March 10, 2007 / Carroll Gardens–Cobble Hill / Perspective / Brooklyn South

Babyless writer in giftless jam

By Ariella Cohen

The Brooklyn Paper

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I have no babies and so, it has been easy for me to ridicule the extravagance of the brownstone baby belt: the $1,000 strollers, the sexy leggings-and-baby-sling combo, the whirlwind of kid-friendly Smith Street brunches I kept hearing about.

The whole G-rated scene was funny — in a mock-the-bourgeoisie kind of way. I mean, the last time I lived near so many mothers, I lived with my own. And she, with the exception of a brief period in the 1980s, never wore leggings. In fact, as I recall, few mothers I knew were sexy, and the ones that were had awful nicknames. And while there are all kinds of reasons for that, the truth is that Brooklyn’s lithe yoga moms made me feel a little like I had settled into an alternate universe where no one was aging.

Then my sister Danya had her first child.

I became an aunt, and the teenager who helped me skip a day of eighth grade to go to a Cranberries concert became the mother of six pounds of flesh named Eden. Suddenly, it was time to find out what happened inside the belly of the yoga mom beast: the kids’ boutiques. Auntie had to deliver a gift.

In pre-Eden days, I had felt sorry for the parents who dressed their progeny in tiny tees that said “I Party Naked,” or “Chicks dig me.” Now I found myself on Court Street, talking with salesclerks about them.

“Parents now have a little sense of humor,” the clerk at Pizzazz Kids said, adding that the “Bald is Beautiful” shirt was “really popular as a baby shower gift.”

To give a little background, my sister is the person who introduced me to ringer tees a little over a decade ago at the Salvation Army. Our mother yelled at her for letting me bring one home, describing the red-on-white “Virginia is for Lovers” shirt as “dirty-looking.”

I loitered at this poinsettia-sized T-shirt rack pondering what it would mean to buy my niece a shirt that matched her momma’s taste for mid-’90s alterna-culture.

Would I be bringing her a piece of her mom’s youth, or simply dressing an innocent babe in an overpriced tee-shirt fashioned after some rag that Kurt Cobain once played a show in? I couldn’t bring myself to buy one, only to succumb later that day to a $14.99 hot pink tube dress/infant gown from American Apparel’s baby line. It was cute.

I contemplated returning the baby tube dress as soon as I reached the reality of Court Street and spotted an American Apparel ad inside a newsbox. The model was wearing a tube outfit similar to the one I had just bought my three-day-old niece. She looked like she may have been on her way to a “Boogie Nights”-themed frat party.

Oh, consumer culture. Oh, children. The combination was giving me morning sickness.

Braving the nausea, I walked down Smith Street into the capital of holistic, maternal buying: Area Mom and Baby. I smiled at the fleeced-out toddlers blocking my entry. A free yoga class came with every $100 spent on overpriced baby wear.

I listened closely as the women around me compared the merits of the New Native baby carrier to that of the costlier Ergo version. I asked intelligent questions about infant weights and breast size, only leaving the store when a woman in Uggs and a baby over her shoulder started talking in a loud voice about protecting her children from germs on the subway and I remembered the scratch in my throat.

Paranoid, self-righteous, unfit for urban life? Maybe last week. This week, Ugg woman could be my sister. I closed the door carefully behind me.

The Kitchen Sink

Our pal Pasqualina Azzarello, the painter who made a DUMBO construction site bloom with murals, will be speaking with 15 other emerging women artists at Red Hook’s Kentler International Drawing Space today (Saturday) at 4 pm. …

So much for Mayor Bloomberg’s much-ballyhooed task force of local leaders to decide how vacant firehouses, like Engine 204 on Degraw Street, should be disposed of. This week, a spokeswoman for City Planning told The Stoop that the sale of Engine 204 was proceeding as planned. The City Council will hold a final vote on the site’s future by April 23. …

Off the waterfront: Columbia Street literary outpost, Freebird Books, is celebrating its three-year anniversary. It’s been a tough road (check out the huge potholes and constant construction outside their front door) but the shop has come through for the nabe with regular readings, free WiFi, a café that sells corndogs (corndogs, Jerry!) and a whole shelf of local indie books. Owners Sam Citrin and Rachel London promise at least one “wine-addled” rendition of their Lynyrd Skynyrd anthem at a birthday bash on Sunday from 7–10 pm. …

The folks at Flying Saucer on Atlantic Avenue, were complaining the other day about the declining quality of the bagels they get from that overrated, Manhattan-based chain, H&H. Our response: buy Brooklyn!

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper