June 27th, 2008 · Comments Off on New Images of Brooklyn Bridge Park
These Brooklyn Bridge Park renderings are totally cheating in the sense that they’re photos of some of the banners that have been hung at the temporary Pop-Up Park. Nonetheless, they represent the latest iteration of the park, the first segments of which will actually be opening next year. Among the first part of the park to open will be the Brooklyn Bridge Plaza, a large cleared space under the Brooklyn Bridge. Construction on the park (which has been controversial because it includes luxury high-rise condos) is moving forward despite the fact that a doubling of the budget means that all the funding isn’t in place.
June 27th, 2008 · Comments Off on City Presents New & Different Coney Island Renderings
Within the city’s presentation prepared for the Coney Island Scoping Hearing on Tuesday night were some new renderings of a proposed Coney future, as well as new detailed maps and diagrams of what would go where. The raucous meeting ended up with the following headline in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle: “Coney Plan Overwhelmingly Rejected at Hearing.” The rendering above is a view up Surf Avenue looking from what is current location of Astroland toward the Cyclone.
June 27th, 2008 · Comments Off on Upcoming: Empty Cages Collective
Here’s a weekend event for the animal lover in everyone, per a posting to our GL Photo Pool by lisacat, a kind soul that has provided us with many GL Adoptable Cuties of the Week and provided homes for countless cats:
I’m not homeless, I just haven’t found the right human yet!” The Beehive Salon in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is hosting a kitten adoption day at their wonderful new location just a block from the Bedford Avenue stop on the L train. North Brooklyn animal advocacy group, Empty Cages Collective will show off some of their cutest cats and prettiest kittens rescued from the mean streets of New York City. They’re ready for new, happy homes and would love to meet you all. Come by between 2 PM and 6 PM on Sunday, June 29th and spend some time in the Beehive’s relaxing back garden cuddling some kittens. The salon is located at: 115 North 7th Street, between Berry and Wythe.
The sun is struggling with clouds outside the Brooklyn Weather Observatory early this morning. Meanwhile, the forecast says this will be a hot and muggy day, with the requisite change of thunderstorms this afternoon and this evening to make going to Celebrate Brooklyn or the Coney Island Fireworks an adventure. The high will be 89 and it will feel like a yummy 98 degrees. Tonight’s low will be 75. Tomorrow will be blazing hot.–Accuweather
There are still some googly eyes here and there in Williamsburg from a bunch that were pasted everywhere a couple of years ago. This pair, for instance, survives on a “No Entry” sign at McCarren Pool.
At first, when our Carroll Gardens Correspondent sent this image, we thought yesterday’s Union Street Gowanus Luxury sofa had been attacked. Then, we compared the sofas and found that this another remarkably similar one that is also on Union Street. This is a Carroll Gardens model rather than a Gowanus one. It’s a French sofa with carved cabriole legs, according to our correspondent.
June 26th, 2008 · Comments Off on Bklink: Fireproof
Like “unsinkable,” fireproof is likely a word that should be used with trepidation. So it was with the St. George Hotel, once a fine hotel in Brooklyn Heights, that back at the turn of the century was said to be “absolutely fire-proof.” Of course, in 1995, the St. George suffered one of the bigger blazes in New York history, a 16 alarm monstrosity that burned through the night.–Ephemeral New York
Olafur Eliasson’s waterfalls were turned on early this morning. Here are some views of the one under the Brooklyn Bridge, which we checked out from Fulton Ferry Landing.
The last time we turned our attention to the Long Island College Hospital Playground in Cobble Hill, it was about the issue of, uh, rats running wild. Now, it’s about the general topic of “filth.” We present the following observation about the playground–which was built by the troubled hospital during the Guiliani Administration in exchange for getting parkland for its parking garage–from the BoCoCa Parents email list:
I don’t know if others are bothered by the condition of LICH playground, but I am. I have called LICH Building Services many times to try to get them to do some basic cleaning of the playground on Henry and Pacific. I am getting the run around with this department. I’ve called both the State and City Dept of Health and 311. Again, I’m getting the run around. I’ve also left messages with the patient representative at the hospital.
