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EditorialsNew and ImprovedThe past week%u2019s announcements of big new rehabilitation projects for downtown Brooklyn neighborhoods are welcome news. A well-designed complex of co-operative housing on the partly bare land known as Block 207 will bring needed family-sized apartments to the North Brooklyn Heights area. In Prospect Heights, some of the low and moderate income people, who so often fear thatrenovation of a neighborhood will drive them out, are going to get a chance to beome owners of their apartments, which will be rehabilitated under a Federal pilot program.While we%u2019re waiting for these new programs, we can enjoy watching the facade improvements of Pintchik%u2019s Paints, the overy-briyhi uuiiu inys aiony Haibusn wnicn will shortly be redecorated in quieter tones through the aid of the Brooklyn Union Gas Company Cinderella Program and the Williamsburgh Savings Bank.Sound Off Readers Talk BackMyopic News ViewsAs a resident of Park Slope, considered by many, your readers included, to be among the city%u2019s most vital neighborhoods 1 am annoyed by the continued myopic newsviews of the Phoenix.Outside of the Redlining issue which gave us more detail than most could consume, your reporting of Park Slope events, problems, political issues, schools or stores is so lacking in depth that it usually amounts to a mere catalogue of vital statistics.That your focus has been slightly to the right of 395 Atlantic Avenue largely ignoring what is newsorthy and interesting about Park Slope is the entire community%u2019s loss. 1 hope in the future you%u2019ll really open your eyes and offer several communities belter means of communication.%u2014RivaRosen field, Garfetld PlaceBusiness MoralityJust a note to thank you for the article Vigil Protests Stevens at A & S in the October 4th edition of the Phoenix. We really appreciate the space and the willingness of the Phoenix to recognize the boycott campaign at A & S for what it is%u2014working people trying to convince a very powerful business in Brooklyn that morality should have a place in their world. Again, our sincere thanks and all bestwishes.%u2014Gene Carroll, J.P. Stevens Boycott Staff, 770 Broadway New YorkGallery MisconceptionsThere arc several mis-conceptions in Slcgman%u2019s article concerning the changes in Atlantic Avenue galleries: (Local Co-Op Galleries Wane, Oct. 4).First, she does not state clearly the basic factor precipitating the moves: Lou Shaloub, a local businessman, owns the buildings of all three of the galleries that arc closing. Wc all had leases to be negotiated this fall Shaloub presented Atlantic Gallery with an increase nearing 40 percent of our current rent. We tried to negotiate with him for a more reasonable increase (wc would have accepted 20 percent) and were met with a request to vacate on the expiration of our lease. It was this factor that made us decide to move to Manhattan.Secondly, there is a misconception concerning co-op galleries versus dealerowned galleries. Not all artists in co-op galleries are %u201cyounger untried artists%u201d ; many are there by philosophy. There is more freedom for the artist in a co-op gallery; you can present any aspect of your work you wish, not simply what may be commercially viable.A show is a statement, not a means of communication. Visual artists are in a funny position because their work isavailable to the public free but the show is financed only if some of the work sells to an individual. The sales do not determine the ariistic success of a show. I feel Stegman adopts a business philosophy in evaluating the success of the galleries. For some the co-ops are an alternative not just a place to show when you have been rejected by commercial galleries. Some of us have work in commercial galleries. The dealerrun galleries can show only what sells; many artists in these galleries do not get iheir work promoted because the dealer depends on the famous artist or the dead ariist for income. The co-ops are more cclcciic because artists judge each others%u2019 work and do not have to depend on a %u201c look%u201d for the gallery.Thirdly, we at Atlantic, never considered ourselves a %u201c Brooklyn%u201d gallery; we considered ourselves an art gallery. Stegman echoes the kind of prejudice that limited reviews, etc. Re: the %u201c collector%u201d (whom no artist I spoke with seems to know): All the co-ops have problems selling work; people have trouble trusting ihcir own judgement instead of the judgement of an authority. Stegman writes as if the galleries %u201c failed%u201d ; we did not fail. We never felt we had to have gimmicks to justify our existence. We put on shows of contemporary art; wc had dance and music concerts; wc had funding from the New York State Council on the Arts for this very reason. So wc arc moving to SoHo tocontinue the same goings-on.