Profiles In Courage: Joe Holtz of the Park Slope Food Coop

Holy shit, Joe Holtz is awash in paper. We have to think back a few short weeks ago to Design Sponge's aesthetic and ascetic home office in order to appreciate the full glory that is Joe Holtz's impossibly cluttered work space at the Park Slope Food Coop. And it must be said: I LOVE IT! In fact, I think Erica and Grace Bonney should showcase Joe's awesome decor on their blogs. Or maybe Hoarders could do an episode.

Joe Holtz—the Food Coop's first paid employee and its longtime General Coordinator—is my personal hero, even though he does make me snort barf occasionally with his zealous righteousness.

Mostly, though, Joe is so low-key, unassuming, nice, and utterly without vanity or ego, you would have no idea that he's a titan of non-profit industry, Crain's NY and Fortune poster boy, and recipient of a Marty Markowitz proclamation...or day...or something.

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Park Slope Profiles in Courage: Jonathan Safran Foer

The littler and I stalked JSF recently at Sweet Melissa's. He told me he barely washes his jeans let alone irons them. I promised to never call him a pompous ass again if he answered our FIPS interview questions. He gave me his very special and private email address. 

It was a BIG deal, man...a big deal, that is, before SOMEBODY upped the ante on me with that Jake Gyllenhaal sighting on the Q train.

Anyway.

In due time, he emailed me with his answers to my questions. That's when I found myself in a moral dilemma, because I just CANNOT BELIEVE some of these answers.

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Park Slope Profiles In Courage: Grace Bonney of Design*Sponge

image courtesy of Grace Bonney

I thought Jake Dobkin was going to be a hard act to follow, but now that I've communed with Brooklyn Belle Grace Bonney, I'm thinking this is going to be FUN! Grace is the founder of the galactically popular design blog, Design*Sponge, which she started in 2004 when she was like 18 or some unconscionably young age.

Flash forward to 2011, and she's now in the RSS readers of, well, everyone. She has a book coming out soon, speaks at events and conferences all over the place, and basically is her own one-woman design empire...and she lives and works right here in Park Slope! Well, until she jilts us for Greenpoint, anyway.

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Park Slope Profiles In Courage: Jake Dobkin of Gothamist

Hey there.

We're doing a new interview series with boys and girls in the hood who we like, and we're kicking things off with recovering Park Sloper and Gothamist Publisher Jake Dobkin. Who knew this dude actually grew up in the belly of the beast? Or that he was so funny?--he's got Park Slope's number.

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