Brooklyn Heights Blog

Rock legend/nabe resident Marky Ramone is interviewed in today's Jerusalem Post. Marky and Friends will be playing Tel Aviv in January: 

Jerusalem Post: Marky Ramone Stays Back…: "Back then, radio ignored us. We persevered through loyal fans, and that's why The Ramones are more popular now than ever. Today there's a new generation of youth that's into The Ramones. They see something they can relate to," Marky said with a distinctive hometown accent during a phone conversation from his base in Brooklyn Heights, New York.

"Despite not having big hits while we were performing, over the years, we've ended up selling a lot of records. Our biggest selling single is "I Wanna Be Sedated" which has sold about two million, and "Blitzkreig Bop" which has sold almost as much. And we have quite a few gold albums [including Rock and Roll High School]."

MARKY IS now the living legacy of the Ramones. Vocalist Joey and guitarist Johnny both died of cancer earlier this decade and bassist Dee Dee succumbed to years of substance abuse. The band members did not have great relations either during or following their career (animosity between Johnny and Joey was fanzine gossip fodder for years), but Marky said that he's reasonably confident there would have been a Ramones reunion if the other members had survived.

Update:  News 12 Brooklyn is reporting that the woman hit by a livery car yesterday on Cadman Plaza West, now identified by the NY Daily News as Shanttarag Raghunanan, is still in critical condition.  News 12 Video

Brooklyn Heights artist Michael Deas has created another stamp for the U.S. Postal Service. His rendering of actress Bette Davis will be released in 2008. He based his artwork for the stamp on a publicity photo of Davis taken during the filming of All About Eve in 1950.

Earlier this year the USPS issued a stamp commemorating President Gerald R. Ford, also painted by Deas.

As mentioned in our comments section earlier today, a woman on her way to become a U.S. citizen was injured when a livery cab collided with scaffolding at 140 Cadman Plaza West.

WABC TV: Car hits woman: A woman about to become an American citizen was struck by an out-of-control car careened into scaffolding in Downtown Brooklyn.

Eyewitness News is told the woman is very serious condition at hospital. She and her family were about to cross the street, to become U.S. citizens at the court house.

The NY Times has a piece today about former Field & Stream editor/Heights resident Sid Evans. He's taken the EIC job at a new magazine, Gun & Garden, and will be relocating to Charleston, South Carolina next month. The piece asks the question – do you need to be in New York City to succeed in journalism? 

New York Times: New York Heresy: It may not be a loss to the city of the same magnitude that Joan Didion’s and John Gregory Dunne’s decamping for Tinseltown was in the mid-60s. But it’s not often that somebody in the magazine business who has actually made it, and is still on his way up, decides to leave New York. To some, in fact, it is heresy.

“There’s a kind of arrogance here that anybody who’s not in New York isn’t here for a reason,” Mr. Evans said last week over elk chops and bourbon at Henry’s End, a restaurant in Brooklyn Heights near his apartment. “You really do begin to believe it, that the only smart people in the media are in New York.”

The reaction to his decision has been, to some degree, predictable. “One friend of mine who works at New York magazine told me it was career suicide,” he said.

[video]http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vf-4lCsLlpg[/video]

[video]http://youtube.com/watch?v=L_HCrmjWLnI[/video]

From TwoFones, the video above and some photos from Thursday night's caroling.

Kim Paris-Vietnamese Grill has opened in the former location of The Greens at the corner of Montague and Henry Streets.  Originally a voice mail message on the restaurant's answering machine touted the opening of Island Grill. Clearly that plan did not pan out. A post on Chowhound notes:

Had an appetizer portion of the pho bo tai[sic]. It was pretty good. I'm not a pho expert, but I've had, and enjoyed, the pho at a pretty well regarded pho place in the dc area, so I know what I like. The pho at the brooklyn restaurant tasted pretty much like I remembered the dc place's pho tasted like. It came with the usual fixings, and a small bowl of hoisin sauce. I also had a chicken entree called honey ginger chicken. It was fine, but I wouldn't order it again. A bit too sweet, and too much ginger flavor. I plan on frequently going back for the pho, however. I do wish that they had soda lemonade like the place in dc had. It was basically just lemonade with seltzer, but it was really refreshing, especially with the pho. Anyway, the place on montague is definitely worth a look. 

Brooklyn Heights resident David Henry Hwang's new play Yellow Face is now playing at the Public Theater. He and nabe townhouse are profiled in today's New York Tiimes:

NY Times: One Character at a Time: “Our notions of authenticity and purity are really just convenient and ultimately superficial,” said Mr. Hwang, sitting in the Brooklyn Heights town house he shares with his wife, Kathryn A. Layng, who is American (whatever that means) and their two children. “Increasingly, race and culture are two different things. The world is a mongrel place.”

As is their town house, comfortably decorated New York-style. Across the room from a fireplace hung with Christmas stockings is a large and impressive 19th-century Chinese cupboard. It was bought, like so many New Yorkers’ bits of chinoiserie, at ABC Carpet on Broadway. [Full story]