• Ratner Will Feel Pain if He Pulls Out [AYR]
• A Ploy By Ratner to Avoid Having His Profit Margin Fall? [Daily Intel]
• Watchtower Selling Bossert on Montague Street [Brownstoner]
• Riding the M Train [NYT]
• Ousted Controversial Arabic School Principal Says She’ll Keep Fighting [NYP]
• Home Front: Bay Ridge Veterans Fight Health Department [NYDN]
• Suicide of Bay Ridge Pharmacy Owner Tough Pill to Swallow [Bay Ridge Rover]
• Owner Was at Center of Big Investigation [NYDN]
• Park Slope Pediatrician Attacked at His 13th Street Office [7Online]
• A Little Movie About Duffield Street [Duffield Street Underground]
• Brooklyn Reading Works on Thursday Night [OTBKB]
• Radical Change at Elly’s on Dekalb [General Greene]
• Court Street Getting Another Spa!!! [Pardon Me for Asking]
• Coney Projects from Stillwell Avenue [Brooklynometry]
• DIY in Bed-Stuy [Bed-Stuy Banana]

The suicide of the owner of Lowen’s Pharmacy, who was caught up in a steroids scandal was reported yesterday. “I’ve shopped at Lowen’s many times over the years. This business has long roots in the neighborhood – Kenny was telling me how he remembers their old location, and the real life Mr. Lowen, pharmacist ,who ran it, near 68th and Third, right next to Three Jolly Pigeons. When the neighborhood’s other small pharmacies –including Alpine Pharmacy and Physicians & Surgeon’s, both on Fourth Avenue, quietly expired, Lowen’s actually expanded. It moved to 69th Street and took over I think three stores. This gave it some degree of size, so that it actually prospered while competing against Rite Aid and the ohter mega-chains that invaded Bay Ridge and all of America. Now a suicide. I took some comfort in knowing that it didn’t happen in the store…Lowen’s Pharmacy has been a beloved part of the neighborhood for 30-40 years or more.”–Bay Ridge Blog, Photo, Soup Flowers/flickr

There’s very cool series of film present by Spoke the Hub called “New York Matters” coming up at the Gowanus Arts Building, which is located at 295 Douglass Street between Third and Fourth Avenues. The films will be shown at 7:30 PM on the second Friday of every month. Here’s some wording about the series, plus the schedule:

Spoke the Hub is proud to host the upcoming film series “New York Matters“, curated by Isabel Hill. The New York Matters film series digs deep into the core of the issues, stories, places, changes and people that make New York a community. On the second Friday of every month, Spoke the Hub will open its doors at the iconic Gowanus Arts Building to present films that are unmistakably New York. Perfect for families, dates, friends and nights when you would love to watch a great movie in a huge loft space among fellow Brooklynites. Suggested donation: $5.00

2/8 “City of Water” by Jasper Goldman & Loren Talbot: A look at how public officials, environmentalists, recreational boaters and regular New Yorkers see our waterfront and its future as development proceeds at gold-rush pace. (Filmmaker will be in attendance for a question and answer session following the film.)

3/14 “Every Mother’s Son” by Kelly Anderson and Tami Gold: Three different women lose sons to police brutality in New York City and unite to fight for change.

4/11 “The Collector of Bedford Street” by Alice Elliot: An Academy-award nominated film about a neighbor with disabilities and how a New York community makes a plan to help him stay in the neighborhood.

5/9 “Metropolitan Avenue” by Christine Noschese: An inspiring film about a Brooklyn community, the changing role of women and how powerful ordinary people can be when they join together to fight for something they believe in.

6/13 “Made in Brooklyn” by Isabel Hill: The compelling stories of factories that flourish in Brooklyn challenge the notion that manufacturing is dead in America.

7/11 “Lavender Lake” by Alison Prete: A Brooklyn community dreams and battles over a new and suddenly desirable urban landscape.

8/8 “Taking the Heat” by Bann Roy: The daring story of the first women firefighters in New York City.

Good stuff right through August.

The trouble at 475 Kent “all started with a standpipe. When the Fire Department passed by for a routine inspection of the sidewalk in front of 475 Kent Avenue last week, they discovered a rusted, non-working pipe. This led them to follow the pipe down to its source in the basement, where they were greeted with a sea of grain boxes piled high to the ceiling.” And the rest is now Williamsburg history.–Brownstoner

The Grand St merry-go-round is happening full force. Developer’s crew was out working at 8:15 Sunday morning – also Saturday. They might have had a permit but no permit allows 8:15 work on Sunday. There were workers without hardhats, dust, trucks parked the wrong way on Driggs etc. Neighbors called 311 on DOB issue and also DEP regarding lead laden dust. I think DOB inspectors arrived this morning and natch, workers were wearing hard hats today.

