The G Train may have problems, but it does have some friends and people that really want to see service improvements. We got an email from Assem. Hakeem Jeffries office about a rally he is organizing next week to call for service improvements on the G. It says in part:

In partnership with a number of community based organizations, local business leaders, and other elected officials, Assemblyman Jeffries will be hosting a rally Wednesday, May 21st at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church to kick off a campaign to encourage the MTA to increase service on the G Train. Service improvements will be voted on by the MTA board at the end of June.

The rally will take place at 6:30PM on Wednesday, May 21 at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, which is located at 85 S. Oxford Street (between Fulton St. and Lafayette Ave.)

To see the flier for the event, click here.

Sunset Park’s Chinatown has gotten some serious press in the last week with a Village Voice article by Robert Sietsema, who says it’s less crowded, less tourist and, well, better than those in the other boroughs. We’ll take that.–Best View in Brooklyn

[Photo courtesy of lornagrl/flckr]

The Brooklyn Bridge’s 125th Anniversary festivities start this week, most notably with a concert and fireworks Thursday night. This is a shot from lornagrl dropped into our GL Photo Pool.

We almost never get to use the the little wind icon that appears here. Right now, it’s calm outside the Brooklyn Weather Observatory, but today’s forecast is calling for winds gusting past 45 MPH later on and cooler temps with clouds and sun and a shower here and there in the afternoon. The high will be 61. Tonight will be cool with patchy clouds and a low of 47.–Accuweather

[Image via Potato Potato/flickr]

This is an LP of Coney Island sounds dating back to 1957 that we found on flickr. There’s a bit more info about it here. We can tell you that Coney Island in Stereo on vinyl will set you back $59.00 and that many of the sounds recorded are of rides that haven’t existed for a looong time.

Workers from Earwax have now made it a habit to throw water on us every Sunday, whenever we perform on the storefronts sidewalk. They have threatened us with mace! They have gotten our electronic equipment wet. The bcfools ain’t gonna take it anymore. Read it and watch it happen and evolve! Performance, movement, Perform and move and perform and move! HAPPENING THIS SUNDAY! BCFOOLS VS. THE EARWAX WATERMEN

There’s a full rundown on Mr. Silver’s BCFools blog. Should be some great street theater, assuming mace and pepper spray aren’t used by store employees. For the record, we’ve been in Earwax hundreds of times over many years and can say with confidence that they’ve never threatened to mace us. Maybe the guy actually said, “Dude, we’re trying to listen to the new Mace CD. Get out of here.”

The Williamsburg Kite Festival took place yesterday in McCarren Park. Here’s a photo gallery of the festivities.

First, Matthew Silver, aka the Bedford Avenue Dancer, gets doused with a bucket of water by an employee of Earwax Records. Then, about 40 seconds into the video the employee comes out and threatens to “mace” him.

There’s a worthwhile stoop sale going on in Park Slope today to benefit Thomas Golden Randolph, a very sick child about whom we posted yesterday. If you’re on Third Street today, perhaps on the way to the Fifth Avenue Fair, stop by and buy something or make a donation. The sale is at 422 Third Street and it runs through 4PM.

Click here for more photos.

Sundays mean one thing around GL HQ: Our Sunday Brooklyn Craigslist Missed Connection. This week, we turn to one that’s a bit different than the usual weekly choices. It’s not a Missed Connection on the L Train or anything like that. Rather, it’s an online Missed Connection. Read on:

Missing my sex addict pal that I connected with via CL a few weeks ago – m4w – 26 (Park Slope / CL)
Hey! It’s Peter Post, Postman Pete…I deleted my e-mail. read below and respond if you remember talking to me: Okay, to put it as articulately as possible: I am an attractive, successful, overly-educated, sarcastic, laid-back, fun, artistic guy who has been trying for quite some time to deal with my affliction. This affliction is centered around addiction. While I’ve been functional and able to control 99% of my life, one part of my life time and again spins out of control: my sex life.

Here’s the thing (as bad as it sounds and as bad as it is): I am in a committed relationship. Am I looking for a sound exit from it? YES. Will that happen overnight for me? NO. In fact, I live with this person.

I have not acted out in a long time, but want to.

The writer who started a “why do people hate Park Slope” discussion when she said she was writing something for New York Magazine has, instead, published her story on Park Slope Hating in the Sunday Times. It covers what will be very well worn territory to those who follow such discussions or participate in them, but will be instructive to the more casual observer of dislike of the Slope. Here is a short excerpt:

To its detractors, Park Slope is both haunt and hatchery of New York’s smuggest limousine-liberal yuppies. It is, if I may further summarize the bad publicity, overrated and hypocritical. Its glorious brownstone blocks and jaunty cafes are awash in carpetbagger entitlement, ruled by snarling “Stroller Nazis.” The neighborhood is a ground zero of all that is twee and lame. It is, God forbid, the suburbs…How did Slope Rage become a meme unto itself, even among people who won’t take the F train below East Broadway?

We must take some hatred of Park Slope with a generous dash of salt (organic, artisanal, hand-harvested). Much anti-Slope invective is stirred up in comments on blogs, which are not known for universally trenchant insight (“Puke Slope!”) or for their warm embrace of, well, anything.

More discussion to come, no doubt.

