[BBG Rose Photo courtesy of Gary Mirabelle]
Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images:

· Man Tosses Grandchildren from Window to Save Them From Fire [NYDN]
· Video of Woman Dying in Hospital from Neglect Spurs Change [NYT]
· Mayor “Disgusted” by Kings County Hospital Death [NYDN]
· Hospital to Institute Reforms So People Don’t Drop Dead on Floor [NYP]
· Balloon Caused Short Blackout in Gravesend [NYDN]
· Is Beekman “Blackmail” an Omen for Atlantic Yards? [AYR]
· A Guide to the Fourth of July Fireworks [NYDN]
· Albee Square is Coming Down in Slow Motion [Brownstoner]
· Noooooooo: Starbucks Closing 600 Stores [Metro]
· Teen Computer Thief Busted by His Grandmother [NYP]
· Problems at the Clinton Hill Library [Clinton Hill Blog]
· Climbing Sullivan Hill [A Year in the Park]
· Coney Hoopla Links [Kinetic Carnival]
· Bed-Stuy Pub Crawl [Bed-Stuy Blog]

[Photo courtesy of Charles Andrisano]
We owe this gorgeous long exposure of the Brooklyn Bridge and Olafur Eliasson waterfall to Charles Andrisano, who has sent other great photos our way in the past.

Here’s a worthwhile activity coming up in Greenpoint on July 12 that came our way that involves taking care of some of the neighborhood’s street trees:

Get Green In Greenpoint! Be a part of our street tree care community event:
– learn about the MillionTrees Initiative
– participate in street tree care on Manhattan Ave. (aerating soil, weeding tree pits, mulching,and watering)
Trees need our help… and we need them. Health benefits, clean air, beauty, you name it. Urban life for a street tree is tough…

It takes place on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 from 10AM-2PM. Meet up at the American Playground, which is located at the corner of Milton St. and Franklin St.

[Photo courtesy of blackoutny/GL Photo Pool]

Here’s another shot of a Brooklyn rainbow courtesy of a contribution to our GL Photo Pool by blackoutny. For the full sized shot, click here.

http://www.bobguskind.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=8516Outside the Brooklyn Weather Observatory this morning, the day looks to be nicer than recent ones. The forecast calls for it to be “most sunny and seasonably warm” with a high of 86. Tonight will be clear with a low of 70.–Accuweather

One of the issues that Park Slope residents have raised during the Great Park Slope Alternate Side Parking Experiment, which is coming to an end on July 14, is that it has led to a lot of clogged catch basins. While the general “filth” in the street argument may be overblown, there appears to be some truth to the catch basin issue which, in turn, has helped cause a lot of street flooding to recent major downpours. Here’s some evidence from one of the recent storms of what’s accumulated in one such spot. Everything changes on July 14.

It’s hard to know what to make of this pic of the cast of Gossip Girl sauntering down the Coney Island boardwalk in a photo from Vanity Fair with, in the words of Curbed, “evening wear flowing, skinny ties flapping in the breeze, champagne replacing de rigueur large beers from Nathan’s.” Yet, there it is, in all its glory.

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 Exit to Brooklyn. They are today’s “must see” vids.

There are many theories about how to best handle a Traffic Enforcement Officer who might be writing you a ticket, ranging from submission to confrontation and everything in between. A week ago we watch someone scream and yell long enough that real two NYPD cars showed up on the scene. In any case, the issue comes up as part of a long email forwarded to us from someone in our Park Slope network that makes the neighborhood rounds from the Park Slope Parents email list. (This is not to be confused the with the Playground Proselityzers Problem from earlier today.) We’re running it because it presents an interesting neighborhood slice of life story:

Allow me to preface this story by saying that I am an idiot. Last week, my wife, two children and I went to Tarzian to buy an outdoor table and chair set to put on our balcony. After I bought the piece, I drove my car in front of the store and double-parked so as to carry the heavy item only a short distance.

As I was doing this, the car I was blocking needed to leave. I placed the item in my hatchback and backed up to allow this car to get out of it’s spot. As I was only trying to place said item and my family into the car I let another car park in the open metered spot, since as everyone is aware, it is a constant struggle to find parking in Park Slope. Now, I am double-parked again next to another car in a metered spot. Behind that car is the bus stop between 2nd and 3rd Streets. Idling in that bus stop is a manned car obviously waiting for a spot to open.

As I get out of my double-parked car to get my eldest of two children and place him in his car seat, the present car that I am now blocking needs to leave. So, rather than put my son in the car I hand him to my wife and back up yet again to let this car out of it’s spot. I am now next to the manned car idling in the bus stop. As the car leaves the metered spot, the car in the bus stop pulls up to take the metered spot. Again no problem. I just want to put my family in the car and leave. So I make the obviously illegal move of backing into the bus stop to place the kids in their car seats and finally leave what is becoming a very trying ordeal. I’m sure we all know what’s coming next.

