The "Losing you" singer released a mini-video yesterday that shows her hanging out on the steps of the infamous pink house of Park Slope. The hot pink Pepto-Bismol building, a local landmark at 233 Garfield Place, was stripped of its hallmark color late last year when it was sold for $2.075 million to a couple who did not care for the shocking hue. The move was applauded by neighbors who were tired of the buzz around the home.

The bright addition to the neighborhood was apparently due to a mix-up while decorating: “They sent me the wrong paint,” the previous owner, retired tailor Bernie Henry, told the Daily News in 2009.

The 96-year-old had started painting the property in 1961, but it had only become the shade that made it famous in the past few years. He admitted that it had scuppered preceding plans to sell the place, with buyers backing out over fears that they would either have to stick with the color or risk being vilified for changing it.

Luckily for fans of the property, Solange included the four-story house in an advertising clip in conjunction with Absolut Vodka. The indie-darling spends most of the vide0 just walking around, being cool and looking at photos of herself coupled with arty shots of people’s shoes.

The short, part of a promotion for her single "Locked in the Closet" (apparently nothing to do with R. Kelly), has been embraced by those missing the real-life Barbie Dreamhouse, including Ruthanne Pigott, the realtor who handled the sale:

"I am aware of the video and as a life long Park Sloper I think it's cool. I passed that pink house too many times to count from childhood to adulthood. I remember when the house right next door was green."

Ms. Gilmartin's new home is as classical as Atlantic Yards is modern.

When Forest City Ratner executive vice president—and soon to be CEO, once Bruce Ratner steps down—MaryAnne Gilmartin spoke to Westchester Magazine, she was asked for "the most baseless criticism" leveled against her. She responded, "That I don’t really know Brooklyn, so I’m not qualified to develop a project there. I lived in Brooklyn from 1988 to 1993."

That criticism is about to get a little more baseless: Ms. Gilmartin and her husband, James, just bought a townhouse in Park Slope, according to city records. The couple paid $3.85 million for the four-story, 20-foot-wide brownstone at 113 St. John's Place, and will presumably be moving from their home in Edgemont, New York.

Situated between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, Ms. Gilmartin's new home is close enough to Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards development that Ms. Gilmartin can walk to Nets games (1 MetroTech, where she works, is a bit of a slog), but not so close that she'll have to compete with arena-goers over parking, or deal with the Barclays Center's booming bass or the sudden outbreaks of Bieber fever that have been known to grip the neighborhood.

And while Forest City Ratner normally chooses modernist architects for its projects—Renzo Piano for the New York Times building, Frank Gehry at 8 Spruce Street and SHoP at Atlantic Yards—Ms. Gilmartin's new abode is thoroughly classical. The interior doorways are still framed by elaborate wooden pilasters, pediments and other classical architectural elements that we're not sophisticated enough to identify, and the wooden fireplace and staircase remain intact.

Ms. Gilmartin unfortunately could not use the power of eminent domain to seize the six-bedroom, 4,160-square foot home from sellers Paul and Chandra Graves, and in fact had to pay $100,000 over the asking price of $3.75 million. The sellers were represented by Libby and Maria Ryan of Brown Harris Stevens, and the buyers by James Cornell and Leslie Marshall at Corcoran.

It has long been heralded as the candy-colored jewel in the chocolate crown of Brooklyn’s brownstone belt, but the new owners of Park Slope’s wackiest house have decided, with the blessing of the city, to return it to its natural shade. The building has become something of a local landmark since Bernie Henry, now 92 years old, bought the place in 1961. He repainted it the fetching pink hue as a gift to his wife. Well, they do say love is blind.

To commemorate the long reign of Brooklyn’s perkiest looking pad, Curbed took to the streets to see what the locals made of the disappearance of this love-it-or-hate-it home, and how they’ll cope without their pink palace.

