There will be two classes (Sat., Aug. 30):

1st group: 10: 00am-12pm
2nd group: 12:00pm-2:00pm

To Reserve your spot please contact Francesca Andre
nociallc@gmail.com
203-685-2200

Le Toukouleur Restaurant
1116 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, New york
www.letoukouleur.com

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Peaches evokes urban farmhouse style.

We really enjoyed our meal. Watermelon with pickled ginger and arugula was just about the ideal summer salad. My son had the barbecued shrimp with pineapple coconut rice, also delicious. For entrées we had a hamburger, baby back ribs, barbecued French fries (addictive!) and red beans and rice with a side of sautéed kale. I would say the menu has something of a New Orleans/Carolinas influence, but what do I know? I’m from Connecticut.

Since we were there to celebrate our anniversary/our son’s birthday (which occur on the same date) I brought along a bottle of sparkling wine. (Peaches doesn’t have a liquor license yet). Right around the time we got our entrees, my recollection gets a little blurry. I do know that we decided not to have dessert. According to the web site, the menu changes daily, but lists sample dishes, including six desserts, all fully in the “New American” camp (pecan pie, ice cream sandwiches, fruit cobbler).

Delicious ginger watermelon salad.

I also remember that it was a Thursday night and the place was packed, inside and out. The take-out window was humming with activity the whole time. I think it’s fair to call Peaches a success. Occupying the former Akwaaba Café and Petit Basaam space, a prime spot on the corner of Macdonough and Lewis, it’s on the same block as Bread Stuy and Brownstone Books and just blocks from the newly renovated Macon Library. Now if only a little of that gentrification would spread a bit further north!

Peaches
393 Lewis Ave (corner of Macdonough)
718 942-4162
Open Weds-Sat 5-10 pm
Lunch and brunch are supposed to “arrive in August” according to the site
BYOB/No reservations
http://www.peachesbrooklyn.com

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Yoga Instructors needed [Help Wanted]
Farmers’ Market Volunteers needed [Help Wanted]
The dream of landmarking Bedford Corners is still alive. [That's Debatable!]
Folks weigh in on the neighborhood safety debate. [The Crime-y Grimy]

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Sales #2

#1 — $365,000 — 1 BR: This is probably on the Clinton Hill side of Classon, but that’s close enough for me to include it. Not spectacular, but not bad either. Classon and Quincy Classon G

#2 — $449,000 — 2 family: Everyone is so brownstone-centric around here that I sometimes feel that I’m alone in liking the brick townhomes and frame homes in the area. This cute little greenie caught my eye because of the low price (which clearly indicates that the inside must be a horror story). I still think it’s adorable.
Jefferson and Malcolm X Gates JZ

#3 — $315,000 — 1 BR: Nice but small. I’ve seen the outside of this building and while it’s not bad, it’s not stop-you-in-your-tracks gorgeous either. It doesn’t look like anyone has moved into the building yet, but I might be wrong. One cool thing about this building was that the caretaker (who was a parttime DJ) used to place a huge speaker in the window of the second floor and play a set on Saturday afternoons. He’d have the mic and he’d try to get passersby in a party mood. On a scale of 1 to 10 I can only give him a 5 on music selection–his choices skewed towards current R&B pop acts like Rhianna. More than once he played some Bob Marley as I was walking by, and I couldn’t help but think, c’mon, Marley? Is that all you’ve got? If I close my eyes and I can’t tell whether I’m at a frat party at a liberal arts college or a backyard BBQ in Carnarsie, then you simply haven’t done your job as a DJ. A DJ is supposed to wow us. Anybody can choose Marley. A real DJ would’ve chosen Peter Tosh. I’d like to give him a 10 for enthusiasm, though. I remember one day when he was playing Marley he had the mic, and he was waving his hand in the air saying “One love, Marcy Avenue! One Love, Everybody!” People walking by only stared at him in confusion. The “one love” never really came together on Marcy that day. I think that many of the people walking by weren’t sure why someone in a new condo building would be throwing a block party by himself. In any case it was nice and I enjoyed it. Of course, once the condo next door started filling up with residents, that was The Day the Music Died. Suddenly he disappeared and there were no Saturday afternoon music fests. I think when he closed his set one afternoon he announced that he was heading down to Prospect Park to spin tunes. I think he said he spins there every Saturday. Bye-bye, Mr. DJ. You will be missed. Anyway, there’s an open house on Sunday from noon to 1:30 p.m. (sans music).
Marcy and Myrtle Myrtle-Willoughby G

