This street seating comes to us via the proprietress of Erica’s Blog, who writes that it’s outside of a car service near Coney Island Avenue and Cortelyou Road:

The inside, you should know, is unlike any car service place i’ve ever been in…you gotta walk deep, deep, deep inside the place before you get to the dispatcher, and the whole place looks to be under some kind of renovation / construction.

They do, however, provide some seating outside.

Do you take photos of Brooklyn and post them on flickr? Please join our Gowanus Lounge Flickr Pool and tag pics you’d like us to see “gowanuslounge.” We love posting them.

[Photo courtesy of Tracy Collins/flickr]

This is a family stroll through the Atlantic Yards site, also known as Pacific Street, as captured on film by Tracy Collins, who is the preeminent AY photo documentarian, and placed in our Gowanus Lounge Photo Pool.

Given that we’ve been following the Anarchy in the Pre-K situation in which children all over Brooklyn and the city has been randomly rejected from pre-school due to snafus which appear to rest with a contractor hired by the city, we will note that a rally sponsored by the City Council is taking place at City Hall today at 1PM to protest the situation. (Parents in Park Slope have probably screamed loudest, but this is a borough-wide issue and there are no doubt children in neighborhoods like East New York, Brownsville and Canarsie that are just as affected.) Per an email:

As you have likely heard, a number of public PreK applicants who should have received priority (siblings of older kids already enrolled at that school; zoned kids rejected, while out-of-zone and out-of-district kids were accepted) did not get spots in this year’s PreK admissions. As spots are limited in general, some schools simply have more sibling or zoned applicants than there are spots for, but that is not the matter at issue.

That’s 1PM today (6/8) on the steps of City Hall.

Here’s a selection of Brooklyn-related vids posted to YouTube in the last week or so.

[Image courtesy of Dalton Rooney/flickr]

This draped fire hydrant on Fifth Street comes to us via Dalton Rooney.

Outside the Brooklyn Weather Observatory we have the makings of a scorcher. The forecast calls for a day that will be “mostly sunny and humid with the temperature near the record of 95.” Meanwhile, the National Weather Service has issued a Heat Advisory from 1PM-6PM and says “hot and humid conditions will be in place once again on Sunday. High temperatures are expected to top off in the middle to upper 90s with surface dew points around 70. This will result in a heat index around 100 degrees.”–Accuweather

As many of you have noticed, GL has been down since about noon yesterday, and we’re currently showing posts only through Tuesday. (This will change as we rebuild things.) This is because our illustrious webshosting service, lunarpages, deleted our database as we were in the processing of transferring to another lunarpages server. We will be attempting to recreate important posts from the last few days and will be on a slow posting schedule over the weekend, as things that we’re wiped out included stored copies of posts that weren’t published. (Those are harder to get back.) Comments from Wednesday-Friday have been lost as well. And there are still some issues with display of images stored directly on the server. To all those that sent us emails, thank you. A word of advice to the reader, here and there, that might be looking for a webhost: You may have seen the free ad that lunarpages offered itself after they destroyed our database and took GL down by redirecting all our traffic to their main page. We would suggest a walk in front of the F Train before using lunarpages. Seriously. Once again, thanks for bearing with us as we attempt to put back together what their callous negligence and staggering incompetence destroyed.

Thanks again, for the outpouring of concern and kind words. We apologize for the frustration and any inconvenience.

It’s from Coney Island, where we imagine the beach will be popular on this very summer-like June Saturday.

Many of us pass the imposing, rather ornate, buff-brick Romanesque structure on the northwest corner of Ninth Street and Seventh Avenue in Park Slope without much thought to its past—perhaps stopping to shop at Brooklyn Industries or Urban Optical on our way to the F train. But the building has an interesting history.

Built by C. Nickenig in 1890 as social club, its first incarnation furnished the borough of Brooklyn with, according to its builder, “a suitable place of amusement.” In its early years, the crenellated roofline of the building had a 15-foot high tower topped with a flagpole bearing a flag with the hall’s name (see pix here, courtesy of Brooklyn’s Park Slope – A Photographic Retrospective by Brian Merlis and Lee A. Rosenzweig). The name of the building, “The Acme,” was also engraved in the Amherst stone of its tower. During these years, the establishment not only served as a lively center where fraternal and political organizations met but it was replete with bowling alleys in the basement and a billiard parlor on the second floor. The third floor boasted a two-story ballroom with balconies (later to become the offices of Old House Journal in 1989 for several years). The street floor claimed an excellent restaurant and bar, the Acme Café and Restaurant (for ladies and gentlemen), which had an outside beer garden where an entry to the Seventh Avenue station of the F train now stands.

