CLAY POT
ing 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 fi -
nancial 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 such as “Lots of love”
and “We will miss you” on a
long scroll of paper its current
owner placed in a so-called feelings
corner of the shop.
Shuttering the Park Slope
COURIER L 14 IFE, MARCH 8–14, 2019 PS
location will allow Silberberg
to focus her efforts on her Manhattan
store, where she trusts
her long-time local patrons will
trek to for their jewelry and ceramics.
“I’m taking a huge gamble
that Park Slope will follow
me,” she said. “I have so many
loyal customers and I know
they’ll shop in Manhattan.”
And when Clay Pot does
close, it will join a laundry list
of other longtime Slope shops
that shuttered after decades
in business, including optical
shop Visions of Park Slope ,
which closed in October after
27 years in operation; Tex-Mex
restaurant Santa Fe Grill,
which also closed that month
following a 34-year run; and
Seventh Avenue health-food
emporium Back to the Land,
whose owner sold his last supplement
last year after nearly
half a century serving Slopers.
CANAL
nel’s fl oor is still covered by
a thick layer of toxic sludge
known as “black mayonnaise,”
and its water is far
from fully purged of such
fi lth as feces and trace
amounts of gonorrhoea .
A local daredevil — who
over the years has slipped
into a full-body wet suit to
take laps through Brooklyn’s
Nautical Purgatory to raise
awareness of its tainted state
— said anyone who takes an
unprotected plunge into the
canal could risk exposure to
a plethora of chemicals and
pollutants, not to mention
hypothermia.
“He’s going to make contact
with sewage, coal-tar
residue, and whatever is
melting in there from the
streets — so dog s---, gas, oil,
copper, and asbestos dust
from everybody’s break
pads,” said Christopher
Swain. “I hope he’s okay.”
Indeed, not all creatures
that found their way into
the canal survived the experience
— both a dolphin , and
the beloved young Minke
whale “ Sludgie ,” met their
early ends after getting
trapped in the channel.
GOOD TIMES: Silberberg showed off the scroll of paper that locals personalized with their fond memories of
the soon-to-close store. Photo by Colin Mixson
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