There are two amazing upcoming food-related volunteer opportunities in North Brooklyn, and each involves a fundraiser for a worthy cause in our community. The first is tonight at the Greenpoint Reformed Church where the Greenpoint Soup Kitchen Supper Club will be hosted. Proceeds from the supper club will help benefit Greenpoint Reformed Church’s soup kitchen and food pantry, which serves over a hundred homeless and underprivileged members of the community per week.  Details here.

The second is the third annual TASTE Williamsburg Greenpoint event, a block party-style tasting event featuring of 40 restaurants, breweries and wineries from neighborhood. The event is a fundraiser for the completion of the Northside Town Hall Community and Cultural Center. TASTE will be held on the 9th, but there are volunteer opportunities beginning this weekend and ending on the day of the event. For each volunteer shift completed, volunteers will receive a ticket that gives the ticketholder four “tastes” (food samples) and two drinks at the event.

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Maybe you’ve seen Elke Reva Sudin, 24, walking around Williamsburg’s Northside? She’s petite and pretty, and, up until recently, had a full head of dreadlocks tucked into a headscarf, and was probably wearing a long skirt. Sudin also walked around the Southside dressed much the same way, but chances are you didn’t notice her there. She “passed” just as easily on that side of the neighborhood, taken by residents for another young, religious girl—albeit one carrying a sketchbook and a cadre of felt-tip pens. Sudin talked to everyone she met, found out their “stories,” and drew them (later making paintings of them in acrylic). All this was in service of a series she was creating as part of her senior BFA thesis at Pratt, its title: “Hipsters and Hassids.”

Today Sudin has become something of a human bridge between the worlds of contemporary art and Judaism. Along with her filmmaker husband Saul, 28, Sudin runs Jewish Art Now, a website that’s a clearinghouse and news organ for all things dealing with contemporary art and underground Jewish culture. She curates shows (Industry City in Sunset Park; Gallery Bar on the Lower East Side) and produces ambitious live-music/dj events that are helping to galvanize an already strong scene of young, Jewish-identifying artists. By winter, Jewish Art Now will also launch as a print publication. I sat Elke down during the high-holiday break to ask how the neighborhood helped forge her inner, cool-meets-Jew comfort zone.

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The Greenpoint Community Meeting is a conversation between community advocates who have spent most of their lives fighting for North Brooklyn, area artists whose work is deeply connected to sense of place and transformation of space, but who rarely attend advocacy and political meetings, along with professionals in design, architecture and landscape architecture whose work integrally engages and serves communities.

The meeting was organized by the Institute for Applied Reporting and Urbanism with support from Susannah Drake of Dland Studio. The studio is located at Greenpoint View, a gallery at 82 Oak Street owned by sculptor Stephen Balamut, and run by Sascha Asher, an interior designer specializing in textiles.

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Tuesday 4/20: Grow Your Parks – The Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn presents Grow Your Parks: a Forum for Park Lovers to Share Ideas for Making our Parks Better. Propose Your Own Park Improvement Idea; Vote on Proposed Projects; and Hear Updates from NYC Department of Parks & Recreation.  6:30pm at Polish National Home (a.k.a. Warsaw), 261 Driggs Avenue/Eckford Street.

Wednesday 4/21: Williamsburg Walks Brainstorming Session – Williamsburg Walks is organizing a brainstorming session to solicit your ideas on how to make the event fun, memorable, and fulfilling. This is a chance for you to get your questions answered, to share your suggestions and to support the event in general. At the session, the organizers will update the group on our latest progress planning the event and conduct a brainstorming session about the kind of programming the community would like to see happen on their street. 6 to 8 pm at Teddy’s Bar & Grill, 96 Berry Street (corner of N8th Street).  RSVP on Facebook.

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Yesterday’s photo of the day sort of pointed it out, but I’ll reiterate it; the India Street Mural Project is now complete. Yep, that’s right, all the hard work the North Brooklyn Public Arts Commission put in to help beautify a desolate Greenpoint block has paid off, and to celebrate the group is having a launch party this Saturday. The event will kick off at 2:15 pm Saturday afternoon with a “press conference and ribbon cutting ceremony with David Yassky.” In addition, Japanther, Ninja Sonik and others will be taking the stage, while local favorites Cafecito Bogota, Plates & Records and the just opened Cookie Road will be on hand serving food. Oh, and you’ll be able to take in the spectacular street art of Ali Aschman, Eve Biddle & Joshua Frankel,  Joshue Abram Howard, Robert Seng, Skewville and Chris Soria.

For more details, read the NBPAC’s press release.

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