Cement Shoes Probably in the Offing

If I had to choose one business to steal from, the South Brooklyn Casket Company would rank somewhere between the Federal Government and Umberto's Clam House. Apparently not everyone shares my apprehension. From Courier-Life:

"Gary Comorau has been selling South Brooklyn Casket Company T-shirts and other garb on his own website — but now the multinational funeral company that bought the Gowanus gravemaker in 2005 wants to put his business venture six feet under on the grounds that he is violating their copyright.

But Comorau is whistling past the graveyard.

“I’ve ignored their ‘cease-and-desist’ letter,” he boasted this week. “My company has no assets, and I don’t sell many shirts. Who cares?”"

I wonder if cement shoes come in sizes.

And Another One

Union protests continue outside of 360 Smith...

More Union Protests in Front of 360 Smith This Morning

To chants of: "Let's go home, there are rats in the building!"

Was it 360 Smith or Not?

Yesterday there was a Union rally on 2nd Place and Smith by the Carpenters' Union, whose members also  drywall and sheetrock. At first, we thought it was regarding 360 Smith Street, but then received an e-mail from the 76th Precienct stating that the rally was unrelated to 360 Smith Street and was, in fact, against a brownstone on 2nd Place.

Well, yesterday Pardon Me for Asking (and, subsequently, the Brooklyn Paper), reported that in fact, it WAS against the labor practices at 360 Smith Street. I'm inclined to believe the police, but the rally was right in front of 360 Smith.

Also, as noted yesterday, although we are staunchly pro-union, the Union seems to have very weak grounds here. $42 an hour for sheetrocking? I might pay that if it included all materials! That price is outrageously high, for a job that does not require much skill or training. Maybe if it were making crown molding or hanging a curtain wall...

Union Protests Outside of 360 Smith

Update: According to the 76th Precinct: "The demonstration is not connected to the 360 Smith Street site. The union is protesting low wages being paid to the workers of a drywall company working in a brownstone on 2nd Place."

This blog is staunchly pro-union (in most cases). This morning there was a protest outside of 360 Smith Street by the Carpenters' Union. As with all unions, I'm sure that they are starved for work. One can't see much carpentry work being done on the site, but this could be a negotiations tactic for upcoming work. The Carpenters' Union has been hit especially hard with the development freeze around the city, so one can understand why they are grasping at any jobs that they might potentially have.

More details as they become available.

Lana's Barber Shop: Making The Cut For Over 20 Years

The antique sign at 523 Henry Street doesn't credit her name but long-time customers will know this barber shop as Lana's Barber Shop.  Once offered three-thousand dollars for the sign, natives can rest assured that it won't be sold or replaced anytime soon.  In a rapidly changing neighborhood such as this one, some things deserve to stay put.  

Meet Lana Deyeva - our loyal neighborhood barber

In 1988, with a nominal amount of English packed in her bags, Lana left Ukraine and moved to Brooklyn.  Having spent some time living in Italy, Carroll Gardens seemed the obvious choice when looking for work.  Two memorable Italian barbers named Patsy and Philip were the men who hired Lana to cut hair in their barber shop, giving her the wonderful opportunity to mingle with the older generation of Italians.  

"Customers loved Patsy and Philip," Lana says with emphasis.  "They were friends but complete opposites.  Patsy looked liked he worked in an office - always with the crispy white shirt, gold pin, tie.  He was someone that believed in dressing up no matter where you worked.  He was low-spoken, never yelled, and he always gave you nice advice.  Philip?  He was the bubbly one.  Chatty.  He knew the dirty jokes."  Patsy and Philip eventually retired and sold to a man named Peter who decided to combine the barber shop with a reupholstering business.  Peter took to the back of the shop while Lana worked the front.  It was no wonder that Lana became the face of the barber shop.  Three and a half years later, the business was hers. 

It can't be denied that Lana has a soft spot for the old Italians who once came and sat down in her chair.  Unfortunately that generation is just about gone.  "I'll never forget this one man," she begins.  "He said to me 'I'll always come to you, so don't worry - If I'm not here, it means I'm not alive.'"  Lana leans back in her chair and smiles.  "I don't always get a lunch hour, you know?  One day this man noticed that I hadn't taken a break.  He asked me 'Did you eat anything?  I've been sitting here, waiting in line, watching you take customers, but you haven't eaten a thing.'  Fifteen minutes later, he comes back with this huge, huge sandwich!  That's Italian people for you.  That kind of generosity is in their blood." 

It was at the barber shop where Lana really got a handle on the English language.  Holding down a full-time job, on top of caring for a young son, it proved hard for her to take classes.  "My customers were bighearted people who practiced with me.  No one laughed!"  She is beaming.  "You know if I started working today, I'd be doomed.  Back then though, in this neighborhood, people didn't care.  If they liked you, they always gave you a chance to survive because nobody ever forgot how it used to be.  Now it's a different mentality and I don't think people are as willing to experiment."  Lana does have her share of younger customers though and she loves them just the same despite how many she has seen leave the neighborhood.  "The boys now - they get girlfriends, they get married, and then they move away.  I say a lot of 'Goodbyes.'"   

