There is little that can actually be said about this sign on Fifth Avenue for the “Park Slope Trail,” other than we wish we had taken the photo ourselves. The sign is genious.–Gothamist & Brownstoner

Fitting the Valentine’s Day theme, we got an email from Nicole Block, who’s a Brooklyn-based custom stationary designer. She wrote to let us know that she’s co-hosting a bridal event with Yvonne Chu of Kimera, the dress and design shop on Atlantic Ave:

It is called the Stationery and Skirts Event, and it’s
next weekend, the 23rd and 24th. I figured since it’s all Brooklyn-based vendors, your viewers would like to know about it.

The event is actually at Kimera, and we’re featuring Sweet Melissa’s wedding cakes. There will be cakes on display and to taste, my custom stationery to see (as well as some giveaways), Kimera’s dresses to drool over and order, and more.

Of course, this is open to anyone who wants to come, but it is all local Brooklyn vendors. And we’re really proud of that.

If you have nuptials in the works, or will have them after today, take note. More info here.

“How long has it been since you found the true love of your life? If it was at least 50 years ago, then you’re invited to Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz’s Valentine’s party.” The party honors Brooklyn couples who’ve been married a half century or longer. RSVP to 718-802-4488. The event starts at 2pm at the Brooklyn Marriott (333 Adams St). It’s free.–About Brooklyn

Among the things that one can do today, is bake something for the significant other. (You have time to bake, right?) For instance, Red Velvet Cupakes. “In a small bowl, sift the cake flour and set aside. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until very light and fluffy, about 5 minutes….” Full directions, of course, are provided.–Brooklyn Enthusiast

Caputo’s Bakery, which is one of several excellent bakeries on Court Street, is ready for love. It has “Big pink heart-shaped cookies with chocolate glaze…Cup cakes with, oh, so colorful flowers and of course, the frosted chef d’oeuvre with delicate sugar roses.” In case you don’t know, it’s at 329 Court Street.–Pardon Me For Asking

There’s another showing of the plans for McCarren Pool tonight (and, hopefully, the Parks Department and the architects will also soon release some high-quality renderings of its plans so that everyone in Brooklyn can see them).

As we noted last week, McCarren Pool is being returned to service as a pool, so the days of concerts there (except for some smaller performances, perhaps, in spring and fall) will come to an end after this summer. While surveys that were filled out about the pool showed support for concerts there in the future, there was strong support within the community itself for McCarren being turned back into a pool. Swimming and big concerts can be somewhat incompatible uses of a such a facility. The Parks Department believes that a disproportionate number were filled out at, well, concerts at the pool, overstating support for shows. In the words of a Parks Department official, “In interpreting the survey data, we did look at where the surveys were collected and from whom, demographically; since many surveys were completed at concerts and online, younger, more mobile and affluent folks were represented more than poorer, older ones.“

Meanwhile, the Open Space Alliance and officials are looking for another place to hold big outdoor concerts in Williamsburg and/or Greenpoint. The most likely spot would seem to be connected to future waterfront parkland in or somewhere near the Bushwick Inlet Park, yet any park is likely to be years in the future as land acquisition could involve eminent domain, court fights and years of environmental cleanup, particularly the land where oil storage and production has taken place.

In any case, here’s an email from Alexander Kane of JELLY NYC, which has produced the free concert series at McCarren Pool for the last two summers. It is circulating via the Pool Aid email list:

JELLYNYC is in FULL support of the renovation of the pool but does find the process a bit baffling with regards to how Parks and designers decided not to pay any attention to the surveys that were submitted. Our goal is and has always been to see the space renovated and turned into a functioning space that represents the needs and wants of the community. That having been said, we will be in attendance on Wednesday and what we and others will be bringing to the table is the need for their to be an alternative site for large scale concerts and other events to occur for summer 2009 – the waterfront, Bushwick Inlet. We are not asking for a bandshell or anything like that, a large concrete slab on the water is fine so long as it can accommodate 5,000+ people. The plans for the Bushwick Inlet, from what I have been told, were conceptualized by Parks in 2006, prior to the concerts and movies in the pool. These plans must be reconsidered and take into account the thousands of people who filled out surveys, and lived here long before the million dollar condos went up poolside. The area is predominantly non residential so it would be a perfect location for large scale events with amplified audio to occur frequently throughout the summer.

Some of the concert supporters may turn up at the Community Board meeting tonight, which will take place at 6:30 PM at the Swinging Sixties Seniors Center, which is located at 211 Ainslie St. (corner of Manhattan Ave.) The plans are not preliminary. They will be presented for formal community review when they are finalized. The plans must also go to the Landmarks Preservation Commission as the pool was landmarked last year.

