[Photo courtesy of Omphale44/flickr]

The Metropolitan Opera offered a blockbuster performance in Prospect Park last night and reports are starting to roll in. Brooklynometry has some coverage and there is a story from NY1, which only describes the crowd as being in the “thousands.” More than a 100,000 were expected and a very, very large crowd came. More to come.

This is one of many photos that hit our inbox yesterday of a horrid mess at 40 Berry Street in Williamsburg, where construction activity seems to have ruptured some underground oil tanks that were being removed. By yesterday afternoon the state Department of Environmental Conservation had checked out the spill, whose exact parameters are unknown. We had featured the site in question, calling it the Mud Pit of Death, because of very dangerous conditions involving crumbling dirt and a fence that opens to a two-story mud pit. (Name now officially changed to the Berry Oil Pit.) The site will be home to a big luxury rental building whose investors include Lehman Brothers and the California State Teachers Retirement Fund. The resident that sent this and other photos writes:

Oil Spill on 40 Berry ST (Corner of N 12th ST, Williamsburg). There are at least 8 tanks being removed. Oil has leaked into the surrounding soil. People in neighboring buildings are complaining of headaches. In one building across from the site there are 5 children ranging in age, from 5 weeks to seven years old. We are nervous about health issues related to the rapid excavation of several contaminated sites on the Northside.

A follow-up email added this information:

The oil spill seems to extend to neighboring sites as well. I had the DEC here this morning to confirm the problem, but no solution was presented. They basically said that all of NYC was toxic.

Another Roebling Oil Field (which is cleaned up per Department of Environmental Conservation standards), but different.

Here’s a compelling Park Slope question about what one should pay a nanny that accompanies one on vacation that was forwarded to us by a member of our growing network of Park Slope Correspondents and Operatives that reached us from the Park Slope Parents Email List:

We have a part-time nanny who normally works about eight hours per day, three days a week. We’ve invited her to come to our beach house with us for a week which she has accepted, but I’m unsure of how to pay her for this new situation. I certainly don’t expect her to work all of the time, and I don’t want to pay an hourly rate for time that she’s sleeping, of course. How have folks paid nannies who went away with them?

An interesting question.

In honor of today’s Mermaid Parade, one of our favorite annual events, here are some vids posted of past parades on the YouTube. By this time tomorrow, there should be thousands of pics and vids around.

Here’s a fascinating opportunity for those that like to visit obscure, historic graveyards. If you’ve heard about the Quaker Cemetery in Prospect Park, there will be an opportunity to visit it on June 28 for a play about the people buried there. We will let the sponsors explain via an email they sent us (and a number of local blogs):

The Quaker Cemetery in Prospect Park will be open to the public on June 28th for a play about the people buried there. The Quaker Cemetery is a beautiful place in Prospect Park that is generally closed to the public. The event is part of our Brooklyn Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends (Quakers) 150th Anniversary…Guides will greet people at the gate to the Cemetery and usher them from grave site to grave site (1820-2008, over 14 sites of individuals and families) providing historical context to this 200 + year old burial ground. A Friend will represent the interred at each grave site and tell about their life and times.

The cemetery is located off Prospect Park Southwest and 16th Street, south of the Long Meadow along Center Drive. There are signs. The event takes place on Saturday, June 28, from 2PM-4PM with a rain date of June 29 from 2PM-4PM. It’s free, but donations will be accepted. In the book of interesting and different Brooklyn things to do, this is high on the list.
[Photo courtesy of A Year in the Park]

[Photo courtesy of vaduzuvant/flickr]

This pretty Brooklyn shot ended up in our Gowanus Lounge Photo Pool, which is now 70 members strong, from vaduzuvant. Do you belong to the GL Pool? Please add your newest photos and also tag them “gowanuslounge.” We’d love to post them.

The Prospect Park Alliance’s Eugene Patron sends word of a fun Prospect Park Summer Program called Summer on the Green. Here’s a bit about it:

The Prospect Park Youth Council’s FREE Summer on the Green Program will be bigger, better, more educational and even more fun! Prospect Park staff and Youth Council members will be on hand to supervise children as they participate in arts & crafts, team-building workshops, conflict resolution workshops, gardening, drama, nature tours, explorations of the Park, and running through the sprinklers on the lawn. Summer on the Green is open to children ages 5 – 15. Individual children as well as day camp/care groups are welcome, but all children must be accompanied by a parent, guardian or camp counselors. Summer on the Green begins July 7, and runs through August 15, Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. each day. The program is FREE.

