This column originally appeared in Brooklyn Paper on June 23, 2007

I’ve gotten to know the mind of the man (and gal) on the street in the Heights pretty well since I started publishing the Brooklyn Heights Blog almost a year ago. Our neighbors are smart, quick witted, proud and a little skeptical. Since I’ve been accused of having many of the same attributes, I’ve contemplated something that would have seemed preposterous when I lived in Manhattan — running for public office.

Before you start to get misty over my zeal for serving the public, let me make one thing perfectly clear about my motivation: I’m downright gobsmacked by the sheer wackiness of some of the folks representing us. Seems like every time I’ve pick up the paper recently at least one of our representatives is doing something odd. Heck, if they can do it why can’t I?

Now I’m sure that state Sen. Marty Connor is fine upstanding member of the community. He’s served us for two decades in Albany, which is admirable — if only for the fact that our state capital is an armpit of a town. But it’s a little weird that he was recently featured in the New York Times complaining about the lack of nightlife up there.

“There’s no ‘everybody place’ [to hang out] anymore,” he told the Times. Really? As one of the posters on my blog reminded the good senator: “There’s still one ‘everybody place.’ It’s called the state Senate Chamber.”

And did Connor really have to go to the mattresses over the vote to name a state vegetable, too?

According to a report in the Albany Times Union, Connor protested a motion by Sen. Michael Nozzolio (R–Seneca Falls) to make corn the “state vegetable.” Why did Connor object? Because, of course, corn is a grain, not a veggie! That led to a hissyfit by upstate teacher Linda Townsend, whose high school civics class came up with the corn recommendation.

But where was Marty when a bill was introduced in this year’s legislative session asking to let medical doctors care for “orangutans, gorillas, chimps and other great apes”? Perhaps he was out looking for a nightspot with Dr. Zaius?

Yes, there are serious issues to be dealt with in government to be sure, but isn’t it time for someone like us to be part of government again? I’d even promise that if elected, I’d only stay in office one term.

“No you won’t,” my pal Howie Greene told me. How­­ie, now a real-estate ag­ent, worked in government back in the 1980s in the borough president’s office and as an aide in the state Senate. He warned me, “You’ll be so drunk with power, you won’t be able to give it up. I’ve seen it too many times.”

Then he gave me a lecture about the long that hours officials put in and all the constituents they need to talk to everyday just to keep our democracy going. And then I wasn’t so smug anymore. Just when I was discounting my political ambitions, Howie added one more thing that changed my mind again: “By the way,” he said, “you could totally win.”

This column originally appeared in Brooklyn Paper on June 9. 2007

Last week, Google added a new feature to its mapping service: Street View. Now, not only can you search for an address and see it on a map, but also see the place you’ve searched for and its surroundings up close and personal. Almost too personal, in an Orwellian type of way. If Big Brother had Street View in “1984,” he would never have had to leave the house.

Immediately after launch, the online zeitgeist was bursting with two cries: 1) “This is great thing!” 2) “This a great … invasion of privacy!”

An Oakland resident told the New York Times she was freaked out to see her cat captured in one of the still photos. She worries that the next step is could be pictures of her bookshelf.

Google’s Lars Rasmussen says that Street View is not an invasion of privacy since all photos used for the project were taken in public places. Despite some folks’ conniptions, an entire subculture around Street View popped up literally overnight. One site, mapmole.com, is dedicated to some of the silly, saucy and scary images captured by the project’s photo vans. That got us thinking: are there sunbathers, giant pumpkins, crimes in progress or something that looks like E.T. in the photos snapped of Brooklyn Heights?

The first thing you notice when trolling the virtual streets is that people sure love to double park in our neighborhood. On the days the photos were taken, countless delivery trucks, vans and civilian vehicles congested the area. A Street View jaunt down Remsen Street turns up two gents in what appear to be matching khaki jackets who may or may not be the street’s famous “Goggle Brothers.”

While it may take days, weeks or months for us to really find something juicy in this vision of Brooklyn Heights preserved in time like a bug in amber, many natives who have since moved out of the area are using Street View as a way to take a virtual trip down memory lane.

“I went home again yesterday,” Philadelphia Daily News columnist Bill Conlon wrote recently.

“Who says you can’t go there? I started at the corner of Hicks Street and Grace Court — my home stickball field street in Brooklyn Heights more than 60 years ago. On my left, were brownstones dating to the mid-19th century, now renovated into seven-figure townhouses.”

And while the Grace Court of Conlon’s youth will soon be made over into condos, it will forever be preserved in cyberspace via Street View. Maybe that’s worth giving up your cat’s right to privacy for, after all.

This column originally appeared in Brooklyn Paper on June 2, 2007: 

An endearing quality of living in Brooklyn Heights is the fact that despite all of the 21st-century means of communication we have at our disposal, one way of “getting the word out” is still the old fashioned sign, posted on trees, windshields, doors and storefronts.

So how do Heights folks use the medium of Martin Luther, the Five Man Electrical Band and New York Mets’ superfan, the “Sign Guy”?

For years the city threw down a challenge to tourists and locals: go ahead try to find the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge footpath. While we’ll never know the emotional toll borne by many foreign tourists in their futile attempts to find their way over the Great Bridge, we do know that one Heights resident rode to their rescue — with signs.

As revealed by The Brooklyn Paper in January, Roslyn Beck began posting her homemade placards to be “helpful.” And her signs were the cleanest, clearest way of directing pedestrians to the bridge entrance.

