Readers might remember the sad story of a dog that was found in Park Slope after being hit by a car. A caring soul took the dog for emergency care, incurring significant charges in the process, and has been trying to find the owner. Meanwhile, help has come from a variety of groups and we’ve been trying to keep track of the story to see if there have been any developments. There’s some good news: the person who rescued the dog noted on Brooklynian yesterday that the creature, who has been recovering, has been adopted. The dog’s new owner is a writer who works at home a lot. Despite all the publicity about the dog, its owner has never been found.

The rats at Borough Hall are still doing well. Thanks to the snow there are many pictures of little tracks that show a great deal of activity as well as the failure of extermination efforts. Nice to see them enjoying this little burst of winter, however.–Pardon Me for Asking

Yesterday, we noted on Curbed that Purple 53, the old bread truck/living quarters that was parked in a lot at N. 11 and Bedford in Williamsburg for a year, was gone. The truck took off last week and actually left New York City on Friday during the snowstorm. The first stop was Richmond on Saturday and the truck’s proprietor, Angel Hess emails to say that he’s now on a farm in North Carolina where he will be spending a week. Mr. Hess paid $200 a month for the space in the lot.–GL Inbox

• Some Changes Privately Reported for Atlantic Yards [AYR]
• Atlantic Yards Construction Update [No Land Grab]
• Admiral’s Row Debate Still Framed as Either/Or [Brownstoner]
• Airline Says Crew Acted Appropriately Before Brooklyn Mom Died [NYT]
• Family Blames American Airlines Crew for Death [NYDN]
• Another Death at Bay Ridge Hotel [NYP]
• Bay Ridge Enclave Planning a Lawsuit Over Ruptured Pipe [NYDN]
• Easter Stuffed Animal Drive [New York Shitty]
• Vid of Coney Island, Circa 1978 [Kinetic Carnival]
• Atlantic Ave. Urban Outfitters Opening Soon [Brownstoner]
• Here’s Greenpoint’s t.b.d. [Gothamist]
• New & Improved St. Clair Restaurant [ABL]
• Melting Nethermead [A Year in the Park]
• Three Classes of Bodega Menus [Bed-Stuy Banana]

Brooklyn photographer Deborah Matlack who often sends us cool photos, especially of Coney Island, passed along some photos of the gazebo that is the site of a very cool summer scene on the boardwalk with much Latino music and dancing. Sadly, a nasty fate has befallen the gazebo this winter, which appears to have been knocked over somehow. Here’s hoping the Parks Department puts it back up again.

The ULURP Committee of Community Board 1 is meeting tonight (2/26). The meeting starts at 6:30PM and will take place at Lady of the Snow Society Inc. Facility, which is at 410 Graham Avenue (between Withers Street and Jackson Street). The agenda includes a request from St. Nick’s for a letter of support regarding the preservation of affordable housing at various sites. It also includes ongoing discussion of the city’s inclusionary housing program, the Grand Street rezoning, issues regarding the Department of Buildings and revisions to the city’s loft law.

This Coney Island sunset photo from regular GL photo contributor Eric Provost is only one of several he’s sent us that we’ll be featuring over the next few days. Check out a a serious of previous gorgeous Coney shots here.

So, the “father of hip-hop,” Clive Campbell (D.J. Kool Herc) is suing Jay-Z, developer Bruce Ratner and Barclays Bank for $5 billion for slavery reparations. Jay-Z is a part owner of the Nets, which would play in the Barclays Center in Mr. Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project. Barclays has been accused of historic links to the slave trade. The suit says Jay-Z, Barclays and Mr. Ratner “profited from the African Slave Trade and continue to profit from these gains, through a conspiracy dating back hundreds of years and continue to date to oppress Black people, enslave them, unlawfully deport them to all corners of the Earth.”–The Real Estate

This is another photo sent to us by sculptor, artist and photographer Gary Mirabelle, who is a regular photo contributor to GL. If you missed Mr. Mirabelle’s snow photos, you can check them out here and here and here.

Somehow, it’s fitting that Lysistrata is being staged in Park Slope by the Gallery Players. We got an email about it yesterday. It will be running from March 15-30. Here’s a bit from the email:

The Gallery Players, Brooklyn’s premier Off-Off Broadway theater, is proud to present the classic and sexy Lysistrata by Aristophanes and in a new translation by Drue Robinson…a bawdy and audacious antiwar classic, [it] is filled to the brim with hilarious innuendo and exposes the shared humanity between two feuding peoples. The women of the warring factions wage a psychological battle of their own when they take over the Acropolis and withhold their sexual favors from the savage local men until such time as the insane conflict is ended…

Lysistrata opens March 15 and runs through March 30, 2008 (12 performances only). Performances take place Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8PM; Sundays at 3PM. Additionally, The Gallery Players is offering a Saturday matinee performance at 2PM on March 22nd and March 29th only. Tickets are $18 for Adults, $14 for Senior Citizens and children 12 and under. Tickets can be purchased 24/7 online at www.galleryplayers.com or by calling TheaterMania at (212) 352-3101 (phone hours 9-9 weekdays, 10-6 weekends)…Other productions at The Gallery Players in 07-08: Man of La Mancha (April 26-May 18, 2008), and the 11th Annual Black Box New Play Festival (June 2008, dates TBA). The Peanut Gallery, a summer musical theatre adventure camp for kids now in its 4th year, will take place in July 2008.

