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Jul 16, 2010 1:33 PM |
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/ar...er=rss&emc=rss
Bringing Fun to Brooklyn
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Free concert series, intitiatives of the Brooklyn borough president, attract big crowds.
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A rendering of a proposed band shell at Asser Levy Park.
By BEN SISARIO
July 15, 2010
Quote:
MARTY MARKOWITZ’S duties as the Brooklyn borough president include appointing community board members and overseeing a budget for capital projects. But one morning this week his platform was all about fun, which he advocated with all the vigor of a contested campaign issue.
“People have a right to have fun in this city,” Mr. Markowitz said in an interview in his office, his voice rising to a level of bombast well known to his constituents. “What are we going to do, become puritans? As long as we’re not inconveniencing in any dramatic way, we have to stay fun here.”
For three decades, going back to his earliest days as a state senator in the late 1970s — he has been the borough president since 2002 — Mr. Markowitz has supported summer fun initiatives that have revolved around two free concert series in Brooklyn parks that, despite relatively little outside notice, are among the most popular in the city. The Martin Luther King Jr. concerts at Wingate Field in East Flatbush and the Seaside series at Asser Levy/Seaside Park in Coney Island and Brighton Beach regularly attract more than 10,000 fans a show, significantly more than the capacity of either Central Park SummerStage or the Celebrate Brooklyn! band shell in Prospect Park.
The series — both of which opened this week and continue for six more weeks — have lineups that can be eye-poppingly starry. Alumni of the King concerts include Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu and a checklist of soul oldies like the Stylistics and the O’Jays. Earth, Wind and Fire; the B-52s; and Hall & Oates have played Seaside.
In their biggest coup yet, both series will feature Aretha Franklin, on Aug. 9 at Wingate and Aug. 12 at Asser Levy, in what she says are her first performances in Brooklyn.
In a telephone interview on Thursday she stated her plans for the shows: “I think what they would like to hear in Brooklyn are the hits. And after that we’re going to rock. I want to rock some of this hip-hop.”
Mr. Markowitz said he had been trying to book her for more than 20 years. When asked why she decided to do the shows now, Ms. Franklin said that the timing worked, as she had plans to meet with students in Brooklyn. She added, “What’s better than having a foot-long hot dog at Coney Island?”
Artists are paid for their appearances; each series has a budget of around $1.3 million, three-quarters of which comes from corporate sponsorships. But performing for a big, appreciative crowd deep in Brooklyn can be its own reward, said John Legend, who played the King series two years ago and will return to Seaside on Aug. 5.
“It really is an authentic real place, not a glamorous place,” Mr. Legend said this week after stopping by Mr. Markowitz’s office at Borough Hall, where he was shooting a video. “You feel like you’re performing for the people. Not just the people who can afford a $60 or $70 ticket, but everybody. And that’s fun.”
At his office, where he handed Mr. Legend a shirt with a Brooklyn logo, Mr. Markowitz enthusiastically praised him as the only artist who has returned part of his fee for charity.
“These are basically moderate-income working people,” Mr. Markowitz said of the audience. “For a lot of people there, this is their summer. Many of them can’t afford to go to the Hamptons or to the Berkshires.”
On Monday a diverse and multigenerational crowd of about 10,000 showed up for the opening show of the series, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic at Wingate, a city park that doubles as a school athletic field. But an unscientific survey of fans suggested that most were from the surrounding neighborhoods, and that plenty were longtime attendees.
“These concerts are great,” said Pia Saxon, 57, who added that had been going to the shows since they began. “You can see whoever you want for free. I’ve seen Stephanie Mills, the O’Jays, the Stylistics, the Dramatics, Curtis Mayfield.”
(Mr. Mayfield is the subject of a sad footnote that will forever be attached to the King concerts. He was paralyzed after a lighting scaffold fell on him there during a windstorm in 1990.)
But not everyone in Brooklyn is a fan of the concerts, or of Mr. Markowitz’s plan for their future. At Asser Levy Park, where the series was to open on Thursday night with a concert by Neil Sedaka and Brenda Lee, Mr. Markowitz’s proposal for a sleek $64 million amphitheater has drawn community opposition.
Two synagogues have sued the city to stop the concerts, saying that the noise disturbs religious services. They cite a city law prohibiting outdoor amplification within 500 feet of a school or house of worship.
The synagogues — Temple Beth Abraham and the Sea Breeze Jewish Center, both on Sea Breeze Avenue — also assert that the planned amphitheater, which would have 5,000 seats and accommodate 3,000 more people on a raised lawn, would bring too much traffic to the area. They say they have a petition with 13,000 signatures.
On Tuesday their opposition hit a roadblock when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed a bill modifying the city noise law for 90 days, allowing the concerts to go forward. But Norman Siegel, the prominent civil rights lawyer who is representing the synagogues in their suit, criticized the temporary law as unfair, and said the opposition would continue.
“They legitimized an illegality,” Mr. Siegel said, “which is why so many people in this community are very upset. It smacks of favoritism.”
Mr. Markowitz, 65, said the amphitheater plan — designed by the international firm Grimshaw Architects — would also fix the park’s chronic drainage problems and is a necessary improvement. Most of its cost, he said, has already been allocated through the capital budget that Mr. Markowitz controls.
During an interview he bristled at the suggestion that the plan was mainly about his legacy. He said he viewed it as a way to allow the concert series to outlast him, dismissing the objections as impediments to fun.
“This whole opposition is bogus,” he said. “They don’t want people there. That’s what it comes down to. It’s bunk.”
The concerts began modestly but have swelled in size. As a state senator Mr. Markowitz created the Seaside series in 1979 at Midwood Field, booking Army bands and other small acts. His first real star, he said, was Cab Calloway in 1982. There was no backstage area, so he took Calloway to a nearby friend’s house for a shower and a kosher meal.
The Seaside series moved to Asser Levy in 1991; the Martin Luther King concerts, which began in 1983 at the old Boys High Field in East Flatbush, moved to nearby Wingate in 1987. Now the concerts are managed by Debra Garcia, a veteran of music publicity and management whose clients have included Van Halen and Pat Benatar.
Most bookings are of the oldies variety. (“Only in the last few years have we broken into the ’80s and ’90s,” Mr. Markowitz said.) But when a particularly hot act plays, the crowds can be enormous. Last year the King series booked Keyshia Cole, a young R&B star who had a reality show on BET. Wingate was mobbed with so many thousands of surplus fans that the police shut down the surrounding streets and made two arrests for disorderly conduct.
Mr. Markowitz said that that kind of response is rare. While he never has brought in an act as famous as Ms. Franklin, he said that he hoped booking her twice would lessen the risk of overflow crowds.
At Mr. Clinton’s show on Monday some fans cited security as one of the strong points of the series.
“This is a real concert with no troubles,” said Martin James of Staten Island, who works for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and was wearing a black-and-gold George Clinton T-shirt. “People complain that you get frisked when you come in, but that makes it safe.”
Next to Mr. James his friend Noel Hawkins, who said he lived nearby and also worked for the M.T.A., had more succinct praise for the series. “I’d pay for this,” he said.
Here a schedule for the Martin Luther King Jr. and Seaside concert series in Brooklyn. All shows start at 7:30 p.m., and are free. Information: (718) 222-0600 or brooklynconcerts.com
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