This cat was found in the North Slope near Fourth Avenue the other night. The person that found him writes on Brooklynian that:

My neighbors and I found a cat outside our building this evening. One of my neighbors says she thinks he has been there for a few days (her dog was interested in it last night). He is very friendly, comes over to people and allows them to pick him up, and purrs when petted. He has a mark where a collar has been, so I think he is lost or else was evicted from his home recently. He is orange and white, an adolescent, and very sweet. If anyone knows where this adorable cat may have come from, or has an idea about where it can find a loving home, please let me know. He seems very healthy and doesn’t seem to have any health issues, and is only a little skinny, so I don’t think he’s been outside very long. He is currently living in my second bathroom, but I don’t know how long I can keep him.

One can leave a response on the original thread if this orange cutie is familar.

Herewith, a selection of shows coming up in Brooklyn from today through Sunday.

Thursday 6/12/08
BAM Rythym & Blues Festival at Metrotech: Otis Clay & Ryan Shaw -Free, 12:00pm

Celebrate Brooklyn, Prospect Park Bandshell: Isaac Hayes – Free!

Music Hall of Williamsburg: Swervedriver, Longwave, The Still Out $20, 9:30pm

Friday 6/13/08
Union Hall: Robbers On High Street, Unicycle Loves You, Modern Skirts $10 advance/ $12 day of show, 8:00pm

BAM Café Live: Melomane- Free, 9:00pm

Barbes: Adam Levy $10, 8:00pm – Hi’s Roundup $10, 10:00pm

Saturday 6/14/08
BAM Café Live: Kristin Mainhart -Free, 9:00pm

Union Pool: Stars Like Fleas (Record Release Party) $TBA, 8:00pm

Sunday 6/15/08
The Yard: Sunday Best w/ Stefan Goldmann- $8, 3:00pm

Union Pool: NYC Popfest 2008 (many bands, BBQ) $12, 3:00pm

—Dan Bennis

The Phallus of Fourth Avenue, aka the Monolith, a very tall and narrow building at Carroll St. and Fourth Ave. is going to be a rental. And quite a rental building it will be, covered in cream-colored stucco, with tiny balconies and overlooking the bar, Cattyshack.–Brownstoner

We’ve seen this image of a bucolic Gowanus Bay before, but we’re taken by it when we clicked over to the Ephemeral New York post courtesy of a Brownstoner link yesterday evening. ENY says it’s “An 1851 oil painting by Australian artist Henry Gritten. The full title is ‘Sun Set at Gowanus Bay in the Bay New York‘ and the original hangs in the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts in Tasmania.” They don’t quite make the Gowanus scenes like that anymore.

“A Long Island contractor faces manslaughter charges in connection with a deadly construction site collapse in Brooklyn earlier this year. Acting Department of Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri says the indictment should serve as a message that shoddy construction will be prosecuted. According to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, William Lattarulo was indicted today on manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, and reckless endangerment charges stemming from a wall collapse back in March at a construction site he owns on Glenmore Avenue in East New York.”–NY1

[Photo courtesy of Vaduzuvant/flickr]

Here’s another cool photo shot during Tuesday night’s line of thunderstorms and placed in our GL Photo Pool.

Outside the Brooklyn Weather Observatory, it’s a beautiful day. The forecast calls for a day that will be “mostly sunny, nice and warm.” The high will be 85. Tonight will be clear with a low of 68.–Accuweather

These chairs were captured via digital image yesterday in blazing heat by Miss Heather. They come from Manhattan Avenue. We like the composition and the way the trash can and chairs are arranged.

[Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Bred/flickr]

Here’s a photo taken in front of the Boathouse in Prospect Park and put into our Gowanus Lounge Photo Pool by Brooklyn Bred.

[Photo courtesy of Tracy Collins/flickr]

This is the rubble of the Ward Bakery building as seen under the fence on Dean Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt Avenues in Prospect Heights. For those that may not follow the Atlantic Yards saga, the building is coming down for the massive, proposed Forest City Ratner project.

