The anti-Valentine's Day parties

There’s not just good eating in the borough this Valentine’s Day. Check out the events below for some special love-themed events in Brooklyn, some traditional, some not (murder ballads, anyone?).

Anti-Valentine’s Day reading

Feb. 11, 7 p.m., free

PowerHouse Arena

37 Main St., DUMBO

718-666-3049

Featuring the editor of “It’s Not You, It’s Me; The Poetry of Breakup,” an anthology of ruptured romance featuring contributions from National Book Award finalist Kim Addonizio, bestselling author Denis Johnson, and former poet laureate Mark Strand.

Valentine’s Day cocktail party

Feb. 11, 7:30 p.m., $5

Word bookstore

126 Franklin St., Greenpoint

718-383-0096

Take a trip to the 1950s, as Time Table presents a cocktail party featuring aphrodisiac food and drink from the 1952 book, “Venus in the Kitchen: Or Love’s Cookery Book.” Feel free to dress the part.

BAGGAGE Claim

Feb. 14, 6 p.m., free
Brooklyn Artists Gym

168 7th St., Gowanus

718-858-9069

Help BAG build a temporary museum with the evidence of love gone by. Bring your mix tapes, hoodies, love letters, crappy jewelry and all forms of bad gifts, and exchange them for new items. You never wore that tee-shirt anyway.

Pete n Jenny’s Cheap Date Valentine’s Day Cabaret

Feb. 14, 7 p.m., $10

Jalopy

315 Columbia St., Red Hook

718-395-3214

This annual cabaret features something for everyone: love songs, murder ballads, burlesque dancers, comedy, poetry, trivia, magic and a kissing booth. Bring, or find, someone to kiss.

I Heart Brooklyn Party

Feb. 14, 3-7 p.m., free

MoCADA

80 Hanson Pl., Downtown Brooklyn

718-230-0492

Show your love for Brooklyn this Valentine’s Day, as the museum presents an afternoon of readings by Brooklyn-based poets, followed by a DJ Set featuring hits by Brooklyn’s illustrious musical artists. It’ll be OK to dance by yourself.

Get Your Heart On!

Feb. 14, 8 p.m., free

3rd Ward

195 Morgan Ave., Bushwick

718-715-4961

Moviehouse presents three-minute romantic movies that include these three criterion: a reference to at least one of the three wise monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil), a celebrity death, and something uncontrollable. How romantic.

Aphrodisiacs and Amor
Feb. 14, 5-7:30 p.m., $65 per couple

SHAG
108 Roebling St., Williamsburg

347-721-3302

SHAG, a fine art gallery and seller of sex toys, hosts a provocative dinner with Nuevo Latino Chef Alex Garcia, who will tease and tantalize the taste buds with a course in aphrodisiacs for couples, who will enjoy their meal blindfolded.

The Rejection Show Valentine’s Day Heartbreak Haven

Feb. 14, 8 p.m., $10
The Bell House

149 7th St., Gowanus

718-643-6510

This one’s for the rejected: comedy series The Rejection Show celebrates Valentine’s Day with an evening of its best breakup, heartbreak and love-related stories, with performances from Jon Friedman (pictured above), Eliza Skinner, Max Silvestri, Sara Schaefer, Gabe Liedman, Gabe Delahaye, Edith Zimmerman, and more, as well as music from The Defibulators, who’s always ready for a party. Despite the theme, all – even happy couples – are welcome. Just don’t be too showy about it.

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The Pink Elephant speaks

By Meredith Deliso

Gentrification in Brooklyn is like a topic you shouldn’t bring up at dinner.

For their next exhibition, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) confronts the issue right head-on with “The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks.”

Through the works of over 20 different artists in nearly as many mediums, the issue is broken down into its conglomerates – real estate development, eminent domain, class issues related to income and housing – through literal and abstract explorations in photography, painting, video, sculpture, poetry and music.

“Now is a good time for this show,” says curator Dexter Wimberly, a Brooklyn native who currently lives in Fort Greene. “Brooklyn is becoming so homogenized. As a curator, it was important to me to make sure this exhibition was not just an African American perspective, or a white perspective or an Asian perspective or a Latino perspective. It was important to try to involve artists that were representative of all these ethnicities.”

(To read about student participation in the exhibition, go here.)

And while most of the artists live in Brooklyn as well, some of them have been forced out of their neighborhoods due to the exact issues the exhibition explores. Alexandria Smith moved out of Bedford-Stuyvesant last summer because of skyrocketing rents, she says. Her painting, “Good Neighbors,” which shows a young woman making or building a fence (it’s intentionally unclear), is not about that, but rather is derived from a line in a Robert Frost poem, “Mending Wall,” which discusses how people use boundaries or walls to avoid the outside world and its problems.

“As I created this painting, I thought about its relevance to Brooklyn and the rise of expensive condos and co-ops springing up in areas of Brooklyn that have long been neglected/ignored by the city,” said Smith. “People have difficulty relating to one another because of differing beliefs which in turn leads to people closing themselves off to one another. In actuality, we are a community and should operate as such.”

Some pieces aren’t necessarily about gentrification, but still speak to it. Marie Roberts has lived in Coney Island her whole life, and Wimberly felt it was important to include her work – sideshow billboard paintings – in the exhibition. “To me, it kind of embodies what Coney Island is about,” says Wimberly.

Included in the exhibition is the piece “Fire Eater,” which previously could be found outside of the Sideshows by the Seashore Theater at Surf Avenue and West 12 Street.“While my fire eater is a modern lady, she stands on the shoulders of a long tradition of performers in Coney Island,” says Roberts.

Not all of the pieces can be found in the downtown Brooklyn space. Gabriel Reese, who does outdoor work in his neighborhood of Crown Heights, created hand-painted billboards that address a different impact of gentrification, from housing to food to demographics, to be placed in different areas of Brooklyn.

“I use humor, subversion and references to popular culture to illustrate the issues,” says Reese, one of whose billboards features, in a fake advertisement, two white women, one wearing a gold “Brooklyn” chain, above the words “Ghetto Fabulous Condos.” “Some of the billboards are down-right offensive, but I would rather offend someone and have them notice these works than be politically correct and no one see them.”

Regardless of which side of the fence who stand on, Wimberly hopes the exhibition sparks a conversation about these timely issues. “It’s about taking what has been historically an uneasy topic, and making people more comfortable with the idea of talking about it,” he says.

Reese, in his way, would agree. “My only goal is to get people to discuss the topic of gentrification. If they go home after seeing one of my pieces and rant about it, I would be very pleased.”

“The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks,” opens February 4 at MoCADA (80 Hanson Pl.), with a free reception from 6-9 pm featuring a musical set by author and DJ Rich Burroughs.The exhibition runs until May 16, 2010, with admission $5 for adults, $4 for students (with valid ID) and seniors, and free for children 12 and under. The museum is open Wednesday-Sunday from 11 am -7 pm. Several public events are also planned throughout its run. For more information, call 718-230-0492.

Photos: An outdoor billboard promoting the exhibition, photo by Gabriel Reese and Lauren Besser; Alexandria Smith'a "Good Neigbors", painting (56" by 56" - Oil on Panel), photo credit: Alexandria Smith; Marie Roberts' "The Fire Eater," painting, photo credit: D. James Dee.

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