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn information and images:

· Three Saved in Coney Island [NYP]
· Lamentation for Woman Found Dead [Brooklynometry]
· Our Dear Dry Cleaner [winsdorterracebrooklyn]
· Smartmom Has Many Mothers [OTBKB]
· How to Blow a Job Interview [Bad Advice]
· Dear Neighbor…About My Mail [Lornagrl]
· Dumbo Weekly Links [Dumbo NYC]

Since the Brooklyn Bridge 125th Anniversary festivities start on May 22, here are a few vids of the bridge from YouTube.

Every week, we take a small, random sample of the comments left by readers during the previous seven days. Here are this weeks (very random) choices:

Hardcore Union Hall Opponent Criticizes Community Board 6. “For the record, I think Mr. Crow has every right to press his case, and this letter shows that he is shrewd rather than nuts, as many have surmised. HOWEVER, his letter contains much ‘false information’ and many distortions.” [Teddy]

Pro-Alternate Side Parking Sentiment in Park Slope? “The only people for whom a shortening of the time has any relevance are the folks who are around during the day–again, a minority–so this “change” is no change for most car owners, who are scurrying around (in my neck of the woods) on Thursday evenings, looking for ‘a Friday spot’.” [Janet]

Jack Heights is Going at Park Slope Again. “This ad makes me want to vomit and weep, in equal measure. No wannabee-in-Brooklyn folks need apply. Stay out. But Queens is Queens is Queens, my natal place, and that of family going back to the 1850s. It will never be the new anything, and NEVER Brooklyn, OK?” [MKL]

Library Porn Debate Continues in Park Slope. “I don’t know about other parents, but TV and radio news is far more upsetting. Try explaining why 50 soldiers just got blown up or hundreds of children are buried in earthquake rubble…” [Doug]

There are a number of these in Williamsburg, around S. 4 and S. 5 Streets, particularly on fences around the various local condo projects.

We don’t normally veer entirely off-topic, but in this case, the subject matter is riveting and worth reading. It’s a series of blog posts from an American that lived through the horrific cyclone that hit Myanmar, from which 100,000 died directly and several million are now imperiled. We found it through the Englishman in New York blog. It is very, very long, totaling many thousands of words, but we found that we couldn’t stop reading. The blogger rode out the storm in Yangon and, then, later travels outside the city.–Danwei

Have you joined our Gowanus Lounge Flickr Pool? Are you already a member? We welcome your contributions! And, don’t forget to tag those pics “gowanuslounge.”

[Photo courtesy of lornagrl/flickr]

This photo comes at us from the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island, where Nathan’s would be out of the frame on the left. The Shore Theater is directly across the streets and that’s the Stillwell Avenue station across the street on the right. The Statue of Liberty Man needs no explanation.

[ad#ad-5-visual-block]

Outside the Brooklyn Weather Observatory right now there is sun, but it’s not supposed to last. The forecast calls for: “Becoming cloudy and not as warm; a couple of showers and a thunderstorm this afternoon.” The high will be 66. Tonight, we’re looking at “a couple of evening showers and a thunderstorm; otherwise, mostly cloudy.” The low will be 47.–Accuweather

Have you joined our Gowanus Lounge Flickr Pool? Are you already a member? We welcome your contributions! And, don’t forget to tag those pics “gowanuslounge.”

[Photo courtesy of arichman33/flickr]

This is Red Hook’s Metal and Thread on Van Brunt Street, courtesy of our GL Photo Pool.

Today is the second day of the Park Slope Open Studio Tour, which one might want to check out on the way to or from the Fifth Avenue Fair. There’s a webpage for the tour here, but the link to the map just leads to a PDF of the image we’ve posted above. The map is supposed to be available at shops in Park Slope.

Here is a report from Channel 2 last night, updating the sad murder of a dry cleaner on Tenth Avenue in Windsor Terrace.

There is no way to look at this baby’s face and not be moved. We’ve gotten a number of emails from the organizers of this event about a “Giant Stoop Sale for Babies” tomorrow at 422 Third Street in Park Slope and a Blood and Platelet Drive for a beautiful child named Thomas Golden Randolph. He will be a year old next month and is a member of the June Babies Group in Park Slope. Per the email:

In December, he was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease called Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis, which is similar to cancer and affects bone marrow and blood. He has been receiving chemotherapy and steroid treatments multiple times weekly and blood and platelet transfusions. He recently faced a major setback and his blood/platelet transfusion needs have increased. The June Mothers Group is holding a giant stoop sale to raise funds for Golden’s medical care as well as a call for blood/platelet donations. Any surplus funds will be donated to the HAA.

The Stoop Sale is at 422 3rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues tomorrow (5/18) from 10AM to 4PM. If you are attending the Fifth Avenue Fair stop by and purchase something or simply make a donation. It will provide a mega-credit of very, very, very good karma. The Blood & Platelet Donations are through Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Schwartz Building Lobby, 1250 First Avenue (Between 67th and 68th Streets) on Tues – Thurs 830 a.m. – 730 p.m.; Fri – Mon 830 a.m. – 3 p.m. Here are some details: “Platelets from any blood type will benefit Golden. Please specify donation is for Thomas Golden Randolph, patient# 35186709. Please call Marion Novak at 212-639-7643 to schedule an appointment and confirm eligibility. Appointments must be made in advance.” These are very concrete ways you can make a small difference in one little life.

Click here for the full stoop sale flier.