Photo courtesy of WallyG's Flickr

I did however have the privilege to live directly across the street from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Brooklyn Museum for almost three years, both of which provided me and my family with countless hours and days of entertainment. No matter how many times I walked by the museum I was always eager to take in the beautiful old majestic building. The size and grandeur of the building itself are just amazing.

That being said, I do have the ability to go online and see what other museums have to offer and, for my money, the Brooklyn Museum has incredibly interesting and important collections and some outstanding cutting edge exhibits as well.

Add into the mix their awesome First Saturday events and your have what would seem like a winning recipe for a museum in New York City, albeit in Brooklyn.

Photo courtesy of CaptainKidder's Flickr

Having lived in that area for a few years and Park Slope for three more years I can tell you that three out of four of those neighborhoods don’t seem like the “museum type”. It’s not to say that no one in any of those neighborhoods ever has any interest or desire whatsoever to go to a museum but they don’t seem like neighborhoods that consist of large group of people with a socio-economic background that you would generally associate with having the kind of disposable income available to spend on museum memberships and donations. As much as I enjoyed the museum and the fantastic shooting fountains and free WIFI on the plaza I am including myself in that last group.

When it opened a new glass entrance in 2004 meant to beckon the masses, the Brooklyn Museum said it hoped to triple attendance in 10 years by concentrating on a local audience. It had stopped worrying about competing with Manhattan museums or about its image — despite its world-class collections — as a poor man’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But six years in, the effort to build an audience is not working. Attendance in 2009 dropped 23 percent from the year before, to about 340,000, though other New York cultural institutions remained stable.

Almost a quarter of the attendees were people who came for First Saturdays, free nights at the museum that include music, dancing, food, cash bar, gallery talks and films.*

Some people may look at these numbers and be discouraged. Quite the opposite, these numbers give the museum an amazing amount of freedom to embrace change. Now is the time for the Brooklyn Museum to shed its cloak of ambiguity and redefine itself, to create a new persona if you will. The Brooklyn Museum is located right in between The Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Prospect Park. The BBG is by far the best of all of the botanic garden’s in NYC, in fact it’s one of the top botanic garden’s in the entire country. Prospect Park is like the Central Park of Brooklyn and is far and away the second best park in all of NYC behind Central Park. All three of these entrances are within a few hundred yards of each other. There is absolutely no other museum in all of New York City, perhaps in all the country, that can offer those sorts of amazing landmark destinations so close to each other.

Brooklyn is, has and probably always will be the land of idealists. The true melting pot of NYC. Let’s reinvent the Brooklyn Museum as the epicenter of the People’s Republic of Brooklyn. Great art, great theatre, great music all have one thing in common. Conflict. Turn the Brooklyn Museum into Brooklyn’s cathedral of conflict. Become the people’s museum. This doesn’t mean you need to “dumb down” the exhibits. Quite the opposite. Stretch the boundaries. Place your finger on the pulse of your neighbors and feel the angst, the desperation, the passion and the intense, unquenchable desire to grow in order to continue to walk, march and fight in this silent revolution we’re living.

* New York Times – Brooklyn Museum’s Populism Hasn’t Lured Crowds

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The BBG is one of our favorite places to go for a nice long walk with the Bean. It really is one of the most relaxing, beautiful environments you’ll find right smack in the middle of Brooklyn. If you’ve never been there you should definitely check it out, you won’t be disappointed. It’s not free but it is affordable and, if you live close enough, the family membership gets you in as much as you want all year, plus a discount from the shop and garden.

One of my favorite times of year to go there are when the Cherry trees are blooming. The BBG has the largest variety of Cherry trees outside of Japan and when you see them all in different stages of bloom it’s a wonderful experience.

If Cherry blossoms aren’t your thing then stop by in June when the rose garden gives up an enormous amount of roses of all colors and sizes. According to BBG’s website it’s “one of the largest collection of Rose rose cultivars in North America, over 5,000 bushes of nearly 1,400 varieties thrive, including wild species, old garden roses, hybrid teas, grandifloras, floribundas, polyanthas, hybrid perpetuals, climbers, ramblers, and miniatures.

