Brooklyn Avenue Block Association - Meeting Notes

Oct 30

Brooklyn Avenue Block Association Celebrates First Year

Starting in the spring of 2024, there was talk by members of the Brooklyn Avenue Block Association of having a block party at the end of the summer to celebrate the first year of our existence. The list of accomplishments during that year is a long one. An initial meeting was called by Dung La and me; we took the roles of president and treasurer and Dung's daughter Alika, newly graduated from college, agreed to be secretary. We started the association with the block from Lincoln Place to St. Johns Place. Right at the start Dung built and opened a Little Library where residents could take books and put others back for the convenience of people in the neighborhood. There were books for children and adults, and books in many languages including Hebrew, French and German. There were classics, including Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner and Charles Dickens, books on travel, gardening and cooking and some racy romance novels. I remember one called “I Couldn't Say No to My Pastor” with a young woman on the cover showing a lot of cleavage. We adopted two trash cans on St. Johns Place from the Sanitation Department, and began picking up litter three times a week and depositing it in green bags that came from the District 8 North facility. We got a good collection of composting cans, which Sanitation emptied on Wednesdays. Dung began planting on the block, putting in a cherry blossom where a large Sycamore had been, and my wife and I put in a peach tree in front of 260 Brooklyn Avenue where there was an empty tree pit.

Then came our first expansion. At one meeting a lot of people from Brooklyn between St. Johns and Sterling showed up as well as a contingent from Lincoln Place between Brooklyn and New York. So we decided to add those blocks to our first block. We appointed Kelly Burwell an “extension delegate” from Lincoln and also Feler Dureus who runs Rehab Haven, a rehabilitation facility on Brooklyn in the new block. Around this time we instituted a membership fee of $20 per member which was voluntary. To keep the money raised we incorporated and opened a bank account. Another development was that a large group of us became Rain Garden Stewards under the direction of Carolyn Egan from the Department of Environmental Affairs and this led to an interest in other blocks that had rain gardens. A group from our block started tending two rain gardens on Sterling Place as well as the two on Brooklyn Avenue and another on Lincoln Place. Periodically Carolyn organized events to clean the gardens, water them, weed them and later to add more plants. Recently Gloria Garcia has joined her office and also comes along on these outings Carolyn distributed tools at these events as well as garbage bags and safety vests. We also took an interest in other blocks asking for visitors from them and visiting them in turn. Perri Edwards of PLANT came by showing us pictures of Lincoln Place, where she and Althea Joseph had organized the block to green it and had won the Greenest Block in Brooklyn contest. This inspired Dung and Deanna to enter. He did a lot of building of boxes for plants, gathered soil and acquired plants. We got a favorable letter in the first judging but did not make the second round. PLANT won yet again, their fifth or sixth time.

By spring Alika had a full time job and busy weekends, so Louise Kurshan took over as secretary, and we began to talk about a block party. Sandra Layne had suggested stoop parties to build up to such an event, but the summer slipped away, and we arrived at September with nothing definite planned. So I thought I would call a meeting to plan for a street party (just on the sidewalk) and was gratified that a good size group showed up. They were Mark and Cheryl Cleece, Marcus Foushee, Helen Chernikoff, Sarah Jensen, Shyka Scott, Rosalind Jamieson, me and my wife Louise. I was impressed by the large number of ideas that emerged. Thus starting from the idea of having chicken, corn and watermelon, more initiatives came out so that by the time of the actual event there was much more that was included.

We got Pando's to contribute a salad and empanadas. We invited Roger the Clown to come do face painting and also make balloon sculptures for children, this at the suggestion of Cheryl. Helen Chernikoff made brownies and cookies, and there were many kinds of drinks acquired, soda, water, soft drinks, cider and sorrel. A flea market came about, and at least five people sold clothes and other items on the street. Six-year-old Ava set up a table to sell bracelets made of rubber bands and did a brisk business. We got Ricky who runs the Mr. Softee truck usually stationed at the Children's Museum to come by and sell ice cream cones, and Matthew from Lincoln Place set up a kind of photo booth and took pictures of people and animals all afternoon, eventually creating a list of over thirty people to whom he would send the resulting pictures. Olu Abney got his talented girlfriend Jordan Jenkins to come and sing. She did some old favorites, like one by Stevie Wonder, and a few songs she wrote herself, one especially good and appropriate was about the end of summer. Mark supplemented the chicken when it didn't seem to be enough and also got us a good supply of ice and water. Marcus helped both with setting up, serving and cleaning up at the end. Children came from far and wide, Tina and Nate brought over their two girls, Israel and Asie came with their girls, Shelly Fank showed up with her child, and Sarah Jensen and her two daughters and a friend, and there were many more. And their were babies too. Shania brought her little girl, and their were plenty of other babies.

What follows is a small collection of photos from the event: