Seeing red

By Meredith Deliso

Get ready to see red. Red velvet cake, that is.

A contest of delicious proportions is coming to the Brooklyn Historical Society this month, as professionals and amateurs vie to see who has the best red velvet cake in Brooklyn.

Held tomorrow as a kick-off to NYCreates’ weekend crafts festival at the society, the competition will feature such pros as Betty Bakery, Sweet Melissa Patisserie, Ladybird and Monica Byrne of Home/Made in Red Hook, which won best looking cake the past two competitions and took best all-around cake last year.

“Mine’s not too sweet,” said Byrne. “A mistake that so many people make is making it cloyingly sweet. Your teeth won’t fall out when you’re done eating mine.”

Deciding whether Byrne repeats this year will be Eric Wolitzky of Baked, Sam Jacobs, editor-in-chief of Eating Everywhere, and, the king of Brooklyn eating, Borough President Markowitz. Though the real winner will be you, dear reader, as once the judging’s over, you can sample all the creations — for free!

Red Velvet Cake contest at the Brooklyn Historical Society [128 Pierrepont St. at Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights, (718) 222-4111], Feb. 11 at noon. Free. For info, visit www.nycreates.org. Interested participants can e-mail jeloisehooper@aol.com.

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Brew ha-ha

By Michelle Manetti

Urban tour guides David Naczycz and Cindy VandenBosch want to share a beer, and some history, with you.

Their Jan. 20 lecture, “Brewed in Brooklyn: A History of Fermenting Barley in New York’s Favorite Borough,” will fill the Brooklyn Historical Society with sudsy tales of our borough’s primary role in American brewing — though from 48 breweries in the early 19th century, we’re now down to three (sorry, homebrewers, you don’t count).

The good news is that those three — Brooklyn Brewery, Sixpoint Craft Ales and Greenpoint Beerworks, which makes Kelso of Brooklyn — will have their product on hand to make history go down easier than a Rheingold (brewed in Bushwick in the 1950s, by the way).

“Brewed in Brooklyn: A History of Fermenting Barley in New York’s Favorite Borough” at the Brooklyn Historical Society [128 Pierrepont St. at Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights, (718) 222-4111], Jan. 20 at 6:30 pm. $20 for non-members, $15 for members. For info, visit  www.urbanoyster.com/events.html.

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Your guide to Fort Greene

By Meredith Deliso

Francis Morrone is slowly becoming a borough expert, neighborhood by neighborhood.

The historian has two neighborhood guides under his belt — for Park Slope and Fort Greene/Clinton Hill, both published through the Brooklyn Historical Society — and he is currently at work on guides for Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights at the behest of the respective neighborhood civic associations.

“Brooklyn has become over the years a specialty of mine,” said Morrone, a Chicago native who has lived in Park Slope for 30 years. “It’s inexhaustible.”

When he talks at Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene tonight, though, the focus will be on that corner of this amazing borough, home to Fort Greene Park, the Pratt Institute, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, and once home to Walt Whitman to Spike Lee.

The main focus of the book is the neighborhood’s social history. And here’s a little gem: Poet Marianne Moore famously left the neighborhood after 36 years in 1966 due to rising crime, leading the New York Times to announce the “twilight” of the neighborhood. At the same time, jazz musicians were moving in, and in one building — 245 Carlton Ave. — housed Wes Montgomery, Freddie Hubbard and Eric Dolphy (who even has a song called “245”).

“That’s like Beethoven, Mozart and Bach all sharing a house,” said Morrone. Some “twilight”!

Francis Morrone presents “The Fort Greene and Clinton Hill Neighborhood and Architectural History Guide” at Greenlight Bookstore [686 Fulton St. at S. Portland Avenue in Fort Greene, (718) 246-0200], Jan. 12 at 7:30 pm. Free. For info, visit www.brooklynhistory.org.  

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Latest Dodger exhibition at the Historical Society hits a homer!

By Ben Kochman

For Brooklyn baseball fans, the Dodgers’ 1957 move to California was as knee-buckling as a wicked curveball. But for true baseball fans, the love never left.

Starting next month, the Brooklyn Historical Society rekindles the flame with “Home Base: Memories of the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field,” opening on June 3.

Digging deep into its extensive Dodger collection, the Brooklyn Heights-based society has pulled out memorabilia from the borough’s baseball heyday at the Flatbush diamond, including team photos, ticket stubs, old scorebooks from the 19th century, uniforms, baseball cards, and even seats from the Bedford Avenue bandbox, Ebbets Field.

Most valuable of all has to be the celebrated banner from the team’s 1955 World Series win.

In addition to the priceless memorabilia, the exhibition explores the complex relationship between the Dodgers and its home borough. Because here we are, more than 50 years after the fact, and we’re still talking about the one that got away.

“Home Base: Memories of the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field” at the Brooklyn Historical Society [128 Pierrepont St. at Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights, (718) 222-1241], June 3-April 24, 2011. Opening night celebration from 5:30-7:30 pm. Free. For info, visit www.brooklynhistory.com.

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