And You Thought Underwear Parties Were Unseemly . . . It’s For The Kids!*

Brooklyn’s Puppetry Arts Theatre is funded, in part, by your attendance at that bi-weekly underwear party. And that’s the rest of the story:

Four years ago, Tim Young, founder and director of Brooklyn’s Puppetry Arts Theatre, which puts on puppet-based educational programs for underprivileged city youth, was facing a stark reality. He was pushing 30 and needed to strip down his life. “I was catering full-time, and I was working so hard that I wasn’t getting anywhere with the theater — ­nowhere,” he says, sitting fully dressed on a stool in his cramped Park Slope kitchen at one in the morning recently. A group of guys in boxers and bright-colored American Apparel briefs breezed by; some stopped to dispense Cosmos into plastic cups from an Igloo cooler. “I was going to have to get a roommate, I was going to have to get a third job. I just wasn’t bringing in the money I needed to run the not-for-profit.”

. . .

Half of the theater’s $30,000 operating budget — insurance, supplies, actor and musician fees — comes from the party’s proceeds (donations, sponsorships, and grants pay the rest). They have let the theater, which is approved to go into the schools by the city Board of Education, expand from throwing one or two events a month to five to seven. Activities range from visiting classrooms to teach students how to make puppets out of paper bags to an annual Halloween carnival in Park Slope. It also puts on a musical, called In a Round About Way, about a girl who runs away from home. Young’s puppet Oglesby also appears in John Cameron Mitchell’s upcoming sexually graphic film, Shortbus.

And although Young can sound a bit defensive — “If someone says, ‘You’re throwing a party for gay men in their underwear!’ I say, ‘Well, I don’t see you paying my rent or giving me money to buy glitter'” — the guests approve. “You come here for the social atmosphere, but you’re also helping kids,” said Mike, 34, a burly lawyer, as he retrieved a plastic bag filled with his clothes. “I’m all for that.”

*At least I refrained from saying anything along the lines of “Puppetry Of The Penis” . . .

Dude, Drop Some Diaeresis In “Reenactor” And You’ve Got A Talk Of The Town Piece!

Proof that even New Yorkers love the occasional historical reenactment:

It was soon after 1 p.m. yesterday when a band of Revolutionary soldiers, one of them just 16, emerged from the edge of the forest, muskets blazing. The British navalmen moved into place, taking no casualties, and loaded their cannon.

“Read-ay,” a man wearing a tri-point hat said as he twirled a smoldering charge in the air and touched it to the fuse. The cannon let off an enormous, black powder explosion, sending a five-foot smoke ring barreling down a hill at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

. . .

The muskets, clothing, cannon, and other materials are almost all replicas made by another group of reenactors, who create objects from historical eras using only the kinds of tools and supplies they would have had.

“I love history. I love doing this,” a parks ranger from Staten Island and part-time British artillerist, Michael Callahan, 49, said. Of his entire outfit, only two things weren’t replicas: a pair of small square spectacles he bought at an antique store, and his underwear.

“The truth is, they didn’t wear underwear,” a fellow artilleriest, Richard Cuneo, said. “We have health standards nowadays.”

It was a consensus among the reenactors that New Yorkers had a stronger interest in their hobby than they had expected. Gaggles of Brooklynites and history buffs with digital cameras, video cameras, and camera phones pushed close to the reenactors and cheered with the cannon’s deafening booms.

The field is a short walk from Battle Hill, the highest point in Brooklyn. Viewed in a larger frame, yesterday’s scene was just one part of the city’s tangled history. Looming above the clouds of musket fire were a Citgo gas station sign and a 1960s-era sign advertising “Worldwide Furniture Warehouse.” Behind those was a church steeple covered in black renovation material, the top of a chemical plant, and, beyond them, the Statue of Liberty.

Location scout: Greenwood Cemetery.

