Closing Bell: Brooklyn Flea + Urban Arts Festival
It’s been a busy week behind the scenes at The Flea, what with last night’s community meeting and all. The meeting was conceived as a listening session for neighborhood concerns but word leaked out and a number of supporters showed up and it ended up feeling more like a referendum on the market. For a…
It’s been a busy week behind the scenes at The Flea, what with last night’s community meeting and all. The meeting was conceived as a listening session for neighborhood concerns but word leaked out and a number of supporters showed up and it ended up feeling more like a referendum on the market. For a couple of longer reports, you can check out Racked, Gawker or Reclaimed Home. Senator Velmanette Montgomery, Councilmember James and Borough Prez Marty Markowitz by proxy all stepped up to the plate on behalf of the Flea; the suggestions ranged from the incremental and addressable to the not-so-reasonable and deal-breaking. There’s a big NY Times story about it slated for this weekend, so keep your eyes out. The two themes we (and others) kept coming back to were community-building and the importance of nurturing small businesses. Along those lines, we hope that everyone who comes out to the Flea this weekend will also make it over to nearby Myrtle Avenue between Emerson and Grand where the first day of the Brooklyn Urban Arts Market will take place; the four other days are August 10, August 24, September 7 and September 21. The open-air market will feature live music, visual art performances, food from Myrtle restaurants, and about 50 local, primarily home-based artisans, vendors, and entrepreneurs selling fashion, art, accessories and more. The event runs from 12 to 7. First timers attending the flea may want to check out the Flea Blog first and get these essentials under their belt: Flea hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday; it’s located at 176 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn. Closest trains are the C and G to Washington/Clinton. Or you can take any of the number of trains that go to Atlantic Station and make the 10-minute stroll up Lafayette Avenue from there.
Update: The New York Times article, by a reporter who took the time to sit down with us and was smart enough not to get himself kicked out of the community meeting, is here; a Daily News article by a “reporter” who was stuck chewing his cud outside the meeting is here. The most amazing part of the News article is the cherry-picked quote from Councilmember James that gives the impression that she’s against the market when she has championed it from the beginning. Some quality journalism.
Nothing so sinister, Left Hook. The intern we had doing Events quit and we don’t have enough time to do it ourselves; plus, we got a lot of complaints about the format of running events the day of, so we decided to stop running them until we could create a way to run them in a more useful way. We’ve mentioned a lot of other events in the Friday Closing Bell in recent weeks, FWIW. In fact, we think it’s good for the flea when there are other events going on nearby–and vice versa. Just goes to show how people will assume the most sinister of intentions.
LMMFAO! That picture of Jon and Eric looks like something from “Asshat Mountain”! Hey Brownstoner make sure you powder up for your pictorial in Playgirl….
Biff has —— — 4 times looking at that picture….
The What
Someday this war is gonna end…
This is really off topic but a comment on this baor made me think of it. I would like to say that I have always been a little POed that brownstoner suddenly decided not to list events in Brooklyn. This choice was clearly made by him, and understandably, so as not to advertise competition for the flea. However, in my opinion, the flea has created a real conflict of interest for brownstoner.com. There have been several times this summer that I have stumbled across some great summer event going on in Brooklyn and had wished that it had been listed on Brownstoner. Yes, there are other places to go for this information, but I read brownstoner pretty regularly and it is just too bad that some of these great events that promote brooklyn are not listed on Brownstoner.
It’s waaaay time past to call the priest a Nazi. There. I said it first.
denton, if you think the incident at the church is a hundred thousandth as fraught as the Holocaust, you’re in serious trouble.
more like a DILF. yum!
I’ve met him and he is a fox – even foxier in person. also really nice. let’s face it, he’s a dish.
4:02, of course he didn’t say anything (we won’t discuss why it couldn’t have been a she, right?). They didn’t say anything during the Holocaust either. Some things never change.
It ain’t religion-bashing when it’s history.
FWIW, anyone against this flea market—or flea markets in general—need to realize that as retail rents skew higher and higher out of the range of mom & pop business owners, “floating” retail events like street fairs and flea markets are becoming more and more important for small businesses.
Anyone notice how nowadays a lot of “stoop sales” are just folks selling shiny brand new stuff? Or how “holiday markets” are basically the new malls of the 2000s?
There’s a desire for people to run their own businesses you can’t fight. So either love it or leave it be.
My wife thinks he’s a fox, too. Kinda Bobby Flay meets Heath Ledger.
But those are her words, of course.