The Prospect Park Youth Resource Center is located in Bowling Green Cottage at Prospect Park Parade Ground, on the corner of Caton and Coney Island Avenues. Call (718) 854-4901 for more information. For more info about all park activities, click here.

Outside the Brooklyn Weather Observatory on this first Saturday of Summer, there is alternating sun and clouds. The forecast calls for it to be “warm with times of clouds and sun.” The high will be 86. Tonight will be “ostly cloudy and more humid; a shower or thunderstorm around late.”–Accuweather

This story comes from Brooklynian and outlines a scary, random violent attack that apparently took place on Sixth Avenue at Lincoln Place. We haven’t verified the story, and the weapon may have been misidentified as a butcher knife, the general story appears credible:

Subject: park slope attack
A good friend’s girlfriend was attacked by a mentally ill man with a butcher knife on Wednesday walking along 6th Ave in Park Slope. She’s going to survive, but it was bad. My friend asked me to warn anyone I know around Park Slope because they think he’s still in the neighborhood. She was just walking along the street talking on her cell phone and he attacked her without a word. I think the police have an idea who he is and that he’s extremely ill. They say he’s probably under 30, slender, about 5’9″, and was wearing checkered shorts, a white tshirt and gray sweatshirt. And they think he’s latino, but I never trust them to get that right. Anyway, not to scare you. Just so you know to be alert.

Another poster says that the weapon wasn’t a butcher knife, but that it was a serious and violent attack. There’s no word that a suspect has been caught.

We conclude Williamsburg Door Friday with (of course) Door Number Three. This is the Faile brand name, which has gone up in a number of place, but without any new art. This comes from Berry Street.

[Photo courtesy of Julie Wilson World/flickr]

Some of the coolest photos we’ve seen in a long time are the ones that Julie Wilson World has been putting up on flickr of Coney Island in the late 80s and early 90s. The photo above is from a set of Mermaid Parade photos from 1991. Do take note of the huge crowd on Surf Avenue as Dick Zigun leads the parade (yes, there were a lot more people on the boardwalk). The point being that the parade once was a much smaller kind of event than the big crowd draw that it’s become in recent years. Give these pics a whirl as they’re an interesting walk down memory lane. In the meantime, click here for info about tomorrow’s parade, which kicks off at 2:00, give or take, and the Mermaid Ball in the historic Childs Building.

The Carroll Park Concert Series starts tomorrow, June 21 with a show by local performer AudraRox. Per an email, the show is free but donations of $5 per family “will be very helpful.” The concerts are in front of the monument in Carroll Park and the sprinklers will be on for colling purposes. The show is at 4PM.
WHEN: Saturday, June 21st, 4 PM. Here’s the rest of the summer schedule:

JULY 9: Lloyd Miller (of the Deedle Deedle Dees) & the Brooklyn Phone Book
JULY 23: Randy Kaplan
AUGUST 6: Uncle Rock
AUGUST 20: Bari Koral Family Band

Obviously, the shows are family- and kid-oriented.

Continuing with Williamsburg Door Friday, we have one of our all-time favorites on Wythe Avenue. This piece of street art has been there fror a while.

“There’s neighborly, and then there’s neighborly. Apparently, someone’s assumption that ‘your hydrangea is my hydrangea’ was a little presumptuous. The note reads ‘To the ‘Neighborly-type’ person who came up my stoop and cut SIXTEEN STEMS off my Hydrangea: This plant is in memory of my deceased mother. I hope you sleep well at night.'”–Brooklynometry

Here’s our regular weekly post from the Center for the Urban Environment about the great tours they run:

Park Slope: Celebrating 35 Years as a Historic District. Saturday, June 21 – 11am – 1 pm – with Matt Postal. In July 1973, Park Slope became an historic district, preserving one of Brooklyn’s finest residential neighborhoods. This walk will visit some of the most beautiful blocks, paying particular attention to the families who commissioned these residences, as well as recent restoration projects and new construction. Meet street level of the 2/3 train at the newsstand in Grand Army Plaza. Fees are $13.oo for non-members, $10.00 for members and $8.00 for seniors or students.

Cruise the Gowanus Canal on Sunday

Summer is here!!! We do love the Friday night fireworks in Coney Island, as there’s nothing quite like heading there on a Friday evening to sit on the beach and watch what is always a nice display. They kick off tonight after dark and are sponsored by Astroland. We’ve found the time they start can very from anywhere from 9PM to 10PM this time of year, with earlier starts as darkness starts falling earlier again later in the summer. A vid of a Friday night in Coney from last summer, here.