The Gallery Players is located at 199 14th St., between 4th and 5th Aves. in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

We will have rain today and it will be breezy by this afternoon. The high will be 46, but it will feel like 42. Rain will continue through early evening. The low tonight will be 34.–Accuweather

GL Analysis
The site at 208 N. 10 is a poster child for everything that is wrong with the building monitoring system concerning low-level violations, like threats to public safety that are less dramatic then steel beams falling 20 stories and killing people or construction safety violations. The lack of solid fencing at construction sites in communities like Williamsburg, which have them on every block, represents a nasty breakdown of the system. Unsecured sites with construction equipment, buildings in mid-demolition and deep construction pits are a danger to the public. Someone–a child, a drunk or an adult with compromised judgment–is going to die at one of them eventually. It is a statistical likelihood. It is a shame that the city doesn’t require developers of expensive projects to surround them with secure fences. When a child or adult dies, some will ask how it happened. This is how it happened: clearly dangerous situations were ignored, and even when they weren’t, the city didn’t require developers to put up fences that wouldn’t fall down in a stiff breeze or that could be pulled down by a ten-year-old. Is it a major scandal given other building related issues? No. Then again, the devil is in the details.

Apparently some people in Boerum Hill have been suffering from an internet outage courtesy Time Warner. Per a GL reader: “I don’t know of anyone else has mentioned this but I live in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn and we’ve been without cable since sometime Friday afternoon. Time Warner doesn’t seem to have any idea when it will be back nor could the customer service rep tell me what happened. I thought I would pass along thus info if you think it may be of interest to the other readers.”–GL Inbox

The Times City Section, the part of the paper to which many good Brooklyn stories are relegated, finally paid attention yesterday to the issue of Officer’s Row, the historic buildings in the Brooklyn Navy Yard that the city wants to demolish to make way for a supermarket and its parking lot. We don’t usually critique print media stories–and we’ll ignore the bigger issue that the Times can’t spare a few inches of print space for Admiral’s Row in the Metro section but can find room for a car chase that ends on Smith Street–but we can’t resist some editorializing in this case. The article, which weighs in at less than 500 words, unfortunately casts the issue as one of groceries for low-income public housing residents versus vague historic preservation goals. The story does mention both sides of the issue, and support for both preservation and demolition, but one can’t help but come away with a sense the writer was spun by the pro-demolition side.

Here’s the crux of the Times treatment:

“Those things there? They’ve been there forever,” said Elijah Knox, a resident of the Farragut project who was hurrying across its wind-swept courtyard the other day. “They need to tear them down.”

That is precisely the thinking of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, a nonprofit group that oversees the Navy Yard. The city is asking that the National Guard, which owns the property, give the land to the city so that the corporation can demolish the houses and replace them with a supermarket of roughly 60,000 square feet and a large industrial building. Residents of Farragut and two other public housing projects nearby would be given preference in hiring.

Although preservation groups, including the Landmarks Conservancy and the Historic Districts Council, have publicly attacked that proposal, it has met a mostly warm reception among Farragut residents, who regard the vacant town houses as neglected eyesores.

We’ve made our position on Admiral’s Row clear and even gone so far as to suggest that it would be a good thing if the Navy Yard Development Corp. followed through on its threat to walk away from the project if historic preservation is part of the deal. The truth is that it may be more difficult to develop a supermarket and to preserve Admiral’s Row, but it is entirely possible and it is totally desirable. The attempt to cast the issue as produce vs. preservation is as divisive and cynical as it is misleading and unfortunate. Brooklynites can have their broccoli and fix up a piece of history at the same time, and it is important that we do both.

It’s a sad day when one has to count on the Federal government doing the right thing and protect Brooklyn history and American history from New York City’s own political leaders and economic development officials. Yet, that is truly what we hope happens in this case. Admiral’s Row deserves to be saved for future generations and local residents deserve their supermarket. Both goals can easily be accommodated.

“A Brooklyn mom flying back from Haiti on American Airlines died after two onboard oxygen tanks that could have been used to revive her failed to work, relatives said Sunday. Carine Desir, 44, a nurse from Lefferts Gardens, collapsed an hour into the flight on Friday, moaning, ‘Don’t let me die.’ Flight attendants and medical personnel tried to save Desir by administering oxygen, but the tanks were empty, the family charged.”–NYDN

There’s a meeting on “What’s Going on at Public Place?” tonight in Carroll Gardens. The city is in the process of selecting a developer for the big project on one of the city’s most toxic parcels slated for development. The development could include 1,000 or more units of housing and buildings 10-12 stories tall. The session will take place at 6:30 PM in the auditorium at PS 32, which is located at 317 Hoyt (between Union & President Streets). It is being billed as “an informational update by representatives for the City on the developer selection process and the next steps for planning the site.” Earlier reports said that the field of developers had been narrowed from five to two and that they would be revealed at a community meeting in late February. Here’s a bit from the email we got from Community Board 6:

From February through May 2007, Brooklyn Community Board 6 and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) hosted a series of public visioning sessions on how the “Public Place” brownfield site at the southeast corner of Smith and 5th Streets could be redeveloped. In July 2007 the City of New York officially issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) which began the formal search for a developer to work with the City and community on planning and redeveloping the site. Responses were due in October 2007. The City is currently in the process of selecting a finalist from the proposals received. At this meeting we expect to hear a report from HPD on the types of responses they received to the RFP, where the City is in the decision-making process, and what the next steps in the process are.

Should be interesting.

A nice group showed up for the Greening Flatbush event yesterday. “It was the inaugural event for the Gardening Committee of Sustainable Flatbush, and we’re all pretty pleased with ourselves.” There was News 12 coverage and a full photoset is here.–Flatbush Gardener