MAS tours with Francis Morrone, Joe Svehlak, ???, and Matt Postal

by Ken

I should have mentioned sooner for the benefit of New Yorkers that the new Municipal Art Society walking-tour schedule -- once again covering three months, December through February -- is available online. As I've mentioned here before, in the two years I've been doing MAS tours, following my ridiculously late discovery that there are such things -- they really have changed my life.

I just did a quick count on my online calendar and see that I registered for something like 20 Municipal Art Society walking tours for the three-month period from September to November. I actually do quite that many, because I "better-dealed" one or two in favor of later-announced tours of other kinds which I couldn't resist, and I had four tours canceled in the two weekends just before and then after the arrival of Superstorm Sandy.

There's so much other tour activity going on in the metropolitan area, including activity involving a number of my favorite MAS tour leaders, activity I'm still just beginning to discover, that it's easy to take the MAS schedule for granted. Which I surely don't do! This time I'll be a little more cautious in registering for tours before other schedules have been announced (I'll try to keep my options open longer, focusing on registering on tours I know will be sold out if I wait too much longer), but by the end of February I expect to wind up doing about as many MAS tours as I've done in these last three months. More, actually, accounting for the tours lost to the storm in this cycle.

I think everyone has settled into the MAS registration system -- no longer so new -- by which all tours require preregistration. It simplifies the life of most everyone concerned, most obviously at the start of each tour, where it's no longer necessary to devote all that time to collecting money for tours that once allowed walk-up registration or doing check-ins for tours that were done entirely by preregistration. The one exception I can think of, and I have met people who fall into this category, is for folks who prefer not to have to plan well ahead.

The fact is that if you do your registration online you can register anytime up to the start of the tour -- provided, of course, that there's still space for the tour you want to do; if the tour is sold out, that's indicated online. (For tour-takers without online access, registrations can still be done by phone, but only during weekday hours when the MAS office is open.)

Even with the price increase that accompanied the new system, MAS tours are an amazing bargain -- a mere $15 for members, $20 for nonmembers. A couple of weeks ago I got an online notice informing me that my renewal was due, and I can assure you, I did my renewal within minutes by return e-mail! Even at the lowest membership level, $50 for individuals ($40 for seniors), you get one free tour each year -- since I had online access to the "free tour" code, I had it applied it to one of the new-season tours even before my new membership card arrived in the mail.

Maybe it was surviving those two weekends without MAS tours that has made me so conscious of paying them their due. Certainly it felt special doing my first post-storm walk, which was of the Madison Square area with Sylvia Laudien-Meo -- on Veterans Day, at the very spot where the Veterans Day parade begins, which added an element of hubbub. I've enjoyed all the tours I've done with the amazingly charming Sylvia, who's an art person, which I'm emphatically not, meaning that I often get a different kind of view of the tour areas, as was the case with a Lower East Side tour she led, which wound up bringing me for the first time ever inside the New Museum on the Bowery. (Sylvia has a tour of Chelsea art galleries scheduled for Jan. 19, and two more of her "family tours," presumably suitable for whole families but not limited to them: Grand Central Terminal on Dec. 8 and Rockefeller Center on Feb. 24.)

(And anyone who hasn't done a Rockefeller Center tour really ought to. I've done architectural historian Tony Robins's and thoroughly enjoyed it. During the holiday season he's doing it twice: on Christmas Day and on Dec. 30.)

WEEKENDS WITH MATT POSTAL AND FRANCIS MORRONE

Then these last two weekends, the schedule has been kind to me, with four tours led by three of my favorite tour leaders. Last week I had the second in a series of three led by architectural historian Matt Postal devoted to the area known to the City Planning Dept. as Midtown East, for which major zoning changes are being proposed which could bring drastic changes (this was actually scheduled as the last of the three tours, but the middle one was a storm casualty and has been rescheduled for Dec. 15); and then Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens with architectural historian Francis Morrone, the middle leg of a three-part series covering the adjacent neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Cobble Hill.

