This post features holiday music from the damn bestest Lesbian holiday album ever:

Venus Envy’s 1990’s cult classic “I’ll be a Homo for Christmas”

The Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower is the most famous building in Brooklyn.  Completed in 1929 it remained the tallest building in Brooklyn for over 80 years.  For all that time it stood alone as a kind of beacon in its corner of Brooklyn just north of Park Slope and South of Fort Greene and just across the way from BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  You could give directions by it (“walk towards the big tower”, “walk away from the big tower”) because there was nothing tall like it near on the horizon.  That has changed now that many similarly tall buildings have joined it only recently in the skyline, but the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower still stands unique and unequaled in the Brooklyn landscape.

The most wonderful part of the building is its old bank lobby with its marble floors, carved teller stations, 63-foot vaulted ceiling, character silhouetted windows, massive bank vault door, and 40-foot mosaic of New York as a Dutch colony. 

For many years, after the bank had closed, the building was first occupied by dental offices (nicknamed “the Mecca of Dentistry”) which then got converted into luxury condos.  But the amazing ground floor space remained mostly inaccessible.  This winter however, every weekend the lobby is being opened up for an ongoing flee market.  And although the building’s million dollar condo developers have renamed the architectural icon “One Hanson Place” and now refer to the main lobby highfalutingly as “Skylight”, the organizers of the flee market (and food mart in the basement below) reach back to the original name by calling the ongoing weekend flee market “Smorgasburg”.

The contrast of the imposing Byzantine-Romanesque architecture and impressive interior details with the eccentricity and discovery of the flee market makes for a fascinating treasure trove of imagery and contrasts.  I went to the Williamsburgh Bank Tower and “Smorgasburg” twice so far and felt inspired to take many pictures, some I will be sharing here now.

Happy Holidays and enjoy this particularly Brooklyn treat.  Hopefully the weekend indoor flee market can continue beyond its scheduled March conclusion, so that this fabulous interior space remains accessible for visiting and viewing.

What’s It To Ya – Venus Envy

The Twelve Gays of Xmas – Venus Envy

Lesbians We Have Heard On High – Venus Envy

Silent Dyke – Venus Envy

Rhonda the Lesbo Reindeer – Venus Envy