2012 December – Brooklyn Artisan

A pararescue soldier holding an M4 discusses gear with Phil Scott as the helicopter is loaded.

Pararescue soldier with Phil Scott beside medevac helicopter.

MY BUDDY JET LAG. YOU CAN’T FLY FROM AFGHANISTAN to Brooklyn without him waiting for you. We took the medevac transport from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to Ramstein, Germany, and from Ramstein to Andrews Air Force Base, where the wounded were carried to Walter Reed by an old white school bus painted with red crosses. Nearly everyone on board the flight had some sort of leg injury. One patient – likely Special Forces because he, like nearly all the Special Forces types I saw at Kandahar and Bagram, wore a beard – was missing his right foot. His left foot was bandaged, and I think he was missing some toes.

Then, alone, I rode an Amtrak train to New York’s Penn Station and took the subway to my home base, Brooklyn. After more than 24 hours of travel carrying 80 pounds of gear on my back, I walked through the front door, up the stairs, dropped the backpack on the floor and kicked off my shoes. I crawled into bed and slept for nearly a day and a half.

I’ve reported from nearly 20 countries around the world, and the loneliest place was Thanksgiving in Kandahar. We stood in line for a meal of turkey roll, instant mashed potatoes and deep-fried stuffing balls dished out on a cardboard plate, and then we trekked to a distant hut to listen in to an airman talk to President Obama over the phone. After that a White House aide called the airman’s wife and transferred the call. The airman choked up, and that’s when the loneliness hit me. I missed Brooklyn, its egg creams, its bridges and steeples, its flea markets and food fairs. And I vowed to enjoy all of those in the coming days between my homecoming and Christmas.

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Executive Editor Phil Scott’s latest book is Then & Now: How Airplanes Got This Way.

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Starting here Thursday, December 6

12 Days of Brooklyn

Brooklyn Artisan’s own collection of

captured views, native tastes and special sips

that make our borough like nowhere else.

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Brooklyn Holiday Book Fair: Placing a Bet on “First Annual”

The title says all – or does it? Fifty-five years later, the borough seems full of life.

Title sez all? But fifty-five years later, the Brooklyn brand is back.

THE HIGH-PEAKED ROOM WITH DARK EXPOSED BEAMS was small, off the beaten track, and crowded, but otherwise the antiquity of the Old Stone House made a perfect venue for the “first annual” Brooklyn Holiday Book Fair on Saturday; never minding its oxymoron, it promised “rare, vintage, out-of-print books from independent booksellers from all over Brooklyn.” Brooklyn Artisan went to the BHBF not quite knowing what to expect – like the young couple who lugged their formidable twins stroller all the way up the narrow stairwell and almost immediately right back down – but BA had a happy time browsing among the second-hand and out-of-print science-fiction books from Singularity & Co., admiring Prints Charming‘s sweet old-fashioned florals and maps posted on two walls, and chatting with the vendors when they had time between customers.

Heather O’Donnell, owner of Honey & Wax Booksellers and the moving force behind the fair, had the best location, the classiest display and snazziest catalog by far. Small wonder, then, that BA’s favorite find was at her booth, a book called Manners for the Metropolis in which to read such things as this: “It is customary, in alluding to ladies in the ultra-fashionable set (provided they are not present) to speak of them by their pet names: ‘Birdie,’ ‘Baby,’ ‘Tessie,’ ‘Posy’; but, when face to face with these ladies, the utmost formality had best be observed.” Manners indeed.

Smart set social advice from 102 years ago.

The author, Frank Crowninshield, was the editor of the original Vanity Fair from its birth in 1914 until 1936, when it was folded. This book, published in 1910, was undoubtedly one of his qualifications for the job. The book sports stylishly smart illustrations. Heather obligingly held open the book so that BA could photograph one.

A used-book store specializing in New York history and culture, eight-year-old Freebird Books offered a well-selected group of old books about Brooklyn and the Outer Boroughs, along with copies of a book of recent photographs of Gowanus. In spite of its vulnerable-sounding location on Columbia Street “on the working South Brooklyn waterfront,” it escaped damage from Superstorm Sandy. Freebird likes to make things happen, with movie showings in its backyard and its “post-apocalyptic book club” meetups once a month.

P. S. Bookshop calls itself “the best book store in Brooklyn” for what it does. And that’s quite a bit. Owner Yuval Gans has given himself the broadest mandate, “buying and selling used and rare books, first editions and reprints, fiction and non-fiction, high-brow or low, children’s and young adults book, books in print and out of print, in English and other languages, scholarly books, art books and catalogs, magazines and other printed matter.” [Read more…]