I've written about both Matt and Francis a lot here. Maybe the simplest thing to say is that depth and range of their curiosity and knowledge, I'd sign up, schedule permitting, for pretty much anything they're doing. If the subject of the walk is interesting enough to them to do, I now take for granted that it will: (a) connect pieces of my world that hadn't previously been connected, (b) teach me all sorts of things I had no idea there were to know, and (c) provide two hours' worth of wonderful entertainment. (Both Matt and Francis have all sorts of tours listed in the new schedule. Be warned that Francis's in particular are likely to fill up well before the tour dates.)

MORE FRANCIS M, AND JACK EICHENBAUM

This weekend again I had a pair of tours. For the day after Thanksgiving there was a walk through "Public Housing's Fertile Crescent," along the East River side of Lower Manhattan, an area I'd never actually walked through, with urban geographer (and the borough historian of Queens) Jack Eichenbaum. I've also written here frequently about Jack. No one has done more to help me see -- and often it is literally a matter of seeing -- how the development of regions and neighborhoods is shaped by geography, including transportation access and population patterns over time.

In the new schedule Jack is doing two of his standby walks, ways of walking north-south in Midtown Manhattan while "Keeping Off Midtown Streets" -- an East Side version (from Grand Central to Bloomingdale's, Dec. 29) and a West Side one (from the Time Warner Center to Times Square, Jan. 27). Also, it's invaluable to register for Jack's e-mail list for announcements of his MAS and non-MAS activities, which you can do on the "Public Tour Schedule" page of his website, "The Geography of New York City with Jack Eichenbaum."

Then today Francis Morrone concluded the "BoCoCa" cycle with Cobble Hill, and it was Francis at his best. I'm only sorry that I had to miss the Boerum Hill installment of this cycle owing to a schedule conflict, which was true as well for the "Heart of Flatbush" installment of a three-part series built around Flatbush's historic districts, which fell on the same day as Jack Eichenbaum's one-of-a-kind "Day on the J Train" tour, which I certainly wasn't going to miss! (Be sure to watch for Jack's "World of the #7 Train.")

I've actually done a terrific Boerum Hill walk with Joe Svehlak, another of my "old reliables," who sort of combines the geographical and architectural approaches in his masterful tours of less-walked-through neighborhoods, especially in Brooklyn. I'm still waiting for a reschedule of his Bushwick tour, which I had to miss because I had to finish a "Sunday Classics" piece; I've loved Joe's tours of Ridgewood (straddling Brooklyn and Queens), Sunset Park (where he grew up), Cypress Hills, and Downtown Brooklyn. I also see Joe all the time on other people's tours, a tribute to the range of his curiosity; he was supposed to be with us, we learned from Jack Eichenbaum, on Jack's "Day on the J Train." I know Joe does a lot of Grand Central tours, so his "Grand Central During the Holidays" on Dec. 22 should be fun. He's also doing a Lower Manhattan tour called "Downtown Connections" on Jan. 20.

NORTHERN MANHATTAN, ATLANTIC AVENUE, AND MISC.

There are also a number of tours scheduled with the highly regarded historian of Harlem and Northern Manhattan Eric K. Washington: "Uptown Trinity Church Cemetery at Christmas," Dec. 23; "Manhattanville: Revisiting a Neighborhood in Flux," Feb. 3 (Eric has literally "written the book" on Manhattanville); and "Harlem Grab Bag," Feb. 23.

I might also mention "Explore and Shop: Wintertime in the Atlantic Avenue Bazaars" with MaryAnn DiNapoli on Jan. 5. I've done MaryAnn's "Churches of Cobble Hill" (which covers not just still-functioning churches but no-longer-existing as well as repurposed ones). It's always fascinating to tour areas with neighborhood residents, and MaryAnn grew up here. Which means she knows the Middle Eastern shops of Atlantic Avenue from longtime personal experience. In fact, the tour I took with her, having been scheduled on a weekday, was compact enough that she was actually able to take us inside several of the shops where she has shopped, well, pretty much forever.

I don't think I mentioned that the MAS schedule has a Green-Wood Cemetery tour with the cemetery's historian, Jeff Richman, on Dec. 15. And I don't know what all else I haven't mentioned. Oh yes, I'm hoping that this time I'll be able to do Linda Fisher's tour of "Manhattan's Civic Center," on Dec. 30. This is one of the tours I registered for the last time it was scheduled but "better-dealed" in favor of a tour I couldn't resist, a bus tour to the Usonia Houses communal-housing development in northern Westchester which was planned in good part by Frank Lloyd Wright, during which tour leader Justin Ferate, another of my all-time favorites, led us through two of the houses, one of them one that was actually designed by Wright.

