#Twee way to describe stuff around us and find commonality.

[kojoty]

So much of online queer community (and there's your first red flag-- often an insistence of a Community rather than coalitions of communities) has been commodified so thoroughly into 'aesthetic' culture that it becomes more about the signalling of abstracted symbols to indicate 'queerness' rather than the material reality of sexual deviation from hegemonic culture. When you live in a world of signs and symbols, of course you're going to be shocked, confused, outraged, and let down when you experience non-commodified queerness that exists as material reality and alongside society. What begins as a meme joke about what a gay person or a lesbian might wear turns into an aesthetic 'creed' that abstracts itself until the fucking caribeener signifies more sexual implication than fucking a woman does! What are we doing here! Stop living your life as Aesthetic and find authenticity to self! Stop adhering to arbitrary symbols formed from commonality and figure out what the fuck you want to do! This goes for every subculture ofc)-- uphold authenticity over commodified capital lest you become swallowed into alienation-- but it's particularly venemous in LGBT circles.

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume Five, Number Six

Photo of Anna Tivel by Matt Kennely

This edition of Dust considers twee pop and 1990s influenced electronica, Malawian street music and stenchcore and a wonderfully understated, gorgeous record by folksinger Anna Tivel (pictured above), among other musical finds.  This time, writers included Andrew Forell, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Isaac Olson, Peter Taber and Jonathan Shaw.  Enjoy!

Barrie — Happy to Be Here (Winspear)

Brooklyn based multinational twee poppers Barrie’s debut album Happy to Be collects a charming array of sweet, feather-light classic AM radio-influenced songs performed by leader Barrie Lindsay (voice/guitar), Spurge Carter (keyboards), Dominic Apa (drums), Noah Prebish (guitar/synths) and Sabine Holler (bass). Lindsay’s songs subtly and acutely describe life as a newcomer to New York. The production and musicianship on Happy to Be Here is never less than expert, full of detail and space that allows each instrument room to breathe. As a singer Lindsay is polite to the point of being demure, and the band follows her lead. Pretty harmonies, delicate guitars and keys, tasteful drumming, unobtrusive but effective bass. You’ll hear echoes of Laurel Canyon, 1980s white soul and The Style Council at their most languid. Perhaps if Barrie weren’t quite so Happy to Be Here the debut would have more impact but if one is considering punting down the East River to a picnic this would be an ideal soundtrack.

Andrew Forell

 Big Bend — Radish (Self-Release)

Radish by Big Bend

Nathan Phillips works in one of music’s uncanny valleys, a place where experimental electronics and ambient drone converges with semi-narrative pop. These eight songs enlist avant garde collaborators—Susan Alcorn on guitar, Laraji on zither, Shahzad Ismaily on percussion and moog and Phillips’ bad-ass opera-singing mother Pam on vocals — to create music that is warm, human and accessible. Phillips himself sings plaintively on a number of tracks, inserting vulnerability and uncertainty into a glitchy, glossy texture of electronics; he might remind you of Dntel. Elsewhere tracks veer off into untethered, unpredictable zones; “03 12’-15’,” the track with Alcorn pits trebly abstract guitar against the warmth of synth and piano. “Swing Low” centers its dreaming agitation around Pam Phillips’ spectral soprano, which is inviting but also remote. Electronics buzz and twitter around her like mechanical insects and birds. The Laraji track “Four,” lays in the pinging, tremulous tones of electrified zither over fat resonance of acoustic bass. It’s full of magic, or at least sleight of hand, and you expect something wonderful to emerge from its eerie cascades of dream-sequence zither notes. Shahzad Ismaily works his customary wonders, coaxing strange atmospheres out of the most skeletal of notes and rhythms. With these songs, you feel like you’re waking up in a strange country, not exactly unwelcoming, but not what you were expecting either.

Jennifer Kelly

 Com Truise — Persuasion System (Ghostly International)

LA musician Seth Haley, AKA Com Truise, releases nine short tracks of woozy 1980s influenced electronica on Persuasion System. Listening to foregrounded hi-hat driven beats, fretless bass sounds, giant swathes of anthemic synth, you’re almost waiting for Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal to start ruling the world again. Haley is unafraid to reach for the big emotional release. That he doesn’t always hit it is due more to familiarity with those triggers than any lack of compositional skill on his part. When it goes a little darker on the drum & bass driven “Laconism”, the mock doom epic “Privilege Escalation” and the ambient restraint of “Gaussian” Persuasion System shows Com Truise’s aptitude in using stadium synth pop tropes to translate big sounds into big statements.  

