Quirky Ed Eisenberg even donned bunny ears for the occasion.
The community activist made sure his support was highly visible at the New Spring Garden Restaurant in Bay Ridge, where Borough President Markowitz donned a red silk kimono and helped ring in the Chinese New Year with a revel and an awards ceremony held in conjunction with the Camp Brooklyn Fund.
Costumed dancers from the Brooklyn Chinese-American Association feted the crowd with dazzling routines steeped in Asian folklore, while opera stars Min Chen and Arthur Lai crooned crowd-pleasing songs.
They might have been a tough act to follow for some people, but “Mr. Brooklyn” — a cultural chameleon — had no problem ushering in the Year of the Rabbit by mixing business with pleasure.
Markowitz handed out awards at the dining establishment, which is on 65th St. between Ninth Avenue and Fort Hamilton Parkway, to four honorees for their support of the Fund, which he created in 2002 to give children from low-income families an opportunity to attend sleep-away camp “and have the experience of a lifetime.”
Those recipients were: Bernard Duffy, market president of Brooklyn and Staten Island, and senior director of Northeast Market Operations at Capital One Bank; Colvin Grannum, president of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation; Ilene Margolin, senior vice president at EmblemHealth; and Charley Ryan and Peter Shapiro, founders of Brooklyn Bowl.
“It was one hoppin’ event,” said Eisenberg.