She wasn’t even going to write him a ticket, but…

This is Part I of a three part vid produced of the 2008 Boerum Hill House Tour. It’s narrated, has background music and seems to make heavy use of Microsoft Virtual Earth to navigate around. You can find Part II here and Part III here.

[Photo courtesy of Carmen/Brooklynian]

This photo from Sunday’s storm of what appears to be the beginning of a funnel cloud over Brooklyn was posted on Brooklynian by Carmen. It’s a pretty amazing image and begins to explain the ominous looking cloud that was pictured here even though it’s not entirely clear to the untrained eye if it was just an odd pattern in the cloud or if it was a very early funnel. Witnesses report seeing circulation.

Since we’ve been on the topic of playground conditions, the one in Sunset Park has some issues too. “…while broken equipment and putrid water is of concern, definitely, the trash [in the Cobble Hill LICH playground] doesn’t look as delicious as ours usually does. No adult diapers, or baby diapers, for instance. And nothing like this very well enjoyed corn husk.”–Best View in Brooklyn

We’ve had cruddy playgrounds this week and surly employees last week and gyrating nannies recently, but here’s our first report of playground proselytizing courtesy of a compelling Park Slope Parents posted email sent to us by one of our reliable and dedicate Park Slope source who enjoys sharing the wealth of info with the public at large:

FYI, the fundamentalist christian groups are back for the season proselytizing to children without parents consent in our playgrounds. Last year CEF handed out candy and coloring books but asked the kids first if they accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior. This national para-church (CEF, Child Evanglism Fellowship comes to urban playgrounds through local church sponsorship with the sole purpose of converting children. It is actually very difficult to discern if the proselyters are CEF because they seem to hide behind their local sponsorship. If this practice is offensive to you, I advise you to call the parks department, ask the proseltyzers for their permits and then call the parks officers (they rarely have a permit and they should not be handing out things to children).

What next?

Did the Great Park Slope Parking Experiment, which generated a disproportionate number of news articles and led to some vocal complaints, make it harder or easier to park? The Department of Transportation has posted a survey and is trying to get a sense of whether it made it harder to mark, easier or made no difference at all. The survey can be found here. There is no box to check if you brought your car to Park Slope and parked it there for six weeks.

The threatened Community Board budget cuts, which would have been small in the scheme of things, yet serious to bodies with tiny budgets, have been avoided. Per an email from CB6 District Manager Craig Hammerman, here are some details:

The budget that was adopted by the City Council this past Sunday night does not include any cuts to the Community Boards. The City Council restored all of the money that the Mayor had proposed cutting from the Community Boards’ budgets. Just a reminder, the Mayor proposed an 8% cut to the CB’s budgets, which would have amounted to $16,000 per Board out of its $200,000 annual budget. All tolled, the savings was less than a million dollars ($16,000/CB x 59 CB’s = $944,000) out of a $59.1 billion budget, or 0.0016 % of the total City budget. This was not an effort to save money – the savings were insignificant compared to the size of the City’s budget; this was a direct assault on the Community Boards, and the community’s voice in government. Fortunately, our institution was spared. For now, at least.

The Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget did confirm this morning that our fiscal year 2009 budgets will remain in tact. However, they also added that the Mayor’s proposed cuts still exist as taking effect in fiscal year 2010 and beyond. This means that if the Mayor does not change his fiscal year 2010 budget, we’ll have to do the same thing next year and fight to defend our budget. We have some time to convince the Mayor of the value of a strong community voice in government. His 2010 Executive Budget isn’t due out until January 2009.

Until next year, then.

[Click to expand]

Exactly what’s going on at 40 Berry in Williamsburg, which has been the site of a large spill of what appeared to be oil, is unclear. The large property carries a city “e” designation, which means there are environmental issues associated with it and that certain “protocols” have to be followed as it’s developed. A report prepared for GL by the firm Toxics Targeting indicates a wide variety of issues in close proximity the future site of the big luxe rental building. The property was home to a trucking company and had a number of fuel storage tanks on site. (Neighbors say some tanks might have been ruptured as they were being removed.) The site is a couple of hundred feet from the Manufactured Gas Plant once known as the Williamsburgh Works, one of two such facilities in the area. (The other was on Kent Avenue at N. 12 Street.) Per the report: “The Wythe Avenue (Berry Street) Holder Station is comprised of ten parcels of land…The site is bounded by North 13th Street, North 12th Street and Wythe Avenue. The gas holder and associated buildings operated at the site from sometime between 1887 and 1905 until sometime between 1951 and 1965. The current land use for the parcels includes industrial and manufacturing.” Like most such sites in Brooklyn, the extent of the contamination and its spread is still being determined. Most manufactured gas facilities left behind a highly toxic substance known as coal tar deep underground. Coal tar can also move around underground and spread a distance from the original source. It’s unclear if it is related to the contamination that has surfaced but an email that came with the report says the “tar is a highly contaminated material made up of ‘polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons‘ or PAHs. This material contains many of the same cancer-causing chemicals found in cigarette smoke. The uncontrolled release of these materials could be a major public health concern.”

