TWO MONTHS AFTER THE BROOKLYN DODGERS won their 1955 world championship, FRED SIMMS started working for Con Edison in a cable-pulling crew. He made $40 a week. Months after Ike took his second oath of office, in ’57, Edward Fitzgerald joined Con Edison. He didn’t much like the job, but a recession was on, so..
LAST SUNDAY, THE MONTAGUE STREET BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT (BID) co-sponsored the first of four block-closings that turned three blocks of Montague Street into ‘piazzas.’ While the 4th of July weekend was a slow time to try something new to promote this unusual street, that fact helped police, the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Montague..
AS THE OCEAN-LOVING FIRST MATE OF TWO ALASKAN KING CRAB BOATS, JIM CLARK kept a fond eye on Red Hook while living in Williamsburg and Bushwick during the crabbing off-season. After a decade of calling Brooklyn home only part time, Clark ended his maritime career last year and finally settled in Red Hook, which he..
THE SPLASHY, ABSTRACT ART OF MARK T. SMITH might pop onto your radar this summer. The Pratt alum has been selected as an official Olympic artist for the 2008 Beijing games, the most recent highlight in a happening professional art career. Many years ago, hot off the Pratt presses, Smith landed his first major commission,..
MILADY HARTMANN’S two young girls are exactly who she had in mind when she began designing children’s clothing. In the bigger picture, though, she sees her daughters as representing the colorful young faces that comprise the fabric of Brooklyn. Hartmann is part Haitian, part French, and her husband, Philippe, is part Canadian, part French, so..
THE FIRST CARROLL PARK KIDS’ CONCERT of the summer was an energetically charged and well-attended affair, despite early concerns that it might not happen. The free concert series’ fate was in doubt due to lack of funding and leadership until SIMMI DEGNEMARK stepped in to lead a small but determined all-mother volunteer team to revive..
AT THE QUILTERS GUILD OF BROOKLYN MEETING SIX MONTHS AGO, MARINE PARK RESIDENT PAULINE PICONE announced that she and her husband SAM would be donating quilts to wounded soldiers at Walter Reed National Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. During the following months, numerous guild members contributed generously to the pile and on May 20,..
PARKING IN DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN and the surrounding brownstone neighborhoods has been an insoluble problem that worsens every year. But in a small corner of the civic center plot where the state Supreme Courthouse was built more than half a century ago, several dozen cars have been taken off the street, freeing up spaces for residents..
NEARLY 46 YEARS AFTER HIS HALL OF FAME INDUCTION, JACKIE ROBINSON received a new plaque — a Hall of Fame rarity — with new details about the full impact he had on both baseball and the country as the first black major league player. His color is something the late Brooklyn Dodger asked to be..
KAREN LOEW has been a member of Grace Church in Brooklyn Heights for 15 years, although she moved away from her Concord Village home in 2006. She now resides an hour and 10 minutes away in Hudson Heights, but attends Grace regularly, serving as lay reader and usher, tied to the church’s deep sense of..