Yesterday, after about 5-10 minutes of rain, there was a huge, filthy puddle that blocked off the pathway btwn the front and back of the playground. My daughter and her friend decided to run back and forth through this sewage puddle. Who can really blame them? The playground is completely filthy, and it doesn’t look like anyone maintains the grounds, ever! I consider this to be a public health issue but no one seems to want to take responsibility.
Does anyone have suggestions on who to call? Anyone know the inner structure of LICH? Who does Buidling Services report to? I feel very frustrated but don’t want to give up. The playground is a great
playground.
Perhaps the monster rat problem has been solved, thought?
The screening of ET and fireworks in Prospect Park scheduled for tonight has been canceled, per an email from the Borough President’s office “due to inclement weather.” A new date will be scheduled.–GL Inbox
We have another entry for the long list of Park Slope openings and closings that we’ve been reporting in recent weeks and that will, no doubt, be noted elsewhere too: A new restaurant called Shinjuku II will be opening on Seventh Avenue in the space formerly occupied by Inaka Sushi, which closed over the winter. Shinjuku is a branch of a restaurant at 177 Atlantic Avenue. The restaurant is named after Shinjuku Station, which is Tokyo’s Grand Central, with nine major rail lines terminating there. The Atlantic Avenue breanch has steel walls, copper pipe and overhead screen sculptures, two tatami rooms, a menu with hibachi items and more. Opening very soon by the look of things.
June 26th, 2008 · Comments Off on Coney Island’s Unofficial Mayor Speaks
Coney Island USA’s Dick Zigun, recently resigned his membership on the board of the Coney Island Development Corporation and has become an outspoken critic of the city’s revised rezoning proposal. Here’s a video of testimony at the often raucous Scoping Hearing on Tuesday night, as well as a written version of his words after the jump.
June 26th, 2008 · Comments Off on Bklink: Park Slope Slices
ISlice did a Park Slope Slice Walk, sampling all the pizzerias from Flatbush Avenue and the Prospect Expressway to the north and south, and Fourth Avenue and Prospect Park West to the west and east. They checked on places where slices are available. The results are interesting. Lenny’s on Fifth Avenue was “a highlight.”–Slice
June 26th, 2008 · Comments Off on More Officials to Speak Out Against Jail Reopening & Expansion
Opponents of the plan to reopen and double the size of the Brooklyn House of Detention on Atlantic Avenue are holding a press conference today in front of the closed facility. The event is happening today at 12:30 and “various elected officials will make known their opposition to the City’s plan to reopen and expand the BHOD.” Officials expected include City Comptroller Bill Thompson, City Council member David Yassky, State Assembly woman Joan Millman, and State Senator Marty Connor. There are already two organized opposition groups, Stop BHOD, and the Brooklyn HOD Community Stakeholders Group. The city is still planning to go ahead with the reopening and expansion plan, whose unpopularity seems to be growing in the surrounding neighborhood.
Comments Off on More Officials to Speak Out Against Jail Reopening & ExpansionTags:Downtown Brooklyn
June 26th, 2008 · Comments Off on More Summer Concerts: Seaside Series & MLK Series
Here are the lineups for two other significant Brooklyn summer concert series, one of which will feature shows by Jill Scott, Erykah Badu and Patti LaBelle. The other will have Micheal Bolton, Liza Minelli and others, which isn’t our thing, but is sure to appeal many as well, even for ironic hipster kitsch. (Brian Wilson will also being doing a show.) There more info here about both. We’ll start with Seaside Summer Concerts, which are Thursday nights at 7:30 pm at Asser Levy/Seaside Park at West 5th Street and Surf Avenue in Brighton Beach:
July 10: An Evening with Michael Bolton
July 17: An Evening with Brian Wilson
July 24: Smokey Robinson and Russell Thompkins, Jr. & The New Stylistics
July 31: Classic Rock with “Mystery Guest” and Starship starring Mickey Thomas
August 7: An Evening with Liza Minnelli
August 14: Salsa by the Sea
August 21: Huey Lewis & The News with very special guest Paul Thorn
Two Bay Ridge drug houses, whose activities have been widely chronicled on the Bay Ridge Talk Message board and by the neighborhood’s large number of blogs has been busted. The buildings were on 93rd Street. Here’s a bit from the Times:
Most neighborhoods in Brooklyn have at least one blog — and in some places, there seems to be one in every house, every bedroom — but not many read like BayRidgeTalk.com, where the subjects over the last year or two veered away from apartment sales and plumbing tips and block parties and sounded more like rat-a-tat police reports. “Fighting and drug deals going down in the driveway of this house,” one person wrote in 2006 about a home steeped in reports of suspicious activity on 93rd Street in Bay Ridge. Another person replied: “I’ve heard loud fighting for almost a year now but did not realize until recently that it’s a crack house.”
