If You Seek Amy

New York is another character in another book:

One recent afternoon, the writer Amy Sohn sat at the Third Street Playground in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, a few blocks from her apartment, and explained the central paradox of her neighborhood. “Every mother knows what a Park Slope Mother is, but no one thinks she is one,” she said.

. . .

Ms. Sohn and Mr. Miller moved to Park Slope in 2005, paying around $600,000 for a two-bedroom third-floor walk-up in a co-op on a block between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West — prime north Slope territory, though Ms. Sohn prefers not to reveal the exact street.

. . .

The apartment has a graceful layout, and the sort of prewar details sought after by the characters that populate “Prospect Park West,” like a working fireplace and an antique wood radiator cover in the living room. The kitchen was recently renovated because Mr. Miller likes to cook. The walls are covered with his paintings — striking portraits of old-time boxers. A pair of boxing gloves dangles from the fireplace mantel.

It’s a masculine look for a home where a 4-year-old girl is often running the floors. “I like the fact that it doesn’t feel like a day care center,” Ms. Sohn said. It’s difficult to be totally chic with a toddler, however. Asked about the peculiar, low-rise coffee table, Ms. Sohn explained that it has a chalk surface, which is used by the youngest in-house artist.

That Ms. Sohn has such concerns might come as a surprise to people who remember her “Female Trouble” column from the late-’90s in New York Press. In sexually explicit language, she chronicled her escapades as a single woman in New York — dates and dalliances with a litany of pale, wispy, downtown artist-types. One reader, in a letter to the newspaper, likened her writing to Penthouse Forum in that “I can’t believe it’s true, but I can’t stop reading, either.”

Ms. Sohn was a literary girl-about-town, but she said that even then she wanted a family. “When I was 25, I felt like a spinster,” she said. “That was where a lot of the comedy from my column came from — I wanted to marry every guy I met.”

In the span of two dizzying years, Ms. Sohn met and married Mr. Miller and became pregnant. Asked if she misses her old life, she said: “I don’t miss the anxiety. My joke is that the conversations around infant sleep are like the conversations around when-should-I-call. It’s like, ‘Last night he slept from 9 to 12, and then he woke up at 12.’ It’s the same as: ‘He said he’d call on Thursday. Then Friday came. By Saturday I called him.’ It’s ultimately very boring.”

How About The Eyeball Of The Clamshell?

It didn’t take long for the Brooklyn Paper to figure out a new nickname for the latest version of the basketball arena at Atlantic Yards:

From “The Hanger” to . . . “The Clamshell”?

Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner unveiled stunning new designs for the proposed basketball arena at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues this morning, renderings that strive to silence the outrage created in May when Ratner dumped Frank Gehry in favor of a Midwest architecture firm whose first effort, a hanger-like design, fell flat.

. . .

Of course, not everyone cheered the latest incarnation of the basketball arena. Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, the principal opposition group to the full Atlantic Yards mega-project, described the design as a “big eye ball at Atlantic and Flatbush.”

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

The Mayor’s Plan To Jumpstart The Economy

Close the streets:

Retail businesses on the Williamsburg block have been struggling this summer more than last year due to customers altering their spending habits during the economic recession. But several owners believe another factor has depressed foot-traffic along the neighborhood’s commercial corridor.

For four weeks earlier this summer, nine blocks of Bedford Avenue were shut down to vehicular traffic as part of the city’s Summer Streets initiative, Williamsburg Walks. Thousands of residents and visitors streamed through the streets to play games, see artwork, and buy crafts and trinkets from street vendors. According to several owners, few visited local businesses on Grand Street during that time.

Am I Dense For Just Now Realizing — I Mean Literally Just Realizing About Four Minutes Ago — That Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” Is A Response To Captain & Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together”?

Maybe I am, maybe I’m not:

On Sunday afternoon, a few dozen ashen-faced night owls — looking for a respite from 90-degree temperatures — took to the beach. They plopped themselves, fully clothed, onto striped lounge chairs and stayed there for hours drinking free PBR. Daniel James, a tattooed nightlife promoter, flipped burgers on a big grill. Showing off bedbug-bitten legs, a girl splashed into the water alone, bouncing a beach ball. “Come on in guys, the temperature’s perfect,” she said, eliciting only confused stares from three tattooed friends.

Forget about Suffolk County’s famous sand though, it all took place in a 700-squarefoot sandbox on Suffolk Street — and the body of water was a two-foot kiddy pool. James, for one, said he’d choose the space — called the “Beach Bar” and located at the back of the Clemente Solo Voce Center — over real sand and surf any day. Kicking up his black motorcycle boots he lit up a Parliament. Exhaling, he said, “The Hamptons is way too far.”

The Golden Days Of Coney Island

And to think they want to turn Coney Island into a giant mall when there is already such awesome excitement to be discovered there:

A capybara, the world’s largest rodent, is the victim of a daily assault of noise, cramped conditions and inhumane treatment — and spectators can witness it all for less than the price of a cup of coffee.

. . .

On a hot Saturday night in Coney Island last week, one young spectator was hardly impressed. “That’s not a rat. That just looks like a guinea pig,” the girl said, disappearing into a thick crowd.