Andrew Forell  

 Shana Cleveland—Night of the Worm Moon (Hardly Art)

The La Luz leader turns introspective on this eerie solo album, sketching glowing just-off soundscapes with a squeaky acoustic guitar and voice. Like many of the songs, the single “Face of the Sun” subdues a spaghetti western swagger into just a hint of wide western horizons; there are bits of cello and bowed bass in the interstices of “Night of the Worm Moon,” shading the folk-acoustic-surf tones towards baroque. Cleveland sings in the common space between bewitching beauty and sing-song madness, Ophelia-esque and surrounded with flowers. She takes command, however, with her guitar, which defines and directs and originates this fetching dream state. Gorgeous, floating, spectral and surprisingly empowered.

Jennifer Kelly

 FACS — Lifelike (Trouble in Mind)

FACS constitutes the latest iteration of the ongoing partnership of singer/guitarist Brian Case and drummer Noah Leger, who each discharged those same duties in Disappears. Expressed mathematically, 2/3 FACS = ½ Disappears, but FACS ≠ Disappears. While the old band’s music moved in a quick and linear fashion around Case’ bleak bark, this new ensemble, which is rounded out by bassist Alianna Kalaba, prefers modular construction and choppy flow. Kalaba’s distorted tone, which recalls Graham Lewis’ playing in mid-1980s Wire (especially live), is a looming presence, stomping through Leger’s sequences of chopped-off rhythm patterns like Godzilla playing a kid’s game with the real estate: “I think I’ll stomp every third house on this block. Next block, I’ll kick every tree to the left. Do I step on the lines, or jump on the cracks?” Case’s guitar blows in and out of the grooves’ vast empty spaces like a flock of metal-coated swallows, absorbing the fading light one moment and then banking up to reflect tiny flashes of the distant red sun the next. His singing has also changed, inching incrementally from the monochrome of yore towards a world-weary, side of the mouth croon. Why, you wonder, does this Chicago band sound so bleak? Hey, it snowed twice in April; what more do you need to know?

Bill Meyer

 Forest Management — Passageways (Whited Sepulchre)

Passageways by Forest Management

Electronic musician John Daniel may call himself Forest Management, but don’t be fooled; there’s nothing pastoral about this music. The passageways he had in mind when he composed the music on this LP are remembered from a childhood home in a suburb of Cleveland, and he made the stuff in an apartment in Chicago. Daniel nicely straddles the digital/analog divide by playing a laptop computer but recording some of the music to reel-to-reel tape deck.  This enables him to achieve a blurry patina of nostalgia-inducing atmosphere that’ll sit right with Boards of Canada fans. But where BOC used beats and samples to highlight their emotional messages and keep things moving, Daniel’s willing to let the music throb and drift. While Forest Management is a fully mobile project that is quite capable of occupying stages around town, this stuff is best appreciated under controlled conditions at home, where you can cultivate a mindset and manage the setting without facing any risks that one might face while zoning out in public.  

Bill Meyer

 Madalitso Band — Wasalala (Bongo Joe)

Wasalala by Madalitso Band

The two musicians of The Madalitso Band, who made their name on the sidewalks of Lilongwe (Malawi), play four-string guitar, cow-skin kick drum and homemade, one-string bass. If that sounds like a gimmick, albeit one born of necessity: it is, but all good street bands need one. Like all good street bands, the Madalitso Band’s necessarily formulaic music is inviting and undemanding enough to draw in spare-change-laden passersby all day, if need be. And, like most street musicians and small-time festival favorites, Madalitso Band’s crowd pleasing tricks don’t directly translate into gripping LPs. Wasalala, at 40 minutes, is about double the recommended daily dose (when was the last time you watched even a great busker for more than 15 minutes?), but, play it while you, say, put the dishes away, and this wholly charming, frequently gorgeous record is guaranteed to move the body and brighten the mood of any sentient person within earshot. Its pleasures are as real, necessary, utilitarian, and unvaried as a fan on a hot day.  

Isaac Olson  

 Minotaur Shock — MINO (Bytes)

MINO by Minotaur Shock

On MINO, Bristol-based David Edwards turns away from his characteristic blend of orchestral acoustic and synthetic instrumentation to hone his synthesis craft. Edwards’ obvious composition chops have been a double-edged sword on past releases. Approaching his works as songs rather than tracks has lent them undeniable musicality; but since that approach is unidiomatic for beat-smithing, it sometimes has felt like the work of someone whose primary business was in sync for film dipping their toes into electronic music and bringing the resources of an entire soundstage orchestra with them. MINO’s focus on a single instrument results in a more inventive sound, defrays the risk of sounding excessively filmic, and retains Minotaur Shock’s strengths of earworm tunefulness and emotional sweep. The textures and polyrhythms bear a surface similarity to LA beat scene notables, while the album’s overall sunniness recalls Machinedrum, who underwent a similar turn to synthesis in recent years. A very different direction for Minotaur Shock and some of Edwards’ best work.

Peter Taber  

 MotherFather — S-T (Self-Released)

MotherFather by MotherFather

MotherFather, a four-piece band from St. Louis, makes broody, duel-guitar-driven post-rock that builds in a slow inexorable way like rough weather or a tidal surge. They build up layers of deep, shadowy sound, churning up the noise gradually so that when abrasive bass saws up through the bottom of “Burning” late in the album, its cinematic metal upheaval is as surprising as cathartic. Two of MotherFather’s members—guitarist Nelson Jones and bassist Brian Scheffer—run a studio in their spare time, and they surround these chugging, chiming onslaughts with clarity. However, the sound is gloomier and less buoyant than epic instrumentalists like Explosions in the Sky, more like the torpid reveries of vocal-less Mogwai or even post-rock-into-metal outfits like Pelican or Red Sparrowes. Guitars drive the train here—that’s Jones and Eli Hindman—but drummer Tim Hardy puts in a strenuous, battering days work on drums and you can’t move the tectonic plates like MotherFather does without muscular, fundamental bass.

Jennifer Kelly

 Neolithic—S/T (Self-released)

Neolithic by Neolithic

Do genre labels really matter anymore? At various sites around the web, Neolithic’s music has been described as death metal, grindcore, hardcore and, in one especially bewildering formulation, “pitch-black death/crust.” This reviewer’s ears hear a pretty straightforward species of stenchcore all over this record, but that begs the question: What does “stenchcore” mean to you? In any case, the good news is that this is a terrific record. Nasty, brutish and way too short. The Baltimore band has only been making records for a little over a year, but the music exudes confidence and, whatever we want to call it, a song like “Myopia” demands attention. Its riffs are precise, its bottom end is deep, its textures and affect are simultaneously razor-sharp and dripping with miasmatic, fluid yuck. Sort of like a zombie’s mouth. One gets the feeling that’s something like what the band intends. Enjoy!

Jonathan Shaw

  Ivo Perelman / Jason Stein — Spiritual Prayers (Leo Records)

Brazilian tenor saxophonist is never one to settle for half measures. If he has a good idea, he’s liable to make a series of records out of it. Google the words Ivo Perelman Matthew Shipp if you need an illustration. But some ideas are self-limiting, such as the one that generated this record. Perelman decided that he was going to record duos with free improvising bass clarinet specialists. There just aren’t that many of those around, so the total so far stands at two CDs; one with Rudi Mahall, the other with Jason Stein. Stein has deep roots in the New York area that Perelman has called home for years, but the two men had never met before they unpacked horns and improvised this album in a Brooklyn studio. You wouldn’t know it from listening, though; they two men throw themselves into the endeavor with the sort of fearlessness that only deep acquaintance or utter self-possession. The first quality only existed on a metaphysical plane — each man reminded the other of a beloved and long-lost ancestor. The latter, both have in spades, and for the best of reasons. Both are masters of their horns, both are close listeners and responsive partners, and the hitherto empty field of tenor saxophone / bass clarinet duets turns out to be rich earth. The horns can sound quite like each other, or hit pitches as distant as opposite ocean shores, and the musicians traverse such spaces in a split-second.