The Toxics Targeting report lists dozens of nearby properties with environmental issues, a handful of them serious and many of a more minor nature. The Toxics Targeting reports draw data from all the environmental databases and analyze them together to show the full picture of contamination around a a site. The firm notes that it’s been doing a lot of reports on properties in the area and that it “seems like development might be robust.”

For a refresher on the nasty mess at 40 Berry click here.

Park Slopers can kiss the suspension of Alternate Side Park regulations goodbye on July 14. The Department of Transportation has announced that all the neighborhood’s alternate side parking signs will have been changed from 3 hours to 90 minutes that the Great park Slope Parking Experiment, which has led to great joy among the majority of residents and complaints from others, will be one for the history books. The suspension took effect on May 19. (And will probably be regarded with gauzy nostalgia by all in a few years.) The Slope’s loss, however, is Gowanus’s and Carroll Gardens’ gain as the same process will be repeated there starting on July 7. The new No Alternate Side Parking Zone will run from Fourth Avenue all the way to Court Street and from Wyckoff St. and St. Marks Place to 15th Street and the Gowanus Expressway. Both the Daily News and the Brooklyn Paper have stories with reactions. Will Park Slope residents now take their cars across the Fourth Avenue border into the Greater Gowanus Metroplex? Will Gowanus & Carroll Gardens residents accept it as a summer gift instead of complaining? Will some Park Slopers not figure out the change by July 14? Tune in again for updates.

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images:

· Kings County Hospital Vid Shows No One Helped Dying Woman [NYP]
· Six Injured in Kensington House Fire [AP/NYDN]
· A Lot of Info About the July 4 Fireworks [Sun]
· Neighborhoods “Getting Safer” Because of More Cops [NYDN]
· Questions for Tax-Exempt Financing Hearing [AYR]
· Progress at Brooklyn Trader Joe’s! [Brownstoner]
· Ragin’ Cajun Crawfish in the Park [A Year in the Park]
· Lee lee go pee pee [Restless]
· New Solar Panels Perfect for Flat Brooklyn Roofs [Green Brooklyn]
· Beware the Montague Street WaMu Card Eating ATM [BK 11201]
· How to Tell the Child Will Grow Up To Be a Landlord [Lost City]
· Coney Safety and a String of Bad Press [Kinetic Carnival]

Whether the waterfalls are a letdown or not depends on one’s perspective, but there is certainly a difference in the case of the one beneath the Brooklyn Promenade between the renderings and photos of the real thing.–Brooklyn Heights Blog

[Photo courtesy of Rubys Host/GL Flicrk Pool]

Here’s another superb photo from Rubys Host via our Gowanus Lounge Flickr Pool. It was taken during one of many storms this past weekend and it is very good.

There’s nothing new about corporate marketing at McCarren Pool Parties, but retailer Topshop’s take has some interesting angles. First, they’ll have a “colored beach huts, mats and deck chairs in one corner of the pool and promo girls will prowl the area, armed with limited-edition beach blankets covered in Topshop hearts and some sort of McCarren motif.” They’ll have a photographer. And, they’ll be putting “McCarren gossip” on their blog. Huh?–Racked

[Photo courtesy of lostinbrookyn/GL Flickr Pool]

Here’s an image of the always lovely, yet somber, Green-Wood Cemetery, which is one of many new shots of that verdant and quiet place put into our GL Photo Pool by lostinbrooklyn. If you’ve never been to Green-Wood, it’s definitely worth a visit. There’s always more information about it here.

Outside the Brooklyn Weather Observatory we’re seeing the same thing we’ve seen on many days lately. Today’s forecast calls for a high of 83 and “times of clouds and sun with a shower or thunderstorm around this afternoon.” Tonight will also have some showers and thunderstorms and a low of 66.–Accuweather

[Photo courtesy of Sarah is Rad/GL Flickr Pool]

We’re not tired of different views of the Olafur Eliasson waterfalls yet. This shot, taken from the water, came to our Gowanus Lounge Photo Pool courtesy of Sarah is Rad.

A feature called I Hate Valentines Day is shooting on Smith Street this week (it’s actually one of several shoots in Carroll Gardens). The Smith Street action takes place tomorrow and, given the film’s synopsis on IMDB, there’s little mystery why Smith has been chosen as a location: “A florist tries to convince a restaurant owner to date her without the fear of it becoming a full-fledged relationship.” It’s a romantic comedy.