Urban Oyster - NYC Walking Tours

There’s an old joke that goes, “What do you call a New York City thermostat?”

Answer: “A window.”

New York may be building a reputation as a “green” city under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but anybody who has ever lived here has undoubtedly had to deal with the leaky windows and leaky faucets of the city’s aging housing stock. While gleaming new buildings built to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, learn more here) standards are springing up around New York, the city will only make headway in cutting its consumption of resources and output of pollution by finding innovative ways to make existing buildings leaner and greener.

New York City has lagged behind some other cities in the number of energy-efficient buildings, but several key steps by the city, and a few high-profile projects, have helped to get the ball rolling on green building. In 2006, the mayor announced PlaNYC, an initiative to make the city more livable for all New Yorkers while also reducing its environmental impact on the globe by the year 2030. As part of this project, last year Bloomberg unveiled an ambitious package of legislation that would have required buildings of 50,000 square feet or more to undergo an “environmental audit” every 10 years, and then make renovations to improve energy efficiency. The audits will still be mandatory – and will affect an estimated 22,000 buildings – but the renovations will be voluntary under the bill the mayor signed into law in December 2009. Nonetheless, many building owners are taking the initiative to improve the environmental performance of their properties because they see the significant cost savings as well as the appeal to tenants of improved services and green design.

These changes can be seen across the city. One of the most recent additions to the Midtown skyline is the Bank of America Tower, which is aspiring to receive Platinum LEED Certification. Across the East River at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the Perry Building is the country’s first Gold LEED-certified multi-story industrial building (learn more about it on our Sustainability Bicycle Tour). In Downtown Manhattan, there have been a couple big green retrofits – 375 Hudson Street, once a drab office block, recently reopened to rave reviews of its renovation by Tishman Speyer, and 375 Pearl Street, the site of the ghastly Verizon building at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, will soon get a green makeover by Cook+Fox.

But the largest retrofit project is the massive renovation of the city’s most iconic building, the Empire State Building. The building’s owners, Empire State Building Company, are investing $500 million in the upgrade of the Midtown landmark, $20 million of which will go towards boosting energy efficiency, making it the largest green retrofit of a large commercial building built before World War II (the building opened its doors in 1931). Since 43% of all the office space in New York City was built before 1945, creating models for greening older structures is essential for reducing the city’s environmental impacts. The Empire State Building has partnered with the Clinton Climate Initiative, through its Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program, and the Rocky Mountain Institute, a non-profit organization which provides recommendations on the design, construction and operation of green building techniques. The renovation project is being carried out by Jones Lang LaSalle and Johnson Controls. The remainder of the money will go towards other renovations, including refurbishing the building’s Art Deco lobby and the Observation Deck, as well as the interiors of the 84 floors in between.

The cornerstones of the project include refurbishing all 6,500 windows in the building to reduce heating and cooling costs, insulating radiators to cut heat loss to the exterior of the building, upgrading lighting and electrical systems and improving ventilation. The building will also be outfitted with a state-of-the-art integrated control system for its heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and individual tenants will be able to use a web-based energy management system to monitor and control their own consumption. In all, the Empire State Building estimates that it will be able to cut its energy consumption by 38% when the project is completed, resulting in savings of $4.4 million annually. On the climate change front, that translates into a cut of 105,000 metric tons of carbon over the next 15 years. The building is also aiming to achieve a LEED Gold rating for commercial interiors, and it has already received a grade of 90 from the federal government’s Energy Star program, putting it in the top 10th percentile among US buildings for energy efficiency.

The project was unveiled in April 2009, but now visitors to the Empire State Building can learn about the ongoing renovations at an exhibit that recently opened in the building’s second floor queuing area. While you wait for your elevator ride up to the Observation Deck, a series of video displays detail the stages of the renovation, the impacts of energy consumption, and ways that cities, buildings, and individuals can reduce their consumption.

We at Urban Oyster were lucky enough to be invited to tour the new exhibit thanks to Jon Peahl, director of sales for the Empire State Building Observatory, and Michael Sibrizzi, sales manager for the Observatory. After walking through the exhibit, we got an express trip to the 86th Floor Observatory, a staple for any visitor to New York. We were also lucky enough to visit the 102nd floor; cradled inside the building’s spire, this enclosed observation deck allows panoramic views without having to walk the outdoor perimeter of the 86th floor. The trip to the top costs visitors an additional $15 (an adult ticket to the 86th floor is $20), but if you’re making the trip all the way to New York to go up the Empire State Building, I would highly recommend ascending the extra 16 floors. (There is actually an even higher point you can climb to, which requires ascending a ladder and climbing out onto an outdoor deck without a railing, but that is reserved for daring celebrities.)

The lives of most New Yorkers are pretty friendly to the environment – we ride public transport more than any other city in America, and we live close together – but our buildings could use improvement. Buildings account for around 70% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, so we can’t green our city without greening our buildings, both new and old. And if we adopt new environmental practices and principles for our buildings, maybe we won’t have to resort to keeping the windows open in the winter and closed in the summer (though even after the remodeling, the Empire State Building will still be one of the only skyscrapers with windows that open).