It has a very colorful history

Ten Japanese Cuisine opened recently in the space that was once occupied by Laila in the South Slope. The space is unrecognizable from the basic premises that used to house the Middle Eastern restaurant. When we passed by, quite early in the evening or late afternoon, there were already a few people dining.

This photo from Green Street in Greenpoint shows the perfect combination of bicycle and comfy chair. Transportation and sidewalk seating! It comes to us from Miss Heather.

Urban Exploration with Forgotten-NY.com from Brian Lehrer Live on Vimeo.

Here’s an appearance by Kevin Walsh of Forgotten New York and Richard Nickel Jr. of Kingston Lounge on Brian Lehrer’s TV show, Brian Lehrer Live. They talk about urban exploration and historic preservation and touch on some Brooklyn issues and places like Admiral’s Row.

There has been an early bump in the road to lattes on the Gowanus side of the Park Slope-Gowanus DMZ. The construction site at 4th Avenue and 3rd Street that’s the rumored future location of a Starbucks isn’t off to the best start with the Department of Buildings. As of yesterday, there was a partial Stop Work Order on the job because a city inspector noticed approximately 100 feet of fencing missing from the site. Interestingly, there are no work permits posted anywhere on the fence and a copy of the stop-work mandate was lying on the ground on 4th Avenue. Actually, make that a Venti instead of a Grande.

The Department of Transportation appears to be making quick work of changing Alternate Side Parking signs around Park Slope, and many Slopers are finding that their alternate side days are being changed, in some cases from Thursday and Friday to Monday and Tuesday. Many of the new signs block out 9AM-10:30AM as the new “no parking” times, replacing old 8AM-11AM or 11AM-1PM rules. It looks like side streets are being changed to Monday and Tuesday or Tuesday and Wednesday alternate side days while avenues are being left as Thursday and Friday days. There have already been rumbling of discontent about the changed days on local email lists, but the fact that there will be four different alternate side days rather than two in some parts of the Slope raises the specter that someone who truly loses the alternate side lottery could end up–in theory–having to move his or her car four times in the course of a week rather than two. We will also go out on a limb and predict that, given the speed at which signs are being changed, that the suspension of alternate side parking does not last the entire summer as had been predicted.

The Anarchy in the Pre-K situation (aka a lot of parents, especially in Park Slope, upset because their children haven’t been accepted into city pre-K classes) has now spawned an information gathering effort via Survey Monkey. Per an email making the rounds via Park Slope Parents, which is a fulcrum of unhappiness about the situation (although the situation is citywide and a Queens Council Member is organizing a protest for Sunday):

As you have likely heard, a number of public PreK applicants who should have received priority (siblings of older kids already enrolled at that school; zoned kids rejected, while out-of-zone and out-of-district kids were accepted) did get spots in this year’s PreK admissions. If you know of anyone in this situation (anywhere in NYC!) please ask them to complete this survey as we (parents of rejected kids) attempt to get a handle on the scope & outreach thus far. While both Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum & City Councilman Bill De Blasio called a press conference yesterday demanding the DOE deal with the situation, we have yet to have a proper response from the DOE as a group or individually. They have told the press they will find suitable spots for wrongly rejected kids, but these spots may be in a school elsewhere in one’s district. That is unacceptable.

The survey–which asks for specific, detailed personal information–is here for anyone suffering from the Pre-K problems.

One mom’s story and analysis, here.

It has been a long time since we checked in on the infamous South Slope Crack Building (officially known as 406 15th Street). It got that name because construction work so destabilized a neighboring building two years ago that people had to be evacuated. For a long time, buildings had “crack monitors” to see if the damage got any worse. Well, the new building is up and one can draw one’s own conclusions about the aesthetics (phrases like “classic Brooklyn ugly” come to mind), but we were interested to find a brand new Stop Work Order slapped on the site. A check with the Department of Buildings website found this gem: “Re: SIDE WALL OF NB APPEARS TO BE ERECTED OFF FOUNDATION WALL” and this comment “LOT LINE WINDOWS, TANGENT PILES NOT IN LINE WITH.GRADE BEAM AS PER APPROVED PLANS.” The entire mess involving the building has been chronicled in exceptional detail by the IMBY blog.

