Park Slope Reader

spring 2021

Slope Survey: Yonatan Israel

By Filed Under: Feature, Slope Survey Tagged With: , ,

The Slope Survey returns for its 19th installment with Colson’s Patisserie owner Yonatan Israel.

Yonatan was born and raised in Paris (France). He’s been a New-Yorker since 1998. After working in film, he was inspired by Hubert Colson, a family friend, to open a French-Belgian bakery. Colson Patisserie opened its doors in 2006  in Park Slope and has since expanded into wholesale distribution across NYC. Colson produces its baked goods and breads daily from Industry City where it also operates another store. Currently, he lives with his wife and three children between Tel-Aviv (Israel) and NYC.

What brought you to Park Slope? 

In 2005, I was looking for a good neighborhood to open my bakery. I was living in the East Village at the time and it did not feel like the right fit. So were most neighborhoods I knew in the city. Rents were already very high and I was looking for a space that was affordable and in a community that would embrace what I was trying to do. I saw this corner space that was a decrepit bodega but seemed to have potential. As I walked out, I met my neighbor, Olivier Conan who had opened Barbes next door a few years prior. I thought that if he could do business on that corner so should I.

What is your most memorable Park Slope moment?  

So many moments, so many people. 

Great music next door, drinks with my staff. Michael Hearst who worked at the bakery in the early days and became one of my best friends. Many days spent in the kitchen with Hubert Colson who was so proud to have his products live on in Park Slope.

Describe your community superpower.  

Our Financiers Teddy Bears.

If you could change one thing about the neighborhood, what would it be?  

I never lived in Park Slope (I know, sacrilege) so I can’t really complain. It’s been good to me.

What do you think Park Slope will look like in 10 years?

Based on the amount of recent residential projects on 4th Avenue, it will probably get more crowded, even less diverse and affordable. But that’s a city wide reality and it has been for as long as I’ve been here.

What are you reading, would you recommend it?  

I am reading “The kings county distillery guide to urban moonshining”. I’ve read a few books about distilling and spirits in the last year and that is one of the best ones. 

I’m also researching pizza and bread again and I’ve read a few great volumes by Marc Vetri and Ken Forkish. 

On the fiction side, I am in the middle of “The housekeeper and the professor” by Yoko Ogawa. Beautiful story 

I am an avid but slow reader and I always dozens of books in my kindle waiting to be read. Not enough time…

What is your greatest extravagance? 

I travelled with my family for 7 months starting in the summer of 2019. We were in India in March 2020 when the country closed its doors to tourists because of COVID. We ended up in Israel where my wife and kids still are. I’ve been back and forth since last summer. Taking time off or living elsewhere is something that seems inconceivable and/or impossible for most people. We were very lucky that we were able to do it. It was an incredible collective and individual experience.

If you couldn’t live in Park Slope or in Brooklyn, where would you go?  

I live right now between New York and Tel Aviv. I grew up in Paris. I’ve been lucky to live in very different and wonderful cities. If I could, I would like to live in India for some time.

Who is your hero, real or fictional?

Joni Mitchell, John Coltrane, Jose Andres, Jamie Raskin, James Baldwin to name a few who’s names start with J.

Last Word, What’s is turning you on these days?

Permaculture. We need to start living and working in a way that sustains our planet and our people. Look it up!

Meet Shahana Hanif, The Bangladeshi Muslim Woman Running To Represent District 39

By Filed Under: Feature, Persisting in Park Slope Tagged With: , ,

Shahana Hanif – Mailer Marketing Campaign 2021 for City Council

When she was 17 years old, Shahana Hanif received life-changing news. A doctor told her that the reason she was experiencing so much pain each day was that she had Lupus, a disease that causes the body’s immune system to attack its own tissues and organs.

“I barely knew what Lupus was,” said Hanif, a Muslim feminist and daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants running to represent Brooklyn’s 39th District in the New York City Council. 

“I had just started the 12th grade when I was diagnosed,” she added. “When I should’ve been thinking about colleges, prom or going abroad, which were the conversations my friends were having, I was needing to understand this degenerative, complicated medical issue that I had never heard about.”

Hanif felt alone. In storybooks, “there were not protagonists who looked like me,” Hanif said. At home and in her community, having a chronic illness was taboo and stigmatized. Despite being diagnosed with an incurable disease that, at a young age, occupied many of her thoughts and emotions, Hanif was pressured to keep her diagnosis, and all of the struggles that came with it, somewhat to herself. 

Now 30 years old, Hanif has spent the past 13 years in and out of intensive care units. She has gone through chemotherapy, had biopsies and has had both of her hips and her left shoulder replaced as a result of the complexities of the disease. 

At the beginning stages, Hanif remembers waiting for hours and hours, confused and in pain, in the waiting area of the emergency room at Coney Island Hospital. In ICUs, she was consistently left without access to adequate medication. 

“The limitations in care for young people and for immigrant communities was very evident,” said Hanif.

