Two Bushwick institutions were awarded “Best of NYC” in the Village Voice this week:

Goodbye Blue Monday for “Best Place To See Great Up-and-Coming Bands Before They Embrace Their Own Hype”

Trees Not Trash for “Best Reason To Take Up Gardening”

Congrats to both winners and here’s hoping that next year’s awards features even more Bushwick businesses (which will hopefully be open by then).

Passing by what appeared to be a junked-out trailer this afternoon, I skidded my blue Schwinn to a halt. In front of me, on the cross streets of Humboldt and Montrose, lay the most beautiful visage I had ever seen, a restored candy green Columbia bike.

After my mouth closed and the drool dried, I looked around and saw that a BUNCH of beautiful, shiny bikes stood outside this trailer, looking rusted and drab by contrast. This was no ordinary bike shop, obviously. This was Bits and Pieces, a 10-year-old project that began as a furniture upholstery site and has evolved into a bike restoration anomaly in this otherwise dingy area.

Outside the makeshift bike shop, a young woman with large, curly hair smiled widely at me, inquiring about the camera I was using. Seemed like she herself was a camera enthusiast and luckily for me, worked at the shop as well. Yasmin Silva introduced me to the shop’s co-owner, Jared “Jay” Silva, whom she first described as her ex-boyfriend, then later in the conversation, her husband. While it wasn’t clear if the last name of the couple was used legally or with affectionate connotations only, the twosome have been working together since childhood.

“His dad started it as a furniture store, but Jay convinced him to start doing bikes!” Yasmin exclaimed, clearly the more gregarious of the two. Jared demurred, shyly explaining, “I had built a personal collection of over 30 bikes and started working on them, making new seats and cleaning them up….it just sort of happened that we started selling them.”

Either way, Jay’s bikes now go for anything from $100 to $500 (although I saw him make a deal on a yellow mountain bike for $75), the top end of the line being the green Columbian I was so set on. If only I could forgo one month’s rent….

And I almost forgot the best part, Yasmin’s poetry, which she recited for me without prompting as I was leaving. Pretty good slam stuff, and she even gave me her myspace account and asked me if I saw Tom to tell him to give me her password…she’s forgotten it.

I used to hear jokes that seeing a white girl in Bushwick was as rare as finding a unicorn. While the recent influx in hipsters might make that term no longer applicable, there is still one genuine unicorn to be found in Bushwick.

Natalie Weiss, aka Unicornicopia, has been living and performing in Bushwick since 2005. At 5′10″, with almond shaped eyes and and a huge smile, Natalie could be confused for a fashion model, a fact Vice magazine took notice of. But Natalie’s mission is not to stand around and look pretty for the cameras; rather she spreads her message through “experimental worship-tunes” that sound like a cross between Laurie Anderson, The Magnetic Fields (when the chick sings), and a 1950’s musical. Not surprisingly, Natalie accredits some of her earliest influences to musicals and has even written a couple — but it wasn’t till a 2001 trip to Africa as an AIDS educator that Unicornicopia was formed. “I was filled with the joy of the lord” Natalie says, smiling widely with no trace of irony. Natalie takes that joy wherever she goes, even when she was transplanted to the Halsey stop on the M J train in 2005 when she moved from Florida to try to have one of her plays performed off-Broadway.

Though the play fell through, Natalie stayed in Bushwick, and though she described her initial experience as scary — always a friendly face, Natalie found it hard to meet people in an area she saw as “more industrial than community-oriented.”

It was only after moving above Goodbye Blue Monday on Broadway and Dodworth that Natalie found the community spirit she was looking for. She accredits the change of Bushwick addresses with the shift of her perspective on the neighborhood. Far from finding the noise of the overhead J and the populated streets a detriment, Natalie finds her music influenced by her scenery, “I’m much more into a noise-oriented sound these days!” she exclaims, ever the optimist.

Her outgoing nature has finally found a home beneath the train, as one can often spy Natalie on the streets outside her home or in GBM, chatting with older residents. “I prefer the old men in this neighborhood to the hipsters,” she sniffs, “at least when you make friends with the old guys, they stop objectifying you!”

Good point — and one she plans to live by — as she is now having to plan a sudden relocation. Though she won’t be living above me anymore, Natalie plans to stay in the neighborhood while doing a back-up singing gig for Fischerspooner. She loves the neighborhood, and as she says on one of her songs, “It is so important to feel cared about.”

–Unicornicopia will be performing live at Monkeytown on Wednesday, September 26th.

Maybe you’ll find your soulmate?

Special Bushwick Friend - m4w - 25
Selling Points:

“I am just looking for someone who is sincere, and likes making love.
And by making love, I mean fucking each other”

Also, I like all kinds of sex. Aggressive sex, aanal sex, oral sex. Meat and potatos sex, Keith Sweat sex, la la la la

Sociopathic Asshole Seeks Same - 27
Selling Points:

Must love me.

(You would think Patrick Bateman lived in a nicer hood than Bushwick)

I watched your bike for a second while you went in brooklyns natural - m4w - 23
Selling Points:

Its too bad I was on the phone because I would have tried to start a conversation.

Last Light - 21
Selling Points:

1. sometimes I eat meat
2. i like brown better than black
9. i prefer lakes over oceans.
12. i really should paint my walls.

You Stole My Wallet & Camera At A Party in the Mckibbon Lofts
Selling Points:

yeah, you are a fucking asshole. anyways, i just want my ID back. you can mail it to me.

Ah, young love!

Say hi to Drew, she works at Goodbye Blue Monday and will be reporting from her neighborhood. — Jeremy

This remarkably-named church is right across the street on Broadway — thus technically Bed-Stuy territory. Sunday services can be heard all the way up and down Broadway, as the congregation spills out onto the street. Usually I wake up to the sounds of Spanish-language classic rock coming from the speakers coming out of a basement across the street, but Sundays are a special treat — complete with organs, drums, and a lot of holy-rollers. Services usually last well into the afternoon, and the rest of the day people walk up and down Broadway in their “Sunday best,” with the kids looking especially uncomfortable in white patent-leather shoes and hair in disarray from dancing all morning.

Word on the street is that there used to be a weed delivery service upstairs (unaffiliated with the church — allegedly!) but it’s no longer in business.