BLOCK-OFF! Btwn 6th Ave & 7th Ave (from 15th-1st) vs. Btwn 7th Ave & 8th Ave (from 15th-1st)

WOO HOO FUCK YEAH IT’S BASEBALL PLAYOFF SEASON!!! I’m not actually as excited as all that, but I enjoy baseball enough & was excited because my hometown Red Sox once again made the playoffs this year. Unfortunately, they now have no chance in hell of actually winning the World Series, but I can at least hope that the Yankees don’t win it all...as long as that prick A-Rod doesn't get a championship ring, it's cool with me.

This week, we’ll be taking a look at the numbered streets between 6th & 7th and 7th & 8th, pitting them against each other in a contest of Ruthian proportions. One group of blocks will embody the spirit of my BoSox. While they won't be crowned champions this year, at least they won't be a bunch of millionaire pretty boys. The other set of blocks will be inhabited by the spirit of the Bronx Bombers & will have a good chance of winning it all, but in the end, it won't matter because as we New Englanders say, "Yankees Suck." As some politician or celebrity or dying child throws out the first pitch & the two teams take the field, we'll be reminded of why baseball is both exciting & boring at the same time. Let the uber maudlin, TBS-tastic, steroid-filled judging begin!

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BLOCK-OFF! Btwn 4th Ave & 5th Ave (from Garfield-Baltic) vs. Btwn 5th Ave & 6th Ave (from Garfield-Park)

Holy crap! Have you schlubs seen this new Tarantino flick, Inglourious Basterds? I saw that shit recently & it blew my friggin mind. Back in the day, when I was but a giddy film student, I held Tarantino up to god status. After a while though, basically after Jackie Brown, once he decided that he was more interested in talking about films than making them, he started to seriously get on my nerves & I disowned him for a long ass time. He & Kevin Smith made me want to puke. Recently though, a friend put together a well-crafted series of essays on all his works, a series that often spoke to why his love of films makes his own films so good. It’s definitely an asset when the director’s actually excited about his film. I’m getting older & more forgiving & it’s been five years since Kill Bill II came out, so after hearing nothing but good words about his new film, I decided to give him another shot.

In our last Block-Off!, we took a look at the numbered streets between 4th & 5th and 5th & 6th, so this week, we’ll be taking a look at the rest of the streets between 4th & 5th and 5th & 6th. In honor of Tarantino, we’re going to infuse one set of blocks with his ridiculously over-the-top love of films. The other set will get to embody the raw violence of his flicks. They’ll go on their merry ways for a while, but as we really get into it, one set will run into the other one & start rambling on & on & on about Sam Fuller & Sam Peckinpah & the beauty of violence, After about five minutes, the other set will grow tired of set #1’s inability to shut the fuck up, hit him over the head with some crazy-ass Japanese weapon & tie him up in a basement. At that point, it’ll be set #2’s chance to speak & the awesome torture will begin. It’ll be all you can talk about for the next two weeks. Let the pop-culture infused, Leone-esque, Nazi-scalptastic judging begin!

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BLOCK-OFF! Btwn 4th Ave & 5th Ave (from 15th-10th & 8th-1st) vs. Btwn 5th Ave & 6th Ave (from 15th-10th & 8th-1st)

Smell ya later, August! Seriously, was that an awful month or what? There was a string of disgustingly hot days. The health care debate officially entered Looneyville. We lost both Ted Kennedy and DJ AM in the same week. Third Eye Blind put out another album. It’s just a month I’d rather forget. From this day forth & for twenty-nine days after that, I will only think September. We get a holiday & a few more weeks of summer & a Nachos NY Grito contest & Fashion Week & new episodes of Sons of Anarchy, Dexter & Fringe. That’s a ton of junk to look forward to.

In this week's Block-Off!, we’re going to start looking at the spaces in between the avenues with the streets from 15th to 1st between 4th Ave & 5th competing against those same streets between and 5th Ave & 6th. We’ve already covered both 9th Streets in the Block-Off!, so they don’t count. To prove how much better September’s going to be, I’m going to infuse one set of blocks with the demonic spirit of August & the other with the hopeful spirit of September. As August drips its nasty sweat all over us, September will be asking us over for steaks…unless Labor Day is ridiculously hot & my whole August good/September bad scenario I’ve created here will be factually incorrect. Let the optimistic, non-celebrity death infused, almost-autumnal judging begin!

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BLOCK-OFF! Remaining 5th Ave & 7th Ave vs. Remaining 6th Ave & 8th Ave

Woodstock Woodstock Woodstock! In case you’ve been away from every form of mass media imaginable for the last week or so, these past few days marked the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, with the festival closing out 40 years ago yesterday. What began as a somewhat small festival a few hours north in upstate New York ballooned to a gathering of 500,000 people & became one of the defining moments of the Sixties. Then Altamont & The Manson Family came along, people died because of both & the idealism of the Sixties soon came to a screeching halt.