The duplex in a recently-converted carriage house has a lot of nice features—it's contemporary in design and amenities, with a nod to the home's history (the mantle in the living room is fashioned from several of the building's old beams). But the most impressive perk, by far, is the 1,200-square-foot roof deck with a fireplace where Mr. Stewart can spend his evenings staring at the stars. Sure, it's not the same as hurtling through outer-space, but Brooklyn's uber-bourgeois neighborhood can sometimes feel rather alien, with its strange child-rearing rituals and myriad ways of making a cup of coffee.

All in all, the place looks perfect for the sleek Captain Picard—we just couldn't picture him in something fussy and Victorian—and we hope that he gets his cable problems sorted out soon, restoring his will to live. Hey, we've all been there.

The house, listed by Brown Harris Stevens brokers Libby and Maria Ryan sold at the $2.5 million ask. And while they might have sunk a lot into the remodel, owners Vanessa DiCarlo Dawson and Giles Luke Dawson made quite a profit, having bought the place for $1.3 million just a year ago. Best of all, this provides more fodder for the Park Slope Patrick Stewart tumbler.

kvelsey@observer.com

On the one hand, Mr. Belichick has made a little money on the sale of the townhouse, netting $2.75 million, according to city records. Not bad considering that he paid $2.2 million for the five-bedroom, three-bath residence back in 2006.

But on the other hand, the house was allegedly a love nest for Mr. Belichick and mistress Sharon Shenocca, whom Mr. Belichick was rumored to have taken up with after splitting from his longtime wife in 2006. Or, if not a love nest, at least a friendly benefit of Ms. Shenocca's close relationship with Mr. Belichick. Whatever the state of relations, or lack thereof, between Mr. Belichick and Ms. Shenocca, their love affair with the Park Slope townhouse is fini.

The house sold at ask to 609 6th Street Realty LLC. after being listed in March (perhaps 609 6th Street is also trying to conceal a secret love along with his or her, or most likely their name(s)?). As for Mr. Belichick, while he purchased the home with infinite care under the BR Realty Trust back in 2006, he took a far more laissez-faire approach when it came time to sell, signing the deed himself before a notary in Foxborough, Mass., where the Patriots' stadium is located.

Maybe Mr. Belichick became tired of the lonely life in Brooklyn and decided to seek out the company of fellow NFL coaches Bill Cowher and Romeo Crennel on the Upper East Side. Group huddle!

So what did this unimaginatively named LLC that bought the place get? A double parlor, lots of windowed rooms with Southern exposures, a library with a fireplace and a large garden (it's no football field, but there's space enough to sun). Listing photos show a place disappointingly devoid of big screen TVs and sports memorabilia. The listing held by Brown Harris Stevens broker Charles Ruoff makes no mention of the closet situation, but we suppose it would have to be somewhat generous to accommodate Mr. Belichick's countless hoodies.

kvelsey@observer.com

Hide yo' bikes, hide yo' wives (Getty Images)

Bike parts being stolen in Brooklyn can mean only one thing: It's officially summer. (It doesn't matter how hot it is outside, if you can keep your bike safe for over three days in Bushwick, it's still Spring.) Now go down to the police precinct and file that police report that won't do you any good.

Yesterday, Natalie O’Neill of The Brooklyn Paper wrote a blog post about the rash of bicycle wheels stolen in Park Slope over the past week. Five of those bikes were left with a note attached, which was photocopied a phone number and a message: "Who ever owns the bike and 2 stolen wheels, I caught the guy + have the two stolen bike wheels."

Ms. O'Neill floated the theory that the person who left the note was part of an elaborate bike wheel-heisting crew, who were looking to ransom the cycle parts back to their owners.
Except that the man who answered the number listed on the sheet says that he only left one note.

The Observer called the number listed on Brooklyn Paper's photo and was connected to an older gentleman who refused to identify himself. He claimed to be retired and on Social Security and told us to call back at 9 p.m. because he "couldn't afford to pay any more for these prank phone calls."

