Lost in History vol. 70: All Boro Bonanza

Damn you Flux Factory. Are you really that good? Can you truly tell the secret whims and desires, the wants, needs and must haves of a bunch of New York City artists / adventurers / self-proclaimed geeks / cheese-bus aficionados / travelers / cheapskates / and those in the know? It seems that way – and 54 people can prove it.
Two weekends back, Flux hosted another one of their fantastically popular, terrifically peculiar, all-day extravaganzas titled Going Places, Doing Stuff. The premise behind GP, DS is that there’s a whole lot of awesome to see in our city. And yet, people generally take this city for granted. Since Flux lost its lease on their gallery-cum-home in Long Island City (they have to move by October,) lead curator Jean Barberis (full disclosure – a fine friend of mine) realized that one doesn’t need a static indoor gallery to display the art or performance of New Yorkers – one can do just as well in the city itself. So Flux asked a half-dozen writers, artists, historians, and so forth to create an adventure-slash-tour, on board a yellow cheese bus, in which participants would have no idea of where they were headed, just a title, a list of supplies to bring and a departure time and place. Get on the bus and take off to points unknown.

I was asked to lead the first Going Places, Doing Stuff, and we delved, mind, body and soul into weird religious spots in Staten Island. The second GP, DS took us into the wilds of Pennsyltucky, courtesy of artist Douglas Paulson. Two more adventures were led – one by Fluxer Annie Reichert, in which she brought a busload of explorers to her native suburban New Jersey and accompanied her Dad on everyday Dad stuff; another journey called Wandering Restaurant, where Portland, OR artist Gary Wiseman brought people to edible areas in Queens. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend either of those two escapades. But nothing was stopping me from attending the Flux-curated expedition on July 19th. What’s more, it was the only one in which I truly had no clue where we were going.

We went All Boro. Five boroughs in one day. Ambitious? Insane? Brilliant? Check, check, triple check. Flux Factory Senior Team: Jean Barberis, Stefany A. Golberg, Morgan Meis, Jason D. Brown, Chen Tamir & Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria compiled the days’ events as personal favorite of theirs. We met at the Staten Island Ferry terminal at 9am, in order to knock off the most estranged borough first. Also, the SI Ferry is one of the only places in NY where you can drink in public (I’ve done extensive research on the subject.) Once we disembarked at St. George, we boarded our cheese bus (54 adults on a machine that should only hold 40) and the journey began. First stop was a private gallery in the backyard of a home in St. George. Some Chilean sculptor who was related to another, more famous Chilean painter. I had had a few rum and iced coffees by then, so I didn’t quite catch the guy’s name. Following the sculpture gallery we made our way down onto the North Shore, immediately across from Sailors Snug Harbor to discover the coolest spot of the day – a DIY BMX bike track hidden in the overgrowth on the shoreline of Richmond Terrace.
After running around like maniacs on this totally badass BMX track, we returned to the cheese bus to discover – our very own Staten Island cocktail! It was 10:30am, we had 4 more boroughs to tackle, and people were getting nice and soused. All cocktails coutesy of Chen Tamir. Staten Island Cocktail

6 parts coffee vodka

1 part dry vermouth

2 parts fresh lime juice

Maraschino cherry
Combine liquid ingredients in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice and shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with maraschino cherry.Over the VZ bridge to Brooklyn and to our next stop – Floyd Bennett Field, NY’s first municipal airport. Opened in 1931 at the southeastern tip of Brooklyn, FB Field was home to a number of daredevil pilots just as aviation was cruising from the airplane age to the jet engine age. Wiley Post, Amelia Earhart, Howard Hughes and more all made Floyd Bennett Field a space-age wonder in a pre-World-War-II New York. After a quick tour of Hangar B – home to dozens of out-of-commission Army, Navy & Government aircrafts, complete with septuagenarian Brooklyn boys building a replica of a Jenny bomber out of wood,

we went to the Aviator indoor stall for a picnic lunch and more Brooklyn booze.
Brooklyn Cocktail

2 ounces rye or blended whiskey
1 ounce dry vermouth
Dash of maraschino liqueur
Dash of Amer Picon
Shake all ingredients well with ice; then strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Onto Queens! Way up north in Queens – the neighborhood of College Point, and the art gallery and brilliant loft-garage-home of local artist John Norwood, a friend to Flux. Again, more art here, some of which was wonderful and some of which was just weird. I took off to explore College Point Boulevard and score some scrumptious Columbian fresh-fruit drinks called Cholada. The day was long, hot, and brains were addled with liquor and other, more illicit substances, so a nice long respite in Mr. Norwood’s air conditioned home was just the ticket. We watched airplanes take off from LaGuardia Airport, just across from Flushing Bay. We drank a special Queens cocktail that was just as nauseous as the first two.

Queen's Cocktail

1 chunk of Pineapple
I slice of Orange, in the shaker.
Ice
1/3 Italian Vermouth
1/3 French Vermouth
1/3 Booth's Dry Gin
Shake well and strain into cocktail glass.