If you would like to learn more about the Empire State Building’s renovation, visit www.esbsustainability.com (I recommend reading this white paper which outlines the project and its impacts), or to plan your visit, go to the Empire State Building official site. Ever wonder what the colored lights on top of the building represent? Check here. For more on green building in New York, visit gbNYC, a great resource for news and information. Finally, though it’s far from the bustle of Midtown, if you come on our Brewed in Brooklyn tour (our next tour is Wednesday), you will learn about the role the Empire State Building played in the end of Prohibition in 1933.

For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson (andrewg@urbanoyster.com). Thanks to Rebecca Karrin (rebeccak@urbanoyster.com) for taking some beautiful photos, and thanks again to Jon and Michael at the ESB Observatory for all their help. All photos are credited to Andrew Gustafson unless otherwise noted.

In the past three days, New York City has lost a pair of baseball icons – Bob Sheppard, the Yankees' public address announcer for more than 50 years, passed away Sunday, while George Steinbrenner, the team's imperious owner for the past 37 years, died early this morning. Both left indelible stamps on the game, and both will hold special places in the city’s vast constellation of baseball stars. As a Red Sox fan it pains me to say it, but New York City is the unquestioned home of baseball. This is not because of the 27 World Series titles won, bought, or stolen by the New York Yankees, or even because it was the only city to ever boast three major league clubs. No, it is the home of baseball because the game was born here, despite what the folks in Cooperstown might say about their absurd myth of Abner Doubleday. This past weekend, before these recent passings, I decided to embark on a baseball journey around Brooklyn. Although they lost the Dodgers more than 50 years ago, from the beaches of Coney Island to the skyscrapers of Downtown, Brooklyn is still filled with more baseball lore than any other borough.

My first stop was Coney Island to see the Brooklyn Cyclones on Friday night. When the team started play in Brooklyn in 2001, they became the first professional ball club to play in the borough since the Dodgers bolted after the 1957 season. With the addition of the Staten Island Yankees in 1999 – Mayor Rudy Giuliani had brokered a deal to bring minor league clubs to the two boroughs and build new stadiums to house them – Manhattan became the only borough without a pro club. The last game played on the island was September 18, 1963, when the Mets finished their brief run at the famous Polo Grounds before moving to Shea Stadium in Queens, meaning Manhattan’s 47-year baseball drought is longer than that of Brooklyn, which still bemoans the loss of its beloved bums (check out this cool map of Manhattan baseball from Flip Flop Fly Ball). The Cyclones like to harken back to the borough’s Dodger heritage – hanging on the wall of the grandstand are the numbers of Dodger greats like Gil Hodges, Don Newcombe and Jackie Robinson. The luxury boxes and martini bars of Yankee Stadium and Citi Field seem a world away from the neighborhood feel of the Cyclones park. There isn’t a bad seat in the house, and a night out with the family won’t cost you a week’s wages. The club is only single-A ball, and most of the players will move on to greener pastures in a year or two, but because they are a Mets affiliate, Cyclones fans get the benefit of seeing some of their young players move up to the big club in a couple of years. In addition to the friendly atmosphere, it’s tough to beat watching a ballgame with a cool, gentle sea breeze during this wretchedly hot summer. The weekly fireworks are worth the price of admission, too.

The next morning, I decided to get a dose of Dodger history at the Brooklyn Historical Society, which is currently running an exhibit titled Home Base: Memories of the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. Among the exhibit’s highlights is the Dodgers’ 1955 World Series banner (pictured), which was shipped off to Los Angeles when the team moved, only to be stolen and spirited back to Brooklyn by a group of aggrieved sportswriters. The exhibit also features a collection of audio clips from oral histories conducted with players, fans, and ballpark employees. A large portion of the exhibit is dedicated to the long and agonizing fight over a new ballpark between team owner Walter O’Malley and the city’s domineering planner, Robert Moses. If O’Malley had had his way, the Dodgers would be playing in a Buckminster Fuller-designed domed stadium on the west side of Flatbush Avenue in downtown Brooklyn, but Moses refused to give up the land below market rate, as the Dodgers insisted, and tried to push the team to move to a site in Queens. Debate rages on over which man’s pig-headedness is more to blame for the Dodgers’ move, but O’Malley got free land for his new stadium, only it was in Chavez Ravine, and Moses got to build a park in Flushing Meadows, for the expansion Mets. The flight of the Dodgers was a sad day for Brooklyn, but with 50 years of hindsight, I can imagine what an eyesore a giant domed stadium in the middle of downtown would be today. I guess the new basketball stadium being erected just down the street will give us some idea of that very soon.

Ebbets Field may be gone, replaced by a high-rise stack of apartments on Bedford Avenue, but it still bears the name of the ballpark, and a plaque acknowledges the bygone Dodger days. The building’s developers tried to make the baseball connection a selling point, dubbing the different units “triples,” “doubles,” “singles” (all pretty self-explanatory) and “bunts” (an efficiency apartment). It was so conveniently located that Prospect Park, Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Brooklyn Museum were “just a short pop fly away,” according to one advertisement. However, most of the first tenants did not have any connection to the Dodgers – they were predominantly African-Americans who had recently migrated from the Deep South and had never watched a game at Ebbets Field. Today, even fewer residents remember the team or its storied past.

Heading back to my neck of the woods in Windsor Terrace, Green-Wood Cemetery is one of Brooklyn’s great landmarks, but few people know that it is also a baseball landmark. The cemetery was one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city during the 19th century, as visitors came to relax in the quiet, leafy grounds and view the monuments to New York’s foremost citizens; many of those prominent citizens were also amateur ballplayers, financiers, and boosters of the game. The cemetery is the final resting place for one member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Henry Chadwick, dubbed the “Father of Base Ball” for his innumerable contributions to the game’s development as a sportswriter, historian and statistician. He was embroiled in a lengthy dispute with sporting goods magnate Albert Spalding, who promoted the idea that Abner Doubleday invented baseball out of thin air on one fateful day in Cooperstown in 1839. Chadwick knew that the story was pure fiction and that the game had evolved over time from a number of English games, such as cricket and rounders. Nevertheless, the story persists to this day, and the Baseball Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown, not Brooklyn, Manhattan, or Hoboken, New Jersey, all of which have far more legitimate claims to being the birthplace of baseball.

The rest of the baseball greats interred at Green-Wood have been largely forgotten by history, as they played in the days before professionals, but the game would never have become the national pastime without them. The graves of early members of the Knickerbockers, one of the world’s first baseball clubs, like Duncan Curry and James Whyte Davis, can be found there. They helped to write the first rules of baseball and participated in the first recorded inter-club game in 1845. The Knickerbockers played mostly in Manhattan and Hoboken, but there are also Brooklyn greats buried here. Charlie Smith and Jack Chapman, stars of the Atlantics, famously defeated the unbeaten Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1870 before 10,000 onlookers in Brooklyn in the first game to go to extra innings. No Negro Leagues stars are buried there, but you will find Nat Strong, a white promoter who helped develop the leagues in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Despite his inseparable connection to the Dodgers and Brooklyn, you won’t find Jackie Robinson’s grave here – he is actually buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Queens, though it’s “just a short pop fly away” from the Brooklyn line (for more on baseball's connection to Green-Wood Cemetery, check out Peter J. Nash's book Baseball Legends of Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery).

Watching it, reading about it, or visiting sites of great moments in the game’s history are all fine ways to enjoy baseball, but nothing beats playing it. To top off my baseball weekend, I decided to take a few cuts at a batting cage. Cages seem to be in short supply in the city. In Brooklyn, I know of only the Nellie Bly Batting Range in Gravesend and the 3rd Avenue Sportscenter in Sunset Park, where I usually take my swings. The city has lots of diamonds, but few cages mean that kids have fewer opportunities to practice when the weather is too cold for outdoor play. Kids from colder climates are already at a huge disadvantage against players in the South and West who play almost year-round – now the Major Leagues are dominated by players from California, Texas and Florida (not to mention sunny Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.) The cage I hit at leaves something to be desired – bring your own bat, otherwise you’ll be swinging with a child’s tee-ball bat, and some of the machines are set up in such a way to make it impossible to see the ball until it has been shot out of the chute and into the backstop. Despite all this, nothing beats the feeling of getting a hold of one on the sweet spot.

There is still a lot of summer left and plenty of baseball to enjoy around the city. If you are interested in taking a tour of baseball history, Urban Oyster is in the process of developing a new tour that we hope to offer in the late summer or early fall, so sign up for our newsletter to receive updates about that. Peter Laskowich offers frequent tours about baseball history and other New York City topics – send him an email to sign up for his newsletter and receive his schedule of upcoming tours, and visit his website. If you would like to get a flavor of his tours, he also offers free 90-minute tours of Grand Central Terminal and Midtown every Friday at 12:30; no reservations are necessary, and groups meet at 120 Park Avenue.

For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson (andrewg@urbanoyster.com).

Can it be? Two blog posts in the same month? Well, we've been pretty busy so far this summer launching new tours, bowling, birdwatching, and of course, watching the World Cup.

Every four years when I sit down to watch the matches of the World Cup, I am constantly torn between thinking, "This is why I love soccer" and "This is why I hate soccer." On the first thought, there is a lot to love about the tournament – with a few exceptions, the nationalism is generally benign and good-natured, and small countries with little to cheer about otherwise are swelling with pride over their sides' appearance on the international stage. On the other hand, the sport's governing body, FIFA, is either deeply corrupt or profoundly incompetent, and matches are routinely decided by referees' mistakes or outright cheating. This is not just sour grapes from a fan of the United States, which has been repeatedly robbed of deserved victories – World Cup champions have been crowned by horrific missed calls and blatant cheating, and FIFA refuses to do anything to remedy this problem, arguing that it is somehow "part of the game."

To prove that I am not just a sore loser, I will admit that this past weekend while watching the US-Ghana match, I felt far more of the former than the latter sentiment. One of the great things about New York City is that every single country participating in the World Cup (plus many, many more) has a community somewhere in the city. While I sometimes struggle to find places to watch my beloved Boston Red Sox with fellow supporters, there is always someplace where Uruguayans or Koreans or Spaniards are gathered to watch their homeland side play, and they are serving up their national dishes and swigging their national drinks.

Some friends of mine who had spent time in Ghana invited me to Cafe Meytex, a Ghanaian restaurant on Flatbush Avenue in Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn. The place was packed from wall to wall with supporters of both sides. Most of the Ghanaian fans were decked out in their country's jerseys or had flags draped over their shoulders. One reveler wore a cape made of the flags of both Ghana and the United States, reflecting a common feeling in the air – the Ghanaians wanted their home country to advance, but a victory for their adopted one would not be heartbreaking.