#4 — $239,999 — Studio: This is definitely the least expensive unit I’ve seen in the neighborhood. Has anyone seen anything under 240K? I remember seeing this building when it was first built, and I thought it looked a bit out of place. It would probably be more at home further up on Bedford Avenue (like in the South Williamsburg section). Not much to say about the unit–seems like a regular studio–but the building, in my opinion, no longer looks brand new. In fact, it looks much older than it actually is. Bedford and Halsey Nostrand AC/Franklin Shuttle

#5 — $999,000 — 1 BR: This is a nice looking loft but the price is less than nice. There are at least 4 (much cheaper) units in this building in contract, but there are several others still available. Is Classon and Lexington on the path to deserving these prices? That is, are the amenities in this area enough to make buyers want to shell out for these lofts? Lexington and Classon Classon G

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(By the way, the MXB Farmers’ Market MySpace page gets points for including Jamiroquai on their soundtrack!)

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Join BPL at Fort Greene’s Habana Outpost for a Back to School Party on Labor Day. Come out for a party like none other featuring a dance party, face painting, story time and eco-friendly crafts for kids, while adults can enjoy a DJ, frozen mojitos and fantastic food. So bid farewell to summer and boogie on over to Habana Outpost for a day to remember. All activities are free and open to the public!

Date: Monday, September 1, 2008

Time: 12- 5 PM

Location: Habana Outpost Ecoeatery
757 Fulton Street at South Portland Avenue, 718.858.9500

Events

12:00 - 2:00 PM

Mini Worm Bin Workshop
Learn how to start a compost bin at home or in the classroom. You will be given all of the information you need plus a few red worms to take with you.

Story Time With Brooklyn Public Library
Brooklyn’s best librarians make your favorite books come to life during book readings.

2:00 - 5:00 PM
Tator Tots Dance Party
Kids, parents and teachers are all invited to dance off the “back to school blues” at the Tator Tots dance party! Featuring DJ Catnip and DJ Dundee.

12:00 - 5:00 PM
Face Painting
Stop by and have Habana Outpost’ resident make-up artist, Christie Caiola turn your kids into lions, flowers, super heroes, or whatever they can dream up!

Recycled Arts and Crafts
Learn how to make your own custom notebook from recycled materials in this fun and educational workshop brought to you by the Leadership Learning Lab.

Library Card Registration
Sign up for your Library Card and meet some of your local librarians to find out about all of the resources available at your local library!

For more information you can visit their Facebook page (they have a FACEBOOK PAGE!).

Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) is an independent library system for the 2.5 million residents of Brooklyn. It is the fifth largest library system in the United States with 60 neighborhood libraries around the borough. BPL offers free programs and services for all ages and stages of life, including a huge selection of books in more than 30 languages, author talks, literacy programs and public computers. BPL’s eResources, such as eBooks and eVideos, catalog information and free homework help, are available to customers of all ages 24 hours a day at our website: http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org.

Habana Outpost is New York’s first solar powered restaurant and marketplace, created by artist and restaurateur Sean Meenan. It is ecologically designed and operated and provides a wide range of free activities such as art shows, movie screenings, fashion shows and children’s activities. Since 2005, Habana Outpost has become a nexus for community activity bringing neighbors, environmentalists, artists and families together into one courtyard.

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Thanks for the info. and the pic, Christopher!

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The opening reception will be Thursday August 21, 2008, 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm at the SONYA Center, 394 Waverly Ave (between Greene and Gates). The exhibition runs from August 21 to September 25, 2008.

Here is a little bit of information about each of the featured artists:

Pamella Allen - Jamaican born, Brooklyn based Visual Artist & Teaching Artist Pamella Allen has been traveling the world “making art” for over twenty years, exhibiting extensively in New York, Paris, London, Costa Rica, and New Delhi. Pamella’s paintings, prints, works on paper, Journalistic Art Books and photographs are a culmination of more than twenty years of travels over land and sea. “In all of my works I speak of life through my experiences as an artist and woman of color living in many different parts the world today. To interpret the truth in all of the humanity that I have seen, I approach the creation of my works from memory and very rapid on-site life drawing, this allows them to speak in the many voices of the collective soul.”

