Come out to Brooklyn Bridge Park this weekend to enjoy spring temperatures and classical music played on a floating barge off Fulton Ferry slip. Violinist Mara Milkis and pianist Francine Kay will play tunes from Telemann, Prokofiev, Schubert and Schumann Friday evening at 7 pm.
Tickets are $35, $30 for seniors and $15 for students, and can be purchased through Bargemusic. Or attend a free performance Saturday at 3 pm, which will be followed by a question and answer session with the musicians.
Anti-gun violence nonprofit Save Our Streets Crown Heights is hosting a happy hour fundraiser tonight at Catfish on Bedford Avenue. The community-based effort to end gun violence in Crown Heights will sell $5 tickets at the door, which can be traded for a po’ boy sandwich, cocktails or draft beer. Proceeds will benefit youth development program Youth Organizing to Save Our Streets. The fundraiser will happen from 6 to 9 pm tonight at 1433 Bedford Avenue between Prospect and Park places.
In the early 1800s, the first steam ferry ran from the old ferry slip (pictured) in what is now Dumbo to Lower Manhattan. All of downtown Brooklyn’s transit developed from that early beginning, which Transit Museum archivist Carey Stumm will detail in a free talk using photos and primary sources.
The lecture will cover “horse car, omnibus, trolley, elevated lines, the Brooklyn Bridge, and eventually the subway lines into Brooklyn — all stemming from this local ferry slip.” To attend the event on March 6 at 6:30 pm, reserve tickets here.
Irondale Ensemble’s “Color Between the Lines” is a musical playing through this Saturday that weaves together Brooklyn’s history leading up to the Civil War, the lives of the borough’s free African Americans, and the stories of New York’s courageous abolitionists. The performance group collaborated with Weeksville Heritage Center and the Brooklyn Historical Society on the production, which draws material from BHS’ recently opened “In Pursuit of Freedom” exhibit on Brooklyn abolitionists.
The original musical is “set in the tumultuous decade prior to the Civil War and explores the tension between Brooklyn’s phenomenal growth during the nineteenth century due to its intricate ties to slavery, and the moral imperative towards anti-slavery activism by a small group of residents,” according to Irondale Ensemble’s website. Tickets are $25, $15 for students, seniors or BHS members, and $15 for matinees. You can buy tickets here for Thursday, Friday and Saturday performances at the Irondale Center in Fort Greene, or here for a Saturday evening performance at the Brooklyn Historical Society.
Architectural historian Matt Postal will lead a tour next month of new buildings in downtown Brooklyn, focusing mainly on the area around Fulton Street and Flatbush Avenue. The tour will highlight the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the cultural district that’s growing up around it, the Barclays Center, as well as buildings designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Cook & Fox, and Hugh Hardy.
The Municipal Art Society is organizing the tour, which will happen Saturday, March 8 at 11 am. Tickets cost $20 or $15 for members.
If you’d like to learn more about some of New York’s most famous black figures, take the Black History Tour at Green-Wood Cemetery, where a historian will explain the backstory behind each grave on the tour. Highlights on the trolley tour will include artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, pictured above; Susan Smith McKinney, New York State’s first black doctor (also pictured); Jeremiah Hamilton, the city’s first black millionaire; and some of the city’s black Civil War heroes.
Cemetery historian Jeff Richman will discuss their lives and the contributions they made to New York City’s cultural heritage. Tickets cost $15 for Green-Wood members and $20 for non-members. The tour will take place this Saturday between 1 and 3:30 pm at Green-Wood Cemetery at 500 25th Street in Brooklyn.
New York Communities for Change and UPKNYC are hosting a Brooklyn town hall meeting tonight at Brooklyn Borough Hall to educate the public and drum up support for Mayor de Blasio’s plan to fund universal pre-K and additional after school activities across the city. The mayor wants to support these new initiatives with a five-year increase on the city income tax for those earning $500,000 and up from 3.876 percent to 4.41 percent, which would bring in an estimated $530,000,000 in new revenue annually, according to a press release sent out by the event organizers.
The plan, which needs approval from Cuomo and the state legislature, would help 53,767 children who receive inadequate pre-K or none at all. Through the tax increase, the city also wants to expand after-school programs for 120,000 middle schoolers, with new programs between 3 and 6 pm in academics, culture and athletics.
“Albany has promised universal pre-K since 1997, but funding commitments haven’t materialized and tens of thousands of New York City children are left behind,” the release continued. “New York City should have home rule authority to raise its own taxes, to provide a dedicated funding source guarantees program stability.”
The meeting is planned for 6:30 to 8:30 pm tonight at 209 Joralemon Street.
Brooklyn Brainery is hosting another cool Brooklyn history class, this time on the rise and fall of Prospect Park, which planners Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux envisioned as a pastoral refuge. By the mid-1970s, the park had become a symbol of the borough’s urban decay and rising crime rates, and “the goddess driving atop the arch in Grand Army Plaza had fallen over in her chariot,” writes urban planning researcher Patrick Lamson-Hall in the workshop description.
But 30 years later, Brooklynites are proud of the park once again. It has a newly landscaped lakefront, a new ice skating rink and clean, rolling green space everyone can appreciate.
“Prospect Park is the the heart and lungs of Brooklyn,” writes Lamson-Hall. “Its decay and subsequent revival showcase important lessons about urban public space, public safety and policing, and the powerful role of citizens in reclaiming their city.”
The workshop costs $10 and will happen from 6:30 to 8 pm on March 11. You can buy tickets here.
East River Ferry service to and from Greenpoint’s India Street pier has been shut down after the ramp to the ferry collapsed suddenly into the water during this morning’s commute, The Daily News reported. Less than a minute after 10 people had crossed the ramp onto the ferry, it collapsed into the freezing East River. Shortly afterward, New York Waterways, the ferry operator, issued an alert letting customers know service to and from Greenpoint had been suspended.
“East River Ferry service to and from the Greenpoint Pier is suspended until further notice as we continue to assess the cause of a gangway that detached this morning,” the company wrote in a statement to the newspaper. “A team of engineers will be sent to investigate the cause and repairs will be made as soon as possible.”
Have you ever wanted to host an event inside the old Court Street subway station that’s now the Transit Museum? Now you may finally get your chance with the museum’s new Platform program, which allows people to perform, present, or host a participatory event at the museum for an evening.
The museum is taking proposals for all kinds of programs, including art exhibits, live performances, film screenings, academic presentations or panel discussions. Whether it’s spoken word poetry, comedy or transit-themed art, Platform is meant to be “a new series of cross-disciplinary programs created by the public for the public,” according to the museum.
The first one will take place Thursday, April 10. Requirements for proposals are on the Transit Museum’s Tumblr, and the deadline is February 25 at noon.
Dive into Brooklyn’s culinary history with a food tour of East Williamsburg’s Graham Avenue, once known for its kosher delis and now a bastion of Caribbean and Latin American cuisines, according to Turnstile Tours. Based on archival research and interviews with local residents and store owners, the Immigrant Foodways walking tour will explore Graham Avenue, Brooklyn’s “Avenue of Puerto Rico,” and stop into the Moore Street Market, the old local standby for Puerto Rican ingredients and street food.
Attendees will get to taste morcilla sausage, green bananas and onions, tamales, sorullos (corn fritters), tembleque (coconut pudding) and several other Latin American dishes. They will also receive map of the area and recipes for some of the market’s products. Check out the full list of tastings and buy tickets here. Tickets cost $45, and the tour will take place March 8 from 11 am to 1:30 pm
If you’re looking for the perfect Valentine’s or birthday gift, Haitian mixed media artist Rejin Leys is teaching a workshop on bookbinding tomorrow in Crown Heights, where you can learn how to assemble a journal, sketchbook or scrapbook. Leys will demonstrate making pamphlets, accordions and diamond books, as well as different techniques for creating art in handmade books.
The workshop is the first of several in “Creativity Unleashed,” a series of artistic workshops led by Haitian artists and organized by Haiti Cultural Exchange. Bookbinding will happen tomorrow from 1 to 3:30 pm at the Haiti Cultural Exchange office in Five Myles Gallery, at 558 St. Johns Place. The class will cost $30, and you can register here.