When Ghana scored first, there was an eruption, but that soon settled back into concern, as most of the Ghana fans knew that the US starts slow but finishes strong – one goal would not be enough to win the game. When Landon Donovan converted his PK chance, the place got nearly as loud, as even the most ardent Ghana supporters cheered on the Americans to at least make a game of it. Gaffes and missteps put the Americans back on their heels in overtime, and they were victimized by Ghana again, this time by Kevin-Prince Boateng. I desperately wanted the US to win, and when the referee called time after the second overtime period, I felt devastated. But, then after a brief moment of heartache, I looked out on the street and saw the jubilant Ghana fans playing drums and stopping traffic on Flatbush. Some leaped on the hoods of cars driven by fellow countrymen passing by, some held up buses until the driver gave a congratulatory honk of the horn, while most just danced and cheered for the last African side remaining in this World Cup. The New York Times captured some of this pandemonium on their Goal blog, and I can be seen in the video below making two mistakes – one was dropping my phone while trying to take the pictures you see on this post, and the other was to wearing the jersey of my favorite side, Sweden, which did not even quality for the World Cup, eliciting some laughs and jeers from fellow soccer fans.

For the dejected American fans, there was lots of backslapping and expressions of genuine condolence from the Ghanaians. One such fan, when I mentioned that the Americans looked slower and less adept in the air, said, "It's because you Americans don't drink porridge for breakfast. You eat cold cereal. That's why you lost." I'll be sure to mention this to the US Soccer Federation at their next meeting to discuss the future of the national team. But there are still two weeks of World Competition left, and I'll be happy to crack open a Star Beer and cheer for Ghana. They gave such a warm welcome to our president, so the least that I can do is root for their team.

Baseball may be America’s national pastime, but bowling deserves consideration as the country’s national sport. According to the annual survey of sports participation by the National Sporting Goods Association in 2009, 45 million Americans went bowling more than once, the highest number for any organized sport. Only “exercise walking,” “exercising with equipment,” camping and swimming ranked higher, and only 11.5 million people played baseball, fewer than basketball, hunting and darts. Combine this with the relative lack of physical exertion that it requires, and the fact that some feel it captures the zeitgeist of our modern era, and its a perfect candidate.

New York City is the birthplace of modern tenpin bowling (Knickerbockers Alley, opened in 1840, boasted the country’s first indoor lane), and today, the city has many bowling alleys with a wide variety of ambiance. If you are looking for the feel of a Middle American lanes ‘n’ games, a place like Brooklyn’s Maple Lanes does the trick. If you prefer to sip martinis with celebrities while you roll and a velvet rope and bouncer to keep the riffraff out, there’s Bowlmor in the East Village. And if you want the hipster version of a throwback bowling alley, replete with craft beer and mid-century kitsch, Williamsburg offers two options – The Gutter and Brooklyn Bowl.

But one thing that you won’t find in New York City are the staples of bowling in New England – duckpins and candlepins. Played with a ball that fits in your palm and smaller pins (duckpins are shorter and squatter than regular bowling pins, while candlepins are skinnier and cylindrical), not long ago, New Englanders knew no other way to roll. In the past century, tenpin bowling (or “big ball” as we call it) has gained a hegemonic position in the American bowling landscape. There are roughly 6,000 bowling alleys across the country, but only about 120 are dedicated to these small ball varieties.

Despite the divergence in styles, all of them were preceded by various types of nine-pin bowling dating back centuries, including skittles and the German game kegel. Due to its connections to gambling, nine-pin was banned in many places in the nineteenth century; according to legend, the tenth pin was added to circumvent this ban, and modern bowling was born. Bowling was particularly popular among German immigrants in New York in the 19th century, and Otto Huber – who's Brooklyn brewery is featured on our Brewed in Brooklyn tour – was a member of the Columbus Bowling Club (he, along with fellow brewer Ferdinand Muench, also ecourged women to bowl, which they did). His scores were frequently recorded in the local paper, and his daughter Emily was married to the club's president, Frank Obernier, in 1891. Germans built alleys across the city, including Joe Heiser's tenpin alley, located at 136 Broadway in Williamsburg, and you can still see an advertisement in the Bronx for Scheutzen Park Hall, which was located on 3rd Avenue and 165th Street in Manhattan and featured an alley and indoor shooting range.

At first glance, the small balls of candlepin and duckpin seem much easier to handle, and it may be an ideal alternative for kids to the gargantuan balls of regular tenpin. Another difference from big ball is that in both varieties, you get three rolls per frame, and dead pins are not cleared between rolls, allowing for ricochets and making it easier to pick up 7-10 splits. But don’t be deceived – candlepin and duckpin are devilishly hard, and a seasoned bowler can be easily embarrassed by the elusive spares, impossible strikes, and scores commonly in Barack Obama territory. No one has ever scored a 300 in either game, and scores above 130 – middling at best in tenpin – are very respectable.

Much like the Mason-Dixon Line, New England is divided between candlepin country, in northern states like Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and the Canadian Maritime Provinces, and duckpin’s domain, in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Massachusetts is divided territory, the birthplace of both styles, but candlepin holds a distinct advantage (34 alleys versus only 4 for duckpin today); up until 2009, the sport was regularly televised on local stations. Candlepin was born in 1880 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and for whatever reason, it migrated north from there. The earliest records of a duckpin game date to 1894 in Lowell, but the game has spread more widely, with lanes as far away as Indiana and North Carolina. There are more than a dozen duckpin lanes in Connecticut (check out this New York Times article about duckpin in the state), but the easiest place to find an alley is actually in Maryland. Rather than diffusing outward from New England, the game leaped to Baltimore by being popularized by Orioles players and Baseball Hall of Famers John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson, who opened an alley in the city in 1900. The game took off from there, and Baltimore native Babe Ruth was also an avid duckpin roller. Candlepin earned its name due to the skinny pins resembling candles, but duckpin supposedly was named by McGraw and Robinson because of their fondness for duck hunting – the way the smaller pins scattered when struck resembled a flock off ducks flying off when a shot is fired.

When I was a kid growing up in Connecticut, every bowling alley had at least a couple lanes, usually at the far end of the alley, dedicated to this peculiar sport played by elderly men with a tiny ball. Only later did I realize that not only was this sport more challenging and fun than tenpin, but I was living in one of the few places in America that offered this unique recreation. Recently, I took a few trips around New England to play these Yankee pastimes. My first stop was my hometown of Hamden, where Cindy and I visited Johnson’s Duckpin Lanes. The place is a typical sight – a basement alley with a low-slung ceiling in a remote corner of a shopping center. You don’t just stumble upon it – you have to seek it out.

Johnson’s is certainly showing its age. Without the need to clear downed pins, the pin-setting machines for duckpin bowling are simpler than their tenpin counterparts, and you won’t find any computerized scoring or cheesy computer animations cheering you on. The machines at Johnson’s are likely as old as the alley, opened in 1955, and they sometimes wobble when setting the pins, knocking down a few that you can add to your score. This aging equipment has, unfortunately, become nearly impossible to replace, as AMF, the dominant bowling equipment manufacturer, has discontinued its duckpin equipment (a move made when the company was owned by Goldman Sachs, so that’s another reason to hate them). Alleys are forced to refurbish their old equipment or cannibalize it from competitors that have closed as the sport declines. It seems only a matter of time before it dwindles away, but in the meantime, the remaining players will see their scores improve as the creaking equipment knocks over more and more pins. Despite my duckpin pedigree, and all the free pins, Cindy and I split our two games. The score sheet shows we could only muster three spares in our 40 combined frames, and three times we managed to knock down all ten pins on three rolls (called a 10-box, not a spare).

My next stop was to bowl some candlepin at Upper Valley Lanes and Games in White River Junction, Vermont. Technically, this alley is not sanction by the International Candlepin Bowling Association – this is really a tenpin alley with a few candlepin lanes in the corner. Candlepin is a rarity in Vermont now – there are two lanes in the border towns of Derby and Lowell, and one in the southern town of Wilmington. Despite the digital scoring, the pin-setting machines here were just as rickety, and they required at least three visits from the maintenance man during the course of our game. This time I went with my family, and my mother was easily the star performer – born in Lynn, Massachusetts, candlepin was the only bowling she knew growing up. Her brother Rob, my uncle, was an avid player his whole life, and today, Lynn still boasts two candlepin alleys. Despite early struggles, my 7-year-old niece Annika pulled out the win in the six-person field with a respectable 82, while I languished near the bottom, barely breaking 50.

I certainly need some more practice, and I hope to visit more alleys before they all disappear, and maybe next time I won't embarrass myself in front of the old-timers. The closest alley to New York is in Stratford, Connecticut, while you will have to venture further to find a candlepin lane (check here and here for listings of alleys with the respective styles). You may think the idea of heading out of the city on a summer day in order to go to a dreary, windowless bowling alley sounds crazy, but these alleys are a unique New England tradition, and they may not be around for much longer.

For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson (andrewg@urbanoyster.com). Thanks to Nick Capodice (nickc@urbanoyster.com) for contributing research and to Cindy VandenBosch (cindyv@urbanoyster.com) for going bowling with me.

Every year, the arrival of spring in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn is not marked by tree blossoms or birdsongs or baseball – it is marked by throngs of Norwegians marching down Fifth Avenue for syttende mai.

The 17th of May is Norwegian Constitution Day, and this Sunday’s parade continued a tradition Norwegian-Americans in Bay Ridge have had since 1952. From watching it you would think that Bay Ridge is still a predominantly Norwegian community. Sons of Norway chapters, Norwegian churches, and Norwegian sporting clubs from across the region converge on the neighborhood every year (there was even a contingent from St. Olaf’s College in far off Northfield, Minnesota), but Bay Ridge is a changed place since waves of Scandinavian immigrants began arriving in the late nineteenth century. Today, you will find far more residents from China, Greece, and the Arabic-speaking world, but Norwegian-Americans still trace their heritage back to this community, though they have mostly scattered to the suburbs.

This year’s parade marked the convergence of two important anniversaries. May 17 marks the day in 1814 when Norway ratified its constitution, though it would take another 90 years to secure independence. Norway had been released from its union with Denmark that year, only to be immediately absorbed by Sweden. But the Norwegians did hold a constitutional convention, and that document stayed in force throughout the period of union with Sweden, and remained in place through Norway’s independence in 1905.