When we asked if he knew about the notes, and for his name, the man started yelling. "How dare you! Do you know how many people called yesterday because of that young woman's blog! Just because I left one note? I got the bike wheels, I caught the guy trying to steal them, and I don't want to be hassled."

The Observer agreed to call back the unidentified man after 9 P.M., when hopefully his free minutes will allow him to be more generous in his explanation of how his note got photo-coppied and used in identical bike thefts.

The general consensus was that no one was having much sex, and no one wanted to, either. Many of the mothers said they could count the number of times they’d had sex postpartum on one hand, and some had 8- and 9-month-old babies. When I came home and reported these stats to my husband, he was elated. We manage to have sex about once a week, which is the new-parent equivalent of constantly.
Not that it’s been easy. No one tells you this, but babies are the world’s biggest cockblock.

The first few times we attempted to rekindle the romance, our son—perhaps sensing the potential biological threat of additional offspring—refused to cooperate. Time after time, we attempted to put him down in his bassinet, only to hear him squeal moments later as we prepared to doff our spit-up-stained sweatpants. Once we finally succeeded, it was a hurried affair, and not as enjoyable for me as I would have liked—not because of any failure on the part of my husband, but because it was impossible for me not to worry that my equipment had been ... well, compromised.

The problem is, once you’ve pushed a baby through an orifice you once reserved for recreational purposes, it’s hard to go back, psychologically speaking. That’s not always a bad thing—I recently needed encouragement to finish a stressful project on deadline, and a friend put her hand on mine and told me, with some very meaningful eye contact, “You gave birth. You can do anything”—but when you’re in the throes of passion and suddenly you find yourself thinking, “A head came out of there!” it kind of puts a damper on the proceedings. I remember my 10th-grade health teacher, Ms. Drvostep, gravely informing the class during a discussion of human sexuality that, at least biologically, the anus was designed as an “out hole.” Maybe that’s my problem. My vagina was an in hole, then it was (briefly, but memorably) an out hole, and now it’s supposed to be an in hole again. It’s having an identity crisis, and it doesn’t help that sometimes, when I’m drying off after a shower, my husband will point at my crotch and exclaim gleefully to our child, “There’s your old house!”

There is also the uncomfortable (double entendre intended) truth that it’s hard to go back, physiologically speaking, even if your doctor gives you the go-ahead after six weeks, which is the standard abstinence period gratefully celebrated by the new mom and ascetically endured by the new dad (the wait time is even longer following caesarean sections). No matter how many kegels—pelvic exercises akin to vaginal bicep curls, for the uninitiated—you do, the fact remains that a fully formed human being weighing around eight pounds came out of an opening previously accustomed to visitors of a smaller girth.

An old Lenny Bruce routine once compared a large penis to a baby’s arm, but add a second arm, two legs, a torso and a head that feels, from the inside, like a bowling ball set on fire, and you have something not at all like a penis. So naturally there is going to be some fallout (no pun intended! none!) from the stretching. No one wants to talk about it, of course. I mean, I’m always seeing tabloid covers crowing about some celebrity or other’s post-baby body, which they presumably achieve through a combination of colonic therapy, macrobiotic diet and virgin sacrifice. But I never see an article about, say, Jessica Alba’s post-baby vagina. And if hers isn’t ready for the pages of Us Weekly, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

It’s a slippery slope even under the best of circumstances, and I’m not speaking literally, as anyone who’s experienced the drying effects of plummeting postpartum estrogen can attest. Even if you do get over the libido-robbing hormone fiesta and the colicky coitus interuptus and manage to retain enviable nether regional muscle tone and semi-regular bedpost-notching, there’s one thing that no amount of personal grooming or mood music can change, and that’s the realization that you’re now somebody’s mother. As such, society now gives you two exciting choices, a special procreative variation on the traditional madonna/whore: either succumb to the high-waisted jeans, sensible earlobe-length haircut, and soccer-friendly SUV of the asexual martyr who lives in a Tide commercial, or get a gym membership, hop on the treadmill, and run like hell for MILF Island. (To be clear, not a real place, although I hear East Hampton is getting close.)

The term MILF itself points up the problem. I’ve always disliked it, and not just because it’s icky and sophomoric, but because it suggests that a mother who’s considered sexually desirable is an endangered species on a par with the Tasmanian Devil or the Giant Panda. I like to think I am at least as sexy as a regular-size panda, on days I’ve managed to shower.

Despite all of the awkwardness and body dysmorphia outlined above, however, I’m happy to report that I still very much enjoy sex when conditions are ideal (baby, asleep; me, awake), and that despite what my sense memory occasionally tells me, no part of my anatomy resembles the Holland Tunnel, even in passing. Post-baby sex can even feel sometimes like the carefree sex of my youth, except that it’s faster and more exhausted—not to be confused with exhaustive—and we can’t make any noise for fear of scarring our sleeping child for life. And we never even consider not using protection in the heat of the moment, because, seriously, look where that got us.

But otherwise, it’s good. Plus there’s the added bonus that I might find a stray Cheerio in my bra. Kinky.
editorial@observer.com

Parking ring rage: the rumors are true! (streetinfo.org)

Park Slope residents are fed up, and this time it's not about those ice cream pushers in the park.

The Brooklyn Paper, in an act of investigative derring-do,  has confirmed what residents have long suspected—a secret parking spot-saving scheme run by the doormen of pricey buildings on Prospect Park West.

The parking ring, long alleged by enraged local residents, is the real deal, the paper reports. Doormen hog parking spaces on street sweeping days, intentionally leaving unparkable half-spaces in front of and in back of cars, then shift the cars around for returning residents.

“I just use my car to hold a spot for them,” Vick Narain, a doorman at 44 Prospect Park West, told The Brooklyn Paper. “The minute there’s a space, it will be gone within five minutes; someone’s always looking for parking around here.”

Sneaky!

Mr. Narain also confessed to saving spots by standing in the road when alternate-side parking rules are enforced.

Other doormen denied involvement in the nefarious spot-saving parking ring, although they admitted to moving residents' cars on occasion.

Naturally, residents who must go it alone on the mean streets of Park Slope, without the aid of a doorman, are outraged by such tactics. Street sweeping makes parking miserable enough without unfair advantages.

“Sometimes you spend 30 or 45 minutes driving around looking for a spot,” resident Carolyn Byrd told The Paper. “It gets really contentious.”

Police say that such tactics are not illegal, but some residents have decided to take justice into their own hands, issuing homemade parking "citations" to space-wasting cars.

In true Park Slope form, the citations are two pages long.

kvelsey@observer.com

Pissed about Park Slope Parking (StreetInfo.Org)

Oh, crazy Brooklynites, will you never change? It's been less than two months since the incident at D’Amico Coffee in Carroll Gardens, when an angry note on the door alerted fans of the 75-year-old shop that nosy neighbors had petitioned the city to get involved in their coffee battle (apparently some people just hate the smell of freshly roast grounds).

This weekend continued the passive-aggressive madness in the form of more homemade "notes": with area residents this time taking to the streets in Park Slope to leave long-form essays on the windshields of motorists who took up too much space with their parking without violating any actual laws.

Read the entire two-page citation, via StreetsBlog.org.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was eating a pint of ice cream—well, gelato—when I received my weekly PSP digest, which was otherwise a lovely and harmless collection of stories about people getting help spying on their nannies using iPhone apps, or choosing the right Jewish day school, that read like an ever-so-slightly ethnic Nicholas Sparks novel. But when I got to the blast about the the ice cream incident, I pushed back my stracciatella in shame.

It all started when someone posting under the innocuous-enough pen name “Sarah” emailed the list serve with her plight: “We were at 9th Street playground... and two different people came into the actual playground with ice cream/Italian ice push carts... I left with a crying 4 year old because I would not let him get ice cream...” “Sarah” then wondered if the vendors were even legal, prompting a self-described “curmudgeon” named Crystal to opine, “We could list other illegal activities in the playgrounds... public urination, selling drugs... And yet... unlicensed food carts... are somehow more acceptable?”