That Beck made the effort to post her signs is proof that there might just be a little Mayberry in all of us. Beck’s act of kindness is about as small town America as cooling an apple pie on your windowsill or asking your neighbor for a cup of sugar.

It’s just that type of spirit that prompted new neighbor Rob Halpin to post signs in April around Cranberry and Willow Streets to ask for leads about his lost cat, Tippy. His note was written in a very cordial style, ending with “Thank you very much.” While Tippy has not been found, Halpin said at the time he was overwhelmed by the response from the neighborhood and the readers of Brooklyn Heights Blog, where the note had been published.

Sometimes signs don’t hit a responsive chord. Last week, locals were perplexed by a cryptic warning posted on a well-kept tree on Pierrepont Street between Henry and Hicks streets. The warning reads: “DO NOT put bread in here. The rats are developing gluten allergies! DO NOT put your dog in here. The rats are not allergic to dogs.”

The author, who identifies herself as “Bonzoni,” says she was attempting to be funny — while at the same time scolding folks for feeding bread to birds because the bread only ends up attracting rats. She added the “kicker” about dogs as a call out to a gentlemen who picks up his small dog, places it into the flower box and allows it to drop the deuce there. He doesn’t clean up afterwards, she says.

Well intentioned as she may be, Bonzoni is no Carrot Top. As any Borscht Belt vet will tell you, when most people see the word “rats,” their ability to process humor, much less sarcasm, goes out the window. (Note to self: “mouse” funny, “rat” not so much.)

And would a story about Brooklyn Heights be complete with a little parking drama? The now infamous “Throwdown on Cranberry” in early May pitted “Angry Person” versus “Inconsiderate Driver.” “AP” tacked a typewritten note to his garage door saying: “Dear Inconsiderate Driver, The next time you park here and block my garage, I will have you towed.”

“ID” attempted his own brand of Heights détente by scrawling on the note: “Dear Angry Person: It was an accident. No need to be rude. We have the same landlord.”

While the rationale of “ID” may seem a stretch, it bears the hallmark of all Heights signs: the desire to connect with our neighbors in quaint, provincial manner. Well, with a Brooklyn twist at least — is a Heights version of the Hatfields and McCoy’s brewing? Doesn’t get any more small town America than that, eh?

This column orginally appeared in Brooklyn Paper on May 26, 2007:

Great art elicits an emotional response from its viewer. If John Barnard’s photo exhibit at St. Francis College, “Nannies of Brooklyn Heights,” was meant to provoke feelings about a number of issues including race and class relations, it’s a resounding success. (See photo in “Nine Days in Brooklyn” on page 2.)

One would expect a show entitled “Nannies of Brooklyn Heights” to pay homage to the hard-working women who partner in raising the offspring of their affluent employers. Instead, Barnard places focus on the children who are being cared for by using titles that make them the center of attention (i.e. “Six Toes and Looking for Candy”).

Whether Barnard is using his titles as a sleight of hand is up to the individual. But what appears to be an accounting of neighborhood caregivers documents far more than that — a huge racial divide. Every nanny is black and all of the children are white. That, along with the way the pictures are composed, recalls the turn-of-the-century work of photographers Henry P. Moore and Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr.

Both men were known for their historic photos of freed slaves. Moore’s photos are regarded today as staged events attempting to showcase a new racial harmony in America that did not exist.

It was Eickemeyer’s mission to show that freed slaves had assimilated into mainstream America. He traveled the South and snapped his most-famous picture, Uncle Essick, in Alabama: a man posed to look like the quintessential American farmer — right down to his corn-cob pipe.

The St. Francis College exhibit transports some of that cognitive dissonance to 21st-century Brooklyn Heights. The combination of titles, staging and the disconnection seen in the nannies eyes makes the viewer feel that the people in the pictures are slightly out of sync with each other.

While a study of nannies with and without their charges might have been another option for Barnard, the path he chose should foster productive social dialogue.

One place where productive dialogue is not happening is the hopelessly class-ist Web site, “ISawYourNanny.com.” It’s by far one of the worst examples of Bloggers Gone Wild.

“I Saw Your Nanny” flies in the face of everything a freshman learns in Ethics 101. It’s basic premise is to publish user reports — mostly anonymous — of angry, indifferent, incompetent or just plain loony nannies.

While some of the tipsters might think they’re well intentioned, they are little more than fear-mongers. After all, a truly helpful person, upon seeing a horrific encounter, would intervene — not worry about running home to fire up the laptop.

Since the alleged incidents are vague, it’s impossible to track down the nanny (or Mommy for that matter) who committed the act, making the site nothing more than a forum for self-congratulation.

That’s, of course, if you can get through the ham-fisted, judgemental prose that is a hallmark of the site, like this excerpt, which allegedly took place at the Court Street Barnes & Noble:

“I witnessed a nanny yesterday who lost her temper with a little boy. She was not watching him that closely and I don’t think his behavior was good. But if she had been minding him more carefully, he would not have had the opportunity to pick up a book and hold it over the ledge and drop it from the second floor down to the first floor. He was only about 2 years old. A fury rose to the nanny’s face and she smacked the c—p out of his hand. She slammed him in the stroller and looked at him with this evil face. Her harsh reaction to such a small child caused myself and the people in our party to be a bit speechless.”

And so it goes. Even your friendly neighborhood Spiderman knows that “with great power comes great responsibility” — a point clearly missed by “I Saw Your Nanny.”