Bill Meyer

 Sick Gazelle — Odum (War Crime Recordings)

Odum by Sick Gazelle

Releasing improvised music involves risk. Musicians often sacrifice quality control for spontaneity, and some seem unable or unwilling to abandon, edit or control their experiments. However, when it works, the rewards are many. Former Crucifucks and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley joins Chicago saxophonist Bruce Lamont (Yakuza and Bloodiest) and ambient guitarist/bassist Eric Block (aka Veloce) to produce a debut album Odum under the moniker Sick Gazelle. The first three tracks combine slow-core jazz and illbient atmospherics with Lamont’s saxophone ,a powerful yearning voice sympathetically supported by Shelley’s percussion and Block’s layers of guitar and bass. The longer pieces “Atlantic” and “Pacific” work best, as Sick Gazelle builds grand spacious structures with an innate sense of dynamics and a muscular foundation. On the short final track “Laguna” the band lets go as Lamont foregoes the sax for a chant-like invocation over a driving rhythm that sounds closer to Sonic Youth than jazz. Odum is dense swamp of sound, easy to get lost in, harboring beauty and danger in equal measure. Leave the compass and venture in.

Andrew Forell

 Stander—The Slow Bark (Self-Released)

The Slow Bark by Stander

Pensive guitar lines surge up into tsunamis. Liquid, lyrical melodies disintegrate under a firehose spew of distorted sound. Stander shifts dynamics like it’s wielding a weapon, and maybe it is. These long-form instrumental meditations build from pastoral, serene interludes into raging towers of feedback (and vice versa), though you can often glimpse the original plaintive theme shrouded in noise and fury. Stander is a Chicago-based heavy post-rock instrumental trio built around guitarist Mike Boyd (who, full disclosure, we know from his job as Thrill Jockey’s publicist), Derek Shlepr on bass and Stephen Waller on drums.  On The Slow Bark, the band’s first full-length album, Stander masters the slow rolling crescendo in cuts like “Cicada Tree,” where a moody, pondering, unsettled guitar melody unspools so gently that the kick of drums, the onslaught blare of amplification, comes like a defibrillator, which maybe, at that point, you need. “Cold Fingers,” too, alternates the loud and the soft, the rage and the quiescence; it calms enough that you can hear how the interplay works, how Shlepr’s bass underlines and reinforces the melodic line, how a riff gets penciled in once, then returned to for an obliterating refrain. There are no vocals—just a subliminal growl near the end of “Cold Fingers” and some eerie altered voice effects tucked into “Cutting Ants, Conquering Ants”— but this is in no way just an extended instrumental jam. Stander’s tracks are carefully constructed, thoughtfully plotted, even if they all end up blown to bits.

Jennifer Kelly

 Anna Tivel—The Question (Fluff and Gravy)

The Question by Anna Tivel

Over four albums, Anna Tivel has quietly been building a reputation as a formidable folk songwriter, a storyteller whose hushed voice weaves simple words into complex narratives about people on the outskirts of society. The Question is tensely, transparently lovely. Tivel’s voice runs toward the calm and matter of fact and never goes much over a conversational murmur. Her melodies, likewise, are precise and pretty. However, the lives she limns in her songs are unruly—a man transitioning to womanhood, a migrant testing a fence line, a homeless child trying to make it through the night—and the thickets of dense, conflicting instrumental sounds seem to echo these complications and strife. She makes wonderful use of strings—viscous throbs of cello, twitchy pizzicatos of violin—to underline but not sweeten her arrangements, and the guitars, too, have a clarity and sharpness that reinforces the acuity of her verses. “Fenceline”’s insistent piano and keening, tremulous strings underline the tension of the southern border crossing; the instrumental interlude zings with anticipation and fear. “Homeless Child” is more overtly folky, but still unblinking and unsentimental as it tells the story of an abandoned child with her own child coming. The refrain couldn’t be sadder or more beautiful, when Tivel sings, “And Jesus Christ, it don’t take much to go from just enough to nothing in the end, and oh my god, homeless child, the world will leave you hanging by a thread.”

Jennifer Kelly

 Various Artists — Hearts and Livers: Global Recordings from 78rpm Discs, ca. 1928-53 (Canary Records)

Hearts & Livers: Global Recordings from 78rpm Discs, ca. 1928-53 by Canary Records