A couple of years later, while pursuing her undergraduate degree at Brooklyn College, Hanif remembers struggling to find housing that accommodated her inabilities. “I had not yet had my hips replaced, and I was suffering,” said Hanif. “I couldn’t walk.”

Soon after, Hanif had her application to Access-A-Ride, the NYC public transportation van service designed for those with certain disabilities and health conditions, rejected. 

“To get rejected was humiliating,” she said. “It is absurd to think that a service that should be available to people like me includes bureaucracy. I didn’t get to make the decision for myself, someone else did. This meant that I was spending hundreds of dollars on car services to get to and from doctors’ appointments. This was before Uber, Lyft and other rideshares.”

For over a decade, Hanif has felt the weight of living with Lupus. But as a Muslim woman with parents who immigrated from Southeastern Asia, she knows firsthand that structural inequities are not limited to those with illnesses or disabilities. 

“This disease pushed me into becoming a fighter,” said Hanif. “I learned to advocate for myself.” 

Throughout college and her professional career, Hanif has actively worked as an organizer in and around her home neighborhood of Kensington. Since May of 2018, Hanif has served as the director of organizing for current District 39 councilman Brad Lander, who is giving up his seat because he has reached his term limit. 

Hanif has focused a lot of her work on preserving and expanding public space for community events, advocating for immigrants and protecting those affected by domestic violence. She helped create the Avenue C Plaza, a public park in Kensington, a neighborhood long-known for its lack of public outdoor space. In April of 2019, Hanif was profiled in The New York Times after helping a Bangladeshi woman escape from an abusive forced marriage. 

If elected, Hanif would become the first Muslim and South Asian woman ever to serve in the New York City Council. She would also be the first woman ever elected to represent District 39, which covers Park Slope, Kensington, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and parts of Borough Park. 

As a city council member, Hanif’s number one priority would be improving education equity in the District. 

“I am a student of the district. I went to P.S. 230 in Kensington,” said Hanif. 

Hanif personally experienced the local public education system, which she said routinely fails many students and their families, particularly those who are immigrants or have disabilities. 

Specifically, Hanif would work to end admissions screening, a process heavily criticized for putting Black and brown students at a disadvantage. She would push for smaller class sizes, more guidance counselors and accessibility for students with disabilities. And she would work to create pipelines for Black and brown teachers. 

The second mission on Hanif’s agenda would be pushing for “free and accessible healthcare.” She would organize for universal healthcare and push to create a statewide single-payer healthcare system. She also claims that she would invest in translators and interpreters in the healthcare system to help immigrants, like her parents, understand what doctors and nurses are telling them. And she would recruit mental health counselors of color, with disabilities and from immigrant communities to work in public hospitals and community-based health clinics. 

As the daughter of a Bangladeshi restaurant owner, the third item on Hanif’s long list of priorities is to provide a path for small businesses to recover from the COVID pandemic. 

“So many stores on 5th Avenue and 7th Avenue are shuttered,” said Hanif. “The most impacted are women-and minority-owned businesses.” 

Specifically, Hanif wants to pass commercial rent cancellation, pass commercial rent control and permanently establish the Open Streets program, which provides restaurants and bars with more space to sit people and allows for more public art and performances. 

“I’m envisioning a new form of governance, one that isn’t alienating folks or making politics or government a separate entity,” said Hanif. “I’m just taking all of the work I’ve done, now with some bigger tools, to city hall. And the folks I’ve been working with are coming with me.”

LEARN MORE ABOUT SHANA FROM BK

The Hill We Climb

By Filed Under: Part of the Solution Tagged With: , , ,

When day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade? 

The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. 

We’ve braved the belly of the beast.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,

and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.

And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it.

Somehow we do it.

Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken,

but simply unfinished.

We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.

And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine,

but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.

We are striving to forge our union with purpose.

To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.

And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.

We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.

We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.

We seek harm to none and harmony for all.

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:

That even as we grieved, we grew.

That even as we hurt, we hoped.

That even as we tired, we tried.

That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.

Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.

If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.

That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.

It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.

It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it.

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

This effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed,

it can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith, we trust,

for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us. 

This is the era of just redemption. 

We feared it at its inception. 

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, 

but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.

So while once we asked, ‘How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?’ now we assert, ‘How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?’

We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: 

A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free. 

We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. 

Our blunders become their burdens. 

But one thing is certain: 

If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change, our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left. 

With every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one. 

We will rise from the golden hills of the west. We will rise from the wind-swept north-east where our forefathers first realized revolution. 

We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states. W

e will rise from the sun-baked south. 

We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.

In every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country, our people, diverse and beautiful, will emerge, battered and beautiful.

When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid. 

The new dawn blooms as we free it. 

For there is always light, 

if only we’re brave enough to see it. 

If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Miss American Pie: Park Slope’s Sweetest Treat

By Filed Under: Eat Local Tagged With: , ,

On the north end of Park Slope’s Fifth Avenue sits Miss American Pie, a relaxed and inviting escape from the speed of the city. 