We love Williamsburg doors and it’s been a while since we posted photos of any, so today were going to do a few and call it Williamsburg Door Friday. Here’s one from Broadway.

We posted earlier this week about the Coney Photos that were posted by Julie Wilson World on flickr. That set has been greatly expanded and is totally worth checking out on this Mermaid Parade Weekend.

It’s not Brooklyn, but WNYC does the best radio coverage around of our borough, so we’ll note that today is the final Big Moving Day from the venerable studios high atop the Municipal Building where the station’s great staff has been toiling in amazingly, uh, modest surroundings forever. Here’s an audio slideshow of the move.–WNYC

Goodbye Gowanus Condo. Hello, Elan Park Slope. Here style can, in fact, go hand in hand with a McDonald’s drive thru window. We’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that the condo on First Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues wouldn’t survive a marketing rebranding, particularly given that developers would like to call everything between the Gowanus Canal and Prospect Park West, “Park Slope.” And so it is with Elan Park Slope, per the banners that have just gone up on the building. Style and substance, uh, with a side of fries.

“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 it at all.” No, we don’t, but perhaps someone does.–GL Inbox

The process of renting an apartment–and all of the marketing games that go with the rental business–have made more than one Brooklynite want to barf. Now, the keepers of the community garden at Fifth Avenue and President Street are angry about an “intrusive” banner for rental apartments that has sort of become part of their garden. Per a GL Correspondent: “Rental ad banner went up on side of a building that overlooks community garden on 5th and President. They are not taking this offense lightly!” No, they are not. Not at all.

[Photo courtesy of Nate Kensinger]

There was some chaos on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope yesterday when the Astoria Federal Saving at Tenth Street was robbed. This, in turn, resulted in what appeared to be an evacuation of MS 51 at Fifth Street next to JJ Byrne Park because many students were outside at the time of the incident. The school was later described as “being in lockdown,” according to parents, although police on the scene called it an evacuation at first. Filmmaker, photographer and GL Contributor Nathan Kensinger was in the area and filed a report yesterday afternoon and got these images of the aftermath. The Post says that two robbers stole $13,000 and fled in a Cadillac. One was caught shortly thereafter and a second person is being questioned.

More exclusive photos and description of the Bank Robbery School Scare

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

· Bed-Stuy Library Reopens After $2M Renovation [NYT]
· Second Indictment in Brooklyn Construction Death [NYP]
· Two Brooklynites Get Presidential Medal of Freedom [NYDN]
· DDDB Asks State Board to Reconsider Atlantic Yards Approval [AYR]
· Sunset Park Firehouse Work Underway [Brownstoner]
· A Deer Crossing Sign in Williamsburg [Gothamist]
· More Bands Added to Siren Fest Lineup [Bumper Shine]
· Music at the Bridge Schedule Announced [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
· Before the Mermaids [Kinetic Carnival]
· Community Board 7 Meeting Rundown [Best View in Brooklyn]
· Fountains of Wayne [A Year in the Park]

We were waiting to see what was going to happen at the Mermaid Parade this year, particularly given the fact that its founder Dick Zigun is now very publicly against the city’s revised development strategy. Yesterday, the first shoe dropped: This year’s Queen Mermaid, Savitri D, (King Neptune is the Rev. Billy) is going to going on a mini-hunger strike after the parade and will be sitting in a window at Coney Island USA’s building at Surf Avenue and W. 12th Street and there will be a webcam of the festivities. All of which means that things are off to an even better start than we would have expected and that organizers are going to try to get every bit of media attention for the cause of the Coney Amusement District while press attention is focused on the area. Per an announcement on the Coney Island Message Board, “it is our freaky-monarchial DUTY to use this power to SAVE Coney Island from the gentrifying apocalypse of RETAIL ENTERTAINMENT HELL!” The Queen Mermaid won’t be eating until the Scoping Meeting on Tuesday (6/24) about the revised Coney plan on June 24. Per the announcement: “She is fasting to draw attention to a destructive scheme to reduce 60 acres of amusements to 9. She is fasting so YOU will come to this meeting, where the fate of Coney Island may be determined.” The Live Mermaid Cam starts Sunday at 10AM. Last year’s event had some redevelopment color commentary too.