Ian Nagoski, the proprietor, curator, researcher, and dogs body of Canary Records, has assembled some marvelous collections of music from records that most 78rpm collectors would leave in the bin. But is that what the people want? Even the characters who populate the farthest corners of record nerd-dom are prone to the influences of groupthink and fashion, and they want you to come up with something just like your last hit, only different. One of the crosses on Nagoski’s shoulder is that while passion compels him to investigate shellac sides of woman whistlers and birdcall imitators, people remember him for his genre-spanning marvel, Black Mirror. Hearts and Livers is Nagoski giving people what they think they want and subtly chiding them as he does so. Both album emblem (there’s no cover — this thing is download-only, and thus not really a thing at all) and title can be read as gentle mockery of the enterprise. But once you get past them, Nagoski’s unerring knacks for selection, sequencing and sound restoration deliver the goods. Exiled rembetika singer Rosa Eskenazi’s quivering lament resonates with Horace Britt’s melodramatic cello recital; a sinuous Korean melody and a beseeching Turkish air impart a common stern spirit. Since he hasn’t written any notes to explain the compilation, it’s all just music, each track equally foreign and mysterious.

Bill Meyer

 Various Artists — New American Standards Volume  2 (Sound American) 

New American Songbooks Vol.2 by Kris Davis, Matt Mitchell, Aruán Ortiz, Matthew Shipp

To some, the Great American Songbook (which isn’t really a book, but a body of popular songs that captured the hearts of both general audiences and jazz musicians in the pre-rock and roll era) represents the acme of American musical creativity. But while some great and flexible material came out of that era, do we really want to concede that the middle of the 20th century was the best we could do? Careful, such thinking paves the way to donning an unflattering red ball cap. Sound American Publishing initiated the New American Standards series to investigate notions of Americanism and standards. Volume 2 taps four pianists not known for their frequent dips into the Songbook to propose material that speaks for communities didn’t quite make it into the original metaphorical volumes. Matthew Shipp proffers brooding extemporizations upon Protestant hymns composed by individuals you’ve probably never heard of. Matt Mitchell invests two tunes sourced from Bandcamp-era singer songwriters with solemn romanticism. Kris Davis’ prepared piano recasts Carla Bley’s “Identity Picks” as a quasi-gamelan reverie that invites the listener to consider which quirks of identify might lock you out, then and now, and what you might do with (or to) a piece of ubiquitous cultural equipment in order to make your voice heard. And Aruán Ortiz offers a luminous exposition of a piece by cultural critic and polymath Ed Bland. All four musicians played the same piano, which serves to make clearer the individual differences of the four players.

Bill Meyer  

 Various Artists — Tombstone Trance Vol. 1 (StabUdown)

Tombstone Trance Vol. 1 by Piezo

Fuzzy technoise is the game being played here with varying degrees of earnestness, as suggested by the goofball album art. Listeners may come for marquee names like Kerridge and Powell, though they’re easily outshone by some nicely varied lesser-known acts. Koehler’s “Below Andromeda” is rhythmically inventive but straight-ahead techno. “Mourning Etiquette” from Grey People isn’t far from the crunchy atmospherics of Modern Love artists. Entries from Bad Tracking and The Rancor Index take things to a considerably grittier, Wolf Eyes-esque level. Vanity Productions’ “No Peep Show Here” could be melodic drone from Yellow Swans, while Organic Dial’s “Absolute Other” is an unexpectedly delicate slice of dub-inflected ambient. Piezo offers a dramatic highlight in “Sponge Effect,” which morphs from a melodic arpeggio into an odd-time paroxysmic blob and back again. Hopefully a taste of more great things to come from all concerned.

Peter Taber

 Woe —A Violent Dread (Vendetta)

A Violent Dread EP by Woe

This two-song EP is a welcome reminder of how good Woe can be (insert snarky pun here). The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Philly quartet seems to have found a stable line-up, with Lev Weinstein providing drums and Matt Mewton’s second guitar rounding out the band, as they did on 2017’s Hope Attrition. Weinstein’s drumming is less acrobatic than the whacko stuff he pulls off for Krallice — but Woe’s sound is more firmly anchored in black metal’s traditions. Woe’s cover of Dawn’s “The Knell and the World,” recorded by the Swedish band back in 1998, celebrates the continuity of that tradition. That doesn’t mean Woe’s music is derivative or pedestrian. The nine minutes of “A Violent Dread” flash past with a sustained intensity that makes the song feel half that long. Chris Grigg’s singing, playing and songwriting are sleek and tough, feral and rigorous. It’s peak USBM. 

Jonathan Shaw

[marlonbwise]

The curious case of Brooklyn's ‘island of misfit toys’

What happened to Underhill Playground’s shared toys?

