I'm trying to get organized and live up to the secret pact I made with myself that go me through the winter. During the cold months, when there was work to do on the house, I comforted myself with the thought: "I'll do it when it warms up."

Then this weekend comes along with 90-degree temperatures. Great. Unable to put it off any longer I went into the back yard with the intent to half-ass some yard cleanup then retreat to the TV again. Over Christmas we refinished some floors in the house, which produced a whole lot of scrap wood. Instead of dealing with it at the time (see above), I just piled all the wood in the yard. The Plywood, 2x4s, Masonite and old wood paneling have shuttled around the yard over the months, coming to rest against the neighbor's chain link fence. It somewhat resembles the barricade in Les Miserables.

I figured I could put the smaller debris in contractor bags and lash together the longest wood boards together in preparation for sawing them into bundles small enough for the trash guy to pick up. This still would leave some huge plywood sheets that would need to be cut repeatedly but there was no way I was doing that for now. I busied myself with the easiest of the tasks, bagging up small garbage, breaking down some of the thinner panels and whatnot. Meanwhile, my neighbor a couple yards over was puttering out back as well.

He struck up a conversation with me, noting that he had just dug up a bunch of dirt from his yard while working on his latest project, which appears to be a sort of gazebo structure (he described it as a 'cabin' and admitted that he's sort of winging the plans, making it up as he goes along; I like him already). Anyhow, he had a bunch of dirt, and he knows we have all these cats running around (his son learned to say "gato" before "Papi," I was somewhat chagrined to learn). The cats love to 'play' in the dirt, as he put it, so it could help keep the cats in my yard if they had more dirt to 'play' in. So I said sure, gimme the dirt.

Herein lies one of the awkward issues of yard-having in Brooklyn: we can't enter each others' yards. My next-door neighbor and I have no fence between us, but nearly every other yard is fenced off. So dirt that needed to travel some 20 feet would need to be carted through the neighbor's house, out the door, down the sidewalk, and through my living room just to get over here. He suggested an alternative: he would fill up sandbags with dirt and hand them over the fence to me.

For the next couple of hours, he shoveled dirt into reinforced bags, dragged them over to a ladder next to the fence, climbed up and gingerly dropped the bag into my waiting hands. I don't have a lot of space to dump extra dirt, but we do have a sizable plot in the back of the yard and a sort of narrow median down the center. We filled up every inch of available dirt-space, and there's still some dirt leftover. Part of his motivation was that now he won't have to pay to have the dirt hauled away. I don't know how much that costs, but he seemed grateful. It must be expensive, cuz I was exhausted and my muscles are all sore from the hauling and dumping; he did all that PLUS the shoveling. He even gave me a new gazebo tent that would have gone unused by him since he was building the permanent cabin thingy. Wow.

I admit I don't interact with my neighbors as much as I should. I talk to the next-door neighbors, since our houses are identical, so we feel like we are sort of related or something. But we're on head-nodding level at best with most of the other neighbors. So it was nice to have an excuse to speak to him, especially since his family is just about the only other family on our end of the block to use their back yards much. I'm hoping we keep talking, I'm racking my brain to find something I can give to him in return, but I'm pretty rusty in the ways of Neighbor Gifting. If I can't find something I would otherwise throw out he might find useful, should I bake him some cookies or something?

Labels: Neighbors, The Yard

Mugsy is not gonna win any Cat Fancy awards, but he's one of our favorite feral cats. He's gotten a lot sweeter since we callously trapped and castrated him, which makes me think we should start doing this to people who bug us as well. It's tough love! Anyway, he usually hangs out in our yard with his boyfriend George. He has his own chair under the gazebo tent, a disheveled patio chair with a hair-matted cushion on it. He comes by every day. Or I should say, he did come by every day.

Last Tuesday he abruptly stopping showing up. George still came by to eat, but he seemed like half a cat without Mugsy. Of course, he's a feral cat and by definition they don't have a home and are therefore sort of entitled to wander wherever they want. But it seemed increasingly strange that this one wasn't showing up. Frankly, where would he go besides our yard?

So I climbed through the fence in the back yard and started looking for him. It was a dumb idea, like a feral cat is gonna just sit there and wait for me to walk up, o hai. But I thought maybe I could get some idea of what had happened to him. A feral's life is hard, often brutal and usually short. I half-expected to find his dead body in the bushes, guarded by George.

Behind our house there is a run-down rectory and a recently-resurrected church (bad economy = holy rollin' weekends). The rectory house appears to be unused and we often joke that the cats live inside it. Beyond the church, the rest of the block is houses in a variety of styles; right next door is a 6-family frame house. I crept behind the church, simultaneously trying not to attract attention and acting like I was supposed to be there.

I went past the church to the 6-family house. It's in a pretty sorry state, the best thing about it is the relatively new plywood panels boarding up all the windows (still I'm not entirely sure that people aren't living there). Just as I rounded the corner, I saw what appeared to be George's distinctive tail disappearing under the corner of the house. I knelt down and could see a hole just below the aluminum siding, just big enough for a cat to fit through. All joking aside, these feral cats have their own damn house!

I didn't have a flashlight so I couldn't see much more. But I figured if George was in there, then Mugsy was probably also there, if at all. There wasn't anything I could do but hope he would show up again. Just over a week later, Mugsy did return, his eyes crusted mostly shut from an upper respiratory infection, but otherwise unharmed. I can't figure out how he survived all that time, but there's probably water in the house, and who knows, maybe he was catching mice.

God help the local cats if the economy recovers enough that somebody fixes up this neighborhood, where will all the cats live? Don't answer that.

Labels: Cats, Feral, Neighbors, The Yard

Hey does anybody attend their Block Association meetings? I finally did a couple weeks ago. Sorta.

When we moved in at the end of 2006 we received a flyer for the meeting, but we didn't make it. We didn't see another flyer until a month ago, so I decided I better make it to this one so I could find out the schedule. It was at 6PM, so Jeannie couldn't go. Plus it was that Tuesday a couple weeks ago that snowed all day. I was running around, picking up newly-fixed cats from BARC,I was tired and I had to shovel the sidewalk so nobody sued me. I was thinking of reasons not to go, but I went anyway.

The meeting was at the library at the end of the block, whose staff didn't seem to know anything about any meetings. But the Young Adult Coordinator checked her log book and confirmed that somebody booked a meeting room. She took me to the empty room, so I sat around trying to determine how long to stay before I could in good conscience, bail.

Eventually a guy showed up, he was the treasurer of the group. Nobody else showed up. But we talked for a while and he said he'd try to adjust the meeting to make them more appealing to the block (like moving the time to 7PM so people could actually make it). He had lots of ideas he wanted to act on, but of course the problem was money, and getting people to pitch in.

One idea included getting the city to erect barriers on our block during the days of summer, so the kids could play without fear of being mowed down by anything but gunfire. He brought up an initiative to get people to clean up after their dogs, which would be nice though I'm not sure how to enact it except to put up a bunch of scolding flyers.

When he started talking about dogs, it gave me leeway to starts my spiel on cats. I told him about our TNR efforts, and how the people we've worked with would trap ferals in people's backyards for free. He warmed to the idea, especially when I noted that a fixed cat won't spray that awful musk, or make yowly mating noises.

Additionally I pointed out the ASPCA would be coming to Saratoga park on the 28th to do their Free/Low-Cost Spay thing. He seemed vaguely aware of the Mobile Clinic, but didn't know its schedule. So I said I'd put up some flyers to alert people.

I only put a few homemade flyers (which I forgot to save so I don't have any electronic version, the ones here are general info flyers) up that explain the process, but I justified it because I wanted to focus attention on my own block. While I was hanging a flyer, a couple of women walking a little dog asked me about it. They too seemed to be familiar with it, but didn't know the details. I gave them a flyer and clarified that people on assistance got their pets fixed for free, which they didn't know. Not sure if they'll take their dog in, but I'm glad to get a little evidence that the flyers might help.

Now I just gotta find a way to get more people to show up to the meeting! Maybe I can get the newly-renovated Dunkin Donuts to cater the affair.

Labels: Bushwick, Cat Fixin', Mobile Spay Clinic, Neighbors

The weather is starting to change and the local stray cat population is starting to go nuts. Maybe these events aren't related, but the cats I know around here have been getting goofy lately. Gladys is recovering nicely from her surgery/vaccinations, she's gone outside a couple of times but seems to be content to stay indoors (what a surprise). The resident cats know not to mess with her, lest they be subjected to piercing screeching. She may not like the other cats, but she rarely has to tell them twice to keep their distance.