Packed with the sweet, nostalgic smell of fresh-baked goods, the 50s-themed bakery fosters a sense of small-town community on one of the neighborhood’s most bustling blocks.

Wednesday through Sunday of each week, owner and head baker Lindsey Hill dishes up classic desserts reminiscent of what would be served at a Fourth of July picnic or after Sunday supper. Since she opened Miss American Pie in August of 2019, Hill’s homestyle baking has turned Miss American Pie into a destination spot for local sweet-tooths. However, like many of the neighborhood’s businesses, Miss American Pie’s future is uncertain amid the COVID-19 pandemic. With high rent and limited business, staying open is a daily struggle. 

Hill, who grew up about 90 miles away from Chicago, discovered her love for baking as a teenager. In her early years, most of Hill’s customers were her friends from the small private high school she attended in Northern Illinois. 

“I was the homemaker,” said Hill. “I would invite people over for dinner parties when I was in high school. I started baking then, using my mom’s Betty Crocker cookbook. I made a lot of strawberry cheesecakes and stuff like that.” 

In college, Hill’s love for baking grew even more. She would stay up all night and escape the world by studying cookbooks and pouring her heart into her craft.

“It became like therapy for me,” said Hill. “In the morning, I would be so excited with all of my creations. My husband, who was then my boyfriend, would come out and say, ‘Oh my gosh. Have you been up all night?’ And I’d be like, ‘Yeah, but look at this!’”

After graduating from college, Hill moved to New York to pursue a career in fashion design. Still, she didn’t give up her love for baking. While working in the fashion industry, She would often bring baked goods in for her colleagues, who, between bites, would ask her why she wasn’t selling the stuff.

“During that time is when I started developing my own recipes,” Hill said. “Baking is more of a science than an art. So, once I understood the science behind it, I began developing my own recipes.” 

Eventually, Hill took her coworkers’ advice and started selling whole pies online. She rented a kitchen and was working as a part-time baker and a part-time fashion designer. Hill kept this up for a couple of years before the time came when she had to make a decision. 

So Hill took a chance. Instead of keeping her high-paying job in the fashion industry, she opted to pursue something she’d loved since she was young. She opened her bakery, Miss American Pie. 

“I felt a divine calling to do this,” said Hill. “I felt like God was telling me, ‘This is where you’re supposed to be. This is where love can spread through you the most to other people.’ So, that’s what I decided to do.”

Hill spent the next year figuring out the logistics behind how she could open her bakery. When looking for locations, Hill printed out a map of Brooklyn, her home for more than 15 years, and narrowed down a few potential neighborhoods. 

“Park Slope wasn’t my first choice,” said Hill. “But, when I started walking around the neighborhood, I really felt a sense of diversity that I didn’t feel in other neighborhoods. I feel like the Barclay’s Center and Atlantic Terminal is this meeting point of a few different neighborhoods, demographics, and walks of life. I thought that it was the perfect place for Miss American Pie because the goal really was to spread love through pie and to be a place where people build authentic relationships around food.”

Named after the Don McLean song, the interior of Miss American Pie looks like a cross between a 50s diner and a grandma’s kitchen. The floors are painted with black and white checkers, and the walls, one of which is exposed brick, are spotted with patriotic flags, family pictures, baking utensils, and old-timey signs that list the day’s menu. 

“When I was growing up, and even back in the 50s and 60s, the idea of eating a meal with your family was ingrained into American society, and I don’t see that anymore,” said Hill. “Relationships are a valuable thing that we are losing. 

Every morning, Hill bakes nine “everyday pies,” including fresh apple pie, cherry crumb pie, and coconut cream pie, just to name a few. Also on the everyday menu is Hills’ Signature Pie, which is made with apples, peaches, and blueberries, sprinkled with oat crumbs, and covered with a lattice top. 

“It meets everyone’s cravings,” said Hill. “If you like the oat crumb top, it has that. If you like pastry crust, it has that too. It outsells every other pie by 50 percent.”

Hill also makes more than a dozen seasonal pies. A few tasty options on the Spring menu are a strawberry rhubarb pie, key lime pie, and french silk pie, which is a flaky butter crust filled with a fluffy dark chocolate mousse and topped with sweet whipped cream. 

“I think ‘classic’ is a keyword when you think about the majority of our pies,” said Hill. “They are like my children. I have a different favorite every day.” 

Despite Hill’s talents and her bakery’s growing support, keeping the business afloat has never been easy. Immediately after making it past the year one growing pains that most businesses go through, Miss American Pie was hit with a global pandemic. 

In March, the bakery was forced to close regular service. They were only open on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for pre-orders. Hill soon lost the ability to support her staff, so her husband quit his job to help out at the bakery unpaid. 

“The neighborhood was so supportive during that time,” said Hill. “People were coming in. Some families were ordering a whole pie every week or buying gift cards if they didn’t need any pie or were on a diet.”

But months later, the financial problems are still overwhelming. Like many of Park Slope’s business owners, Hill is taking things day-by-day. 

“I would like to say we will be around, but I have no idea,” said Hill.