Honestly, I just wanted to write a quirky Brooklyn story. A slice-of-life, neighborhood-magic story about a beloved playground. But in doing so, it’s possible that I ruined it for everyone.

Let me back up.

The playground in question is Underhill Playground, in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, aka, the “toy” playground, or what some parents jokingly referred to as the “Island of Misfit toys.”

For as long as most people can remember—at least, most parents of kids of playground-using age—it has been home to dozens of large plastic toys. The pavement there was littered with colorful trikes, noisy walkers, enormous play kitchens, ride-on trains or trucks, and bulky bulldozers. Stuff that neighborhood parents dragged out of cramped living rooms or muddy backyards and donated to the common good at the park.

Parents loved that the toys stayed out of their apartments, that there was plenty to go around, and that it helped teach sharing to irascible toddlers. Their toddlers took their first tentative steps on the hard pavement while holding onto the walkers, and later became skilled riders on wobbly-wheeled tricycles.

And in an era of helicopter parenting—when so much of our kids’ activities are curated, arranged, and spoon-fed to them—Underhill and the faded, often slightly derelict toys had a wild, magical feeling. In this circumscribed space, kids would wander off to find fun, which parents could have nothing to do with and didn’t have to coordinate.

A side benefit: parents could actually have a moment to sit down and chat with one another in complete sentences, which helped foster a strong sense of community, even if you only came once a weekend. Real friendships—both adult and child—were forged while negotiating tricycle time and comparing pre-school experiences.

Yes, one can argue that all decent playgrounds become a “third place” for young families—but Underhill habitués would argue that the joyful cacophony of clutter here made for particularly free-spirited kind of vibe, which made it that more special, and certainly unlike all the other playgrounds in the area.

While the toys were definitely faded, for a long time Underhill matched the feel of Brooklyn before it became curated and twee. And even as the neighborhood’s rents and home prices have soared and previously neglected brownstones have undergone multi-million dollar gut renovations, residents have continued to dig the less polished vibe—the common language of keeping the kids active and happy united us all.

With all this in mind, I began to report this story for Curbed—to describe and celebrate this particular playground. Like many other parents I’d spoken with, I wondered when the toy stuff had begun. How did the parks department feel about it, or manage it? Was anyone anti-toy? I really wanted to figure out how it all worked.

In an era of helicopter parenting, Underhill and the faded toys had a wild, magical feeling.

I gave a call to the Parks Department, which in Brooklyn has been helmed for the last year by Commissioner Marty Maher. Before we even talked on the phone, a spokesperson made it clear: Leaving the toys, while “well intentioned” goes against the rules and regulations. 1-04, c4: “No person shall, within or adjacent to any park, store or leave unattended personal belongings.” The toys and those who leave them: scofflaws!

When I did actually talk to Maher, he basically said as much—albeit in a much friendlier and more oblique way. “Look, we’re the fun agency,” said Maher, by phone. (He actually proclaimed the agency the “fun agency” no fewer than five times during our call.)

“We have over 200 playgrounds to clean and inspect every day, and we put safety first,” he explains. “I get it, people want to be helpful, and want to do something nice. No one wants to be a Grinch here but we have to ensure that the playground is safe and we have standards to comply with. And let’s be honest, a good percentage of that stuff was just crap. God forbid something happens; we didn’t do our duty to make it safe there.”

Over the years, Maher says they went with a subtle approach. “We’ve tried to sort of nicely stop the dumping mostly by having our workers talk to people and suggest other ways to dispose of the stuff,” he explained.

I had contacted the Parks Department on a Monday; Maher and I spoke on Friday. But sometime between those two days, a truck rolled up in the middle of the night and removed all the crap. All of it.

Since my kids (who are eight and four) and I only go there occasionally these days, I got wind of it from a post within a Prospect Heights Parents listserv that weekend. One by one, neighborhood moms and dads wandered over to Underhill only to find it devoid of all the fun. Parents took to the mailing list to express shock and sadness, and to ask Why now?

It had been going on for a decade, after all. Could it be the recent campaign ad for Mayor Bill de Blasio, which included some footage of parents and kids amongst the toys at Underhill, they wondered? Frankly, that didn’t seem likely, since the ad had started airing well before my inquiry, and the playground wasn’t named (or chyroned) in the ad. News reports took note of the neighborhood upheaval—talking to parents who were sad, confused, and downright outraged.

Immediately, parents starting demanding answers by calling City Council member Laurie Cumbo—Underhill falls within her district—or calling the Parks department. Others suggested organizing a playground committee to take action, and take responsibility over the toys, should they be ever returned. Many parents just wrote to say how tethered to that playground they felt.

“It's not an exaggeration to say that my daughter essentially learned to walk using the push toys at Underhill,” says Ella Ryan, a mother of two who lives near the park, who I contacted after reading her comment on the listserv. “We have downstairs neighbors and poor insulation between the floors so having a walker in our apartment would just be too disruptive to them. More recently she started trying to use the scooters and other toys you have to propel with your feet. We could see the progression of her abilities as she grew into using different toys and the great thing is we didn't have to go out and buy any of them!”

Elana Gartner Golden, another commenter, has lived in the neighborhood for 12 years, and had a similar experience. “My daughter learned to ride the tricycle there on an, admittedly, down-trodden tricycle. When we finally got her a tricycle of her own, she was a whiz at pedaling as a result,” she explains. “The toys at Underhill made it a unique playground and a community. In fact, our kids took great pride in giving their own toys back to the community so other kids would have a walker or a tricycle. It made them feel like big kids.”

The changes hit some people hard. Underhill sits in a unique location, and serves a wide swath of people in Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, and Park Slope. And certainly between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., the playground is a lifesaver for parents and caretakers who have little kids—i.e. those who are too young for school and for whom the toys are sometimes more accessible than the monkey bars or climbing structures. After school, it’s flooded with elementary school-age children looking to burn off some extra steam with their friends until dinner.

Our kids took great pride in giving their own toys back to the community—it made them feel like big kids.

While the removal of the toys happened to have coincided with the first real cold weather and the shorter daylight hours, it does seem distinctly subdued there lately, if not more sparsely attended. The trikes in particular—the functional ones—are among the most missed items, since they tended to hold kids’ attention for the longest periods of time.

Without the toys, the kids seemed at first confused—and then, by a few accounts, vocally upset. Instead of racing into the park to grab a toy, some of the kids look to be sticking closer to their caregiver—relying on their prompts or guidance for what to do. Exactly what parents hadn’t wanted.

Just about a week after the toys vanished, several reps from the Parks department and one from Cumbo’s agreed to meet with parents. After a few minutes of non-answers and deflections to that central question, finally, a woman named Monica Abend from Cumbo’s office admitted: While there had been a few safety complaints called in by members of the community, the truth was that the complete and rapid removal of the toys, without any discussion, was … a miscommunication on the part of the Parks department, on the part of Maher. Not that the toys wouldn’t have been removed anyways, but perhaps not without a bit more warning or cooperation from the community.

So maybe it wasn’t me after all!? Maybe there really were some unhappy parents calling the Parks department around the exact same time I planned this story?

What ensued next was a lengthy discussion about the toys overall—it was the thing many kids loved about the park, said a few; they were sort of derelict, admitted one parent, and we, as Underhill users, were not doing a great job of trashing the ones that were beyond repair. One woman noted that it certainly wouldn’t be a good idea for this wealthy pocket of Brooklyn to ask for money in the budget for a worker to inspect them regularly. (There had been someone doing this in the past, but he was a seasonal worker, apparently, and no longer doing so.)

A Parks rep then brought up the idea of a “playground equipment box”—a large container that would live at the playground, where the toys could live at night and in bad weather. While just relocating the toys to the confines of a box doesn’t entirely solve the inspection problem, Parks seems to feel that the limited space and contained aspect will make it easier to do this task. If that was the best they could do, short of having no toys at all, most parents seemed willing to take what was on offer.

Parks placed the order for the box, and in fact, it arrived about a week later. Interested parents signed up to jump-start a Friends of Underhill action group, which would hopefully work with Parks in the future as well as make sure that the toy situation remained under control.

As the group thinned out and disbanded—mostly to chase their kids up and down the slides and ladders—at least one person asked the question on everyone’s minds: “So, once the box arrives, if we start bringing toys back and we put them in the box, they won’t get taken away?” The answer seemed to be no.

Funnily enough, just as I left, a woman got out of her car and unloaded a trash bag containing two plastic walkers, leaving them just beyond the park iron gate.

from Curbed NY - All https://ny.curbed.com/2017/12/20/16797708/brooklyn-playground-underhill-avenue-nyc-parks