How can we facilitate speeding up the zoning amendment approval process in City Council? The site manager at 227 grand told me yesterday that they plan on working at least the next 4-6 weekends!! No sleep for neighbors – with the bars traffic on Friday and Saturday night and construction in the morning….maybe we can throw eggs out the windows. Breakfast meetings???

Community activists were trying to get the downzoning fast tracked and Community Board 1 actually voted quickly to approve it. If the developer has the foundation of the building in place before the downzoning, it can be built to the 14-story height.

I am actually going to miss that chunk of fifties modernism. Reminds me of this building in Prague I used to walk by. Very Funtionalist…the two buildings could be fraternal twins separated at birth!

Indeed.

A followup and a more tidbits from that wild frontier of retail and dining excitement, Park Slope:

1) Reaction to the closing of 2nd Street Cafe in Park Slope has been mostly one of dismay, if not anger. One reader writes, “This was my one of my favorite reasons to go to my girlfriend’s neighborhood…Hopefully they’ll put in a Ruby Tuesdays so Park Slope will have a ‘New,’ ‘Edgy’ vibe or at least somewhere that will be over $30 a plate so i’ll know i’m earning my well spent money in style.” But not everyone is shedding tears, one of our readers writes: “This was one of the worst restaurants I’ve ever been in – period. The place was more like a bad day care center. My only concern is that the parents and the screaming kids will now be invading more civilized dining spots. At least with 2nd St Cafe, they were quarantined.” There are many comments over at Brooklynian.

2) The South Slope’s Laila, from which we once got an order of hummus with a staple (small, and already stapled closed) inside, is closed. The Middle Eastern restaurant was on Seventh Avenue at Fifteenth Street, which unlike the northern stretch of the avenue around Third Street, has seen a lot of openings the last few months. No word on a replacement for Laila, which had both fans and detractors. Us, we sort of soured on it after our staple experience.

3) The empty storefront on Seventh Avenue north of Union Street and south of Berkeley that is between the mediocre Indian restaurant Amin’s and a liquor store is said to be heading toward opening some sort of food etablishment. One rumor on Brooklynian.com says it will be a frozen yogurt establishment. Given that Tasty Delight is down the block on Union Street and Oko is on Fifth Avenue that would leave a retailer whose name begins with Pink as a possibility if it is, in fact, a frozen yogurt emporium.

“The infant-mortality rate in Brownsville surged dramatically in 2006, jumping from 9.1 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2005 to 12.5 – eclipsing all other neighborhoods in the city, records show. The grim statistics, which also reveal a slight spike in HIV-related deaths in East New York and Canarsie, come as the city’s overall death rate fell to an all-time low.” The dramatic increases in heart disease occurred in Park Slope and Bay Ridge, but Bensonhurst, Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay have the large number of heart disease fatalities in the city.–NYDN

The rally organized by City Council Member Bill de Blasio to call for fast action on a downzoning of Carroll Gardens and an interim moratorium on any buildings more than 50 feet tall takes place today at 11AM on the steps of Borough Hall. It will include Assembly member Joan Millman, The Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association, Carroll Gardens Coalition For Respectful Development, Baltic & Warren Neighbors, Columbia Waterfront Neighborhood Association and The Union-Sackett Block Association. Mr. de Blasio is introducing a resolution calling on the Department of City Planning to immediately start a downzoning study of Carroll Gardens and “to implement the appropriate procedure to protect the character of Carroll Gardens until the downzoning is complete.”

So, what was a Union Market van doing in Sunset Park? Uh, perhaps buying produce from Rossman’s Discount Fruits, which is a wholesale/retail fruit market / grocery store on 3rd Avenue under the Gowanus Expressway in Sunset Park. “So the next time you pay $15 for that independent-grassroots-organic-locally grown-farm fresh avocado or that artichoke direct from Castroville now you’ll know where Union Market is really getting their produce from… straight from the bucolic farms and rolling hills of Sunset Park; 26th street and 3rd Avenue to be exact.”–Gotham City Insider

