We’ll leave aside the assertion in this video as to whether or not this video shows “harassment” of senior citizens by Bruce Ratner to get to the crux of the issue: it painfully the demonstrates the extreme violence being done to the quality of life of an elderly woman that is enduring Atlantic Yards demolition work going on outside her window. The video shows how deeply construction and demolition work can violate the core of one’s life. The person that made and posted the video writes:

This type of “work” begins as early as 7 am and lasts until the evening. Email Marty Markowitz at marty@brooklynbp.nyc.gov and ask him to stop the construction until the needs of the residents there are met.

We often joke about demolition porn, but this video, frankly is about as pornographic as things get. Hardcore.

Could deep reform of the Department of Buildings be an issue whose time has come, given two horrendous crane collapses (plus several arrests) this year? Well, there’s a press conference to call for reforms that will be taking place on Thursday at Noon at City Hall. Per an email:

In light of the Deutsche Bank building disaster and the two recent high-profile crane accidents, community activists and elected officials are coming together to demand reforms at the Department of Buildings. Mayor Bloomberg’s recent proposals are a step in the right direction , but now he has to work with community groups that have been advocating for DOB reform for years. Construction deaths are not limited to cranes, so it is important to address the bigger issues, and not just react to the news of the week.

Read more ahead.

We were reading a thread on Brooklynian about people’s feeling that there is more dog crap on the sidewalks of Park Slope than before, when we came across the long entry about a dog owner that wanted to clean up after their pet but, uh, couldn’t. Given that it touches on two of our favorite topics, one of them being interesting social interactions in Park Slope, here it is, as posted by Obamanut:

I was in Prospect Park with my dog (fairly large) when he suddenly got ‘the runs,’ nothing I could do. A ‘new Park Slope’ type middle-aged couple sitting on a bench, who looked like they just moved into the hood from the Upper West Side, watched me intently as I walked by past them. When my dog popped a squat, the gaze became even more intensive. When I looked at my dog’s watery leavings, which had instantly soaked into the grass/wood chips, and gave up and walked away, the woman’s eyes lit up as if she had been waiting for that moment her entire life – “HEYYY HEYYY HEYYY” she says after me, probably thinking I was going to just melt with shame and embarrassment.

Imagine her surprise when I said there was nothing solid to pick up…

We originally ran this video, which we found quite compelling on Friday, before lunarpages–the web hosting company from hell–decided to delete GL before a server switch was complete, taking us down for nearly a day and wiping out several days of posts…but we digress. We’re reposting this vid here because we think the situation it shows sucks that much. It comes from a reader in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens who shot this at 3:58AM Thursday night – Friday morning. Our reader writes:

The MTA is working on the subway tracks in Prospect Lefferts Gardens between the Prospect Park and Parkside Avenue subway stations. In case you’ve never been over to this side of Prospect Park, the subway is not buried and runs in a long open trench. I would estimate the sound decibel rating at about 120 (see this handy chart) which as you can tell by the video is extremely loud. It is impossible to sleep with such noise. This does not seem to be emergency work. In fact, this has been going on-and-off for the last few weeks on some nights. I should note that most of the time they are not welding as seen in the video but are pounding away with what sounds like a steel mallet. Not quite as loud, but enough.

Couldn’t they start a little later?

Among the many changes in parking regulations taking place in Park Slope–like the having alternate side cleaning on streets on two days and cleaning on avenue on two different days–regulations are also changing on Seventh Avenue. From a Park Slope Parents email:

New parking regulations have arrived. New parking regulations on 7th Ave (posted on Saturday) between Flatbush and Lincoln. No Parking from 7:30-8 AM EVERYDAY (except Sunday)!!! This is horrid for those of us who live near by and may have to move our cars everyday between 7:30-8 am. Does anyone know if this new regulation is suspended while they change all the signs?

We await the next development.

The “Summer of Hope” in Coney Island is now smaller. Half the carnival rides on developer Joe Sitt’s land are gone (as was planned) and the temporary amusements have now been reduced. The petting zoo across the street has also left town. The rides have been replaced by parking and the blue fence that was down temporarily around some of Mr. Sitt’s land on Stillwell Avenue near the boardwalk is back up. Meanwhile, there’s a crazy rumor on the Coney Island Message Board that Astroland’s lease will be extended past this season, although there is no substantiation or further elaboration.

Last week, we posted photos of a scary situation at 40 Berry Street in Williamsburg, where a luxury rental building partly bankrolled by Lehman Brothers and the California State Teachers Retirement System is going up. A shoddy wooden fence opening to a two story drop into a mud pit was ajar, dirt was crumbling into the hole and the sidewalk was cracked. The gate opening into the pit is still there, but it’s been nailed shut with wood and a barricade has been placed in front of it. Asphalt has been placed in the crumbling sidewalk. We still wonder why the Department of Buildings allows a developer to maintain a gate that opened to a two-story deep excavation site, and why trashy, cheap construction that falls over when someone blows on it is allowed, but at least someone now has to work to get access to the 40 Berry Mud Pit of Death.

Are those waste barrels in the Lehman Bros.-Teacher’s Death Pit?

Outraged city parents whose children were mistakenly rejected from public prekindergarten programs were still waiting late last week for a fix. The application mixup meant children with older siblings in school weren’t given first priority, as is Department of Education policy. But the problem may be more widespread – with parents charging that children from outside school zones were admitted to the programs…City Department of Education spokesman Andy Jacob said mistakes made by the city were limited to fewer than 200 applications citywide. Education Department officials systematically reviewed 9,000 applications for younger siblings, and were reviewing others on a case-by-case basis.–NYDN

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

· Guy Gets Locked in Burg Bar Overnight , Lives to Tell Story [NYT]
· About Marty Markowitz’s Latest Community Board 6 Purge [AYR]
· Law Firm Urges Halt to Atlantic Yards [Sun]
· Al Fresco Brooklyn Dining Choices [NYDN]
· Couple Arraigned in Child’s Death [NYT]
· Guy Goes Berserk in Crown Heights Then “Drops Dead” [NYP]
· Solomon’s Appliance Repair [Lost City]
· Is Seltzer Company Doing Ditmas Park? [Ditmas Park Blog]
· Newkirk Avenue Block Party [Sustainable Brooklyn]
· TV Drama, Castles, Shooting in Dumbo [Dumbo NYC]
· New Ices Shop in Windsor Terrace [Kensington Brooklyn]
· More Bed-Stuy Murals [Bed-Stuy Banana]
·

In case you missed our Friday-Saturday drama, GL was mightily screwed by our really bad webhost, Lunarpages, on Friday. Some readers may still, in fact, be being redirected and think we’re still down. If you see this on your RSS feed, but can’t see GL when you type in gowanuslounge.com, try clearing your cache. You may also be the victim of a cookie inserted by lunarpages.com, should you wish to look for it and delete it. Full details of the nasty problem here. Right now, we are still missing most post from last Wednesday and comments from Tuesday-Friday were permanently deleted. Some photos in our media library posted from May 29-June 6 are gone too. Many items that were deleted have been reposted, however, and we’ll get to some missing ones as we can.

These earrings come from the Cool Cat jewelry store in Downtown Brooklyn on Fulton Street. Mesmerizing.

“Coney Island’s famed Cyclone roller coaster isn’t just terrifying – it’s downright dangerous. There were at least seven incidents last summer in which riders suffered serious back and neck injuries, records show. At least two lawsuits stemming from the incidents have been filed, including one demanding $1 million. But the ride’s operator, Carole Albert, has quietly worked to settle the suits, insisting on ironclad confidentiality agreements, a source said. In the lawsuit discussions, lawyers for Albert’s company, Astroland Inc., admitted the problems were caused because the ride made its first 85-foot drop with too much speed, the source said. Astroland – which has operated the ride under a lease from the city for the last three decades – said it had since repaired the problem.”–NYP

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

Monday 6/9/08
Union Hall:
American Babies, Oliver Future $8 7:30 pm

Tuesday 6/10/08
Union Hall:
Adem, Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Sharon Van Etten $8 advance/ $10 day of show, 7:30 pm

McCarren Park Pool:
Death Cab For Cutie w/ Rogue wave $42.50, 7:00pm

Barbes:
Slavic Soul Party $10, 9:00pm

Wednesday 6/11/08
Barbes:
Bloodcount $12 per set, 8:00pm & 10:00pm

—Dan Bennis

[Photo courtesy of lornagrl/flickr]

This contribution to our GL Photo Pool comes from lornagrl. It’s the scene outside the Freak Show in Coney Island naturally.

Manhole fires in Brooklyn yesterday caused disruptions on five subway lines Sunday evening and cut power to up to 1,500 residents in Boerum Hill. “Around 5:45 p.m., a manhole fire at Dean and Smith streets disabled power to signals on F and G lines, while nearby, at Bergen Street and Fourth Avenue, problems on the power lines cut electricity to signals on the Nos. 2, 3, and 4 lines. Subway service was shut down along section of the lines, mostly between Brooklyn and Manhattan, for more than an hour.” No word on whether all power has been restored.–amNY

[Photo courtesy of Brit in Brooklyn]

No it’s not specifically a Brooklyn photo, but Governor’s Island is just across the Buttermilk Channel from us and the photo comes to us from GL Contributor Adrian Kinloch of Brit in Brooklyn. The photo is of one of the sculpture exhibitions currently on the island. For more about what’s going on there this season, click here.

Outside the Brooklyn Weather Observatory, there is strong sun. Today’s forecast calls for “Very hot and humid with the temperature tying the record from 1984 with hazy sunshine.” The National Weather Service has issued an “Excessive Heat Warning” from Noon-7PM and one for tomorrow too. The high will be 95 and it will feel like 104. Tonight there will be strong thunderstorms.–Accuweather

Generally the bus-related rants that we come across have to do with the reviled B61. This one, however, which was posted by to Brooklynian by apresvu has to do with the B67, which we don’t hear about very much. Here it is:

I take the B67 every morning usually about 7:25am from south slope heading north. Until about two months ago there was a very pleasant driver who would greet passengers with a “Good Morning”. Hey, I’m not even looking for a greeting, but it was nice and I would return the greeting. However, the past few months have been vastly different. How do I put it, this driver absolutly refuses to recognize a passenger, he looks straight ahead, and he has that scary look in his eye. Like “don’t fuck with me or I’ll kill you“. I’ve overheard other passengers call him “Mr. Personality”.

‘Back Door! Back Door!’

So, here’s a bicycling-related Sunday Missed Connection that doesn’t have to do with near misses or being run down, but with drunk biking (and seeming confusion of the Williamsburg Bridge with the Brooklyn Bridge). Here we go:

Glad you wear a helmet, but you should really get blinky lights! – m4w – 27 (Kent under the bklyn bridge)
Hey you! I was biking around 3am on this Saturday night, going home all buzzed and happy from dancing, standing up on the pedals to catch that breeze and keep cool, when I saw you ahead of me. I thought to myself, “man it totally sucks that I would be a total creep to talk to this girl while we’re riding!” Thus decided, I passed you without comment. (Though I was thinking “HI! I’m drunk. I love biking drunk. La la la” and “Man, I’m glad that girl is wearing a helmet, but she needs some lights! Safety first.”) But yes, I forced myself to not be weird and talk to you. Until you greeted me with a simple “sup”

I looked back and there you were, black dress, basket, happily biking along. 🙂 I managed to say “hey!!!!” and then biked away, afraid to appear weird by starting a conversation. But here I am, home, and I can’t get you out of my head. Even if you never write back, go you for actually being friendly! But if you do see this… do you want to go fly kites in the park and bike to the beach? Bye~

Safety first, indeed.

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

· Sunset Park Spiderman Speaks About NYT Bldg Climb [NYP]
· Bed-Stuy Couple Face Charges in Death of Child [NYT]
· Don’t Worry, They’re Not Removing Rail Lines for Atlantic Yards [AYR]
· Locked Gate in Sheepshead Bay Draws Ire [NYT]
· Students Apply in Droves for Target Jobs [Brooklyn Junction]
· Burg Barista Wins Latte Contest [Gothamist]
· Er, Keep Warm for Summer [New York Shitty]
· Oh, that Retail Space at the Williamsburgh Bank Building [NYT]
· The Local Bed-Stuy Pool [Bed-Stuy Banana]

Here’s a fun vid shot on Kent Avenue across the street from the Edge showing a gorgeous time lapse of sunset.

The reverberations of the Anarchy in the Pre-K situation continue, with a protest at City Hall this morning and calls for more protests and email campaign by disgruntled parents. One parent writing via the Park Slope Parents email list offers an interesting look at how a private contractor in Pennsylvania contributed to the mess:

I had a long talk with a parent coordinator this morning who told me more detail about the screening process than the Times article revealed. The article stated that parents either filled out the application incorrectly or the algorithms weren’t working. I can’t speak to the latter, but as for filling out applications “incorrectly”, this is what she told me: the data clerks in Pennsylvania were interpreting these forms without a clue as to what NYC looks like. If you mispelled a street name, you were rejected. If you left something off because you weren’t sure how to answer it, you were rejected.

The ‘mishandling’ was very personal.

You may have noticed that GL was down for about 18 hours on Friday into Saturday morning and that when we came back online some of our posts were missing, comments were gone and some photos had disappeared. This is because our (reprehensible, incompetent, and just-plain-crappy webhost, lunarpages) deleted our database before a switch to another one of their servers was complete. A good friend worked overnight to get us back up and running, almost having to recreate GL from scratch, due to other errors the webhost’s staff of technical geniuses also created. (Note to Google: Please match lunarpages with crappy webhost, nation’s worst webhost and creeps. Once again, that’s lunarpages = sucks.) We are still rebuilding some lost posts and apologize to people whose comments have disappeared. We can’t get them back. (If you left a comment between Tuesday and Friday, it’s gone.) There may be some old posts that are missing photos too. (Our friends manage to delete the image library after May 29.) In addition, we’re not reposting some posts from Tuesday-Friday that were dated or that were mainly photos. The entire database through most of Tuesday was intact, except for those deleted images hosted on the vile lunarpages. For those that have had older posts showing up on their RSS feeds, sorry. We’re having to repost items from scratch.

One final note, our new best friends at lunarpages also put a temporary cookie on our site to redirect GL visitors to their own website. This cookie may not have expired on some browsers, so some viewers may still be redirected to a lunarpages ad. (So, some people may think we’re still down but, hey, they can’t see this post thanks to the Lunarpages Cookie From Hell.) This is not unlike beating you over the head with a two-by-four and then hanging an advertising banner from your lifeless body.

We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience and leave you with this advice: If you want a webhost and you’re thinking about lunarpages, have a glass of lighter fluid with a side of rat poison laced with tiny shards of glass instead. You’ll be glad you did.