Before the Brooklyn Dodgers became the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers they were known as the Brooklyn Atlantics. The Atlantics played during baseball’s infancy at Washington Park baseball field, which use to be a 3rd Ave. and 3rd St. in Gowanus Brooklyn. (Some amazing old photos of the baseball field can be found on this site. And yes the old wall to the baseball field still stands.)
Recently a baseball card of the Brooklyn Atlantics was unearthed at a garage sale. This card is now up for sale at the Saco River Auction Co. in Maine on Feb 6th, 2013. The value of this card simply can’t be estimated because the only other card like this one is in the Library of Congress. Pretty nifty! Check out the authentication document here.
There’s all sorts of places to shop during the holiday season, but only one is filled with two weekends of pure awesome …
Brooklyn Craft Central(Sat. and Sun, Dec 15+16 & Dec 22+23) takes normal craft fairs and punches in the face! Ok, not really. But metaphorically it totally does. Why you ask? Cause it’s like fight club and…. No wait it’s not really like fight club… Sorry, not sure where the focus on fisticuffs is coming from. Oh wait, yes we do. It’s cause this event is badass and here’s 5 solid reasons why you are going…
You of course know Littlefield the 6200-square foot warehouse venue with shows like Kurt Braunohler and Kristin Schaal Hot Tub and former Daily Show’sWyatt Cenac comedy show Night Train. (If you didn’t go to either of these, know we are totally giving you the stink eye). Aside from the celebratah’ that perfumes the joint, Littlefield is super close to where you live. It’s in a little neighborhood that we love called, Gowanus! Which is conveniently located in between your laziness and the fact that you need holiday gifts.
If you have kids you know one of the hardest times of year is from now to the end of the month. This month is jammed packed with so much holiday stuff. It so difficult to go to every little event and even more impossible to find time to shop! When you do find a moment to run and get gifts, what do you do with the kids? Leave them at home to cause chaos? No! That’d be silly. You can totally just drop them off for a few hours at the Brooklyn Robot Foundry! They have this amazing class called “Kids Play, You Shop” that take place on Sundays this month. Kids get to learn about, you guessed it, ROBOTS, while you run around and get their or everyone elses gifts. That’s seems awesome enough, but there is an even more awesome element to thisclass. If you drop your kids off at Robot Foundry you can totally get discounts at local restaurants, boutiques, and even a gym!
Now that we’re older what we grew up with… is thought of as vintage!”
That’s what Greg Paquette tells us in his new ‘vintage’ store called The Sporting Lifein Gowanus, Brooklyn. In the store, which opened last month, you won’t find pieces from the 1960s like what Don Draper wears on Madmen or old-timey items worn during prohibition like on Boardwalk Empire…. what you will find is something from the late X’er and Y’er generations youth… fashion pieces from the late 80s and the 90s. To our generation these items are from a simpler time when we were younger and fashion was…well, “unique” to say the least. Greg says:
The items that you’ll find in [other] vintage shops are not what ‘we’ get nostalgic about… it’s stuff from the 90s that we are into!”
And Greg’s right! His store is like a drive in a DeLorean down memory lane complete with talking Steve Urkel doll:
Yes, you did do that Greg! And we are glad you did. The store has all sorts of crazy stuff like old buttons, a complete Walkman outfit, an OJ Simson shirt…and even old rackets that you can grab to use at the Thomas Greene Park around the corner. It’s ‘da bomb’!
But be warned this store will date you, and if you haven’t realized it’s been 19 years since Saved by the Bell went off the air…you will. As Andrew Raskin, also of The Sporting Life says:
My niece didn’t know what half this stuff was!”
To bad for your niece Andrew… this stuff is totally the coolest of the cool from our childhood. It’s like “Whoa”, fantastic!
The Sporting Life is located at: 285 Nevins Street At Sackett, Brooklyn, NY
In this addition of Art Insight, host Andrew Guidone interviews singer/songerwriter Clarence Bucaro and talks about Film Biz Recycling where this particular episode was actually filmed.
It’s no secret that the Gowanus’s first clam shack, Littleneck, has been very successful. Just last week they were in the New Yorker and the week before it was the New York Times or maybe it was the New York Post? No one can really remembers what came out when at this point, it’s just abundantly clear that Littleneck is a big hit! But the clam shack owner’s, who started their success with a kickstarter, aren’t just content with one popular place in Gowanus. Just a few doors down from Littleneck inside what was once Tony’s bagels, construction is underway on some type of eatery (maybe with tapas) by the clam shack boys and another investor. Details about what food and drinks that will be served are not yet set in stone…or at least being kept secret for the time being. If you poke your head inside the new venue you will find a wooden bar on the right side and some rural aesthetics, similar to the atmosphere found in Littleneck. Unlike Littleneck though, this place has a nice backyard, which we are sure the clam shack boys and their new investor will design to be a romantic hideaway underneath a glorious Gowanus sky. Right now the eatery is scheduled to open at some point in July.
The crack between two hipster neighborhoods, home to the now superfunded Canal, the flash point for the new 'Buy Local' and textile revolutions, & filled with brilliant bohemians. . . this is Gowanus & it’ll awesome your face off.