Here are a few photos, in slideshow format, taken in Prospect Park very late yesterday afternoon as snow was falling.

The residents of 475 Kent have launched an online petition drive to gain more support for their efforts to be allowed to turn to the vacated building. In just a couple of days, the petition has apparently garnered 1,200 signatures. Here is some of the text of the letter directed to Mayor Bloomberg:

My attention has recently been drawn to the problem of the artist’s building at 475 Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.

You are certainly aware by now that over 200 people are in danger of losing their homes and workplaces permanently – which usually spells financial ruin in a community already subjected to considerable risk.

In the spirit of the cultural tradition that has long prevailed in this great city, I urge you to do everything you can to help those who work and live at 475 Kent Avenue to return to their studios immediately and to foster our common creative capital.

The petition is available here.

[Photo courtesdy of adella/flickr]

That oyster bar planned by Jim Mamary on Hoyt Street is not wining friends among the neighbors. They’ve now organized as the Hoyt Street Alliance and are distributing fliers around the neighborhood asking residents to oppose the opening of the establishment on a residential street. They’re urging people not to sign a petition in favor of the oyster bar that’s at Bagels by the Park on Smith Street. Our Carroll Gardens Correspondent got one of the fliers last night and reports:

The group says that Hoyt Street is zoned for residential without a commercial overlay. Mamary says this is not the case etc. These neighbors are really upset over the bar and I feel sorry for them. They are right across the street from the proposed bar and really want to maintain the quiet, neighborhood character for their kids and retirement years.

Here’s a bit from the flier:

…we are a small block of only ten houses, all owner-occupied. There are babies, school age children and people getting ready to retire. All of us have day jobs, many of us get our children off to school even before we go to work.

The current wine bar already on the corner of Union and Hoyt affects the quiet nature of these streets. Every evening there are smokers outside the wine bar and car services honking their horns at midnight. This bar proposes to expand around the corner and the combination of both bars will occupy almost 50% of the block on the east side of the street. There are only 20 people living in the 6 houses on this side, but the proposed new bar on its own will hold 36 people. Think about an extra 36 people coming and going right next door or a few doors away from your house, at night or at 2.00a.m., smoking and talking on cell phones on your stoop.

Bagels By The Park currently has a petition drive asking your support for their bar. We are asking you not to sign it. Instead, please help us stop the bar.

The group asks for emails opposing the bar to be sent to seagarden295 (at) msn (dot) com. It is also urging calls to local officials. Pardon Me For Asking has the full text of the flier along with numbers of the elected officials.

The Red Hook vendors are getting things together to bid on getting a long term permit to operate this summer and beyond, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that they’ll win and the conditions imposed by the Parks Department and the Health Department are so onerous it may make it impossible. The Village Voice Eat for Victory blog updates the fairly depressing situation, including costs for food carts of $15,000-$30,000 per vendor. Of the Parks Department RFP, Cesar Fuentes, the leader of the vendors, says: “It is more fitted for a corporation than a group of artisan food vendors.” Proposals are due by February 22. The Voice says “there is competition for the permit, but at this point, it doesn’t seem to be fierce. The vendors’ greatest opponents remains the Parks Department and the Department of Health.”

We have said before and will say again that anything this city government does to threaten this Red Hook institution would be a travesty. It is no less vile to subject people to standards they can’t possibly hope to meet financially than to sell out the park from under them. Will the city murder a local institution in an underhanded way that seeks to conceal the nature of the homicide? Will some of the public officials that vowed to protect the vendors like Sen. Charles Schumer stand by as Parks Department bureaucrats pull the trigger on a gun that has had a silencer attached to it? Will the Ikea shoppers who will flood the streets of Red Hook this summer be treated to corporate food stands decorated blue-and-yellow and selling burgers or will the Latino vendors be forced to shell out tens of thousands of dollars on the food vending equivalent of the city’s new “street furniture” bus shelters and newsstands? Stay tuned.