Today the barber shop is certainly busy but nowhere near as busy as it used to be.  Years ago, at seven-thirty on a Saturday morning, you had men lined up at the gate waiting for the door to open at 8 AM.  "Now, the neighborhood is sleeping at eight o'clock," Lana says, quite matter-of-factly.  "Maybe I have my first customer close to ten o'clock, then a huge break, maybe another customer..."  Actually, on the day I went to chat with Lana, she told me to come back in thirty minutes (she was finishing up with a customer).  "It's slow today," she said.  When I returned, she had one guy in the chair and four more waiting to see her.  I guess you never know how many people will walk through your door on a given day.  And that's the beauty of the barber shop, no?  That, and affordability!  Fourteen dollars will get you a haircut and ten dollars will get you a shave. 

So what're you waiting for?  Go and sit in this lovely woman's chair.  She's been making the cut for over twenty years, you know.

Lana's Barber Shop

523 Henry Street between Sackett and Union

718-596-5603

Open Tuesday through Saturday

Closed Sunday and Monday

Walk-ins are the best kind!

Caputo's Bake Shop: A Carroll Gardens Haven

Caputo's Bake Shop occupies the first and second floor of a white-brick building at 329 Court Street between Sackett and Union.  If you live in Carroll Gardens, you know this bakery quite well.  In fact, the Caputos may even know you.  Their long, striped yellow bread bags with the bold blue capped CAPUTO'S font may be the most recognizable logo in the neighborhood.  And if someone sent you on a scavenger hunt to find it, you wouldn't be limited to the bakery alone.  Caputo's not only boasts of a successful retail business, but of a thriving wholesale business as well.  They distribute their breads, of which there are over 100 different varieties, to stores all over Brooklyn.  They are, without a doubt, the men with the bread. 

Meet John and James Caputo - father and son. 

Established in 1904 by John's father and grandfather, the bakery was originally opened for business on the southeast corner of Union and Hicks before it and adjacent buildings were demolished to make room for the construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.  John's father was the baker and he did everything by hand in an old-fashioned slow mixer.  They sold three breads: plain, seeded, and scalita (a dry Sicilian bread that goes best with soups, I learned).  Home deliveries were big then and so frequent trips were made by horse and wagon around the neighborhood, running up stoops with bread baskets.  "Families ate a lot of bread - five to ten loaves a day!" John says.

The clientele was noticeably different as it was a working-class Italian-American neighborhood.  "If you wanted to work behind the counter and be a salesgirl, you had to speak fluent Italian," John recalls.  "Our backhands? All Italian."  Those scalita loaves went fast.  "Today we only sell a couple of scalitas, but we used to make hundreds of them.  Meat was expensive and so the staple was bread.  You filled up on bread.  My father used to say 'You can't have a piece of meat without a piece of bread'," John reminisces.  James laughs and adds, "Our family still can't eat without the bread." 

In the early 1960s, right around the time the old International Longshoremen's Association building was being built (now torn down in order to make room for upscale housing), the business moved to 332 Court Street (across the street from its present location).  With bakery establishments on the rise, Caputo's saw competition from nine other stores.  "There was such a demand for bread that it was okay to have so many open though," John explains.  "Some did better than others but everyone, at least, made a living." 

Today, however, Caputo's is one of the two standing traditional Italian bread bakeries in the neighborhood (the other being Mazzola's on the corner of Henry and Union).  A day-to-day business with preparation beginning around four or five o'clock in the afternoon, there are doughs that need to be started one day and finished out the next and then there are some that are baked out in one day and put under refrigeration.  Some doughs take three days to prepare.  However, it's during the holiday season when the Caputo men really need and require the most help from their staff.  "Even then, it's not enough," the both of them agree.  

In 106 years, the business has been passed down amongst five generations of Caputos and we can only hope it doesn't end with James.  Years ago, when James was working in finance, John actually considered working his way out of the bakery so that he could retire.  James didn't like the sound of that.  "I decided it was a bad idea," he jokes.  "We were a family business and my Dad had put in forty, fifty years here.  I couldn't let him go that easily."

This father and son duo have a fairly straightforward business motto that has been around a long, long time: KEEP THE PEOPLE HAPPY.  They're a neighborhood bakery that caters to its inhabitants - always has, always will.  "One of the reasons why we changed our mix of breads was to accommodate all of the young, new people who were moving in," John explains.  "Fifteen years ago, bread was still a popular thing... but they came wanting the new breads - the kaiser rolls, the brioche, the olive."  He lets out a little smile and says, "They thought they were gourmets." [Side note: the olive bread is my favorite bread there.]  "But that's why we're still here," John says.  "We bake what the people want.  If we depended only on the basic items we sold forty and fifty years ago, people would pass right by."  And pass right by, they do not.  Not when you have baguettes and ciabattas, olive breads and onion loaves, rusticas and semolinas stacked warm and pretty in the window.

It seems that the bread attract the parents and the cookies beneath the counter attract the children.  "I see it, everyday," James says.  "A child will not allow his mother to pass the shop without stopping for a cookie." 





Caputo's Bake Shop
329 Court Street b/w Sackett and Union
718-875-6871 

More by Sylvie Morgan Flatow 
Photos by Max Flatow

Carroll Gardens Residents More Unemployed Than Those in Coney Island?

Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill are apparently doing worse than Coney Island and Sunset Park when it comes to unemployment data. From the Times City Room Blog, via the Village Voice:

"Predictably, realtor-friendly districts in north (Williamsburg) an southwest (Sunset Park) Brooklyn are doing better than Crown Heights and Brownsville. It's a small surprise that Coney Island and Canarsie are more in the middle, at 9 percent -- lower than Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens! Maybe formerly productive citizens in the latter districts have taken to living off rents.

Unofficial unemployment, of course, is probably much higher all around."