For those of you within reach of central Brooklyn, I’m going to be moderating a discussion this Saturday night by Brian Berger and Tom Robbins, two of the many authors (Berger is co-editor as well) of the marvelous new anthology “New York Calling,” a look back at New York City in the ’70s and ’80s that is remarkably free of either rose-colored nostalgia or revisionist Giulianiesque horror at “a city out of control.” (My favorite snippet: The Scene Is Now keyboard player Phil Dray recalling a block committee meeting in the rapidly gentrifying Alphabet City on adding street trees: “All the white people want the trees, but the Hispanics are against it, saying that prettifying the block will just drive the rents up.”)

The reading/discussion will start at 7 pm this Saturday, October 13, at Vox Pop, corner of Cortelyou Road and Stratford Road in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. (By train, take the Q to Cortelyou Road, then walk about six short blocks west, past the newly planted street trees in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.)