The Post Oppo Research Machine Chugs Along

After revealing yesterday that Yvette Clarke sort of overlooked not actually receiving her degree, the Post Oppo Research machine makes Chris Owens prove he didn’t put up fliers calling David Yassky a rat:

A black Brooklyn congressional candidate denied having anything to do with putting up fliers calling his Jewish opponent a rat.

During a debate last night, Chris Owens — the son of Rep. Major Owens, who is vacating the seat in the 11th District — was asked if he was connected to fliers addressed to “Nasty Yassky.”

The posters refer to City Councilman David Yassky, who has been accused of moving into the district to run among a crowded field of blacks and take advantage of a split vote. “We don’t need any more rats or roaches in the neighborhood,” they read.

The fliers were next to campaign posters for Owens, who said he hadn’t seen them. Councilwoman Yvette Clarke called Yassky an opportunist, while State Sen. Carl Andrews said he “has the right to run.”

Just two and-a-half weeks to go until the September 12 primary . . .

Forget The 1,500 Construction Jobs, This Is Sure To Provide Beat Reporters With Years Of Work

Sure to occupy the mental space of Brooklynites for years to come, the first in a series of high-profile, high-intensity meetings about the controversial Atlantic Yards project took place yesterday:

An overflow crowd vehemently laid out the pros and cons of the proposed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn for seven hours last night at a raucous public meeting. Their passions suggested that opinions had only hardened in the three years since development plans were announced.

“This project essentially separates the neighborhoods of Brooklyn rather than uniting them,” said Jonathan Barkey, a photographer, brandishing posters he had generated of proposed skyscrapers towering over existing brownstones and playgrounds. “I would call this development a Great Wall of Brooklyn.”

Bring it on, said Dan Jederlinic, an ironworker. “Bulldozers are coming,” he warned the project’s opponents to whooping applause, “and if you don’t get out of the way they’re going to bulldoze right over you!”

. . .

Umar Jordan, 51, a black resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant, said he had come to “speak for the underprivileged, the brothers who just got out of prison,” and he drew loud cheers when he mocked opponents who had moved to Brooklyn only recently. Mr. Jordan suggested that they “just go back up to Pleasantville.”

“People complaining about the size of a building, the height of this or that?” Mr. Jordan said. “Welcome to the hood; this is Brooklyn!”

. . .

Outside the auditorium, meanwhile, hundreds from the housing group Acorn, which supports the project, chanted, “This is our neighborhood, and we know what is good.”

The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a civil rights activist whose church nearly abuts the project site, was talking to reporters about the need for lower-income housing when Mr. Barkey, the photographer, interrupted him.

“Like this?” Mr. Barkey said sarcastically, pointing to his posters of huge, blank building faces towering over a neighborhood. “This is rich folks’ housing. Look at these walls.”

Mr. Daughtry was not impressed. “Don’t you understand that all we’ve been around is walls all our lives?” he said. “You need to take that somewhere else.”

(Say what you want about the Ratners — they really built up a solid flank . . .)

Location scout: Atlantic Yards.

See, The Thing Is Was, Senior Year Was Just Such A Blur For Me . . .

One day after she received a big endorsement from rising star Anthony Weiner, opposition research about CD11 candidate Yvette Clark emerges with its first hit. Oh, how did that get in the Post? Hmm, I wonder:

A Brooklyn congressional candidate said yesterday she forget that she never completed her college degree.

City Councilwoman Yvette Clarke, running in the 11th District, claims on the Campaign Finance Board Web site that she graduated from Ohio’s Oberlin College. But the Democrat, who also studied at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College, admitted yesterday to being two classes short of her BA.

“I spent much of the day today in contact with Oberlin College and Medgar Evers College to retrieve my academic records from two decades ago, convinced of my recollection that I had fulfilled the requirements for a bachelor’s degree,” Clarke said.

“Contrary to that recollection, I have now discovered that I remain two classes short of the requirements for my degree. This is an embarrassing moment for me, but I feel it is important to set the record straight.”

Next oppo steps: Check how crazy she sounded on the podcast (I haven’t listened to it). Or here (I’m pretty sure she was the only one who out and out said that only an African-American should run).