Brooklyn (Park Slope to be exact)

I live in Brooklyn, New York, in a neighborhood known as Park Slope. This neighborhood fits me – fits like a miniscule number of others might. “The Slope” is a neighborhood of classic brownstone architecture built on a gentle hill climbing up to Prospect Park.

The neighborhood is also known for:

Children - lots of children.

Baby Carriages

Churches and Synagogues

Café Steinhof a wonderfully hospitable, comfortable and convivial Austrian bar and restaurant that employees and attracts a bright and diverse group of people doing all kinds of creative things. In fact, the artists (who you will eventually be introduced to here) that are creating something for this project all work there.

And don’t miss the annual anniversary party and “Sound of Music” sing-a-long.

The Café is owned by Paul Goebert. Paul is a native of Austria. He named it after a famous psychiatric hospital in Vienna.

Ironically, or perhaps synchronously, there is an “Icarus Project” that devotes itself to “navigating the space between brilliance and madness”. Be sure to check out their image gallery, it rocks!

Hopefully, I’ve given you the sense that Park Slope is indeed my spiritual home. That being the case, I thought that perhaps, a tattoo of a neighborhood street scene wrapping right around the fat part of my calf would be a great homage to this community that nourishes me.

I took some photographs of my favorite buildings (lost to my last hard-drive crash) and visited Adam Suerte, a visual and tattoo artist who grew up in the borough and owns “Brooklyn Tattoo”.

Adam did a great job and came up with this (click it to see full-size):

That’s Café Steinhof on the corner. “Music Masters” is really called “Music Matters”:

and is actually located across the street. Jason Figel owns the place.

Little did I know, that there is a comic book about the ‘hood. Issue number 6 of “Local” by Brian Wood and Robert Kelly in which Music Matters appears.

But anyway, after thinking long and hard, I have not yet found the Tattoo I wanted.

Next to Come: Baptism By Zeppelin