I'm Seeing Green

Online Community Goes Live

I'm a very regular reader of the Brooklyn real-estate blog, brownstoner.com. Its older self-description was 'an obsessive interest in brownstone Brooklyn,' though now its slogan is 'Brooklyn inside and out,' as befits its broader perspective. It's a prolific site, with all kinds of news about real-estate and current events broadly connected to the state of life and the built environment in Brooklyn (and New York). The Forum section deals with advice about everything from the minutiae of sealing marble counters, to how sleazy real-estate brokers are, to how to deal with the odd stoop-pooper.

One of the regular posters decided it would be a good thing to organize a get-together of 'brownstoners' in the flesh; the first one was back last October and the second was yesterday, both in bars with boccie courts, oddly enough, though none of the attendees actually played it...too much of interest otherwise.

I approached the first one with considerable curiosity. Being a regular ranter on the blog myself, and having been called many names due to my over-solicitousness to tenants' predicament and my over-willingness to suggest raising taxes on everyone making more money than me (that's my detractors speaking,) I wondered how it would be to meet in person the anonymous people I had been having many conversations with. Not the least of the curiosity was the unmasking of the body behind the login name, so to speak...since the names may not reflect the persons behind them at all, though over the months the sex (I was trained to use 'sex', not 'gender' as I keep telling my son, who's at the age that any use of that three-letter word is hilarious) of many had been revealed through their writings.

It was a very pleasant surprise. Rabid ranters seemed normal in person and I actually wondered whether it would be harder to make fun of/ridicule/dismiss as idiotic the writings of those whom I'd met (actually, the answer is yes and no, but that's another story.)

Last night was the second meeting. Though I'd forgotten many (the name tags were usually the on-line names, not the real ones,) it was like meeting  slightly eccentric family members at the next major holiday.

The blog/response scenario is of course such a recent phenomenon that practically anything could have been anticipated. The anonymity granted by posting on blogs under a pseudonym is quite cherished and unique...almost like writing anonymous letters in another era. But that action was considered anti-social and usually confined to the 'poison-pen' world. Nowadays the anonymity, while still used as a cloak for all kinds of excess, is self-protective as well...who wants the many internet trolls to identify you (I wondered if protectiveness  was operative in the ratio of men to women in the group yesterday, which was high, or whether there are many more men posting on brownstoner than women)?

Which is why this second meeting, with its glimmerings of an actual community developing, is so interesting. If you didn't know it, you might have thought that this was a group who worked together having an after-work social session. Lots of conversation and drinking. This may become a regularly scheduled event, and maybe real-life friendships will develop. But then would you have to control your posting language? I wondered perhaps if that was why many regulars were not present.

Denmark Rocks, US schlocks

Had any doubt about these United States of America not exactly being a hotbed of cycling fervor?  Here's some statistics to prove the point; cycling distances per person per year [copehagen.com ]

Denmark: 954 km [ 590 miles ]

Netherlands: 879 km
Japan: 354 km
Belgium: 329 km
Germany: 298 km
Sweden: 277 km
Finland: 256 km
Ireland: 186 km
Austria: 173 km
Italy: 159 km
Great Britain: 84 km
France: 81 km
Greece: 77 km
USA: 33 km  ... [ 20 miles ]
Luxembourg: 31 km
Portugal: 29 km
Spain: 27 km

Welll, we're better than Luxembourg, but then there's probably only 27 fatcat bankers living in that tiny state, and as for Portugal and Spain? That's a mystery, but maybe it's something to do with the Catalonian temperament.

The Unnamable Play at the Old Stone House

I'm somewhat of a Shakespeare purist at heart, so I approached the Old Stone House , where I was to see "Dzeici Makbet" ("a Wicked Work in Progress") last night with some trepidation.  But from the very enthusiastic reception I got at the entrance, greeted by cast members, to the thoroughly enjoyable hour-and-a-quarter of the show, I'm glad I my fears were far from coming true.

To give you an idea of what the performance was like, consider these points:

Instead of a program with the usual notes on the actors and the obligatory notice praising Actor's Equity, we're handed a "Rules of Engagement..." which says, among several points, that all Actor must know the entire text, and that each is "encouraged to play a Witch, Makbet (Macbeth), and Lady Makbet at least once per enactment."

Before the play begins, the cast, speaking in various sometimes-put-on accents, encourages the audience to eat (bread, sausage and macaroons) and drink (wine, and a potent sweet liqueur) to get in the mood. Glasses and utensils are not much in supply; straight from the bottle and bits off the hunk is the way.

The "stage" is somewhat smaller than the average living room carpet (in fact, it is a living room carpet,) and contains at times, eight actors, and eight lit candles; the only other prop being a bucket (put to good use, among other things, as the witch's cauldron,) and a hand-held spotlight used to great effect as the only source of non-candle light.

Actors change roles at the drop of a hat, negotiating the change in the manner of an improvisational exercise (the director, Matt Mitler told me at the end," well, we've not had two Macduffs in the final scene before".) This may, and does, lead to a considerable level of confusion and sometimes incoherence (a knowledge of Macbeth is essential, check synopsis here before you go if your knowledge of the play is spotty), but the action moves smartly along, propelled by the energy and acting acumen of the cast. If you consider the additional tension induced by this number of actors working quite physically in such a tiny space, surrounded by audience members inches away, with breakable and lighted objects around, you'd see why there's probably a clause in the non-program prohibiting lawyers from attending. Nobody yesterday seemed even remotely fazed.

Not the least of the delights of this performance is the melding of the Shakespearean text (well, considerably truncated, of course, distilled to its essence is perhaps the more operative word,) with songs in multiple languages and a consistent humming refrain which begins and ends the show (and yes, the audience is encouraged to join in the haunting sounds.) Does it matter that we wonder exactly who's who at the moment? No. It adds to the effect.

I wished I had my son with me as I know (aside from the libations, of course) it would be greatly enjoyable for anyone  of any age with a love of theatre, an open mind and a sense of fun. Only other performance tonight at 8pm

The Dzieci Theatre "is an international experimental theatre ensemble dedicated to a search for the "sacred" through the medium of theatre." They will be at La Mama on Apr 16-19 with "Fools Mass at LaMaMa" and I certainly intend to be there.