Now, normally things named Crystal disagree with me—crystal meth, Crystal Pepsi, that natural deodorant that looks like the lovechild of a golf ball and Troy from Out of This World—but this one really struck a chord.

When I was coming of age in the early nineties, I wasn’t allowed to walk in Prospect Park alone due to the likelihood of running into a heroin pusher or a Crip; who knew it could get so much worse, so fast? That the sound of the Mister Softee jingle—a cloying riff on “Pop Goes the Weasel,” itself an incredibly threatening nursery rhyme when you think about it—would become tantamount to Peter Lorre’s creepy pedophilic whistling in M?

A lot of people have gotten upset over the suggestion that frozen treat purveyors should be outlawed from peddling their popsicles during spring and summer, their busiest seasons, and use this kerfuffle as yet another excuse to bash what one Gothamist commenter called Park Slope’s “whiny bitchass” parents.

Here, however, I must disagree. In fact, I’ll take it a step further. Why limit the ban to mobile carts? I can’t count how many times I pass Ample Hills Creamery, the popular ice cream spot on my corner, and flash forward to the day when my son will demand a cup of the small-batch brand’s “Salted Crack Caramel,” so named for the diabetes-courting mixture of saltines, butter, sugar and chocolate mixed in to the base flavor.

I’m already working with my life coach to prepare for the first time I’ll have to deny my child pleasure; to see his angelic little face redden, his rosebud lips twisting into a grimace as he experiences soul-shredding rejection for the first time.

But honestly, what about toy stores? Pet stores? Restaurants that carelessly leave Dixie cups full of tempting crayons out on their tables, forcing me to sternly remind my son that he is not the next Basquiat? What of the artisanal mayonnaise store opening mere blocks from my apartment? I shudder to think of a beautiful day of bonding ruined when my child stops in his tracks, hurls his ciabatta BLT to the sidewalk and pleads with me to buy him a tub of white-truffle mayo to bring out the flavor of the house-smoked heritage bacon. Oscar Wilde was so right when he wrote, “I can resist anything except temptation.” And it’s everywhere.

(Incidentally, to those judgmental dictators who implore, in the parlance of Nancy Reagan, that parents just say “no”: We don’t say “the N word” in my house. Instead we say, “Whatever would mean the most to you emotionally,” while making the sign language gesture for “freedom”.)

I think it’s interesting that the Hester Prynne of this urban fable, the PSP-er identified only as “Sarah,” limited her complaint to vendors in the playgrounds, when deep down we all know the playgrounds themselves are the real problem. How many times has a perfectly good walk in the park been sullied when a child stops short, unable to resist the siren song (banshee shriek is more like it) of the tire swing, that staph infection on chains that calls to mind something pulled out of the Tin Man’s rotting S&M dungeon. Or the mealy, festering sandbox? And don’t even get me started on slides. Did Chutes and Ladders teach us nothing? How will squeaking down a white-hot gauntlet of gnarled metal help my son get into Dalton?

For Christmas last year my father had the audacity to give my son the Fisher Price Chatter Telephone! In addition to confusing a post-millennial child with its obscenely large handset and alien rotary dial, its “pull cord” might as well have arrived from the factory tied in a noose.

Oh, and newsflash to the 16 people who gave the Play-Doh Fun Factory a five-star rating on Amazon: it’s not so “fun” for kids with celiac disease and a penchant for eating brightly-colored clay, or for young foodies who want to learn to make a decent hand-cut tagliatelle. Sheesh.

These things—these fripperies—may seem as harmless as a soft-serve cone, but as we now see, even that is a trauma waiting to happen.

And what of Sarah and Crystal’s inquiry as to whether the ice-cream vendor’s presence was legal? Turns out it’s not—Megan’s law does not have a Sno-Kone proviso. Look for a Park Slope Parents citizen’s arrest initiative soon.