TOWER TRIP
Take a tour of the city’s first airport
COURIER L 46 IFE, OCT. 4-10, 2019
A blast from the past: Visitors can tour the restored airport control tower in Pooch perfect
By Aidan Graham It’s a doggy heaven on earth!
A new Fido-friendly
amusement park will
romp into Williamsburg this
weekend! “Best Dog Day Ever:
Halloween Edition” will open
on Oct. 4 for a month-long stint
of offering mutts a dog-gone
adorable two-hour extravaganza
of puppy play, said a rep with
the company.
“It’s a place where you can
really pamper your pooch,” said
Stacey Richman. “Everything
in the space is from the
perspective of putting pups
first.”
The spot has a Halloween
theme, but it is no doggy
haunted house — instead, it is
an indoor wonderland of wags,
with play spaces, grooming
opportunities, a canine costume
closet, and a Halloween watering
hole, all designed to celebrate
your fuzzy little buddy. Even
the spacious play pen and the
lengthy obstacle course will
capture images and reward
canine accomplishments, said
Richman.
“There’s a ball pit with a
six-foot slide so dogs can go in
head first — with a slow-motion
camera attached so you can get
an image of that,” she said.
“And we have a corn maze
where the dog goes through,
and we time the dog on how
quickly he goes from one end to
the other.”
Tail-waggers looking for
tasty treats can cool down at
a Halloween-themed treat shop
— featuring healthy ice cream
and nutritious non-alcoholic
“beer,” said Richman.
“We have a trick-or-treat
shop, where you and your
dog can share an ice cream
sundae together — we have
dog-friendly ice cream, and
dog-friendly toppings,” she
said. “You can also share a dogfriendly
beer with your dog.”
There will also be actual
human-friendly beer for the
human companions, she said.
The entire experience is
designed to be picture perfect
for social media-savvy dog
owners who want to capture
fur-fect photos of their fuzzy
companions.
“If something’s not on
Instagram, did it even happen?”
noted Richman. “So there will
be a lot of photographable
moments that people can share
on social media.”
Even the most scruffy pups
will be camera-ready after
visiting the Dyson-sponsored
grooming station, where they
can get their hair done and nails
clipped — and in keeping with
the Halloween-theme, owners
can dress their hounds in
various far-fetched ensembles,
said Richman.
“We have a costume cam,
where dog owners can dress
their dogs up and various
costumes and do a 180-degree
photo booth,” she said. “It’s
reminiscent of a red carpet for
your dog.”
“Best Dog Day Ever” at
TwentyFiveKent (25 Kent Ave.
between N. 12th and N. 13th
streets in Williamsburg, www.
bestdogdayever.com). Oct. 4–27,
Thu–Fri at 4 pm and 6:30 pm,
Sat at 12:30 pm, 3 pm, and 5:30
pm, Sun at 12:30 pm and 3 pm.
$35 for one adult and one dog
($25 for additional adults).
Bric building
Arts group opens new media lab
TBy Bill Roundy hey’re looking for a few
good fellows!
Downtown ar ts
organization Bric unveiled its new
media lab last week, and is now
hunting for a half-dozen artists
to take full advantage of its stateof
the-art editing bays, podcast
recording studio, and screening
room. The Bric Community Media
Incubator will offer support and
resources to new, diverse voices in
film and television, said the vice
president of Bric TV.
“In this first group, we’re
looking for underrepresented
voices and filmmakers of color,”
said Aziz Isham.
The arts group will select six
applicants for its first, six-month
media fellowship, which will start
in January, and the group plans to
follow that first class with another
half-dozen media-makers the
second half of the year. Those
chosen for the program will have
access to the Media Incubator
office space, including its editing
suites and studios, can take classes
in digital production and postproduction,
and will receive other
support and mentorship from the
arts organization.
Applicants must live or work
in Brooklyn, cannot be currently
enrolled students, and should
have a specific audio or video
project that they are working on,
said Isham. Applications will be
available in late October.
The Bric Community Media
Incubator is located on Rockwell
Place in Fort Greene, just across
the street from the Bric House
on Fulton Street, where the arts
group has several performance and
visual art venues.
Those who do not win the
fellowship, or who simply cannot
wait, can still take advantage of
Bric TV’s video equipment, which
can be reserved by anyone who
takes an orientation class, said
Isham.
“Orientation, Media
Education” class at Bric House,
647 Fulton St. at Rockwell Place
in Fort Greene, (718) 683–5600,
www.bricartsmedia.org. Oct. 19 at
10 am. Free.
By Chandler Kidd Take a flight of fancy!
Brooklynites can take
a trip back to the Golden
Age of Aviation this month, back
to when the New York City’s only
municipal airport was located
in Marine Park. The air control
tower at Floyd Bennett Field
will offer free 90-minute tours
to ticketed visitors on Oct. 20,
as part of the 17th annual Open
House New York weekend on
Oct. 18–20.
The event helps to remind
New Yorkers of their history, said
the director of the Open House
program.
“A site like Floyd Bennett Field,
where many Brooklyners never get
to go, is a reminder of what the
early days of air travel in New York
looked like, and how remnants
of New York’s past infrastructure
continues to surround us,” said
Gregory Wessner.
The tour will begin at the Ryan
Museum, formerly the airport’s
terminal. Visitors will learn about
the history of Floyd Bennett
Field, which was built in 1931,
and about the famous pilots who
flew there, including Amelia
Earhart and Howard Hughes. The
tour will include peeks at areas
usually off-limits to the public,
including tunnels underneath the
airport runways, used to transport
luggage to the planes, and a visit to
the restored control tower, which
still offers an astounding view of
Jamaica Bay, the runways, and the
rest of Brooklyn.
The antique airport is one of 60
architectural wonders throughout
Kings County that will open to
the public during Open House
New York, including private
residences, historic monuments,
and manufacturing sites.
Those who wish to tour the
Floyd Bennett Field Control Tower
must make a reservation on the
Open House website, starting on
Oct. 8 at 11 am. Reservations are
often snapped up quickly, but there
are also many sites that will be
open without a ticket.
Two of the featured sites this
year will be free for anyone to visit,
Wessner said.
“This is a big year for Brooklyn,
we have our featured sites which
are the Brooklyn Navy Yard and
the Brooklyn Army terminal, it’s
sort of like an Army-Navy rivalry,”
he said.
Tour guides will lead visitors
through the brutalist atrium of the
Army Terminal in Sunset Park at 2
pm, 3 pm, and 4 pm on Oct. 19 and
20; and the Chashama Studio Hub,
on two floors of the Terminal, will
hold open studios for its 96 artists
that weekend.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard in
Fort Greene will have 50 of its
tenants available on Oct. 19 from
10 am–6 pm, allowing spectators
to tour their spaces and the Navy
Yard campus.
Floyd Bennett Field Control
Tower tour (3159 Flatbush Ave.
at Floyd Bennett Field in Marine
Park, www.ohny.org). Oct. 20 at 10
am; noon, and 2 pm. Free.
Massive canine wonderland
is coming to Williamsburg
Marine Park’s Floyd Bennett Field on Oct. 20, as part of the Open House New York
weekend. File photo by Steve Solomonson
Just add art: One of the new editing
bays at Bric’s Community Media
Incubator. Photo by Derrick Watterson
Get the ball! A dog lounges in the ball pit at “Best Dog Day Ever,”
a pup-up spot offering an indoor place for dogs to play, starting
on Oct. 4. The Dodo
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