The Red Hook Ballfield Vendors are almost back. Seriously. We got an email from Cesar Fuentes, who is the group’s spokesperson, that they’ve finally cleared up the mess with the Department of Health and will be back next Saturday, July 19, with a “raindate” of July 26 if all the vendors aren’t ready. Here’s his […]

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[Photo courtesy of vaduzuvunt/GL Flick Pool] It looks like the Red Hook Ikea Annex, (aka the sign painted on the vacant building a block from the Ikea on Van Dyke Street), has gained an added element. About a year and a half ago, the same art appeared in a bunch of places on the fence […]

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If you’re in Red Hook tonight or want to head there for a non-Ikea-related reason, definitely go down Van Brunt Street and check out the Mark van S Studio at 384 Van Brunt. The people behind the “What’s the Hook?” photo show are projecting images of Red Hook on the building after dark. What’s the […]

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Here’s another video posted by Hunter-Gatherer that has a lot of footage of Brooklyn in the 1980s. It comes from a film about the making of Last Exit to Brooklyn, which was released in 1989 and set in the 1950s. Great, great stuff.

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“A Brooklyn judge on Wednesday ordered the removal of an 18-foot-tall, 200-foot-long metal fence that separates the Red Hook Recreation Area from the Henry Street Basin. City lawyers had argued that the fence was built illegally and impeded access to the Red Hook waterfront…The fence was installed, without permission, by Gowanus Industrial Park, which owns […]

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Here’s a clip featuring Red Hook and other Brooklyn neighborhoods including what is now called Dumbo and Sunset Park, circa 1989, that was just posted to the YouTube. It appears to have been uploaded by the proprietor of the blog Hunter-Gatherer. There are several vids and they deal with the making of the film Last […]

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We were unable to check out the Red Hook Ikea from the land side this past weekend, but we did catch a view of it from the harbor behind the Erie Basin. Gothamist had a fun look at where things were a little crazy in a traffic sense and where things remained relatively quiet that […]

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“Do you know anything about a Verizon cell tower going up at the corner of Clinton and Huntington at 561 Clinton? I live in the building and workers have been on the roof putting it in since last week, and I was wondering if the community knew anything about it and was trying to fight […]

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[Photo courtesy of s5r5h/flickr] Do read the words that accompany this photo, which is titled “Ikea Madness”: ok, so i HAD to go to the opening of the brooklyn ikea. got there on the b61, my usual bus home. this time i stayed on to the end. it dropped you off right at the front […]

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Here’s a short vid shot yesterday on the esplanade behind the new Ikea in Red Hook.

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This is Beard & Dwight Street, where we’ve been photographing the street from the same vantage point, using the Stop sign as a kind of marker. The photo on the left was shot in April, 2006. The photo on the right is now. The crane in the right hand photo, by the way, was relocated […]

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[Photo courtesy of Brit in Brooklyn] Red Hook has been a busy place today, with Beard Street busy with traffic and the Ikea parking lot jammed. Plus, there have been lines. Old school Eastern Europe lines reminding one of the days before the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Communism. GL Contributor and Brit in […]

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[Photo courtesy of Racked] The deed is done. The sawdust has already been cleaned from the ceremonial log sawing and the first customers have already been inside the Red Hook Ikea for two hours. The new era on Beard Street has begun. Racked has full coverage of the morning and dozens of photos, much of […]

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By now, there are probably about seven people in the entire city that don’t know that Ikea is opening in Red Hook, and five of them are under three years of age. Ikea’s advertising and PR campaign has been so complete–and every media outlet and blog has been so happy to help cover the pending […]

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Red Hook’s Beard Street may be one of the most changed streets in all of Brooklyn over the last few years, although Kent Avenue in Williamsburg could start to give it a run for its money. The transformation of Beard Street from a long stretch featuring a closed shipyard and sugar refinery to a big […]

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It is zero hour. At this very moment, the first customers are streaming through the doors of the new Red Hook in Ikea, the first of hundreds of thousands of people that will come to this formerly remote and industrial corner of Brooklyn over the new few months to shop for Billy bookcases and Ektorp […]

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[Photo courtesy of Racked] Our friends at Racked are live on the scene down on Beard Street and filing reports from the Ikea opening. The latest dispatch says about 500 people are in line an that the scene is “a cross between a political rally, a big-top circus and some sort of fanatical cult gathering.”

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The reports being filed from the Ikea tent line by Adam Robb are alternately funny and weird, with the blow-by-blow of what it’s been like to camp out at the Red Hook Ikea (and await a free Ektorp sofa) being particularly compelling. Check out all the glorious coverage by clicking here.–Racked

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Do take a few minutes to watch this if you want to chuckle as the “protesters” against the Red Hook Ikea are picked off one by one.

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Oh no. We were led to understand that the “log sawing” that will replace a ribbon cutting at the Red Hook Ikea tomorrow is a Swedish tradition. Now, we learn that it’s not so, per Raquel Ortigueira, who handles cultural and public affairs for the Swedish Consulate General. “This isn’t a Swedish thing, it’s an […]

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[Photo courtesy of Adrian Kinlock] Our friends at Racked have someone on scene in the line outside the Red hook Ikea, where things remind us of what would have preceded an anticipated mega-shipment of oranges in East Berlin in 1983. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. The Ikea Brooklyn line is way more orderly and smaller […]

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In honor of all the media hype and hoopla surrounding the second coming opening of Ikea in Red Hook, we’re offering up a few views of the store from the lot next door. The property, which has a colorful history, including residents living there and being one of the last homes of Red Hook’s wild […]

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Beard Street was already buzzing more than usual this weekend as some sort of pre-opening shopping event was going on at the Red Hook Ikea. The Ikea Shuttle was already running and a steady stream of cars was coming down Beard Street and going to the parking lot. Beard Street, at times, still had that […]

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Our Carroll Gardens Correspondent filed this updated photo of the street sofa that has graced Coffey Street in Red Hook for some time. It’s, uh, getting a little bit trashy down there.

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As we noted yesterday, five of the Red Hook vendors made an appearance at Coffey Park on Saturday, serving up food to those who knew about the block party and some people that wandered over to the Ball Fields and saw the fliers that had been posted. In the meantime, the ball fields themselves are […]

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