(718) 260–2500 Brooklyn Paper’s essential guide to the Borough of Kings July 12–18, 2019
NIGHTLIFE
Right on cue
Call it pool paradise!
A new billiards bar quietly opened its doors in
Williamsburg earlier this year, offering a dark,
clubby atmosphere to both pool sharks and casual
party people. The narrow venue on N. 11th
Street, across from the Brooklyn Brewery, contains
two large rooms, the first equipped with a
60-foot bar, and the second with 10 regulationsize
billiards tables. The owner of Brooklyn Billiards
said that he opened the spot in February
after hearing that the neighborhood lacked any
spot to get behind a cue ball.
“People had to go to Borough Park to play
pool,” said Timur Munarov, who also owns the
Billiards Room in Queens. Editor’s note: there
is a pool hall in Park Slope, but it is still a long
way to travel.
He designed his new location to combine oldschool
decoration with an industrial feel that
matches the neighborhood.
“I wanted it to have a Williamsburg feel to it
with a touch of modern,” Munarov said.
A skilled pool player since the age of 15, Munarov
hoped to make Brooklyn Billiards a meeting
spot for serious billiards players. His plan
has succeeded — the venue now hosts seven
amateur billiards teams, which face off against
other teams in a league every Monday, Tuesday,
and Thursday. The league games are more social
than they are serious, said an employee.
“The games are a chance to meet people and
to get better at pool,” said Brooklyn Billiard’s
manager, Annie Jay. “We’re trying to expand the
league because people like it so much.”
The venue goes beyond billiards — it also
serves late-night bar food, beer, and cocktails
and it stores board games under the bar. On
weekends, dee-jays and bands play live shows
in the front room, and crowds often flock to
the venue to watch sports on the bar’s 14 large
televisions.
Brooklyn Billiards 90 N. 11th St. between
Berry Street and Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg,
(718) 599–2603, www.bkbilliards.com.
Open Mon–Thu, 4 p.m.–2 a.m.; Fri–Sun noon–4
a.m. $10 per hour per person to play.
— Rose Adams
Blue funk
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
It’ll be a fantastic show!
A Californian roots singer will bring
his soulful songs to a free afternoon
festival hosted by the Brooklyn Academy
of Music at MetroTech Commons
on July 18.
Oakland-based Fantastic Negrito will
perform his powerful blend of blues, punk,
funk, soul, and gospel — or “blunk,” as
he calls it — and he said that the show
will be a spiritual experience for the audience
in America’s Downtown.
“They can expect a whole lot of church
without the religion,” said the musician,
who goes by Xavier Dphrepaulezz offstage.
Dphrepaulezz grew up in Massachusetts,
the son of a Somali immigrant dad
and a mother from Bedford-Stuyvesant,
the eighth of 14 kids.
The family moved to Oakland,
California when he was 12, where he
discovered a wide range of musical and
artistic influences, including the painter
Basquiat, the band Parliament Funkadelic,
and David Bowie, Little Richard, and
Prince.
“When I was a young kid and saw
Prince dressed in a trench coat and garters
— while I wouldn’t necessarily wear
that, it was pretty impressive to see that,”
he said.
The artist began playing basic funk in
the 1990s, but a serious car crash in 1999
put him on a different path.
He joined the burgeoning Afro-Punk
movement in the early 2000s under the
moniker Blood Sugar X, and in the 2010s
he took on the name Fantastic Negrito,
gaining attention by winning NPR’s Tiny
Desk contest, and delivering a powerful
performance at the public radio station’s
cramped studio in 2015.
He has since released two full-length
albums — each of which won a Grammy
for Best Contemporary Blues Album, and
last week he dropped a music video for
the track “The Suit that Won’t Come Off”
from his 2018 record “Please Don’t Be
Dead.”
The song and the record are part of
his fight against the current political turmoil
by seeking unity in music, according
to the artist.
“People are trying to make it normal to
be a Nazi — I’m not accepting that,” he
MUSIC
said. “One thing music does, it unites
people, even people that have differences.
Music can give them a reason
to come together — it’s a great ice
breaker.”
The Bay Area songster will perform
at the Downtown space as part
of the Academy’s R&B Festival,
which has free concerts every
Thursday through Aug. 15.
He will share the bill with
Brooklyn United Evolution Drumline,
a Kings County group of
school-age drummers.
Their performances are separate,
but at the suggestion of this
reporter, Dphrepaulezz said he may
join forces with them on stage.
“You never know, we used to do
that all the time in the streets. I came
from the streets doing busking, and
we used to always meet up with people
in Oakland playing drums,” he
said. “You just planted the idea,
so we’ll see.”
BOOKS
Reading picks
Community Bookstore’s pick: “The
Secret Commonwealth,” by Robert Kirk
In the 17th century,
Scottish minister Robert
Kirk set out to collect
the accumulated lore
of the fairies, fauns, demons,
sprites, spirits, and
elves of his native Highland
village, and wrote
what he believed to be the
first systematic history of
his nonhuman neighbors.
Written in a minister’s
crisp prose with startling
credulity, this long-forgotten
classic, originally published by Sir Walter
Scott, is now available in a charming edition
from New York Review Books Classic.