AND SPEAKING OF JUSTIN FERATE . . .

He seems to be doing most of his tours these days as coordinator of the Wolfe Walkers tours, via which in just the past year I've been able to do amazing bus tours to the Mark Twain House in West Hartford as well as the Usonia Houses, and also visit such diverse locations as the Jamaica Wildlife Refuge, the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Uptown Manhattan (combined with the Audubon Terrace complex), and Chinatown.

An unfortunate casualty of the storm aftermath was a tour of Staten Island's under-construction conversion of Staten Island's Freshkills landfill into what will be NYC's largest park. But in turn one of the MAS pre-storm cancellations allowed me to do an extra Wolfe Walkers tour I hadn't expected: a Halloween-themed walk through Greenwich Village. I've done a number of Village tours by now, but I had a feeling that Justin's Village wouldn't be the same as anyone else's, and it wasn't! Still to come in the current Wolfe Walkers cycle is a tour of the Cloisters and Fort Tryon Park on Dec. 2, one of the tours I signed up for as soon as I saw the announcement.

By the way, as a source of information about fascinating tour goings-on in the NYC area, there's no resource quite like Justin's e-mail list. Justin sends out vast quantities of pass-alongs of events he thinks may be of interest, and I can say that I ALWAYS look at his pass-alongs. I've already done a whole bunch of events I wouldn't have known about otherwise. For that matter, Justin's website, "Tours of the City with Justin Ferate," is itself an invaluable resource. Here's the link to sign up for Justin's mailing list.

#

My basic principle regarding Justin Ferate's tours is that if Justin thinks someplace is worth going, as long as my schedule permits, I'm going with him. (See below for an update.

by Ken

For NYC gadders, this may be the "the" weekend of the year, with the unfortunately simultaenous immersion of the tenth annual Open House New York Weekend, one of the most eagerly awaited events of the gadding calendar, and a NYC-based What's Out There Weekend presented by the DC-based Cultural Landscape Foundation. The only thing more remarkable than the quality of the offerings is the fact that they're free!


OPENHOUSENEWYORK WEEKEND

Yes, OHNY Weekend includes bike tours too!

OHNY functions year-round, but to urbanly aware New Yorkers when you say "Open House New York" thoughts turn automatically to "the" weekend, now upon us. Here's the official description:

To celebrate the city’s architecture and design, the 10th Annual openhousenewyork Weekend will once again unlock the city, allowing New Yorkers and tourists alike free access hundreds of sites talks, tours, performances and family activities in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. From private residences and historic landmarks, to hard hat tours and sustainable skyscrapers, OHNY gives you rare access into the extraordinary architecture that defines New York City, while introducing you to the people who make the city a vibrant and sustainable place to live, work, and play.

You have to look at the actual listings to appreciate their staggering range -- in both subject matter and geography. (Start with a map view here.) There are over 200 events, and last year combing through the listings I came up with something like 40 tours I would have happily done.

It gets a little crazy because the actual listings aren't released till two to three weeks before the weekend, and there are always a couple of dozen events you know everyone will be trying to register for, providing frustrated would-be registrants with anecdotes to last them through to next year's festivities. Still, that leaves an awful lot of events still looking for takers, and my guess is that even now you can find lots of really interesting tours you can still do. (Of course some of the most interesting ones are offbeat enough to attract smaller crowds.)

This year my life was simplified by the much earlier announcement of the schedule for What's Out There Weekend NYC. I was so delighted by the offerings that I booked myself solid. The only thing that remains to be seen is whether I can actually survive the whole program.

However, I still plan to look carefully through the OHNY Weekend listings, which always contain suggestions of places that may be visitable -- usually be advance reservation -- at other times of the year.


WHAT'S OUT THERE WEEKEND NYC

The D.C.-based Cultural Landscape Foundation is new to me. Here's how it describes its mission:

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) provides people with the ability to see, understand, evaluate and appreciate landscape architecture and its practitioners, in the way many people have learned to do with buildings and architects. Through its web site, lectures, outreach and publishing, TCLF broadens the support and understanding for cultural landscapes nationwide.

I found out all of that after I saw the listings for its What's Out There Weekend in New York (which I wrote about at the end of August), even though I did dimly recall that the dates were the same as OHNY Weekend.

Explore and discover NYC’s
landscape marvels with free tours
in all five boroughs, featuring some of the nation’s most innovative landscapes spanning two centuries of design. Experience the great civic spaces of Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza and Prospect Park, Bob Zion’s original “vest pocket park” at Manhattan’s Paley Park; Wave Hill’s majestic views of the Hudson River from the Bronx, and the unique urban design of Sunnyside Gardens in Queens. Many are places people pass daily, but do we know their background stories? What’s Out There Weekend promises to shed new light on familiar places.

What’s Out There Weekend dovetails with TCLF’s Web-based What’s Out There, the nation’s most comprehensive, free, online database of designed landscapes. The database offers a broad and interconnected way to discover the breadth of America’s landscape heritage, while What’s Out There Weekend gives people the opportunity to experience the landscapes they might see every day in a new way.

Recommendations are required, but here may still be a bunch of events you can register for. You'll find listings here (and a schedule pdf here), and then you can register here.

I'm thinking I stumbled onto TCLF and WOTW when the fall Municipal Art Society tour listings were announced, because originally two of the fall MAS tours were scheduled to be "in partnership with the Cultural Landscape Foundation": one on Saturday morning of Grand Army Plaza, at the main entrance to Brooklyn's Prospect Park, led by Matt Postal; and one on Sunday morning of "St. George: Staten Island's Developing Waterfront," led by "life-long Staten Islander Georgia Trivizas . . . inspired by the overlooked tour guides she's met through her travels -- native taxi and bus drivers"). Early on, however, the Staten Island walk was converted to a regular MAS tour, and I went ahead and registered for it.

Meanwhile I registered for five WOTW walks -- four on Saturday, starting with Matt's Grand Army Plaza one, followed by two in succession in Prospect Park (the Long Meadow and Ravine at 11am, and Lakeside at 1pm), then hauling off to the opposite end of the city, Bronx's Van Cortlandt Park; and one on Sunday, a tour of Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, which I should have more than enough time to get to upon my return from Staten Island. (It wasn't planned, but I realized when the dust settled that over the two days I'll be doing tours in four of the five NYC boroughs -- all of them except Manhattan!)


CATCHING UP WITH JUSTIN FERATE

I've written about some of the amazing tours I've done with the tirelessly engaging and informative Justin Ferate, going back to my first: a daylong trek to Tottenville, at the southern tip of Staten Island. Since then there have been destinations like Jamaica National Wildlife Refuge in Jamaica Bay, northern Manhattan's Morris-Jumel Mansion and Audubon Terrace complex, and the Mark Twain House in West Hartford, Connecticut -- and, most recently, an amazing bus tour to the Usonia Homes in the vicinity of Pleasantville, New York (in more or less central Westchester County), a planned community developed beginning in the late 1940s which took on a whole other dimension when the founders succeeded in enlisting Frank Lloyd Wright to oversee the layout of and design principles of the future development (in addition to designing three homes himself, one of which we got to see).

I may have been remiss in not mentioning the Usonia tour as soon as it was announced. Then again, it sold out pretty quickly.

I know it's kind of late notice, but tomorrow (Saturday) at 1pm Justin is leading a tour for Wolfe Walkers:

Landmarks of Early African-American New York

Few are aware of the role of African Americans in the history of Lower Manhattan. Even fewer are aware that in 1612, a freeman of African and Portuguese descent, Joao “Jan” Rodrigues, became the first non-native settler on the island of Manhattan. In 1626, the later Dutch settlers brought Africans to New Amsterdam as slaves. By 1711, roughly 1/6 of New York’s residents were black – most enslaved and some free. During the tour, we’ll visit such noted sites as New York’s slave market, the site of the slave revolt of 1712, the notorious “Five Points” district, Abolitionist-related sites, the New York African Free School, the site of African Society for Mutual Relief and the site of Freedom’s Journal, the first African American owned and operated newspaper in the nation.