C. Bangs - My work investigates frontier science combined with symbolist figuration. I’ve included quantum equations by Dr. Evan Harris Walker as sacred writing. These equations function as design elements and refer to the interconnectivity of everything and the relationship of time to space. My paintings on canvas or wood panels with sanded surfaces and are painted with acrylic containing mica and iron oxide overlaid with oil and powered gold pigments, which visually and conceptually references illuminated manuscripts. Archetypes of the Earth and cosmological elements are depicted from a ecological feminist perspective. One premise is that we are part of the Earth and all the elements of our bodies at one time were within a star. We contain both systems within us. My art is informed by mythology and the hope for human evolution, in a wide variety of mediums.

Kennis Baptiste - Baptiste started his artistic journey by experimenting with acrylic and oil paints. He had no idea that he could produce such work without practicing or having prior art education. Most of his initial works were figurative portraiture studies. He later started to study and experiment with different abstract ways of capturing movement and energy. During his experimental period, Baptiste was able to find his own unique style of expression. As his art form slowly evolved, the quality of his paintings improved and his knowledge and interest in fine arts also increased. As an urban artist of African and Caribbean decent, Baptiste believes that inspiration can be found almost anywhere. All one has to do is open their eyes, keep an open mind and draw their inspiration from what they see in their community and in the world.

Ramona Candy - After a long dance career, I put art to paper and canvas and call myself a “choreographer on canvas.” My approach to work, be it painting, collage or print, is like that of a dancer. With color, shape and movement, I create choreography on canvas. Though primarily inspired by dance, it is also pride in a rich Caribbean heritage and growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn that influence my work. I use color and shape to reiterate the vibrancy of a culture and way of life I continue to experience. Using movement, I hope to make a connection and open communication, much in the way a performer onstage connects with her audience.

Cochrane - There is no such thing as an original idea however there is innovation. Each mind that wills the hand to create something beautiful or ugly is borrowing from that force in the universe that gives us hope with our dreams or pain in our nightmares. Those of us that are covered in the arrogance of a know it all claim this force as there own and believe no one else should have access to it. They do not understand that the creative force belongs to everyone. Our balance is being shifted with each event that unfolds on earth. The force is all we have and those of us who can’t channel it rely on those who can. Artist of the world are the last line of defense on this chaotic planet and we are relied upon to keep bringing color movement and sound to mother earth.

Francks F. Deceus - continues to emerge as one of the important young painters of his generation. Born in Haiti, Décéus and his family moved to Brooklyn, New York when he was eleven years old. It wasn’t until he graduated from Long Island University with a degree in Sociology that he turned to making art as a career. Over a fifteen-year career, his work has marched chronologically from his childhood in Haiti, through his immersion into his new urban community as an immigrant, and recently, to his meditations on a conceptual vision of humanity. He has always been more interested in exploring themes and issues than in making definitive statements or creating a visual language with his art, and his work resonates with political and sociological content.

Angela Earley - Angela Earley is an artist and educator who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA in printmaking from Syracuse University in 1997 and her MFA in printmaking from Pratt Institute in 2005. Her art has received recognition both nationally and internationally and her most recent “Pigeon Series” of large drawings and etchings is permanently installed at the Radisson Royal Hotel in Dublin, Ireland. For nine years, Angela has been an art teacher at the 92nd St Y and a teaching artist in the New York City public school system through L.E.A.P and the Rotunda Gallery Education Program here in Brooklyn.

D. Lammie Hanson - The key element to my work are lights and shadows. That’s how I paint and now that is how I photograph. This year, 2008, a few projects I have been working on. I am introducing my “Trees and Branches” series, a study of nature at night; my “Music Suite”, a study of local NYC musicians; and my “City Suite”, a study of NYC at night Iand. In the painting category I am expanding on my “LOVE” series and “Introducing Abstracts” series.

Natasha Harsh - After graduating from Philadelphia College of Art, Natasha Harsh moved to N.Y.C., working primarily in art-related fields, she never stopped painting. Over the years, she has had several solo shows and exhibited in numerous group shows. While working in her studio at 41 Union Square West, she was intrigued by the “organized chaos” of the Farmers’ Market. The overflowing arrangements of vegetables seemed to have intrinsic abstract qualities. An ever-evolving series of oils, watercolors and aquatints ensued. With “still-life” as predominant focus, Natasha has also produced a large number of other representational works. Having painted at least six very large commissioned portraits of the Minsky family, she feels like their artist-in-residence. She even painted a “portrait” of another friend’s back-yard; trying to capture the essence of this garden by combining images from different seasons into a final painted image. Her painting’s ultimate goal is to evoke a basic, familiar responsive chord in the viewer.