This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Norway’s national poet and the author of the country’s national anthem. The theme for this year’s parade was “Ja, vi elsker dette landet” – “Yes, we love this country,” the first line of the anthem. The endless sea of Norwegian flags, festooning shirts and hats and waved by nearly every sidewalk reveler, show that residents cherish their bonds to Norway. It also shows that even though the Norwegian community in Bay Ridge is small, they still hold tight to the neighborhood. I wondered if for some, the opening lines of the anthem evoked even stronger feelings for Brooklyn than for Norway. It truly was a neighborhood celebration, and you didn’t have to be Norwegian to participate – Chinese members of a local church marched by, and even I, a Swedish-American, had a great time.

The grand marshall of this year’s parade was former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason, who grew up in East Islip, Long Island. His remarks from the grandstand were brief, though he did comment on the squareness of his own head, and his susceptibility to the harsh rays of the sun (“square-head” is common epithet for Norwegians and Swedes, though it has been reclaimed, and it is more often a source of pride than an insult.) One of the most impressive displays was the police department brass band from the city of Bergen, in western Norway – I imagine it is an opportune time to be a criminal in Bergen, since most of the city’s police force appeared to be performing in the parade. 

The Norwegians do not just come out one day in May, however; there are still several cultural institutions around the neighborhood that have carried on the traditions of the community. The neighborhood used to be filled with Norwegian bakeries and grocers, but today, Nordic Delicacies is one of the last places still selling Lutefisk and canned fish cakes (both the bane of my father’s childhood). Gjøa Sporting Club, founded in 1911 by Norwegian seamen in Bay Ridge, runs a thriving youth soccer program. The Scandinavian East Coast Museum is raising funds for a permanent home, they conduct research and build their collection, and occasionally they put on exhibitions. Due to the shrinking of the Norwegian community in Bay Ridge, the Scandinavians have banded together to share some common institutions. The Danish Athletic Club has more Norwegians than Danes filling its dining hall most of the time. Norwegian and Swedish interlopers can’t keep the place afloat, so even non-members who would like to grab a bite are welcome as well. They even let a couple Swedes march in the parade, though just a couple – Miss Sweden followed Miss Norway of Greater New York in the motorcade (the Swedes have their own celebration, which will be held in June, though there is no parade.)

Even if you missed the parade this Sunday, there are still lots of ways to experience Scandinavian Bay Ridge, and there is always next year – even after the last Norwegian leaves the neighborhood, I have a feeling people will keep coming back to here for generations to celebrate their heritage.

For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact andrewg@urbanoyster.com.

If you are looking for something to do this weekend (and don't have plans to join us for a Brewed in Brooklyn tour), the Taste Williamsburg Greenpoint Festival will be taking place this Sunday.

This celebration of the neighborhoods of northern Brooklyn will feature the cuisine of the area's top restaurants, live music performances, cooking demonstrations, and all of the proceeds will go to a great cause.  This event will support the building of the Northside Town Hall Community and Cultural Center to be housed in the converted historic former Engine Company 212 firehouse, which was the subject of two massive sit-ins, an award-winning documentary and the inspiration to turn around the areas crumbling economy and infrastructure with years of community organizing. The center will be the home of two long time community groups Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG) and the People’s Firehouse, Inc. (PFI), provide affordable meeting space to local groups, and house a first floor gallery space to be maintained by a collective of local art groups. The money raised will go toward the project’s capital fund, which needs to reach $1 million by next year, to begin the renovations to convert the building into this much-needed resource.

Some of the local businesses that will be participating from Williamsburg and Greenpoint:  An Nhau & Banh Mi, Antek, Aurora Ristorante, Bakeri, Bedford Cheese Shop, Blackbird Parlour, Brooklyn Brewery, Diner, DOC Wine Bar, Dressler & Dumont, Fabiane's Cafe & Pastry, Fatty 'Cue, Fornino, Juliette, Karczma, Le Barricou, Lodge, M Shanghai, Manhattan Inn, Mesa Coyoacan, Miranda, Nita Nita, Pies 'n' Thighs, Rabbithole, Rye, Sel De Mer, Sweetwater, Taco Chulo, Teddy's Bar & Grill, Traif, Van Leeuwen's Ice Cream, Walter Foods, Wine Cellar Sorbets, and Wombat.

Details for the event:

Date: Sunday May 16th, 2010
Time: 12 – 4 pm
Location: N 11th St. Between Berry St and Wythe Avenue
Tickets: $35 for 6 tastes, $55 for 10 tastes, $95 for 18 tastes
Advance purchase at brownpapertickets
Tickets will also be available at participating venues and on the day of at the Ticket
Booths on North 11th St. (cash only)

Miniature models are awesome. Scale models of buildings and landscapes are such precious objects crafted by their creators with precision and care. They are built to capture a moment in time – to freeze the idyll of a bygone American landscape of railroad depots and bustling main streets, or to visualize the critical moments of an epic battle across an open field. I love the sense of omniscience that models provide – we can peer into windows, look down alleyways, and see this whole vast creation laid out before us on a single horizon.