...but Woodstock was memorable & really brought people together, so to celebrate the anniversary, in this week’s Block-Off!, we’ll be bringing together the remaining businesses we haven’t covered on 5th, 6th 7th & 8th and pitting those on the odd avenues against those on the even avenues. That means that on 5th, we’ll be covering the block from Sterling to Park, on 6th, the blocks between Union & Park, on 7th, the blocks from 7th to 5th and from St. John’s to Flatbush & on 8th, everything from 9th to Flatbush…and no, we won’t be covering the areas of 4th, 5th & 6th beyond Park Place, as on the day when I first drew the boundaries of the Block-Off!, the Wikipedia definition of Park Slope put the north border at Park Place. The Wiki page has since been changed, but I don’t deal well with change, so I’m not embracing this new definition.

To top it off, this week we’ll be ignoring all the apartment buildings & empty storefronts & extraneous crap to give you nothing but the straight, unfiltered Block-Off! poop. There’s just way too much extraneous crap on the blocks. As one set of blocks reflects on Woodstock with memories of free love & Hendrix & Sha Na Na, the other set will get confused & think that the Chili Peppers headlined & won’t be able to understand why everyone’s so nostalgic for three days of literal raping & pillaging. Let the muddy, idealistic, flower power infused judging begin!

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BLOCK-OFF! 4th Ave [from Union to Baltic] vs. 8th Ave [from 15th to 12th & 11th to 9th]

Holy shitballs it’s hot outside. It’s hot inside. It was in the nineties yesterday & could hit that again today. Awesome. Let’s celebrate. You don’t necessarily have to celebrate the heat though. You can celebrate Hulk Hogan’s 56th birthday. You can celebrate Ben Gibbard’s 33rd. You can celebrate the 18th anniversary of the founding of Al Qaeda. You can celebrate Joe Rogan’s 43rd birthday by claming that 9/11 was a conspiracy…or you can just Celebrate Brooklyn! by hanging outside the periphery of the Prospect Park Bandshell & avoiding the ticket price while listening to TV on the Radio. While you’re busy celebrating, Saturn’s rings will be disappearing.

In honor of all this mid-August celebration, we’re reaching to the far corners of Park Slope (a fact that I did not take into consideration re: walking when making the pairing) for this week’s Block-Off! We’ll be featuring another of our tag team-style competitions, with 4th Ave between Union & Baltic going up against 8th Ave from 15th to 9th. Since we already covered the area between 12th & 11th about a month back, we’ll just skip over that part of 8th in our journey & continue with the blocks from 11th to 9th. You’ll probably be too busy celebrating & high on goofballs to notice anyhow.

Since this week’s sections of 4th Ave & 8th Ave are on exact opposite corners of the Slope, it’ll be all faraway combat, sort of like a Block-Off! version of the impending war with North Korea, a war that I’ve come to believe we can only prevent by sending them Bill Clinton once a year for an updated portrait. As the groups of blocks push & shove each other, eventually one’s going to end up getting pushed off the edge of Park Slope all Return of the Jedi emperor style & we’ll all learn the true meaning of Christmas. Then we’ll celebrate Ewok-style, people! It’ll be Endoriffic! Let the drainingly hot, drone-involved, furry wood-creature influenced judging begin!

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BLOCK-OFF! 6th Ave [from 9th to 3rd] vs. 6th Ave [from 3rd to President]

Last week, we totally sucked. This week, reinvigorated by the Sunday night experience of 3RD ROW AC/DC (booyah!), we’re going to totally rock. In fact, we’re even going to go as far as to right a past wrong this week. It’ll be touching. Today marks the anniversary of the day the Billboard Hot 100 was created, so we’re going to be paying homage to fifty-one years of SOLID GOLD HITS. In a seriously shocking travesty, AC/DC has never managed to climb higher than #28 on the charts. Where are your priorities, Billboard? Two number one albums from them but no number one hits? Does that even make sense to you? Awful.

Anyway, we’ll be taking the Block-Off! back to 6th this week, as we pit 9th to 3rd against 3rd to Union. One group of blocks will be inhabited by the blasé ghosts of Nelly, Bryan Adams & Plain White T’s, while the other will be shot full of electric Acca Dacca awesomeness, some shit loud enough to make your skin crawl in a good way. They’ll battle for control of the music industry & in the end, we’ll see which one will be ROCKING THE FUCK OUT & having the time of their lives at age sixty. Let the overly amplified, balls-to-the-wall, Aussietacular judging begin!

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BLOCK-OFF! 4th Ave [from 9th to 3rd] vs. 4th Ave [from 3rd to President]

Howdy fair readers. It’s time for another edition of the Block-Off! When we last met, we unveiled our first ever tag team edition, with groups of blocks on 4th Ave & 6th Ave going head-to-head in a revolutionary competition commemorating Bastille Day.