• Ratner Could Back Out of Atlantic Yards Project Without Penalty [NYP]
• Details on Litigation and Atlantic Yards Financing [AYR]
• Ratner Financial Problems Coverage Roundup [No Land Grab]
• Myrtle Building Boom from Above [Brownstoner]
• RIP Matty Franz, the Rot in Hell Guy [NYShitty]
• Bay Ridge Pharmacy Owner at Center of Steroids Scandal Kills Self [NYDN]
• Smith Street Murder Still Unsolved [McBrooklyn]
• Thor Watch [Kinetic Carnival]
• A Small Missile in Prospect Park [PMFA]
• Mysterious “Sites and Rituals” in the Park [A Year in the Park]
• Underbridge Pictures Closing in Dumbo [Dumbo NYC]
• Bed-Stuy Style [Bed-Stuy Banana]
• New Storefront on Dekalb [Bed-Stuy Blog]
• $2.595M 15-Room Colonial Revival in Ditmas Park [Ditmas Park Blog]
• Brooklyn Calendar Girls Tossed to the Curb [Brooklynometry]
• Brooklyn Navy Yard Back in the Day [General Greene]
• Response to Court Street Nightmare Regal Theater Complaint [BHB]
• Brick Oven Pizza Coming to Wallabout [Clinton Hill Blog]

The St. Nicholas Neighborhood Preservation Corporation will be hosting a candle light vigil and sleep out demonstration at 202 Franklin Street tomorrow, January 30th starting at 6:30 p.m. For those of you who are not in the know 202 Franklin Street caught fire nearly four years ago. Despite numerous demonstrations, making light of their plight at last year’s town hall meeting and the property being sold several times the necessary repairs needed to enable these rent-stabilized tenants (many of whom have lived here much longer than myself or most of the people reading this for that matter) to move back home.–New York Shitty

The two images above are pinhole photos of Coney Island shot by Anna Sawaryn, who is having a show of her work called Coney Island Through the Invisible Lens that open on February 2. She writes:

This is photography in it’s simplest form, using a wooden box, NOT a camera. The box does not have a lense or automatic shutter. The exposure time ranges from several seconds up to a half hour. This gives the images an ‘old world’ almost ghostly, sometimes, distorted quality. Pinhole photography best captures the ‘essence’ of the subject being photographed. I like to use pinhole photography to document places that are changing and are at risk of vanishing. These are my ‘memories’ of Coney Island and the East Village.

The work will be on display from February 2-15 at the 4th Street Photo Gallery, 64 East 4th Street. The opening reception is February 3 from 2PM-6PM.

“The pleasures of an Urban Outfitters shopping trip—Cheap Monday jeans and faux-vintage accessories among them—won’t be available in Cobble Hill for at least a few more months.” The new Urban Outfitters at 164 Atlantic Avenue “doesn’t doesn’t look anywhere close to being finished.”–Racked

Is the Great War on Borough Hall Rats being lost? “Well, I may be imagining things, but in that short time, the critters seem to have become much larger, judging by the size of their burrows. The rat holes are enormous. Could this be why the City has given up and called in the professionals?” New signs indicate that a private company is now trying to kill the Monster Rats. Good luck, U.S. Exterminator Inc.–PMFA

Abigal Press, which owns 92 Third Street (corner of Hoyt) is moving to Queens next month. It’s interesting because they received city money in 2002 to renovate the building. This included tax relief, which in turn would be spent to renovate the building. They had planned to move to Sunset Park a year ago, but it was rumored that they could not because of the financial incentives they received from the city required them to stay in 92 Third Street. Incidentally, business has been off over the past 6 months. My friend tells me this may (or may not) be an intentional plan in order to dissolve and sell the business, and of course, the building (clearly the more valuable than the business of prayer cards).

The owners of Abigal are being very tight-lipped about the move. They have not told employees if they will or will not have jobs. They have started to sell off their printing equipment. There are rumors that the building has been sold and will be developed into condos. What will this mean in relation to the development on Smith Street – specifically the Scarano project, which is right up the block?

There is nothing right now indicating the property has changed hands, but if it does, and if the properties on the market are developed (Brownstoner has been chronicling the ongoing development of a condo project at Third and Bond for months) in addition to the Whole Foods opening, it would be a massive change in the Third Street Corridor between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens.

• 2008 Idiotarod Insanity: The Photos [GL]
• 2008 Idiotarod Insanity: The Video [GL]
• Best of the Idiotarod [Gothamist]
• Idiotarod 2008 [Bluejake]
• Idiotarod 2008 [gothamistllc/flickr]
• 1,336 “Idiotarod 2008” Tagged Photos [flickr]
• My Friends Raced Shopping Carts [Urban Seen]
• Idiotarod 2008 [shortonbrains/flickr]
• The Running of Brooklyn’s Idiotarod 2008 [McBrooklyn]