“Park Slope artist Alex Grey is known for his love of LSD and the vivid, elaborate body of work that has often been inspired by it. His paintings have graced album covers for Nirvana, Tool, and String Cheese Incident—not to mention rave flyers and sheets of blotter acid. Juan Pablo Fernandez, who lives in Sunset Park, describes Grey’s work as ‘the best art that has come out in the last couple hundred years. Not only is it beautiful, but it has depth and meaning to it.’ Sweet words, but the two soft-spoken men have squared off in a lawsuit that raises questions about art piracy and permissible sales practices on the Internet…”–Village Voice

The South Slope’s Little D Eatery, which is on Seventh Avenue between 14th and 15th Streets, is on the market. Someone posted a link on Brooklynian to the listing on Craigslist offering a Seventh Avenue Bar/Restaurant for either $415K or $350K, depending on the ad. Per the $415K ad:

Neighborhood Bar / Restaurant with strong neighborhood clientelle for Sale in Rapidly Developing South Slope (Brooklyn). Reduced Price! Turn Key, beautifully built restaurant / bar with full liquor license and loyal neighborhood clientele. The Restaurant is approx 800 sq ft. seating 50 at 17 tables with 8 seats at the bar (74 capacity). Dining atmosphere is warm, intimate and energetic. Features weekly wine tastings, Live music and an eclectic seasonal menu. Kitchen and bar are fully operational with all new equipment. Purchaser will receive brand new 10 Year with 5 year option at an amazing rental rate of $4500 per month. Key Money:$415,000. 50% Owner Financing Available.

The $350K ad which has some different details is here. A number of restaurants and have opened and closed in the area in the last year or so. The most recent changeover is a new one–from Laila to Ten Japanese on the corner of Seventh Ave. and 15th Street.

Here’s one of our weekly features from the Center for the Urban Environment (CUE). This week’s interiew is with Drosera owner Marielle Anzelone. CUE was introduced to her through the Sustainable Business Network NYC, which is a network of businesses dedicated to building a vibrant, diverse and responsible local living economy in New York City. For more information on SBNYC check out www.sbnnyc.org.

Q: Where are you from originally?

A: I was born and raised in New Jersey. I also received my undergraduate and graduate degrees from Rutgers University. I heart the Garden State!

Q: What lead you to botany and garden design?

A: My garden and landscape design business was born of the desire to bring nature to the public, like my Native Plant Display Garden in Union Square Park. I’m inspired by the beauty of the local – our regional plant communities. Consideration is given to ecological relationships, seasonality, textures, and winter interest. Native plant gardens are habitat havens for birds, bees, butterflies, they reflect our local natural heritage and they can be carefree and beautiful when thoughtfully designed.

Q: Yes, the relationship between flora and fauna is an important one, but something a lot of us lose sight of when planting our front and back yards—why do you think that is?

A: Because the sole focus of 99% of the books and magazines on landscape design is aesthetics, with no consideration given to ecological processes. This industry is tends to view vegetation as merely ornamental, like a lamppost. We can’t continue to create gardens and landscapes that don’t address the needs of the environment.

A lot more with Marielle Anzelone, right ahead.

There are planters and, then, there are planters. This former toilet on Union Street near Nevins in Gowanus on the front steps a very rundown and possibly vacant home is a planter. Very DIY.

We came across this thread about flower box thieves–it starts with an incident in the South Slope–on Brooklynian. Here’s the original theft report posted by windowdressing:

So I moved. And since I’m moved to a 1st floor apt, I thought that buying some nice flower boxes and filling them with (wait for it….) flowers would be a nice idea. So I bought two and set them up outside on my gate. Very pretty, I thought, I hope my new neighbors like them. One week later, one of them has already been stolen. Dammit. Scene of the crime: 16th street, btw 7th and 8th (close to the corner of 8th). Time: This past friday or saturday night. (I was out of town visiting my family). If anyone has information about the dastardly perpetrators of this heinous act, please forward them along.

More tales of purloined flora, ahead.

You have to love the Metropolitan Opera in Prospect Park…well, if you do, the opera is performing in the park on Friday, June 20 at 8PM. (The rain date is June 21.) Soprano Angela Gheorghiu and tenor Roberto Alagna will perform a sort of “Opera’s Greatest Hits” show with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Per the Met’s website:

In what is anticipated will be one of the Metropolitan Opera’s largest outdoor concerts in company history. Met Summer Concert: Live in Prospect Park has the potential of being attended by an audience of up to 150,000 people, who will be drawn from all five boroughs and the suburbs. The performance will be broadcast live on WQXR-FM (96.3 FM), and streamed live on the Met’s website, www.metopera.org…The married star couple of Gheorghiu and Alagna will sing popular arias and duets by Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti, Massenet, and others, conducted by Ion Marin. Gheorghiu and Alagna will perform on a larger than normal stage in Prospect Park’s Long Meadow baseball fields, surrounded by six jumbo video screens that will be strategically placed throughout the area to maximize the viewing experience.

It should be a busy night in the park.

This is the scene on 17th Street in what we believe is the South Slope. The GL reader who emailed this photos and the ones after the jump writes:

Here is a graphic statement of why I love Brooklyn and why it is so important that the neighborhoods most under pressure from gentrification maintain a mixed-income balance of affordable, as well as market-rate, housing. These are a few photos taken of a rare urban jungle, complete with lions, tigers and elephants…

See Tarzan riding the white elephant and more ahead.

Today’s Daily News deals with an important part of the Anarchy in the Pre-K situation: the fact that affluent parents in Park Slope and other neighborhoods haven’t been the only ones impacted by the partial meltdown of the selection and admission system. The troubles are hitting parents of modest means in less privileged neighborhoods too who participate less in online email lists that tend to get attention for problems. Per the NYDN:

Middle-class parents in Park Slope and Williamsburg have been outraged by the city’s prekindergarten application mixups – but the new system may have posed a problem for poorer residents, too. Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Public School 3 has space for 54 prekindergarten students for next fall, but parents didn’t know about the new application rules – so only 18 slots were filled. “It seems like such a daunting task, when [last year] it was so easy – just go to your neighborhood school and sign up,” said PS 3 literacy coach Lisa North.

“In a place like Bed-Stuy, people move around a lot. They live with other people. I’m sure our parents never got [notice].” This year, parents were required to send in an application by April 18 – and then go to schools to register if their children were admitted.

There is no word yet on how, when or if the problems are going to be fixed.

“A building contractor is facing possible murder charges on Wednesday for a Brooklyn construction accident that killed a worker and injured another in March when a foundation wall collapsed. ‘I think maybe it will be manslaughter,’ contractor William Lattarulo said Tuesday as he prepared to surrender to prosecutors this morning. Lattarulo, 63, blamed heavy rains and said he tried to warn workers in the March 12 collapse in East New York that killed worker Louro Ortega of Queens. Authorities fined Lattarulo and indicated shoddy construction caused the collapse, which occurred just three days before the E. 51st St. crane crash that killed seven people in Manhattan.”–NYDN

The former vacant lot between N. 11 & N. 12 Streets in Williamsburg that was most recently a parking lot and was, for a time in its history, a paint factory, is now a construction site where a large Karl Fischer building (eight stories, 180 units) will be rising. The construction fencing went up last week and excavation work got underway. The site is sealed up pretty tightly in terms of getting photos, but we noticed mounds of excavated soil piling up. It is standard practice in such cases where soil may harbor toxins to cover it with tarps so that dust doesn’t blow around. (For instance, the dirt mountains at the Roebling Oil Field site a block away were covered in tarp as soil contaminated with heavy metals, oil and other toxins was being removed.) In this case, the site is across the street from homes, a new condo and from McCarren Park, not to mention fronting busy Bedford Avenue. Rumors about the property have reached the level of urban legend over the years. Here’s what one reader wrote Curbed just last week:

“There was some digging today at the site on the corner of Bedford and N12/N11. If neighborhood lore is even partially true, that is a very toxic site. It is also close to (among many things) where my community garden has been growing away for the past decade…The site was an ink factory for the treasury, and the ink products left serious contamination in the soil? Supposedly it was to be capped and left still for several years?

From the views we were able to get of the soil, it was only covered here and there by a tarp–which either indicates that there’s really no need to cover it or that, well, the contractor doesn’t have enough tarp. It could be that the surface soil being excavated now was “clean” stuff brought in to cap the site after the factory that was there was demolished, still it’s interesting to see piles that are partly covered and partly exposed in the middle of a high traffic area.

Additional digging of the dirt, ahead.

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

· Ambulette Kills Teen in East Flatbush [NYP]
· Atlantic Yards Ironies at Eminent Domain Conference [AYR]
· Witness Says He Threatened to Kill “The Grim Reaper” [NYP]
· Coney Island Sofagate Roundup [Kinetic Carnival]
· CB7 Hearing Today about Bush Terminal [Best View in Brooklyn]
· Brooklyn Bridge Park Demo Coming Along [Brownstoner]
· Out in the Blazing Sun [A Year in the Park]
· Kill Devil Hill Revisited [New York Shitty]
· Loving the Slow Bike Movement [Sustainable Flatbush]
· From Flophouse to Art House? [Bed-Stuy Banana]
· Community Board 10 Zoning Meeting on June 11 [Bay Ridge Journal]

The fact that there are only three hard-to-see little green triangles on the map above is a good thing. It’s Con Ed’s map of service problems, which last night looked like something with an outbreak of the measles. This is the view as of 8:15 AM, showing some small remaining problems in Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and Sunset Park. The Con Ed Map, which is a handy little tool for checking on misery during power problems, can be found on this page by following a link. McBrooklyn had a report on last night’s situation.

Check out last night’s mess by clicking here.

Here is a list of upcoming Brooklyn Community Board Meetings from the handy Daily News compilation. A number of them take place today:

Community Board 1 (Greenpoint, Williamsburg) will hold its next board meeting at 6:30 p.m. today (6/11) at Swinging Sixties Senior Center, 211 Ainslie Street.

Community Board 2 (Fort Greene, Fulton Mall, Boerum Hill, Clinton Hill, Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn Heights, Fulton Ferry, DUMBO) will convene its next monthly board meeting at 6 p.m. today at Phoenix Career Academy, seventh floor meeting room, 50 Jay Street.

Community Board 4 (Bushwick) will hold its regular board meeting at 6:30 p.m. June 18, at 195 Linden Street.

Community Board 5 (East New York, Cypress Hills, Highland Park, New Lots, City Line and Starrett City) will hold its next board meeting at 6:30 p.m. June 25, at 127 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Community Board 6 (Red Hook, Cobble Hill, Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus) will meet today at 6:30 p.m. today at Public School 27, 27 Huntington Street.

A whole lot more meetings for CB7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 ahead

The Fourth Annual Renegade Craft Fair is happening this weekend in Williamsburg. It’ll be taking place for the second year in a row at McCarren Pool rather than in McCarren Park proper. The dates are June 14 and 15 from 11AM-7PM. More than 200 artists are supposed to be showing their stuff. Also, per the craft fair website: Popshop DJ Squad playing tunes and treats from Lefty’s Silver Cart, The Treats Truck, Wheeler’s Frozen Desserts, Fizzy Lizzy, 1 Bite 7 Days and Mister Softee.

Brit in Brooklyn blogger and GL Contributor Adrian Kinloch has been having a field day taking photos of lightning strikes during some of the nightly thunderstorms rolling through during the just-concluded heat wave. He sent us this photo from last night’s heat wave-ending storms and also posted some photos on BIB.