%u2014SabraMoore, Painter, Founding Member, Atlantic Gallery.Mapping the SlopeThe Phoenix should start reading its own paper! In three distinct places you report of my tour of the southern area of Park Slope alternately given and%u201c 8th St. to Prospect Avenue%u201d & %u201c Below 9th St.%u201d In an article, %u201c The Market%u2019s Tight, But....%u201d the boundaries of Park Slope are properly defined by people who give their time to make %u201c news%u201d for the Phoenix.Bui...in your reporter Betsy Kissam%u2019s article, accompanied by a map, the boundaries of Park Slope both appear and are reported inaccurately. Quote, %u201c A portion of the neighborhood from roughly 9th St. to Park Place....was designated as an historic district in 1973.%u201d The district fully extends to 14th St. and the proposed expansion to Windsor Place, hardly %u201c 9th St.%u201d The map too, as handsome as it is, fails to indicate the full coverage of Park Slope along the entire western border of Prospect Park.Since you are looked upon by many, myself included, as a voice for Park Slope, I would appreciate your improved accuracy when dealing with the southern area of Americas finest Victorian neighborhood. Much continued success.--Carl Kaiserman,12th St. Park Slope.At Large by L.J. DavisSkating Down The Tube In A Seventies Zero-Think HazeBY L.J. DAVISI don%u2019t mean to boast, but I don%u2019t have a thought in my head. It is immaterial whether this state springs from shellshock subsequent to reading Bel Kaufman%u2019s new novel or from taking my kid%u2019s post-school telephone calls or from some other but equally proximate cause, such as ice tea or ingrown toenails. The fact remains: I don%u2019t have a thought in my head. Zip. Zilch. Zero. It%u2019s all sort of dark in there, and the curtains are getting dusty.This is an unusual state of affairs for me%u2014when I%u2019m not using it, my brain generally occupies itself with proving the existence of man or plotting revenge%u2014but it is an instructive one. Although I am sitting here like a slab of warm bacon, passively watching the earth career madly around the sun. I suspect that my mental activity has reached a point about on a par with your typical urban roller skater.It strikes me that we%u2019ve been making a great mistake over the last couple of decades, or at least our vocabulary has: the whole ur-thrust of a big hunk of society ever since the sixties hasn%u2019t been to turn on, but to turn off. Lo, how the mighty are fallen! Where once your average American was ne%u2019 sr so happy as when he was slaughtering buffalo, butchering Indians, and whupping slaves, he now appears to desire nothing in this world so much as to sit out in the garage under an old piece of mattress ticking, like a discarded washing machine.BLAME TELEVISIONFrankly, I blame television; as far as I can tell, the Democrats had nothing to do with it. The whole problem seems to reside in the inconvenient fact that adulthood bears utterly no resemblance to Saturday morning. (Indeed, a very interesting monograph might one day be written on how the____A_____ _ * ri.:.i __ . %u00ab %u2022' %u2022 cunvm uatv yjt iwu U IIIIC- OWLS 111UL.11 L%u00bb1 115ginger and savagery to an attempt by the perpetrators to make the world function Saturday morning.)Adulthood isn%u2019t even like the seven o%u2019clock news; it doens%u2019t come in segments, and it has no beginning, middle or end. Yeah, sure, I know it starts with a measure of hopes and then its hair falls out and finally it keels over dead, but that%u2019s not the same thing; I%u2019m talking about structured adventure and punch lines, not biology.Anyway, having made the horrifying discovery that life on earth is remarkably different from fantasy on the tube (unless, of course, you happen to be a soldier of fortune such as myself), the citizen%u2019s options are few. He can resign himself to his fate, or he can check out. Or he can do both: he can labor away in the world%u2019s hay for as long as the world allows him