March 8–14, 2019 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 AWP 3
Clay it ain’t so!
Slopers mourn closure of beloved store
Photo by Colin Mixson
ON THE RADIO
Trains, parades, audiophiles
By Moses Jefferson
Brooklyn Paper
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green!
That’s right, folks, this
week’s new Brooklyn Paper
Radio episode featured all of
the above, as co-hosts Anthony
Rotunno and Johnny Kunen
talked their way through another
news-packed show with
guests who discussed the latest
calls to split service on
the beleaguered R train between
Brooklyn and Manhattan
, the first formal appearance
of LGBTQ marchers in
the Brooklyn St. Patrick’s Day
Parade , and the Brooklyn Public
Library’s forthcoming podcast
, “Borrowed,” which the
book lenders will debut this
month.
Reporter Julianne Mc-
Shane joined the hosts to fill
listeners in on locals’ concerns
about a quartet of local politicians’
demand that officials
with the state-run Metropolitan
Transportation Authority
again bifurcate interborough
R-train service.
The scheme — which
would stop Manhattan-bound
R trains at Court Street, allowing
weekday riders to freely
transfer to 4 or 5 trains to
continue their journeys, and
weekend straphangers to ride
to the distant isle along the
N line over the Manhattan
Bridge — drew heat from
some residents, one of whom
called in to question just how
many local opinions the electeds
sought before putting the
request in writing to authority
bigwigs.
“I would want to know
about this feedback some of
them claim they are acting on,
where it came from. It seems
like many of us didn’t know
this was being considered,”
said Bay Ridgite Nancy Ford,
who said the last time transit
chiefs bifurcated R-train
service, in the wake of superstorm
Sandy, it added at least
15 minutes to her regular commutes
to Manhattan.
The show then turned from
the subways to the streets, welcoming
Irishman and LGBTQ
advocate Brendan Fay to discuss
Brooklyn St. Patrick’s
Day Parade organizers’ historic
decision to formally
open the march to participants
from those communities
for the first time in its
44-year history.
Fay, whom police arrested
with seven others for “parading
without a permit” after
they tried to join the 1999
march through Park Slope,
said it is about time that people
who identify as Irish, and as
LGBTQ, can celebrate those
identities without fear of retribution.
But to hear more about
what to expect from the library’s
podcast — you’ll have
to tune in to ours.
Brooklyn Paper Radio, recorded
at our studio Downtown,
debuts new episodes
every Tuesday, and can be
found, as always, on BrooklynPaper.
com, iTunes , and
Stitcher .
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
Park Slope is going off
the Pot.
Slopers are sobbing over
the looming closure of yet
another long-standing local
business, Seventh Avenue
retailer The Clay Pot, whose
owner will shutter the local
store on March 10, just months
after it celebrated its 50th anniversary.
“It’s really sad,” said Helen
Spontak, who moved to Park
Slope in 1977. “The neighborhood
is turning into something
I don’t recognize.”
Entrepreneurial couple Bob
and Sally Silberberg opened
The Clay Pot in January 1969,
hawking ceramics they made
on site in a back-room studio
from the shop between Garfield
Place and First Street.
The couple moved to Massachusetts
in 1974, but continued
to operate the store in
absentia, using it to sell their
“seconds” — slightly damaged
pieces they offered on
the cheap — according to their
Second-generation owner Tara Silberberg is closing
The Clay Pot’s Park Slope location on March 10.
daughter Tara Silberberg, who
now runs the shop and a sister
outpost that opened three
years ago in Manhattan.
The Silberbergs expanded
their Seventh Avenue store’s
inventory in the 1980s, stocking
other makers’ merchandise,
including jewelry, in addition
to their ceramics, and
their daughter took charge of
the family business in 1990
after graduating college, saying
her good eye and a talent
for sales made her a natural
successor.
“I wanted to be in Brooklyn,”
said Tara Silberberg. “I
love stuff and it turned out I
had a real knack for it — I’m
an amazing salesman.”
The shop had several years
of strong sales until the financial
crisis in 2008 — and even
then managed to keep its doors
open despite a year-long dry
spell following the crash, the
younger Silberberg said.
“At the beginning of 2008
we were up 25 percent from
2007, then the stock market
crashes, Obama gets elected,
and I had entire orders of really
expensive jewelry that I
didn’t sell a piece of for a year
and a half,” she said.
Sales didn’t really pick up
after the markets corrected
themselves, however, which
the second-generation owner
attributed to a maturing local
clientele and the migration of
its core customers to trendier
parts of the borough.
“This part of Brooklyn
has become older and older
— or extremely wealthy —
both of which don’t seem to
be into this store,” Tara Silberberg
said. “Younger consumers
are the ones who are
more actively buying things.
They need things!”
Still, news of Clay Pot’s impending
closure shocked those
loyalists left in the neighborhood,
many of whom scrawled
messages of love on a long
scroll of paper Silberberg
placed in the shop.
Shuttering the Slope location
will allow her to focus
her efforts on her Manhattan
store, she said.
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