We soaked in the A/C and tried to ignore the fact that eventually all 54 of us would have to reboard that 40 pax bus, in 92 degree humidity, in the northern-ass-end of Queens, and depart for the only borough that attached to the mainland of America. Which we did. Evetually.

The Bronx. Fort Apache. Burning tenements. Yankee Stadium. Yachts. Lobster shacks . . . quiet, serene, Maine-like fishing villages?!? Welcome to City Island, population 4500. Commonly referred to as New England in New York, this impossibly picturesque spit of land off Pelham Bay is famous for seeming completely outside of NYC, yet within the five boroughs. We parked the cheese bus and wandered around the Pelham Cemetery, purportedly the only final resting place in New York City right next to a body of water. We hiked our way down the 1.5 mile City Island Avenue to the southernmost point which was when we split for dinner. Some went the fried and greasy route, some went the burgers and fries route, I went the whole lobster & clam bake route. It was a well-earned crustacean.
There’s only so much All Boro a New Yorker can handle – so after yet another impossible to swallow cocktail, this one named for the Boogie-Down Bronx, we piled onto that magical cheese bus and slept our way back to the city. They said it couldn’t be done – All Boro in one day. Clearly "they" never messed with Flux Factory.

Lost in History vol. 65: Staten Island Adventures!

We here at Lost in History delight in adventures within the outer boroughs. Especially when said adventures take us to places we haven’t been before; little known secret gardens and hardly-visited museums that revel in the urban idiosyncrasies that make NYC such a marvelous place to live and work. What better excuse to forge such an excursion then being asked to do exactly that: run an all-day adventure to parts unknown, courtesy of Flux Factory! Which is exactly what happened this past Saturday.
Flux Factory is an arts space with a sense of humor located in Long Island City, Queens. Previous installations have included Grizzly Proof – a multimedia show involving various artists’ interpretations of a Grizzly-Bear-Proof suit; and NY NY NY – another multimedia show in which artists recreated the Queens Panorama of the City of New York, and which your author engaged the masses in a psycho-geographical trivia. For their current show, Going Places (Doing Stuff), Flux was taking the project outside, by asking various artist-performers to invent their own adventure, stuff a buncha people onto a cheese bus without revealing too much of the ensuing journey, and take off. Flux asked yours truly to kick the summer-long series off, and informed the participants that the tour would a) stay within the five boroughs, b) last all day, and c) be led by a native New Yorker and licensed NYC tour guide with “knowledge of New York City and a rambunctious personality (that) make him the greatest guide you could wish for.” Aw shucks.
25 people met up at the City Reliquary Museum and Civic Organization in Williamsburg at half-past 11am, to peruse the museums holdings before the adventure began. Flux had been smart enough to ensure that our cheese bus had A/C so we wouldn’t swelter, and our driver was a very friendly Haitian gentleman named Marcus. As soon as we hit the BQE westbound, it was pretty clear where we were going – not to the Bronx or Manhattan or Queens. And although we were driving through Brooklyn, we sure weren’t going to spend our time there. We were headed to NY’s smallest borough in population (less than half-a-mil) but the 6th largest island off the coast of the country; the one, the only, the 40% Italian – Staten Island!
First stop on our magical mystery tour was the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Grotto, in Rosebank, right near the VZ Bridge. Built in 1937 by the local fraternal order, the Grotto is a handmade collaged and stucco’d outdoor sculpture built from concrete, seashells, bicycle reflectors, religious statues and ceramic chips, dedicated to their namesake saint. Open year-round, the Grotto in Rosebank is quite powerful, and as a work of handmade, devoted, religious art, it is also the first Traditional Cultural Property listed in NY State.
Second stop was the Castleton Hill Moravian Church Labyrinth, farther inland on Victory Boulevard. Contrary to what many people think, a labyrinth is not a giant three-dimensional walled-in maze designed to lose its travelers. Instead, a labyrinth is a flattened two-dimensional path that, through it many twists and turns, will always present a way out. This particular one was laid out on the courtyard of the Church, and acts as a meditation tool; as one walks the labyrinth, one should experience peace and spiritual enlightenment. While various members of our adventuresome group strove for those lofty goals, by taking their turns in the 90-degree heat, assisted by the very friendly Pastor Lynnette Delbridge, other intrepid SI explorers marched down the block to order a half-dozen pies from the legendary Joe and Pats Pizzeria. Ricotta with broccoli rabe; Pepperoni; Scungilli with fresh garlic; cheese-free with arugula with cherry tomatoes and onions; plain; those Staten Islanders sure know how to craft heaven into eight slices loaded with fresh toppings.
We voraciously attacked our pizza back on the bus and headed off to adventure number three, deep in the heart of the island atop Lighthouse Hill – arguably the highest natural point on the Eastern Seaboard (although this is a long-running argument between the residents of Lighthouse Hill and the residents of Todt Hill). Amidst the opulent mansions and private driveways snaking up and down the gorgeous land lies the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art. A publicly funded institution with as idiosyncratic a history as its location, the entire place deserves its own Lost in History column, and will receive one, in due time. However, there’s more adventure to our Staten Island, so after a 45 minute docent-led tour of the tiered gardens and art & antiquities collection, we headed off.
Rumor has it that there is a privately designed, privately owned Frank Lloyd Wright house atop Lighthouse Hill. I had never heard of such a thing until Moe, another tour guide and New-York-ophile, inquired of Jessica, the docent. She obliges and gives walking directions, so off we march through the lush SI forest to find the thing. In the midst of the hunt it begins to downpour, but Marcus, ever-ready at the helm of the cheese bus, picks us up and we manage to find the home. It looks like a Maine summer house at the edge of a lake, but one that got left in a medieval stretcher a bit too long.
We also discover the Victorian lighthouse that gives the Hill its moniker – the towering monstrosity is just chilling in another privately owned backyard.
The adventure is almost over – adventurers are getting Staten-Islanded-out. We attempt to find the Conference House, which is in Tottenville at the absolutely southern-most point of NY State. On Sept 11th, 1776, this country estate, the only surviving pre-Revolutionary manor house, acted as the final meeting place between the American and British Forces in a futile attempt to call off the War. Unfortunately, thanks to a series of dead-ends, and a busload of hungry, sun-stroked, tired, cranky, non-islanders, we said screw it, and made our way to Killmeyers Bavarian Beer Hall and Garden – the oldest beer hall cum restaurant in the borough. It was there that we feasted on schnitzel, bratwurst, hefeweizen, German Chocolate Cake, and raised a collective toast to the amazing, underappreciated, overlooked and friggin enormous Staten Island. And it only took two hours to get back to Brooklyn. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, but not for aother couple of years. I love you Staten Island!
more pictures can be found here on my Flickr page.

