Last Minute Gift Giving Ideas For Mother’s Day

A question I find myself asking more and more nowadays is as follows:

When we will we as a society pull our collective head out of our ass and get our priorities straight?

After all, I live in a neighborhood where:

1. Luxury condominiums are the standard, yet more and more families are flooding into the local food pantry.
2. Five banks can be found in a two block radius south of Greenpoint Avenue but nary such an institution can be found to the north.
3. Bars are proliferating, but the selection of restaurants (unless of course, one likes Thai food— A LOT) is becoming more and more sparse.

Yes sir, if you love you some psychics, booze, Thai food, banks and pet supply stores, Greenpoint is the place to be. If you need to eat, buy housewares or something for Mother’s Day (like the rest of us) this arrangement presents certain challenges.

Which brings me to this.

This is the window at Just For Fun, a stationery/novelty store on Manhattan Avenue. As you can see, the theme is Mother’s Day. I am terrible about remembering such holidays. Thankfully these folks have a number of great gift-giving ideas for prodigal children like me.

Perfume, lighters shaped like the Statue of Liberty, edible underwear— all are excellent ways of telling mom how much you love her on Mother’s Day.

Those of you who are diet conscious will be pleased as punch to learn these great tasting strawberry flavored skivvies are also LOW IN CARBOHYDRATES! What will these unsung geniuses think of next? Control top edible underwear? I can only hope so.

Miss Heather

Another Saturday At Studio B

The numerous building and fire code “irregularities” barely scratch the surface as to my fascination with this establishment. No matter what time of day I walk by there always seems to be something going on. Yesterday afternoon was no exception.

It was 3:30 p.m. when I saw a minivan park in front of Studio B. Intrigued, I hung around to see what would happen next.

Man steps out of minivan, walks to the front door and stares at work permit.

Bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this.

Having read said permit, man returns to van and waits.

One block away I notice HE IS STILL WAITING. What is this man waiting for? Does he want to make sure he gets into this evening’s event? He hardly looks like the Studio B type. Or is he?

Thankfully I walked by again around midnight. Not only were things starting hop (and the rooftop garden appeared to be closed) but across the street I found a very curious item jammed in a window sill.

And then it all made sense. Next thing you know Bob Dole will be down there trying peddle his little blue pills to get around paying Studio B’s exorbitant cover charge.

Miss Heather

Greenpoint Photo du Jour: Authority

From the Greenpoint Terminal Market.

Miss Heather

Greenpoint Photo du Jour: Psychic Friend

From Manhattan Avenue.

Miss Heather

No Sleep Til Greenpoint

Anyone in the know will tell you schlepping one’s ass from Greenpoint to Park Slope and back is no picnic. This usually entails taking the G to F. Getting to the Brooklyn Lyceum is a bit more complicated. Do I want to transfer at the 4th Avenue Station for the M(aybe) or R(arely)? No, I have more faith in my feet than those trains, thank you very much.

So after the Blogfest the Mister and I walked to the F. This ended up being a trek well worth making. Firstly, I learned the pay phone at the intersection of 4th Avenue and Garfield Street is tapped. How do I know this you ask?

Someone was kind enough to label it.

This person (presumably a patron of the Manhattan-Queens bound F) employed a very novel (if flawed) approach to solving this civil liberties conundrum: if you can’t hear them, the spooks can’t hear you.

We saw this at Bergen Street waiting for the G train. While too abject for some, I have to admit any commentary involving a penis and a small fluffy dog makes me chuckle.

Further down the platform we saw some subway Seppuku. This is pretty dark. Even for me. I want to go home.

Nothing says welcome back to Greenpoint to yours truly like:

I like big dick in my mouth

scrawled on a Department of Buildings subway poster. I suppose “Construction Safety Week” didn’t go over as well as intended. Yes, I am just as surprised as you are.

As many of you know Town Square’s “Earth Day” celebration at McCarren Park was co-sponsored by Exxon Mobil, British Petroleum and Bruce Ratner (among others). What you may not know, however, is Susan Anderson of Town Square rolled out this classic one liner in the April 25, 2008 edition of the Greenpoint Courier:

Exxon, for better or worse, is a part of the community.*

Greenpoint— with or without oil— is is indeed going green. Just not in the manner the local patricians had intended. Unlike the party-foulers at Nassau Avenue, we folks at the Greenpoint Avenue stop don’t worry too much about death.

We prefer to celebrate life.

Miss Heather

*I just about pissed my pants laughing when I read this.