In addition, from the 1690s until the 1790s, both free and enslaved Africans were interred in a burial ground in Lower Manhattan, beyond the boundaries of New Amsterdam. Built over by development, the cemetery was officially “rediscovered” in 1991. Our tour will include a visit to the new African Burial Ground Memorial – dedicated to those who are buried in this hallowed ground.

During the tour, we’ll encounter such people as Joseph François Mangin, designer of New York’s City Hall and the Venerable Pierre Toussaint – a candidate for Roman Catholic sainthood. We’ll address and visit noted religious sites associated with the black community: John Street Methodist Church, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, Mother AME Zion, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, and the Abyssinian Baptist Church. We’ll also discover overlooked heroes and heroines. Learn of Elizabeth Jennings who, in 1854, successfully sued to eliminate racial discrimination for New York’s public transit. Discover Dr. James McCune Smith, the first licensed African American doctor in the country. Learn of the New York connections for Frederick Douglass, the most famous African American of the 19th century – often called the “father of the Civil Rights movement.”

Date: Saturday, October 6, 2012 Time: 1:00 PM to approximately 4:00 PM Meet: SE Corner of Broadway at Chambers Street at north end of City Hall Park Trains: 2 or 3 Train to Park Place || A or C to Chambers Street

R Train to City Hall || 4, 5, or 6 Train to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall Leader: Justin Ferate, Urban Historian

Fee: $ 20 in advance (Includes all Admissions) $ 23 on-site (By check to Hermine Watterson) (Includes all Admissions)

Justin has other Wolfe Walkers tours (which he coordinates) coming up:

* Museum of Chinese in America, Chinatown Walk + Dim Sum Luncheon
Saturday, October 13, 10:30am to approximately 2:30pm, limited to 25 participants
$40 in advance ($45 onsite, if available)

* for Halloween: The Ghosts of Greenwich Village
Saturday, October 27, 1pm to approximately 4pm
$20 in advance, $23 onsite

* Discover the Creation of Freshkills Park! (ferry and bus tour)
Saturday, November 10, 9:15am to approximately 12:30pm, limited to 23 participants
$20 in advance (no onsite registrations)

* The Cloisters and Fort Tryon Park
Sunday, December 2, 9:45am to approximately 12:30pm

Registration is by mail, not online. You can download a PDF of the fall brochure or of just the registration form.

Justin's website, Tours of the City with Justin Ferate, is an inexhaustible resource in its own right, and you definitely want to sign up for his mailing list, which brings a rich stream of event announcements and pass-alongs that Justin deems of possible interest. I always look carefully at his e-mails, and am always happy when I can squeeze an event into my schedule -- this is almost all stuff that I wouldn't have found out about otherwise, like the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy's daring venture into my own neighborhood, Washington Heights, for a new tour called "Frankfurt on the Hudson," which drew a huge amount of interest. (I saw Justin there, and he explained that for some time he had thought about undertaking a similar tour but just hadn't gotten to it.) Just this evening there was an e-mail from Justin about the upcoming New York Archivists Week, October 7-13. I still have to go through those listings!


DON'T FORGET JACK EICHENBAUM'S "DAY ON THE J"

It's coming up in two weeks. Remember, he hasn't offered it in eight years. Do you want to take a chance on having to wait till the next time?

A Day on the J
Sunday, October 21, 10am-5:30pm

This series of six walks and connecting rides is astride the colonial route between Brooklyn and Queens. We focus on what the J train has done to and for surrounding neighborhoods since it began service (in part) in 1888. Walks take place in Highland Park, Richmond Hill, downtown Jamaica, Bushwick, South Williamsburg, and the Lower East Side. Tour fee is $39 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address) The full day’s program, registration coupon and other info is available by email: jaconet@aol.com. The tour is limited to 25 people. Don’t get left out!

#

See below for information about the Jamaica Bay Ecology Cruise leaving from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, on June 24.

by Ken

Some years back I had the pleasure of providing overnight accommodations to a friend who had a layover in New York on his journey from the Midwest abroad, and because he'd never been in the city, I went to the airport to meet him and drag him all the way back to my place in Washington Heights -- not quite as long a distance as you could have within the five boroughs of NYC, but a long distance anyways.