Lost in History vol. 59: Happy Birthday, Mr. Teletrophono!

Celebrations come and go in New York City. With so much history, so many events to commemorate and remember throughout the five boroughs, it’s easy to forget a brilliant human being or their spectacular accomplishments. That’s why we weren’t all that surprised to learn that we were some of the only people who arrived at the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum in Rosebank, Staten Island yesterday to celebrate the 200th birthday of Antonio Meucci, the true inventor of the teletrophono in 1849!What the hell is a teletrophono? A teletrophono is an invention, resembling two tin cups attached via an electrically charged wire that enabled two persons to communicate while standing in entirely separate rooms! Mr. Meucci discovered this incredible modern marvel while living in Cuba and treating sick patients through “electrophonic” experimentation, where he would send small electric shocks through charged wires from his mouth to the mouth of the afflicted. Once, while standing in a separate room, he heard & felt the shout of pain inside his own mouth, coming from the gentleman in another room being treated, Meucci realized he’d discovered something great – namely that sound can travel short distances through electric wires. In 1849, as Meucci started work on what would become the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell (booo!) celebrated his second birthday.

In 1850, Meucci and his wife emigrate to New York, settling in the bucolic farming community of Rosebank, Staten Island. Meucci patents smokeless candles and produces them in a little factory in his backyard.
Slowly, Ester Meucci’s body succumbs to arthritis, and she is relegated to her second-floor bedroom. So Meucci creates a mini-telephone system hooked up around the house in order to speak with her as he continues his candle production and works on various inventions. In order to keep up rent on the property, the Meuccis take in boarders, most legendarily Giuseppe Garibaldi, “Hero of Two Worlds” and subject of a previous L.I.H.Over the next 20 years, a series of extraordinarily bad luck, fraudulent investors, popular anti-Italian sentiment, court cases ruling against his inventions and one steamboat explosion (the Westfield, in 1871) prevent Antonio Meucci from renewing patents and holding onto important documents proving him the true inventor of the telephone. (After the Westfield explosion, Meucci was so badly burned that Ester had to sell the original teleptrophono models to a second-hand dealer for six dollars in order to pay the hospital bills.) In 1872, Meucci submits his plans to the District Telephone Company of NY for assistance in proving his invention; after two years of persistent visits to the Company, he learns the papers are lost. Twenty days after this injustice, Bell applies for his patent in the creation of the telephone. Meucci’s remaining years are spent in his cottage in Staten Island, tinkering on inventions and engaged in futile court cases trying to prove his primacy in the telephone patent. He dies penniless in 1889, ever confident that “the telephone, which I invented and which I first made known and which, as you know, was stolen from me.”
Although popular culture and the history books tell us about Bell’s invention as the first telephone, there is a marvelous little museum, owned and operated by the Sons of Italy, chock full of artifacts and displays proving otherwise. So when better to go, then on the man’s 200th birthday!? We sang “Happy Birthday Dear Antonio,” watched an inspirational film about his life and times, took a private tour of the collection with the wonderfully informative (S.I. native) Robin Cocozza (and her awesome Staten Island accent), and we snapped pictures like crazy. Highly recommended for any fans of homegrown museums and / or teletrophonos.

(first published on 4/14/8 in www.thelmagazine.com)