But the otherwise-outdoor cats have all but built one of those things you put up against a castle wall to storm the gates or whatever. Flossie, who still is believed to have a litter in the parking lot across the street) comes to eat and never wants to leave. The gray tabby who we always mistake for Decatur has become bolder as well, and Gladys' 3 remaining kittens are getting especially intrusive.


The orange kitten crossed a behavioral threshold the other night, suddenly not only tolerating being petted, but coming up and asking for it. He's still skittish, but otherwise he's ready to be a house cat. His brothers are less advanced, but they see him getting scratched under the chin and are probably thinking about it. I feel bad for the most fearful of the three, he sits on the windowsill and cries at Gladys. But Gladys seems to have forgotten she ever had kittens, she barely looks at him. Luckily he has the companionship of his brothers to assuage his woes. I keep trying to explain to them that it's in their best interest to get tame right now since the younger they are, the better adoption-fodder they are. Even Gladys may be a hard sell, since she's an adult more or less, and Flossie will probably only appeal to people who have a soft spot for special needs cats, or old ladies (I mean, Flossie would be good for an old lady, not people who are into old ladies).

Anyway, I need to begin construction on some bad-weather cat shelters. Lucky for me, I live in a neighborhood literally surrounded by 99 Cent stores, so it shan't be hard to pick up some big storage bins. But I gotta relocate some of these cats to the back yard; I get enough needling from the neighborhood kids as it is without having the areaway full of cat condos (lately I've been getting "Dude! Kitty, kitty, kitty!" in my direction.)

I'm also doing other stuff, including but not limited to preparing for Motico's first shows since last year! Basically we're practicing a lot and I'm trying to find new stuff to add to my rig to cover up for my lack of proficiency.

Labels: Cats, Feral, kittens, Neighbors, Pets, Weather

On the Map Dept: I live on Eldert Street, a 6 block long stretch on the south side of the Shwick (let's get all the kids to start calling it that!). My end of the block is residential, rowhouses and an elevated train. Children run around the block and participate in activities that can only be described as "wholesome." They roller skate (with or without those shoes with the wheels in the back), jump rope, bike, play basketball, pick broomsticks out of the trash and hit each other with them. It's been pretty startling to see kids act like this, I thought kids just sat in front of the TV all day, absorbing Fritos and Hawaiian Punch while watching reality TV shows about people starving themselves. What I wanna know is, how do these nice little kids transform into the surly teenagers who hang out further down the block?

Anyway, that's life on my end of Eldert Street. On the other end there is an old knitting factory building that's been converted to loft apartments. The industrial side of Bushwick somehow made it this far south, seemingly only along the L train. The building at 345 Eldert is full of artists, and apparently a group of them are trying to get financial backers so they can buy their building from its management company. If successful, they will have a huge space in which the artists call the shots. Nice idea, I guess, but are they serious? The article in the Brooklyn Paper isn't clear how much of a joke this is, but the accompanying photo doesn't lend a whole lot of credibility to their crusade. They need some kind of venture capitalist to provide the dough to buy the place, who's gonna do that? This sounds like the 21st century version of the "Let's put on a show!!" type stuff from the 70's and 80's. I hope they pull it off, though I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time anybody thought of this ("Hey, we all live here, we're all into the same stuff, let's buy the building!"), but I dunno if anybody ever actually went through with it. Aren't there any wealthy, eccentric philanthropists anymore?

Still, the notion of a gaggle of artists trying to run their own building ... shades of Lord of the Flies? Speaking of which, are you aware there's gonna be a reality TV show in which a group of children live in the wild without adult supervision? See what the kids on my street are missing out on?

Labels: Brooklyn, Bushwick, Gentrification, Neighbors, Real Estate, The City

I was feeling gross yesterday but I was planning on going to work anyway until Jeannie talked me out of it. As lazy as I can be, I still have trouble making that decision to call in sick, mostly because I'm still not used to the notion of having sick days (of which I actually have a lot left to use).

Anyway, this worked out well since yesterday was The Day They Came to Remove the Tree. There was an old tree that had been devoured by termites and had fallen in the back yard, probably several years before we came to own the place. This would be a very easy thing for anybody with a chain saw to remove. However, there was a catch: a 40-foot clothesline tower.

For those of you who don't know, or who haven't been over to Abby's backyard, in the olden days, people dried their laundry on clotheslines. To facilitate this for upper-floor tenants, a ladder-like device was erected at the far end of the yard with pulleys attached for each floor. I'm not sure how people originally attached the lines (I guess some poor kid had to shimmy up the ladder with a rope in his teeth) and voila, you had a place to hang out your wet socks.

Since the advent of the commercial and/or residential laundry facilities, clothesline tower fell into disuse. Ours in particular suffered from obsolescence, the previous owners let it rust so bad its base supports rusted through. So at some point somebody moved it to the side, threading it through the phone lines and letting the top rest again the branches of the tree in the adjacent yard.

So not only was there a tree to remove, but it was partially leaning on this giant, rusty, steel tower thing which was precariously balanced between a couple of thin branches and the phone lines for half the neighborhood (all the more reason to go to cellular phones). I had no idea who to call to take care of this, but when the tree guy came over he said, "Eh, we do this all the time." It took them about 2 hours to do the bulk of the work.

The tree was gone before I even noticed. They also pruned back several other trees that were threatening other cables, as well as a bunch of vines. Work was momentarily stopped when they asked me to look up pictures of poison ivy and oak to make sure the vines weren't poisonous. I inwardly chuckled, I mean really, poison ivy here? Please. So I printed out some pictures of it to compare and they continued clearing it away.

The clothesline tower also came down without much trouble, they just slid it out from between the cables (I think they did break a couple of small branched in the tree). once they had it down they cut it into a couple of pieces and threw it on the truck, like it was nothing. It was especially helpful that our home abuts a church yard, so they were able to back their truck right up to the back fence of our yard.

They took most of the big stuff, leaving the green wood to dry out for a couple of days. They come back tomorrow to take the rest of it, plus all the leftover wood from my studio project. I'm trying to pick out some of the 2x4s or whatever I might want to keep. But it's a joy to ditch most of that stuff, as it has been taking up so much space in the cellar.

Before the tree guys showed up, I let the cats run around the yard. Despite the fact that there is no fence between our yard and the neighbors, there are tall fences around the perimeter of the two, so I haven't worried much about the cats escaping. Well, at some point I realized that Freddy was nowhere to be found. Indeed, long after the tree people had decamped, I peered over a fence and spied her sitting under an old Schwinn in the church's yard. I plied her with cat food to no avail. I feared she would return to her stray-cat, bird-killin' ways.

It was at this time I realized there in fact was a thatch of poison ivy growing out of the corner fence. Jesus Christ! I don't know how to get rid of it, should I just spray it with weed killer? I kind of want to get rid of it before the guys come back for the rest of the debris, cuz they said they don't wanna get near it, lest treeman Tony ruin his momentous birthday plans for the weekend.

At about 9:15, Freddy strolled back inside. She's still not any nicer to us, but she knows where she lives at least. Here's an album documenting some of the day's activities.

Addendum: Here's a pretty cool page about an archaeological dig in a Brooklyn back yard that has pretty much the only reference I could find about clothesline towers (their was half the size of ours and apparently not sitting between phone cables).

Labels: House, Neighbors, Pets, Renovation, The Yard

Despite still having some loose ends (more wall work to do, no latch on the door), we hooked up the rig and went to town, musically, last night. The verdict: not bad! Sound isolation is better than I anticipated. Well, actually, when we began this project I envisioned a completely soundproof space, wherein a man could cut sheet metal with a rusty circular saw at 2 in the morning and have no fear of annoying a soul. But as the work progressed I realized that the reality of things would be a bit less dramatic. But I started thinking all this work wasn't gonna amount to anything except a rather cramped and stuffy practice space, with bass frequencies reverberating through the house and into angry neighbors' domiciles.

Here's my sonic breakdown of the varying levels:

• In the living room you can hear things, but all but the loudest bass notes are fairly well-muffled. In fact, most sound leakage seems to be coming from the stairwell, which is exactly the same issue we experienced at the old place. If we put a door at the bottom of the stairs, that should really help contain things.
  
• On the second floor you can't hear much at all, just a couple of taps here and there. I assume the top floors are blissfully ignorant of that band room altogether.
• I went outside and couldn't hear anything at all. It's weird to realize how much 'ambient noise' there is here, but you notice it when you concentrate on it. There's like a constant, low-level woosh all around, the confluence of passing cars, people talking, trains running, a million roach wings flapping in unison.
  

Later that same night I wondered aloud why I was so concerned about our noise. From the time practice ended, we heard countless elevated trains rumbling by, several vocal arguments on the streets, and a bunch of gunshots. However, I feel if my neighbors complain about the music and bring up the potential of gun violence, this may be misconstrued.