It was a special week, as avid Block-Off! reader “now you know about 4th Ave” harshly critiqued us & commented that “wow, these things suck worse every time.” We weren’t aware that people saw the Block-Off! as some sort of Citysearch/Yelp guide, as opposed to an opportunity for us to write the stupidest stuff possible about every single business in the neighborhood in the most objective way possible.

This week, in order to dispel any misconceptions that the Block-Off! is anything but the latter, we promise to suck worse than we’ve ever sucked before. We’ll be staying on 4th Ave the entire time, making our way down toward Atlantic, pitting the blocks between 9th & 3rd against the blocks between 3rd & President. Since this stretch of 4th for the most part sucks, it’ll be very fitting. As one group is all “ooh, look at our vacant lot” & the other is all “we’ve got wicked huge condos too,” it’ll totally blow. We promise. Let the craptastically turdtastic whirlwind of widespread suckitude begin!

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BLOCK-OFF! 4th Ave [from 15th to 9th] vs. 6th Ave [from 15th to 9th]

Viva La France! Today’s Bastille Day, folks, and you know what that means. It’s time for you to break out your berets & French Fries/Toast & favorite Francophone albums and get down Paree stylee. Shake your booty like it’s the late 1700’s & you’re French & you’re pissed off at the king & his uppity wife (played by Kirsten Dunst)!

In this, our first week where we’ll be featuring groups of blocks all tag team-like, we’ll be visiting the areas between 15th St & 9th St on both 4th Ave & 6th Ave, pitting 4th against 6th in a totally revolutionary battle. As one team of blocks embodies the monarchical spirit of Louis XVI, it’ll reign for a while before the other team of blocks, embiggened with the soul of the French underclass, will rise up & execute the hell out of peeps. It’ll be quite the reason to break out the baguettes & wine. Let the feastastical, regicidal, prison-storming judging begin!

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BLOCK-OFF! 5th Ave [btwn 5th & 4th] vs. 8th Ave [btwn 12th & 11th]

Wow. So this week marks the 23rd edition of the Block-Off! Yes, it is very Jordan of me. Thanks for noticing. For almost six months now, you & I have traipsed up & down the Park Slope avenues, having a weekly moment together over ridonkulous nonsense about our neighborhood businesses, all belched from the depths of my glue-huffing addled head. I’ve infused the blocks with the spirits of Tupac & Biggie, Baldwin & Estevez, The Titanic & Lincoln, and Osama & Chuck Norris. I made fun of a lot of businesses & most of them deserved it. These are our golden weeks, folks! Cherish them because the Block-Off! is pretty much the greatest invention since sliced bread, which was first sold 71 years ago today in Chillicothe, Ohio.

All great inventions must come to an end though, so to let you down slowly, over the next few weeks, since I’ve basically run out of blocks worth tossing into the ring by their lonesome, I’m going to be bringing you a few weeks of Block-Off! (Filling in the Gaps Edition) and a few other surprises…but for this week, we still have two (somewhat full) blocks ready to jump in the ring, so let’s not make further adieu & such.

This week, we’ll be visiting our last full block on 5th Ave—from 5th to 4th—and for the first time, we’ll be taking a trip way over to 8th Ave, between 12th & 11th. As the two blocks embrace the spirit of invention, they’ll tinker away in basements & garages for our affections, just like the dad in Gremlins, with his awesome “Bathroom Buddy.” One block will be a total genius & develop the atomic bomb (which was first tested this month, back in 45’) and the other will invent an mp3 player for your dog. In the end, humanity will thank both either way, but with some serious reservations. Let the gizmoidic, too much coulda, not enough shoulda judging begin!

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BLOCK-OFF! 5th Ave [btwn Douglass/St Johns & Sterling] vs. Union St [btwn 6th & 7th]

Sometimes, my timing’s slightly off. Last Tuesday, I dedicated the Block-Off! to the awesomeness that is cable news…& then over the past seven days, cable news learned the true meaning of “when it rains, it pours” as four celebrities died, giving them all sorts of stories to work with. Oh well. Today marks the fourth anniversary of the day that Spain legalized gay marriage (really, USA?) & this past Sunday was Manhattan’s Gay Pride Parade, so this week, in the spirit of these events, we’ll be infusing the blocks with extreme festiveness! Sorry Brooklyn Gay Pride Parade. You’re so two weeks ago…like I said, that timing thing.

We’ll be taking the Block-Off! to one of our last blocks on 5th Ave, the block between Douglass/St Johns & Sterling. When we’re done there, it’s on down to Union Street and up to take a look at the block from 6th Ave to 7th. As our two blocks ACT TOTALLY GAY, one will charm us with its fashion sense & get invited to the White House, while the other will charm us with its fashion sense but still remain a second-class citizen. God will apparently hate both blocks, but since Jesus loves everyone, they’ll be at odds & will sit down for an important father-son chat, just like on the Brady Bunch. It’ll be rather touching & in the end, we'll all learn a lot of important lessons. Let the long-overdue, human rightastic but thongalicious judging begin!

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