Snow:

• It’s Snowing [Lost City]
• Gerritsen Beach Snow [GerritenBeach.Net/flickr]
• Ah, Yes, Some Snow [Z. Madison]
• Light Snow in Carroll Park [PMFA]
• New Brooklyn Snow Photos [flickr]

Not Snow:

• Pintchik Sites Are the Future of Flatbush Ave. [AYR]
• Duffield St. Hotel Halway There [Brownstoner]
• Successful Red Hook School Could Lose Vital Small Classes [NYDN]
• Brooklyn Magnet School Racial Quota Under Fire [Sun]
• Brooklyn Exporting Babies? [Gothamist]
• Support in Dumbo for 475 Kent Artists [Dumbo NYC]
• Still More Great Moments in Aluminum Siding [New York Shitty]
• “Looking for the Next New Thing” [OTBKB]
• Ditmas Park v. Sunset Park [Ditmas Park Blog]
• Jail with Retail Plans Floated Again at Meeting [NYDN]

There are not happy times at Carroll Gardens’ Marco Polo restaurant on Court Street. The restaurant’s owner, Joseph (Marco Polo) Chirico, was caught up in the Gambino crime family busts last week. The 63-year-old restaurant owner, who is a friend of many of Brooklyn’s top public officials, including Borough President Marty Markowitz, was arraigned yesterday and released on $1 million bond. From the Post:

Chirico – freed on bond after putting up his Staten Island mansion as collateral – is accused of collecting $1,500 that was extorted from trucking-company executive Joseph Vollaro on behalf of fellow Gambino soldier Jerome Brancato. Vollaro – now in protective custody – wore a wire for three years to gather evidence against the Gambinos for authorities…The Italian immigrant’s involvement in the case has stunned Brooklynites – among them judges, politicians and civic leaders who have frequented his eateries.

And a taste of the Daily News coverage:

But Chirico will be able to go back to work serving up gnocchi, capellini and other Italian fare at the restaurant he and his wife, Rosa, have run since 1983, said his lawyer, Joseph Benfante. “I guess we just can’t serve the ‘Godfather Special’ on Sunday anymore,” Benfante joked.

The lawyer maintained that Chirico was caught in the fed’s net only because he did a favor he shouldn’t have.

As PMFA put it, “Not a good week for Marco Polo.”

[Photo courtesy of tokenygaard/flickr]

Sustainable Flatbush is sponsoring a “Greening Flatbush” event on Sunday, February 24. Here’s something from the release we got about it from Chris Kreussling, who is also the person behind the Flatbush Gardener blog:

On Sunday, February 24, residents and other members of the greater Flatbush community can learn what they can do to beautify and improve the environment of their neighborhood.

“Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are” is an afternoon of short lectures, demonstrations, and workshops on topics ranging from planting and caring for street trees to composting with worms in your kitchen…Greening Flatbush is Sunday, February 24, from 1:30 to 4:30pm at the
Flatbush Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library at 22 Linden Boulevard. The event is free, but space is limited. To register, or if you have questions about this event, please email greeningflatbush@gmail.com.

You can check out Flatbush Gardener’s post about the event here. Making things green is a nice thing to think about around this time of year.

Lovers of Karl Fischer are sure to especially enjoy the latest from Hot Karl, which is planned for India Street and Franklin, across the street from the Astral. A reader asks: “Any idea what Jetsons-looking, maxed-out bit of Narcotecture this ass clown is looking to unleash upon me and mine?” It’s a 12-story “vertical addition” to an existing building that is supposed to have 17 apartments.–Curbed

“A Williamsburg community activist who would be the first Hasidic Jew on the City Council if elected has decided to run for David Yassky’s seat. Isaac Abraham, a hardware store owner and tenants advocate, said he is responding to “very strong” pressure from friends, colleagues and community residents to seek the post Yassky must vacate in 2009 due to term limits…Abraham is the fourth candidate to announce plans to run for Yassky’s seat.”–NYDN

The jail with retail idea is still alive even if the jail with retail & condos scheme crashed and burned and the jail with school concept was DOA. Now, the city has trotted out a rendering from no less than Skidmore, Owings and Merrill to try to build support for doubling the capacity of the Brooklyn Detention Center at Atlantic and Smith and ringing it with retail. They even tossed Trader Joe’s into the image as a “placeholder.”–Daily Intel

Of all the things we would expect to find a fight about, the city’s “Green Streets” program is not one of them. Yet, there’s a battle about a plan in Gerritsen Beach, where GerritsenBeach.Net, which does superb work covering issues in that neighborhood and environs, has been writing about the fight, which includes some heavy-duty politicking. He emailed us to say:

I just wanted to let you know about something over here in my neck of the woods. Do you know green streets? Those are the streets that have gardens and/or trees in a median. Well my neighborhood is actually against this plan and is now turning against Marty Golden, the one who wants this. More or less we got him elected. He’s all alone on this project playing politics…A lot of people are using the term war against green streets. There is going to be a town hall tomorrow. Its a very large battle over a 1 mile stretch of land.

A war against green streets? Should be an interesting meeting. It takes place today (2/13) at 7:00 pm at P.S. 277 at 2529 Gerritsen Avenue.