When You Get Caught Between Red Hook And New York City The Best That You Can Do Is Chinese Takeout

The Brooklyn Paper (.pdf) finds people who say what we feared they were thinking:

The Queen Mary 2 christened the new cruise ship terminal in Red Hook last week, drawing plenty of oohs and ahhs from onlookers, lots of platitude-filled speeches from politicians and one unanswered question from skeptics, “What’s in it for Brooklyn?”

More than 2,000 luxury cruisers spewed forth from of the world’s largest passenger liner on Saturday into the Red Hook sun and then promptly got on buses to Manhattan or the airport.

“This is a very nice terminal, but Brooklyn means nothing to me,” said Hoanes Koutouduian, a visitor from Portugal. “I’ll be staying in Manhattan for the food, drinks, and the jazz.”

But it’s not like they weren’t warned:

Cunard, which operates the 23-story boat, did little to encourage the Queen’s passengers to remain in Kings. The company’s Web site, for example, refers to its new port of call as “New York, New York.”

“See the bright lights of the Big Apple,” it reads. “Some come just for the shopping: there’s Bloomingdale’s on Lex, Tiffany’s on Fifth, Barneys and the unique boutiques along Madison. Or head downtown and explore the trendy shops of SoHo.”

. . .

“This is a joke,” said Tonya “Lenell” Smothers, owner of the neighborhood’s popular boubon-filled liquor store, “Who gets off a boat and goes to general contractor or a Chinese restaurant with bulletproof glass?”

In The Eternal Words Of Murray Head: Edward R. Murrow, The World’s Your Oyster

The city don’t know that the city is getting the crème de la crème of the chess world:

Brooklyn’s Edward R. Murrow High School chess team scored a checkmate last night as it captured another national title.

The eight-member team from Midwood won the National High School Chess Championship for the third straight year with a razor-thin half-point victory.

“It’s a great pleasure to have the honor of winning the title again for the last time,” said team captain Ilya Kotlyanskiy, a 17-year-old senior, who will graduate in June. “We proved our skills.”

The three-day tournament in Milwaukee came down to the wire with the Brooklyn team needing to win their final two games to capture glory.

“It feels great to win it all by ourselves and not have to share the title with anyone,” said junior Sal Bercys, 16, the highest-ranked player on the team.

Last year, Edward R. Murrow tied for the championship with Catalina Foothills High School of Tucson, this year’s runner-up. It was the sixth first-place crown for Edward R. Murrow in the team’s 22-year history.

The team later celebrated at Chuck E. Cheese.

No One Is More Unmoved Than The Amusement Park Veteran

Don’t oversell it or anything:

A New Jersey amusement park king is rushing to reopen the shuttered [Nellie Bly] Shore Parkway kiddie park by Memorial Day weekend — with brand-new rides, a new name and wi-fi technology.

Martin Garin and his co-owner son Marc plan to restore five of Nellie Bly’s ancient rides and introduce seven new ones — most of them with kid-friendly names like Venture Elephant.

“I don’t know if its going to be much different, but it’s going to be quality — it’s going to have rides and food and entertainment,” said Garin, who ran New Jersey’s Meadowlands Fair until 2002.

Minor thrillers such as bumper cars, the Tilt-a-Whirl, and the Scrambler will be reintroduced, and a handful of less-scary attractions, such as a carousel, also will hopefully draw the kids, the Garins said.

“It’s like every kiddie ride,” Marc Garin said of the Venture Elephant and others like it. “It just goes ’round and ’round.”

Less God, More Singing; Brooklyn Fathiests Get That Old Time Religion

I feel a Sunday Styles feature coming on (.pdf):

Gina Duclayan lights one candle and then another and intones a familiar sounding prayer.

“Baruch ha-or ba-olam (radiant is the light within the world),” she says, closing her eyes and moving her hands from the candles to her chest, if inviting in some higher power.

“Baruch ha-or-ba-shabbat.” It is Friday night and Duclayan and husband Daniel Radosh are lighting Shabbos candles and saying a prayer over challah and wine (substituting grape juice for wine, so their children can also partake) like many Jewish couples all over Brooklyn.

But there is one main difference: Duclayan and Radosh don’t believe in God. Call them “the new fatheists,” growing number of Brooklynites who are turned off to organized religion — there’s just too much “God begat this” and “God smote that” for them — yet still need spirituality in their lives.

. . .

[Religion inspiring the best in Mankind is] what drives atheist Arthur Strimling to services at Kolot Chayeinu, a Jewish congregation in Park Slope that’s so liberal that the mission statement says, “Doubt can be an act of faith.”

“My grandfather and father were staunch atheists, and so am I,” Strimling said. “But am of the generation that saw Martin Luther King and other ministers defending the best values, with courage and fortitude, in the name of God.

“You don’t need God to do those things, but it proved to me that spiritual hunger is not something I wanted to fully extinguish in myself.”

So when Rabbi Ellen Lippmann talks about the Torah, Strimling finds himself interested, even if he doesn’t believe the passages.

“Reading the Torah is about examination,” he said. “It’s creative and humanizing process and I love that. In the Torah, God is a complicated idea. If I believe in anything, it’s that humans’ hunger for God is so universal that it can’t be ignored. It must be in the DNA.”

Or as atheist Lee Pardee, who attends Unitarian services, put it: I may be an atheist, but I love singing in the chorus!

“When I first joined this congregation, I was so pleased by the songs. There’s no God in them! It’s just like church, but all the words have been fixed,” Pardee added.

“I can actually sing the hymns and believe in them.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses: Tastefully Dim, Comfortably Dumb(o)

The Brooklyn Paper talks its way into the Watchtower (.pdf):

Jehovah’s Witnesses make up 11 percent of the Brooklyn Heights population; their Watchtower turrets define the borough for people making their first trip over the Brooklyn Bridge; their 33 properties are omnipresent in the Heights and DUMBO.

When they’re not out preaching or “spreading the good news,” as Witnesses call it, they hole up in an enormous Brooklyn complex — vast in size and function.

Think of anything one might need in modern society –lawyers, dentists, engineers, architects, painters, plumbers, electricians, a gym, swimming pool, pharmacy, cafeteria, laundry facility. You name it, they’ve got it.

. . .

Not only does the Watchtower have everything, it’s also great place to acquire new job skills. Hemmelgarn, for example, is learning public relations, and his wife, who had no hair-cutting skills before coming to Brooklyn, now works in the barbershop.

The building at 25 Columbia Heights is the brain — or soul — of the Witnesses’ worldwide operations. It sits like a behemoth across from the Hillside Park dog run. A bridge connects its two sand-colored buildings.

Given that it’s a world unto itself, it’s not surprising that the building feels like another country — the Midwest. People are friendly. They greet each other with a smile and hello. Their gentle voices are marked with inflections from outside the tri-state area.

The carpeted Watchtower lobby, lit with recessed lighting, is tastefully dim. Rob the “official greeter,” stands behind a long counter. Kitschy biblical scenes painted by Witnesses decorate the walls. The place feels like the illegitimate child of a Marriot hotel and a hospital for the ill-at-soul.

(Dana, this is dripping with condescension!)