— Samuel Partal, Community Bookstore 43
Seventh Ave. between Carroll Street and Garfield
Place in Park Slope, (718) 783–3075, www.
commu nityb ookst ore.net .
Greenlight Bookstore’s pick:
“Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl,”
by Andrea Lawlor
I caught up with “Paul
Takes the Form of a Mortal
Girl” after it was republished
in paperback
this spring, and I loved
it. The novel, with a
main character who can
shape-shift from “Paul”
to “Polly,” is a fun romp
through the queerscapes
of the ’90s with excellent
characters, smut, poetry,
and music and reading
recommendations galore. I will be recommending
this to my special customers who I think
will get a kick out of it.
— Austin Broussard, Greenlight Bookstore
686 Fulton St. between S. Elliott Place and S.
Portland Avenue in Fort Greene, (718) 246–
0200, www.greenlightbookstore.com .
Word’s picks: “The
Sun on My Head,” by
Geovani Martins
“Debut” is a loaded
term, because so many
new or first books reek
of the influence of earlier,
often greater, writers.
That is why, when
something is not only
fresh, but also undeniably
good, we should all
take notice.
Geovani Martins’s parables of tender masculinity
are rendered in a natural dialogue that
brings us straight onto the blinding beaches of
Rio and the desperate walled-in streets of the
favela. For Martins, this is home, and his stories
are so evocative, so full of life and motion,
that I was floored. This is a book for all ages,
for all sensibilities.
— Jeff Waxman, Word 126 Franklin St. at
Milton Street in Greenpoint, (718) 383–0096,
www.wordbookstores.com .
“Fantastic Negrito” at MetroTech
Commons Myrtle Avenue between
Lawrence and Bridge streets Downtown,
www.bam.org, (718) 636-4100.
Jul. 18 at noon. Free.
By Bill Roundy
Brooklyn Paper
They’ve turned a show about nothing
into something special!
Brooklyn’s beloved minor
league baseball team will shed its
usual name this Saturday for one of
its biggest annual events: “Seinfeld
Night!” The Brooklyn Cyclones will
become the Brooklyn Marble Rye for
the evening, wearing limited-edition
jerseys and caps for the night
— not that there’s anything wrong
with that.
This year is the 30th anniversary
of the sitcom, which started in 1989
as “The Seinfeld Chronicles,” and
the ’clones have gone all out for this
night. The stadium will be renamed
“Kramerica Industries Ballpark” for
the evening, every fan attending the
game will get a “Fusilli Jerry” figure,
and actors Tim DeKay, who played
“Bizarro Jerry,” and Matt McCoy,
who advised “Serenity now, insanity
later” as Lloyd Braun, will be in
the audience.
Sadly, meet-and-greet sessions are
already sold out.
Fans who want to join the fun will
also have plenty of opportunities! In
addition to the annual, horrible-towatch
“Elaine Dance Contest,” the
party on July 13 will feature the between
inning contests “ ‘Can’t Spare
a Square’ Toilet Paper Race,” a “Marble
Rye Toss,” yada yada, and a muffin
top–eating contest.
The team started celebrating “Seinfeld
Night” five years ago to celebrate
the 25th anniversary of the show, and
it became an immediate sensation.
The geniuses at MCU Park have many
other promotions for the rest of the
season, with almost every night offering
something special for fans. Here
are some of our favorites:
July 14, Marvel Superhero
Night: Spider-Man may hail from
Queens, but the sometimes-cloned
hero is a ‘clones supporter! The first
2,000 fans will get a Spidey bobblehead,
and kids dressed as heroes can
take the field during the National Anthem.
July 25, Christmas in July: Cool
off with an extra winter holiday in
July — and pick up an ornament of
the Parachute Jump that you can hang
on the tree (first 2,000 fans only).
Aug. 10, Mo Willems Day: The
Cyclones celebrate the children’s book
author from Park Slope, who wrote
“Knuffle Bunny” — whose title character
recently got a bronze statue at
the Park Slope Library — and “Don’t
Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.” Early
visitors can score a baseball hat in the
shape of a pigeon.
Aug. 17, Star Wars Night: This
game is sure to be out of this world!
Costumed characters will roam the
stands, Jedi will train on the field,
and the first 2,000 fans can get a Hyperspace
Jersey.
Aug. 31, “Parks and Recreation”
Night: This might be the
next “Seinfeld Night” for fans of the
more recent sitcom! Events have not
yet been announced, but the show’s
newscaster Perd Hapley (actor Jay
Jackson) will be there!
All games at MCU Park (1904 Surf
Ave. at W. 17th Street in Coney Island,
(718) 372–5596, www.brooklyncyclones.
com). $5–$20.
Fantastic Negrito brings his ‘blunk’
to Downtown Brooklyn festival
Fantastic news: Oakland songsmith Fantastic Negrito will bring his blend of blues,
punk, funk, gospel, and soul to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s free R&B concert
series at MetroTech Commons on July 18.
Lyle Owerko
And the prize is right
‘Seinfeld Night’ and more from the Cyclones
Full-body dry heave: Contestants will take to the field for this year’s
Elaine Dance-Off at MCU Park’s Seinfeld Night on July 13. Photo by Steve Solomonson
Hector Hernandez
/www.brooklyn-cyclones.com
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