A couple more Crack Building visuals, ahead.

· Two Men Climb NYT Building, One Was From Brooklyn! [NYT]
· Two Teens Charged in Crown Heights Beating [NYP]
· 14th Annual Native American Celebration Will Draw Crowd [NYDN]
· Parents Frustrated with School Admission Mess [NYT]
· Markowitz Gives Award to Man He Ousted from Community Board 6 [AYR]
· Correction Commissioner Talks About Jail with Retail [Brownstoner]
· Racial Profiling in Heart of Bed-Stuy [Bed-Stuy Banana]
· Sunset Park Cars Getting Shrink Wrapped! [Best View in Brooklyn]
· How to Do Mexican in Greenpoint [Brooklyn Based]
· About the Fasces [Brooklynometry]
· The Traveler: Brooklyn Dog Ends Up on Long Island [Gothamist]
· Grill Fest in Sheepshead Bay Tomorrow [Sheepshead Bites]
· Dylan Prospect Park Tix Being Scalped For $300-$600 [McBrooklyn]

“One parent’s casual idea to bring a toy rocket launcher to Greenwood Playground this afternoon turned into a ‘happening’ with children patiently lined up to wait for their turn,” writes Lauren Collins of the Windsor Terrace Alliance, who sent photos of the neighborhood excitement. “Ahhh, summer is almost here.”

See more playground fun by clicking here.

That big pro-Atlantic Yards rally sponsored by Forest City Ratner took place at Borough Hall yesterday. There were speeches by Borough President Marty Markowitz, Curtis Sliwa, ACORN’s Bertha Louis and others, although top-billed speaker Rev. Al Sharpton didn’t make it because of travel problems. The organizers said that 3,500 people came, although some estimates were only half that number. Atlantic Yards Report notes that “Brooklyn was just not very much in the house. Despite decent weather, free t-shirts, a full-page ad in the Daily News, an E-newsletter, requests from union bosses to attend, and promises of free food, free transportation, and “international recording artist Maxi Priest,” the disparate and soon-diminished crowd was often subdued, even bored, and a passel of Forest City Ratner operatives monitoring the event looked somber, despite the billing as a ‘fun day.’” There is Daily News coverage of the event here. Tracy Collins has a full photoset here and Adrian Kinloch has a large set here.

This beauty comes from N. 11 Street in Williamsburg via the camera of Miss Heather who is our prime supplier of images of the Brooklyn Street Couch.

<p align=”left”><a title=”link-asterisk.jpg” href=”http://www.bobguskind.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/link-asterisk.jpg”><img src=”http://www.bobguskind.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/link-asterisk.jpg” alt=”link-asterisk.jpg” align=”left” /></a>The website for NV 101 N5 in the Burg is up and running. It’s a Karl Fischer building at N5 & Berry and has apartments starting in the $500s for 1BRs. The copy about the Burg itself says it is full of “epicurean delights, shopping and green spaces,” among other things that range from “Polish bakeries pumping out that fresh bread smell to skateboard specialty shops with their faint emanations of punk rock.” Is that like London Calling emanating from a car parked in front of SEA on N. 6 Street at a very low volume?–Curbed

Here’s a view of a recent sunset from a rooftop overlooking the mighty Gowanus Expressway and, beyond it, Red Hook. It comes to us via our GL Flickr Pool.

The Coney Island Development Corporation has launched a new website with a “Coney Island Fun Guide.” The site highlights Coney attractions and events and includes an event calendar. It’s part of the CIDC’s broader PR work for Coney Island beyond its, uh, somewhat more controversial rezoning efforts. The Fun Guide can be found here. We do think that people will find the event calendar particularly useful.

There’s a meeting coming up for Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park on Monday, June 9. One of the pitches in the email we saw is that people are trying to organize so that planning for a concert space to replace McCarren Pool will be part of the Bushwick Inlet Park discussion. Per the email: “This means going to meetings and getting involved. Otherwise, have fun wondering why all the bands from our neighborhood are playing shows in Park Slope and Central Park. Or why Live Nation got to build some cool space and all the shows here cost $50.” The meeting takes place at 7PM at Diamond Bar, which is located at 43 Franklin Street. There are serious questions whether the Bloomberg Administration is moving quickly enough on the park to ensure development beyond a Phase I project before leaving office.

More detail ahead.

A couple of such messages were spraypainted on the huge metal fence surrounding a big construction site between N.11 and Roebling Streets. Feel the love.