Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn
[Photo courtesy of Idle Type/flickr]

Here are few pics of Christmas decorations in Bed-Stuy. “As for Santa’s ethnicity, the debate still rages, but surely we agree that he’s on the stout side and runs a tight sweatshop of little people.”–Bed-Stuy Banana

Greenpoint, Brooklyn
[Photo courtesy of dj mark dean/flickr; for full Walk Around Greenpoint for Christmas Lights Photoset, click here]

The monster car-killing hole on Pacific Street between Bond and Nevins opened wide again yesterday for another round of Demolition Derby before being filled up, although it likely to come back to life as some sort of underground collapse or leak is causing it. The most recent email from the Boerum Hill Yahoo Group about it is so amusing (in a car killing way) that we thought we’d share. The subject line is “Who Needs a Meteor Crater in Arizona?”:

Anyone who always wanted to see meteor crater in Arizona can save the airfare and just come to Pacific street instead. As predicted (you heard it here first) our mid-block sinkhole collapsed again, this time worse than ever before. Cars hitting it basically run into what amounts to a two foot wall of roadway. I put a cone out (my last one) after someone bent his rims and damaged his front end going into it. Another enterprising person put out a garbage can and caution tape to warn motorists.

I’ve heard from some folks on the block that the city and the original contractor are meeting to figure out how to fix this, but I’m unsure if any progress has been made. I have called 311, as have others, repeatedly, and each time DOT comes to fill it in, fairly promptly, and of course each time it collapses again. I know Yassky’s office was called on this as well.

In its current form, any motorist hitting it at 20 to 30 mph at night is virtually certain to get in a serious accident. We’re not talking about a normal pothole here.

Now that I am out of cones and since the garbage can and tape approach won’t last long( it will only work if five or six parking spots on the south side of the street remain empty), anyone know a way to warn motorists?

Shouldn’t the city be responsible for warning motorists somehow since they certainly know about this problem from multiple sources? I just can’t believe its up to me and other residents to try and throw something together to warn cars and prevent a major accident. The city should be able to do better than garbage cans and tape.

The Great Hole of Pacific Street was filled again late yesterday, so the question is: Will it reopen today, tomorrow or next week?

The competition among developers to win the rights to develop the deeply toxic parcel of land between Smith Street and the Gowanus Canal known as Public Place took a step forward this week with the release of this rendering. It shows the Avalon Bay vision for Gowanus and includes a number of mid-rise buildings, going up to 12 stories. Look, however, at the way the rendering depicts the Gowanus, which looks more like the Hudson River in Battery Park than, well, the Gowanus Canal. (It was given to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.) The proposal would include six buildings, 425 affordable rental units and 326 condos. It looks like one of those grand Kitchen Sink proposals with something designed to appeal to almost any possible constituency in the community: a 14,000-square-foot supermarket along Smith Street, another five retail locations with 18,400 square feet, 11,400 square feet of artists’ space, a 2,500-square-foot art gallery, a 3,200-square-foot restaurant, a 5000-square-foot environmental centers and a 1,200 square-foot youth center, a 5,400-square-foot senior center and a 2,500-square-foot boathouse and pedestrian walkway on the Gowanus. Other competitors for the choice expected next year include Related Companies, Two Trees Management, The Hudson Companies and The World-Wide Group. All the development teams include politically-connected local groups, so expect the final decision to be made on factors that may transcend the merits of the individual plans. None of the plans address the thorny issue of cleaning up the gravely polluted parcel, which is a prerequisite for any development.

Blogger’s anti-spam software is running amok. It has already taken down Brit in Brooklyn and GL could be next. Right now, we’re dealing with anti-spam word verification, which seems to have the side effect of not allowing us to store drafts of our posts and of not backing up our posts automatically. (If you’re favorite blogs mysteriously stop posting and they’re on Blogger, they could have been anti-spammed by rampaging software.) We wouldn’t be surprised to simply find ourselves unable to post in coming days. So, consider this a kind of message to the future in case this increasingly dysfunctional goes totally psychotic with hyper-manic anti-spam software. No fun.–GL

The information trail that led to us posting this cool hand screened image of Brooklyn started with Apartment Therapy SF, which lead through Curbed San Francisco which, in turn, led through our colleagues at Curbed NY. And, here we are, having gone from Bernal Heights to Brooklyn Heights. The poster comes from Ork and is part of a series of city posters. The Brooklyn map is, sadly, sold out at the moment, but the Manhattan one is available for your friends across the river.

Some vids posted to the YouTube of the over-the-top light displays in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn.

Well, after “The Brownstoner” reported that a Goldman Sachs exec was buying in Brooklyn Heights, “the Brooklyn bloggers are up in arms.” In fact, “All we can say is that it’s a good thing these people don’t know that one third of the permanent DealBreaker staff moved to Brooklyn Heights last March. They’d probably be marching in the streets.”–Deal Breaker

[Photo courtesy of Kriete/flickr]

Pics:

• Gowanus at Night, (above) [Kriete/flickr]
• The Thinker, in Santa Hat [GerritsenBeach.Net]
• Factory Window #1 [Seriously Excited]
• Ice Bike [INSIJS]
• Union Street Subway [Park Slope Street Photography]
• At the Front of the JMZ [Blue Jake]
• Coney in Winter [Cara S’/flickr]
• Marine Park [seriously excited!]