gainful employment, ajid he can take a vacation on weekends and every afternoon after five.This vacation consists of giving oneself a temporary lobotomy, and it can be accomplished in a number of ways, most of which I leave to your imagination and/or experience. If I had my druthers, though, I would wish for only one thing in this connection: the next time a proud new banner is raised on the bastions of solipsism, the invention of a whole new vocabulary describing it could somehow be dispensed with. It makes conversation so hard.PIXIELAND ROLL ARAMAA lifetime spent as an observer of the passing scene had not left me unprepared for the latest manifestation of this American thirst for the imperfectly remembered pleasures of amniotic fluid, but I hadn%u2019t expected it to strike me with such a peculiar nostalgia. It took but a single glimpse of roller skating fiend tearing through Washington Square like a gianl spermazota, and I was at Pixieland Roll-a Rama in Nampa, Idaho.My career has provided me with many things I can scarcely believe I ever did (like facing down an enraged black mob in South Bend, Indiana,, from whose fury I was saved by a pair of construction boots and a Brooklyn address), and roaring mindlessly around and around a hardwood floor, looking at the backs of gjrls%u2019 knees to the tune of %u201c Glowworm%u201d ranks right up there with the best of them.I remember it well: the breathless rush ov movement, the dull roar of the wheels, the excruciating pain in the ankles, the horrible boredom, all the old joys. This country was founded on the notion that the benefits of civilization would, through the miracle of equality, gradually seep down through the ranks of society like so much filtered coffee, but in practice the reverse has occurred.Tiny-brimmed fedoras, popular -alkaloids, mumbling and contemporary rock music (instructions to a salsa band: take an old garbage can and hit it with some sticks; hit it a lot) and put a few of the many gifts of the lower classes to the upper, but I never thought that my native turf out in the land of the Jesus freak and the potato would give this country anything but Harmon Killebrew.True, 1 once walked irflo an editor%u2019s office to find him peddling around the Bigelow on a unicycle while eating a bannana, but the paper was going out of business everybody was \anytning, I thought the next thing would be Dungeons and Dragons or sculpting the likeness of Mount Rushmore out of Legos%u2014that%u2019s what%u2019s going on around here over in my offspring%u2019s barra^oon.INEVITABILITYNow that I think about it, though, there is a certain inevitability about it all, like the Civil War and the New York Mets. Hamilton Jordan (pronounced Jordan) has effectively killed both the disco craze and the coke spoon industry; when big-name socialites like Jerdan follow where the bold captains of the avant garde like Andy Warhol Leon Spinks have led, the end is at handSimilarly, a judge out in California has finally dealt marijuana a crippling blow, not by precept but by example; in cultivating an acre of the stuff for his personal consumption, he%u2019s finally made it into a thing that daddies do. For a while it looked as though giant portable loudspeakers blaring ,t he sounds of a weasel in heat%u2018were the coming think, but evidently the batteries wore down or the auditors went deaf.All the great graffitti artists are dead and we shall not see their like again. Cookie baking requires certain forensic skills, and besides, all the cute names for the cookie\conveyances have already been taken and you would have to cal! yours The Cookie Hearse or some other downer.No, skates it is; nothing else will suit, and I have once again perceived a trend a nanosecond too late to become the Ray Kroc of the zombies. Missed again, dammit. And it should have been so obvious. Not only are the usual conditions fulfilled%u2014i.e. it%u2019s something you can do instead of thinking what makes people mad while giving you a sense of adventure and a spot on the David Susskind Show, but roller skates are hard to steal.They%u2019re even harder to steal than a pair >f pants. I mean, they have all these laces md things. Why, in order to do the job properly, you%u2019d have to get a bunch of the fellows and a surgical saw, Yessiree, it%u2019ll probably take the usual punks a month or iwo before they figure that out. In the meantime, happy skating!%u25a0October 18, 1979, The PHOENIX, Page 9