Anywho, the BBG is getting ready to celebrate its 100th anniversary and they’ve been collecting photos and stories from visitors on Flickr and other places around the web. I submitted the photo I took of my daughter (above) to the BBG Stories pool of photos.

I just received a message from them saying that they’re going to use the photo 100 Years, 100 Stories gallery exhibit this summer and they’re sending us all invites to attend the opening night reception!

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Like him or not, Bloomberg is not afraid to, at times, swim against the current and support legislation that may be unpopular to a small segment of the population but has or will provide a better quality of life for many, many others.

One very cool program that Mayor Bloomberg is responsible is for is 311. Basically you can call 311 for any non-emergency related question about NYC. Find out whether or not alternate side parking has been suspended, what day your trash pickup is on, report stray cats, annoyingly loud neighbors, literally anything. If they don’t know the answer they will 9/10 times be able to connect you to the dept. or agency that you need to speak to find the answer you need or report the problem you are concerned about.

311′s Mission Statement:

311 is New York City’s online Web site and phone number for government information and non-emergency services. Whether you’re a resident, business owner, or visitor, all the resources of New York City are just a phone call away.

• Provide the public with quick, easy access to all New York City government services and information while maintaining the highest possible level of customer service.
• Help agencies improve service delivery by allowing them to focus on their core missions and manage their workload efficiently.
• Provide insight into ways to improve City government through accurate, consistent measurement and analysis of service delivery Citywide.

Twitter is the perfect social media tool for Bloomberg and 311 to harness for this program. Not only will it allow people to quickly and easily report issues, ask questions or submit suggestions, it will allow other New Yorkers to follow along and build a community of concerned citizens, all with the same knowledge base, that will allow them to see and follow what is going on in their neighborhoods.

In the last two reports on the State of the Twittersphere (pdf) these locations were listed as some of the top locations of Twitter users: “New York”, “New York, NY”, “NYC”, “new york city” and “Brooklyn (represent!)”. That information combined with the fact that at least 35% of all Twitter users live in urban areas, Twitter becomes the perfect storm for NYC 311.

Not only will it be a tangible online branding of a great service, it will be, to all intents and purposes a knowledge base for concerned New Yorkers. By following NYC 311 on my Twitter stream I can not only find other well-meaning, community orientated New Yorkers to connect with, I may very possibly find an answer to a question that I hadn’t even asked yet.

Just imagine the ease of use to send out one Tweet either the night before or the morning of announcing opposite parking has been cancelled. Harnessing Twitter will not only allow 311 to be reactive around a community, it will also allow 311 to be far more proactive about making announcements and alerting New Yorkers to important information.

It’s time Mayor Bloomberg, the writing is on the wall, let’s do this. If you need hand creating general guidelines and best practices for your online Twitter presence I would be more than happy to lend a hand in helping get this winning idea off the ground. Just give me a call when you’re ready.

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Suddenly, all these slightly older, financially stable career people found themselves in New York and ready to have children. People that, for the most part grew up in other states, more than likely in the suburbs, watching Sesame Street, had suddenly found themselves in a uniquely wonderful position. They could actually, literally afford to find their way to their own little Sesame Street.

For two generations, the fictional block of brownstones inhabited by curious children, friendly adults and some odd-looking Muppets has helped shape childhood education by offering exercises, games and life lessons all wrapped up in a television-friendly format. It’s a model that’s proved durable and influential, says Syracuse University pop culture professor Robert Thompson.

TV Guide’s Michael Davis has a new book Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street.

“The idea they came up with was kind of radical: If you can sell kids sugared cereal and toys using Madison Avenue techniques, why couldn’t you use the same techniques for teaching counting, the alphabet and basic social skills? And it works,” (says Syracuse University pop culture professor Robert Thompson.)

“I met a lot of people who I worked with in New York or got to know in New York — transplants — who said to me, ‘When I first arrived here in New York, I had this strange desire to find Sesame Street,’ ” Davis said.

Maybe it worked so well that even 20 years later, certain yuppies were subconsciously climbing their way to the top all so they could finally move back to a place that held so many fond memories. Sesame Street.

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