Kathleen Hayek - I am in humbled awe of the power of life to destroy and create itself endlessly. In most of my work, I am attempting to dialogue with this fracturing, displacing, churning cycle—devastation to re-creation—of natural life force. My current works are landscapes of memory and dreams inspired by long drives on open road, along rolling terrain in all seasons. I use simple symbolic markings of trees and horizon line, scraped into printing plates, building the landscape mostly with layers of paper and colored inks in the printmaking process. Although I work in small series, carrying a theme through its natural evolution, each print in the series is unique and thus called a monotype or monoprint. All are created in the spirit of spontaneity, joy and love of natural forms and color harmonies.

Nikita Hunter - Art and spirit are one. Realizing this, I integrate my spiritual and artistic experience to understand the spiritual aftermath of the middle passage that has left many African Americans void of links that connected them to their ancestors and traditions from the continent. In my work, I have sought to find those links and bridge the gaps by studying Yoruban religion, and compare it to my grandmother’s spiritual survival tactics. I have used my paintings to convey my questions about traditions. Particularly in “What’s Your Identity”, I integrated a primitive application of paint with fragments of oral traditions, masks, maps, and images to illustrate how African culture and spirituality transcended the middle passage and impacted my sense of identity today, despite my confusion on how to honor cultures of an intermixed heritage of African and Seminole Native Americans. I used the hair, black and red to illustrate that fusion of cultures, and I used the patchwork quilt format to unify all of the questions and fragments the summed up my existence.

Musa - Musa is an Installation Artist and Sculptor. Brooklyn has been his home throughout most of his childhood and adult years. He lived in numerous places during his formative years. He has lived in Cleveland, Akron, Dallas, Virginia, and Upstate New York. Throughout those years, he found traveling to be a true education. Through practical application, his journey has given him a foundation for understanding life, people, and culture. Musa is now living and working in his childhood neighborhood of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. He uses the activities and experiences in the past and present as inspiration to make his work more interactive. He is currently engaged in developing installation, video and public art projects.

Douglas Newton - I have been painting in a surrealistic style since about 1990. Images of houses, suburbs and cities, pools and gardens create an alternate world based on memories, observed reality and my imagination. I have shown in many group shows in New York City in both commercial and public spaces. I also had a solo exhibition at the Educational Testing Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, and was in two group exhibitions at the Hudson River Museum. Presently, I am represented by Gallery in the Woods in Vermont. My work is in a number of private collections. I live and work in Brooklyn, New York.

Kathleen Migliore Newton - I believe strongly that subject matter in art is the force that drives style, My canvases are peopled with characters, mostly taken from photos that I take. The figures are in an urban setting on the subway or moving across the geometry of the built environment. Living in New York City, I am a witness to the human panorama of people of diverse cultures going about their daily lives. I have tried to dream their lives. My most recent series is of people looking at paintings in Museums. I am interested in the contrast of time, place and culture between the images in the paintings and the viewers.

Sally Mara Sturman - is a working artist living in Brooklyn with her English bull terriers, Henry and Violet, who often make their way into her illustrations. She has continually painted and exhibited her work since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design and her paintings have been used by such clients as Tiffany &Co, Godiva Chocolates, Random House, Conde Nast Traveler, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Gourmet, Country Living Gardener and McGraw Hill.

Lawrence Terry - I use smoking, burning & line carving in varied hues assembled. At the center of the piece, the circle, represents the human journeys wholeness. My work continues to spring from the region of instinct and interior, and brings to the viewer an opportunity to experience a bridge between the superficial and the mystical.

Iram Yeates - Iram’s art work reflects the passion he feels for jazz and dance. “Jazz to me is the embodiment of freedom. Every struggle with social and humanitarian issues leaves me with a note, a chord, and a melody. Jazz is the essence of modern music. Jazz is learning to speak the blues for all to hear. In my paintings, I hope to voice the history of jazz and its development so others can learn to love this true American art form”. When ask about dance his response was “at times it may take a paragraph to say what a dancer can express in a few moves. My paintings freeze those moments in time the energy, intent, drama and spirit still intact. I can speak endlessly on these paintings because they never stop for me they keep dancing”. Dark, black, ebony, and noir are words that can be used when describing Iram’s artwork. The base of his work is always built on the foundation of black from there he sketch in white charcoal then, work his color into and out of the darkness. “I don’t paint pretty colors for the masses; I do paint beautiful colors for the individual against the darkness which is the performance. The vision lives because my paintings are the windows, the night clubs, the stage, backstage, and the rehearsal the darkness is the emptiness before the performance. It is the mirror just before energy manifest to life, the performance begins”.

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