I gotta get more of those moving blankets! They're heavy and have several layers to them, this might really solve my cheapskate acoustic issues! I still need bass traps to suck of the boominess, but we're off to a good start? Who can remember our setlist? Because we sure can't.

Oh, and confidential to Al: You will notice the light fixtures and bx cable are now safely (more or less) tucked away amongst the radiator pipes. Thank you for your angry concern.

Labels: Motico, Music, Neighbors, Renovation, Soundproofing

I'm tired of posting pictures of that damn band room. Anyway, it's nearly done. We still need rugs or something to dampen the sound in the room, but after that it's party time, more or less.

So here's a photo of the neighbors' houses. If you crop out the dirt-floor 'parking lot' on the right, and the enormous consturction site on the left, this little part of the block looks pretty nice. I mean, when people aren't shooting each other, kids aren't fighting, or the ice cream truck isn't parked right in front of the house playing "Turkey in the Straw" for a half hour at a time. What's the rate of psychosis in ice cream truck drivers?

Labels: Bushwick, House, Neighbors

You know how sometimes when you drink you end up doing things you later regret? Well, this happened to me the other night. I awoke on Sunday with a pounding head and the sobering realization that at 3:30 the night before I was singing "Captain Jack" because Alex knew how to play it on the piano. Sure it could be construed as an amusing party-type moment, but the more I thought about it, the worse it seemed. Now I keep thinking, "What if the neighbors were trying to sleep? What if their bed is right on the other side of the piano-room wall? Oh god I was singing Billy Joel. I mean, please. Billy Joel."

Luckily, my body shut itself down soon after. My only solace is that I think the neighbors know I live in the lower part of the house, and will blame it on Buzz. They think he's trouble anyway.

Labels: Bushwick, Friends, Funny to Me, House, Neighbors

This was quite a weekend, but before I get to any of that, I must mention the most bizarre moment of the past 48 hours. Saturday morning (er, afternoon), I was hanging out with the guys from the Makebelieves (they stayed at our house after their Glasslands show), and Al mentioned "What's with your neighbors and their big bird?" He directed me out to the back yard where, 2 yards over, there sat one ring-necked pheasant. Yeah, that's right. A pheasant. Whaa?

Sadly, my stupid camera's batteries were dead and we had no spares around the house (Incidentally, this makes me want to go on a long rant about how it's pissing me off that bodegas constantly sell mostly-dead batteries to me), but you must believe me that inside the chain-link fenced yard, strewn with garbage and renovation debris, a lovely example of this game bird strode about like he owned the joint. A stray cat was in the next yard, eying said bird with great attention. Reportedly, the cat had been in the yard but was actually chased away by the pheasant, which was somewhat larger than the cat.

According to my research though, this is not all that strange. Pheasants are all over the boro, and because nobody is really hunting them, they get along just fine. Still, there's something just plain odd about seeing such an animal in this environment.

Labels: Animals, Brooklyn, Bushwick, Neighbors

Looks like Sylvie's here to stay. She and Buzz got hitched at the fabulous Brooklyn Municipal Building over the weekend and then had a reception at home. I took a few photos of the ceremony and forgot all about the camera until they got to the cake-cutting (which I also missed, I only got one odd pic of Buzz waving a cake spatula around).

This was the new house's first party, so far it seemed to weather the storm well. Despite the rain, the wedded couple made good on their promise to break a whole bunch of plates in the back yard. Apparently this is some sort of wedding tradition (gimme a wineglass carefully folded into a napkin, thank you). I don't have any photos of this, but I'm pretty sure somebody got some footage, so I'll link to it when it becomes available.

Ironically, our yard has already been the site of a similar celebration: before the party, I had to go out and sweep up a number of glass bottles that had been lobbed onto our property. I wasn't sure where the bottles came from or if our yard specifically was being targeted, but I hoped it was just mindless littering. But after the plate-throwing cacophony ended, just as the last people returned inside, a St. Ides bottle came out of the sky, landing squarely on the patio. I'm almost certain it came from the house next door, probably from the top floor. Now I'm not sure how to fight back, aside from leaving the broken crockery out there as a symbol that we really don't give a damn, but at some point I will want to spend time in that yard, and I don't wanna have to wear a helmet. I'm thinking of getting an air rifle, but perhaps that may just exacerbate the animosity. Wait till they get a load of band practice.

Labels: Bushwick, Neighbors, Weddings