Their scale and detail can be breathtaking at times. We recently visited the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, where Howard Tibbals' vast model of the fictitious Howard Bros. Circus is on display (pictured left). Tibbals has been working on the 3,800-square-foot model for over 50 years, and he claims it is still incomplete. In Shartlesville, Pennsylvania, you can visit Roadside America, a model train village that was also the single-minded creation of one man, Laurence Gieringer. In both of these models, the time scale is altered as well; every few minutes, darkness falls over of the scene to mark the passing of another day. At Roadside America, each nightfall is marked by a projection of the Statue of Liberty on the horizon, as well as one of Jesus, and the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner.

When deployed in movies, models can show a landscape tranquil and pristine a few brief moments before it is ravaged by a dam burst or an earthquake. Unlike with computer-generated effects, even if we can see the inconsistent shadows, the absence of people, or any other tell-tale sign of a movie miniature, any kid who has ever built a diorama can identify with the magic of movie making. The science fiction film Moon, one of my favorites of the past year, eschewed CGI for its moonscapes in favor of models, and the results are brilliant. Iinterestingly, the main character, played by Sam Rockwell, is seen throughout the film whittling his own miniature village to pass the time on the solitary moon base.

Now, what if we could reverse this process of movie trickery – rather than make the small look big, we make the big look small, and we can capture the wonderment of miniature models in the world around us without the tedium of a lifetime of whittling and painting? Behold the magic of tilt-shift photography, a technique that makes ordinary scenes of the real world appear to be carefully constructed tiny models. The process works by shallowing and narrowing the depth of field in photographs, shrinking the area that is in focus either through the use of special lenses or by digital manipulation of pictures. Suddenly, your neighborhood can be transformed into a block in Roadside America, or a neighborhood waiting to be trampled beneath Godzilla's foot.

You can make your own tilt-shift photographs with the aid of an online tool, tiltshiftmaker.com. The results are endlessly pleasing, and I've spent hours miniaturizing my entire life – the photograph above is a picture I took along the water on the north shore of Staten Island. One stunning example of this technique I recently stumbled across is a short film by Sam O'Hare titled "The Sandpit," which depicts New York City in miniature. I especially like the water scenes, even though they look the least like miniatures – water can be a giveaway of a miniature, since water droplets can't be scaled down to size – because the boats resemble toys in a pond. If you would like to learn more about how this film was made, check out this interview with the creator.

Finally, if a digital simulation of a miniaturized New York City is not satisfying for you, just visit the Queens Museum of Art, where they have the city's Panorama, a scale model of every building in the city built before 1992 – that's 895,000 buildings arrayed over 9,335 square feet. Created for the 1964 World's Fair on the orders of Robert Moses, who lorded over the city as if it were his own personal model, the Panorama has gone through several updates and overhauls since its unveiling. The museum offers free tours of the Panorama every Saturday and Sunday at 4 p.m.

Last week, I told you about an upcoming episode of NBC's Law & Order that was filmed in my neighborhood, Brooklyn's Windsor Terrace. I had speculated as to which neighborhood they might try and pass our street off as, but instead of making it a stand-in for a specific place, our block was labeled simply, "Queens."

For some reason, the show informs its viewers of the exact address of locations in Manhattan, but anytime they wander into other boroughs, they don't bother to specify. In Monday's episode, they visit a dentist's office, and the screen reads, "721 East 26th Street." When the action moves outside of Manhattan, we get no location and date card, and no signature "doink doink" sound; we just have to infer from the dialogue that they are in some unspecified area of Queens, which just happens to be the city's largest borough. Were they in Astoria, which presumably is close to the fictitious 27th Precinct where the detectives work (which would be somewhere in Harlem, based on the locations of the real-life 26th and 28th Precincts) or did they have to drive an hour and a half out to Rosedale? This can have an impact on the story, as the detectives frequently moan about having to drive to Westchester or Albany, and it matters to us lowly outer-boroughers (at least, it matters to me).

Speaking of the story, the episode "Four Cops Shot" was loosely based on an incident in Lakewood, Washington last November, when four police officers were shot dead in a coffee shop. The Law & Order episode had the added twist of the suspect potentially facing the federal death penalty – in the real incident, the shooter, Maurice Clemmons, never faced a court, as he was shot and killed by a police officer two days after the murders. It is somewhat eerie that the episode filmed on my block also happened to be about federalizing murder cases in order to seek the death penalty in states without capital punishment (the death penalty in New York was struck down by the courts in 2004), which is a topic I have been studying and writing about for the past year.

I can't say that I have ever been walking in a park in New York City, seen something on the ground, and then thought to myself, "I sure would like to eat that."

That is until I met "Wildman" Steve Brill and went on his urban foraging tour. For an hour and a half, we ranged about Forest Park in Queens, digging in the understory, plucking leafs and twigs, and experiencing the park with a new sense – taste. In addition to sharpening my tongue to the flavors of the forest, the tour opened up my eyes to a whole new way of seeing the woods. Even with the cursory knowledge of edible plants I gleaned from the tour, the forest scene in front of me suddenly popped with delectables; this experience was much like when I started to learn birdsongs, and the meaningless din of tweets became a symphony of identifiable species. I have been an avid birder ever since, and perhaps the Wildman has convinced me to find more of my daily fodder on the forest floor.