The Air Train was up and running by then, providing -- for the first time! -- easy access from JFK to the Howard Beach station of the A train for the long trip back to my place, but I still feel kind of bad about what I did. Instead of doing the logical thing and planting us on the Manhattan-bound platform, I dragged my poor friend to the opposite platform, from which the A train begins what I consider an amazing trip across Jamaica Bay to the Rockaway peninsula.


I think of this as one of the amazing rail journeys a person can make for the price of a subway fare. I do it at least a couple of times a year, even if I have no desire actually to be in the Rockaways. I realized, though, that my friend had no interest in this little ocean voyage by rail, or in my labored efforts to explain the geography of our journey. I suppose it was understandable that his mind was more wrapped up in the long and laborious trip still ahead of him, and the several months he would be spending in his remote destination.

I thought about that day when I took my most recent trip across Jamaica Bay, but for the first time not all the way across the bay. At the Broad Channel station, the next stop after Howard Beach, I was getting off to meet a tour group led by the incomparable Justin Ferate, which would begin with a walk through the community of Howard Beach -- an extremely right-wing neighborhood with a heavy concentration of police and firefighters -- as the start of a mile-and-a-half walk to the visitor center of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. As many times as I've made the train crossing of Jamaica Bay, I never had any idea there even was such a destination.

I was caught short again when some of my fellow tour-group members not only had never done the Jamaica Bay train ride but really didn't even know where they were. They had followed Justin's instructions (in some cases never having set foot on an A train before) and arrived at the designated subway station and found the designated meeting place, but the rest was a mystery to them.

Jamaica Bay has always been a mystery to me, but not that kind of mystery. I've always been a compulsive map-reader, and when my family moved to New York when I was 12, and I began to become obsessed with the map of NYC, my eyes were riveted by that enormous expanse of bay bounded by the coasts of Brooklyn, "mainland" Queens, and the Rockaways. So when I saw that Justin was doing a walking tour of the Wildlife Refuge, I got my check in the mail immediately. And it was a terrific afternoon tramping around the most accessible portions of the refuge guided by Don Riepe, director of the Northeast Chapter of the American Littoral Society, and the enormously capable and charming Elizabeth, who works with Don.

It was a wonderful but exhausting afternoon, and I'm going to share something with "Urban Gadabout" readers which I somehow managed not to mention to readers of my DownWithTyranny "Sunday Classics" posts. (I'm figuring there isn't much overlap between the readerships, even making the large and presumptuous assumption that either has any readership.)

I've written several posts now based on the New York Concert Artists series of "Evenings of Piano Concerti," including today's, and while it's true that most of what interested me had already happened in the first three concerts, I never got around to mentioning that I blew off the fourth and final one, because that Saturday I would have had to go straight from the Jamaica Bay outing to Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church on Manhattan's West Side, with possibly time to stop at a conveniently located branch of my gym to shower. And the next day I had walking tours scheduled first in the Bronx (the second walk in Jack Eichenbaum's terrific Municipal Art Society series of South Bronx walks, which began in March with Mott Haven and concludes June 24 with Morrisania) and then in Brooklyn (the New York Transit Museum tour of several historic subway stations, which I wrote about recently).

There's more to that story, including tales of a number of other upcoming events around the city, but I'm going to leave that for sometime soon, maybe even tomorrow, in order to pass on news that Don and Elizabeth shared with us before we left the Wildlife Refuge.

June 24 - Jamaica Bay Sunset Cruises (3pm-6pm)

Leave from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn aboard the "Golden Sunshine" for a narrated tour of Jamaica Bay. Learn about the history, ecology, wildlife and management of the refuge and see egrets, herons, osprey, peregrine falcon, terns, shorebirds and waterfowl. Cost: $45 includes tour, wine & cheese, fruit, drink, snacks. Call (718) 318-9344; e-mail: donriepe@gmail.com. You can also make payment here. (With Gateway NRA and NYC Audubon.)

You may have noticed that the date is the same as Jack Eichenbaum's walk through Morrisania in the Bronx. Yes, once again, as with both previous installments in Jack's Bronx series, I'm headed straight from there to Brooklyn!

More about upcoming walking tours of Jack's, and some other tantalizing events, in the next installment.

#