The Times seems to confuse message boards and blogs, but the gist of the story remains. There’s also a story in today’s Post.
A violent ex-con who had violated his parole in April was still free to brutally attack a professional dancer from Park Slope, authorities said yesterday. Thomas Russo, 32, allegedly stalked Diana Greiner, 39, along Sixth Avenue in Brooklyn at about 11:45 p.m. on June 17. Greiner, a dancer, told cops she was vaguely aware that Russo was following her, alternating between being in front of her and behind her, sources said.
Russo got in front of her outside 176 Sixth Ave. at Lincoln Place and bent down to tie his shoe. As she walked toward him, he sprang up and brandished a knife, the sources said. She covered her face, and Russo allegedly struck her in the head – fracturing her skull – slashed her face and body, then fled, authorities said. As cops interviewed Greiner at the hospital, she remembered she’d seen the psycho sneak into a bodega.
It looks like some workers were behaving badly at the Harmony Playground in Park Slope this week. (This is not to be confused with the workers smoking at the same playground or with the recently wet ‘n wild gyrating nanny.) The story comes through our Park Slope Network in the form of a forwarded email from the Park Slope Parents Group leaked by a member and it has all the elements of a compelling story including cursing, speaking in an alleged threatening tone to a parent and, of course, more smoking. Here is the tale of woe:
On Monday I was at the 9th Street Playground with my two daughters and a friend’s daughter. When I went to take the girls to the bathroom, we walked by two Parks Department employees who were engaged in a very loud argument. They were using foul language and when I asked them not to do so in front of the children, they told me (in a threatening way) to mind my own business. Then then continued their argument and, when it was over, sat down on the bench and started smoking cigarettes. I called 311 to anonymously report the incident to the parks department and I hope others do the same if they witness this sort of behavior. Also, you might think twice before sending a child to the girls bathroom on her own. I was under the impression that the employees are there to help people at the playground, not to threaten them.
June 26th, 2008 · Comments Off on Here Comes “Summer 08 @ Pier 1”
We’re only a couple of hours away from the opening of the Pop-Up Brooklyn Bridge Park for waterfall viewing and summer lounging by the water. Here’s a bit more detail about it from the Brooklyn Bridge Park website:
Opening to the public for the first time, Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1 will offer spectacular views of New York Harbor and The New York City Waterfalls by Olafur Eliasson, presented by the Public Art Fund. Pier 1 will also offer a cafe run by local restaurant RICE, along with picnic tables, benches, landscaping with trees and grass, and sand play area. The 26,000 square foot site was designed by landscape architects dlandstudio. SUMMER ’08 @ PIER 1 will be open June 26 – Labor Day, seven days a week, from 10:00am – 10:00pm.
June 26th, 2008 · Comments Off on Bklink: Non-Union Labor
Anyone looking for a compelling story about the underside of development in Brooklyn should check out this tale of non-union labor at Toren and the downtown Sheraton. It includes pay that’s 1/3 to 1/2 of union workers, long hours and alleged threats of violence against workers trying to organize.–Village Voice
Comments Off on Bklink: Non-Union LaborTags:Shortlink
The sun is struggling with clouds outside the Brooklyn Weather Observatory early this morning. Meanwhile, the forecast says this will be a hot and muggy day, with the requisite change of thunderstorms this afternoon and this evening to make going to Celebrate Brooklyn or the Coney Island Fireworks an adventure. The high will be 89 and it will feel like a yummy 98 degrees. Tonight’s low will be 75. Tomorrow will be blazing hot.–
The screening of ET and fireworks in Prospect Park scheduled for tonight has been canceled, per an email from the Borough President’s office “due to inclement weather.” A new date will be scheduled.–GL Inbox