Brill has been doing foraging tours for nearly 30 years in parks and woods around the city and the greater New York area. He has run afoul of the authorities a few times, most notably in 1986, when the city's Parks Department ran a sting operation and busted him for picking dandelions and eating them (click on the "My Arrest" link on his webpage for a lengthy list of clippings related to the incident). The city no longer expends so many resources cracking down on weed pickers, but they are still not crazy about foraging – as long as you are discreet and not denuding the forest, no one will arrest you for collecting a few greens for a salad or herbs for tea. If you do go foraging, of course, remember that there are many, many poisonous plants out there, so be careful. When asked if he had ever been poisoned, Brill answered, "Yes. I was raised on junk food."

So, what were some of these urban vegetables we collected, and how did they taste? Our first plant was, of course, the dandelion – an easily identifiable and abundant weed that makes a nice salad (though the leaves become bitter later in the year, much like overripe lettuce that has "bolted"). We also tried a few garlic-related plants, like field garlic (pictured at top), which resembles chives, and garlic mustard, which is in the mustard family, but its leaves taste like garlic and its roots like horseradish. If you are interested in making tea, the twigs of the black birch (tastes like wintergreen) and the common spice bush can be boiled for various medicinal effects – I tried the latter, and honestly, I think I will be sticking to my Lipton tea bags. My big take of the day, though, was a large root of sassafras, which I intend to use in a batch of homemade root beer (more to come on this project).

I discovered this tour thanks to my friends over at the Atlas Obscura. The event was part of Obscura Day, a worldwide celebration this past Saturday of wondrous and curious places. More than 80 different museums, tours, and other institutions from 20 different countries put on special programs for the event, which drew more than 4,000 participants. In addition to the Wildman's program, other Obscura Day events around New York City included a special tour of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel (which we have highlighted before), a tour of Brooklyn's Dead Horse Bay, and a visit to the taxidermied wonders of the Vanderbilt Museum on Long Island. The day turned out to be a big success, and thanks to the folks at Atlas Obscura for putting it together.

If you would like to join "Wildman" Steve Brill on one of his outings, check out his website for a calendar of events, an encyclopedia of edible plants, and recipes for cooking them.

For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact andrewg@urbanoyster.com.

I guess I can call myself a real New Yorker now. Why? Because an episode of NBC's Law & Order has been filmed on my street. For a full day back in February, the cast and crew of the police procedural occupied a swath of Windsor Terrace stretching from McDonald Avenue to East 5th Street filming an episode for the series' 20th season.

The arrival of the Law & Order film crew brings a mix of excitement and annoyance to any New York City neighborhood. There's the double bonus of famous people in your neighborhood and getting to see your block on television, but then there's the hassle of blocked streets and restricted parking. One of our neighbors, the Greenwood Deli & Grocery, was so giddy about the show's arrival that they set up a stand with plastic fruit and vegetables (the place is not known for its produce) in the hopes of attracting the film crew to shoot in front of the store. The prop fruit stand didn't make the show, as the crew stayed on the other side of the street.

During the filming, series stars Jeremy Sisto and Anthony Anderson interrogated an elderly woman, and a squadron of actors pretending to be SWAT raided one of the block's nicer houses – their guns looked real, but their uniforms were too crisp and clean to mistake them for real officers. This neighborhood is actually home to many police officers, and I got to watch the small screen action while standing next to some real off-duty cops. I asked one officer if she spotted any glaring mistakes in their police procedure, and she said no, she was just having fun watching; her partner had even less to say about the filming, as he was a German Shepherd K-9 police dog who was just enjoying his walk.

The episode will air this coming Monday, and what I am most interested to see is which neighborhood our street is a stand-in for on the show – Law & Order stories occasionally bring police and prosecutors across the river to Brooklyn, but most of the action usually takes place in Manhattan. If that is the case, I can't really think of a neighborhood in Manhattan that resembles the modest two-story rowhouses and vinyl-sided homes of Windsor Terrace. Considering that the vast majority of the show's audience are not New Yorkers, the show sometimes takes liberties with locations. I recently watched an episode titled "Bible Study," which supposedly took place at a synagogue on Eldridge Street in the Lower East Side. While that street is home to a synagogue, they did not film anywhere near this address – rather than a narrow street crowded with tenements and adorned with Chinese signs, as the real Eldridge Street is, the block in the episode was a broad, leafy avenue with a row of brownstones on one side and a park on the other. So, when our block is shown on the show, don't be surprised if our sleepy residential corner is labeled 42nd Street and Madison Avenue.

Law & Order, along with its spin-offs, is filmed almost entirely on location in New York City (the interior shots are done at a studio in Chelsea). Some locations have been used repeatedly over the years, and The Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting has a list online of selected past filming locations, so you can try to hang around some of these places to catch the film crew. But if you live in New York long enough, you are bound to just bump into the show eventually.

If you're more interested in tracking real cops and robbers in New York City, there's ways of doing that as well. Police scanners are fun and popular way to follow what the police are doing in your local area, but unless you are a member of the emergency services branches (police, fire, EMS), it is illegal to have a police scanner installed in your vehicle in New York state, but there are ways to listen to the NYPD's radio communications. The website Mel's Garage carries a live feed of police communications, as well as information about precinct locations and 10- codes. If you own an iPhone, there are several police scanner apps, such as Scanner 911, which just recently began carrying New York City police feeds.

The episode featuring Windsor Terrace, titled "Four Cops Shot," airs Monday, March 22 at 10 p.m. So keep your eyes peeled for Greenwood Avenue and our local watering hole, Denny's Pub.