Words:

• Crime Down, but Brooklyn Talks it Up [CityRoom]
• Avalon Myrtle Demolition Starting [Brownstoner]
• Goldman Sachs Nudges Down Forest City Rating [AYR]
• Greenpoint Correspondence [New York Shitty]
• A Blogged Week [Bay Ridge Rover]
• Own Some Custom Made Art [OTBKB]
• Nancy of the Park Slope Christmas Trees [Brooklynometry]
• Get Your Christmas Trees at the Pearl Street Triangle in Dumbo [Dumbo NYC]

Of course, it’s not that hard to tell which way is one way at Newell Street and Meserole Avenue in Greenpoint, as long as you look at the parked cars and the direction of the traffic. The signs, well, those might get you turned around a bit. This contribution comes from our inimitable Greenpoint Correspondent, who knows the way without looking at the signs.

Here’s a fun vid, just posted on YouTube, of the Wonder Wheel, “as seen through the eyes of four-year-old.” Some of the footage was clearly shot in 2006, before Joe Sitt and Thor Equities did some demolition of rides on their property.

Fifth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn
[Photo courtesy of MeganFromTheLastTownCho rus/flickr]

Here’s an updated version of the guide to buying local crafts and all kinds of cool things. Check this out if you’re going out holiday shopping and want to find a craft fair or other event this weekend.–Brooklyn Based

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The wild and crazy lights of Dyker Heights are on full blast. Head out to check them out. You’ll be glad you did.–Gothamist

Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn
[Photo courtesy of a special GL Correspondent]

We hate to go off-topic, but there appear to be some scary things going on with Blogger at the moment that make us glad we’re going to be transitioning away from the platform in the near future. A couple of days ago, we got an email from Brit in Brooklyn, noting that he’d been locked out of his blog for days because Google’s software had flagged his blog as possible spam. He has been waiting for a week for the Google crew to decide that his blog is real. Yesterday evening we discovered that word verification had mysteriously appeared on GL because, you guessed it, Google’s anti-spam software had identified us as a possible spam blog.

Uh, friends at Blogger, your software may be running amok. The irony here is that we’re victimized every day by spam blogs reposting our items, and there are few ways to defeat the problem.

This is all a long way of saying that if Blogger does to us what it did to Brit in Brooklyn, we may vanish for a few days. We hope this isn’t the case, but like any corporate entity that is becoming bloated and unresponsive, Google and Blogger don’t fix problems right away. So, if Blogger’s suddenly hyper-aggressive, manic software that is shutting down longstanding blogs goes crazy on us, the only thing we can do is explain in advance.

We doubt that 103 104 complaints to the Department of Buildings generated by a small renovation project is a record. (Between the time we posted this on Curbed yesterday afternoon and the time we wrote this in the evening, another complaint was added.) Likewise, three years of work probably isn’t a record either. However, the Park Slope Renovation from Hell, aka 598 Sixth Street, is a neighborhood horror. The 11-unit building is being converted to 15 units, and the permits were first issued three years ago.

There was some brief press coverage in 2005 after residents that remained in the building were forced to live in the winter of 2004-05 without heat, not to mention horrid living conditions, and what is alleged to be intimidation and harassment, in an effort to get them out. Neighbors, meanwhile, have been subjected to work at all hours of the day and night. Some have moved; others has simply suffered through the three years of work, including much of it done after hours. (Complaints on this front have produced little DOB action as the inspections can happen days after the complaint is made and the inspectors inevitably find “no evidence” of after-hours work.) The community has watched parking spaces occupied, on and off, for years by dumpsters and other construction-related equipment. Gaping, car-killing trenches have appeared in the street and been left to do damage for weeks on end.

There is a new thread on the Park Slope Forum started by a neighbor who appears relatively new to the Park Slope Renovation from Hell. The post says:

We have been dealing with a sleazy developer who bought a building next door and has been renovating it for 3 years. He got rid of most of the rent stabilized tenants through bullying tactics and continues to think he can bully the whole block. He takes up parking spaces illegally and dumps his construction debris all over the block so he doesn’t have to pay for a dumpster. He works on the weekends without permits etc. etc. We have called 311 over the past 3 years and gotten very little results.

Here’s something that a tenant of the Renovation from Hell Building wrote almost two years ago about the landlord/developer’s tactics:

His coersion worked on one of the tenants. He couldn’t handle the extremely loud noise all summer and phone calls from Livanos 2 to 3 times a day telling him to take a ridiculously small sum of money and leave, so he just up and moved overnight.

Some of us feel we will die here before we leave. 3 of us are here over 31 years and one other for about 15 years. You can’t just antagonize old timers who are very adjusted to a lifestyle and expect them to leave.

Livanos was told this over and over again, so he started to use very nasty means thinking he’d have us all out by now. He tries to get the city to say the building is unsafe to have us vacate, when he is doing the best he can to create the disaster, so he won’t have to pay us money to vacate. Once vacated, you may or may not get your apartment back.

Neighbors have also alleged that the scope of the work has far exceeded anything allowed by the original permits and in the original plans. For whatever reason–slow or less than rigorous enforcement–the 103 filed complaints have resulted in far less violations than one would expect for such a development. It’s unclear whether any tenants have stuck out the three-year construction project or whether it will be wrapped up in 2008 or 2009 or 2010 or 2011, although one might expect things to move along if the buildings is completely vacant. That’s one screen (and there are several) of the complaints to DOB pictured below.

[Photos courtesy of Carol Gardens]

One of the things we love about the medium in which we work is the way that readers, in effect, become correspondents and can move the conversation forward or add to the flow of information. So it is with some photos we posted yesterday of two old florist’s signs. Those photos themselves came from a GL reader who’s been sending us a treasure trove of material and stories. Then, another reader left a comment that said, “If you like old signs you should see what has surfaced on clinton st, just past the BQE across from the projects. old cheap joes is no longer there and some old signs for a ‘Clinton Cafe’ and others have appeared. god knows from what era, but I’m guessing pre-bqe…” Another reader named Carol Gardens followed up yesterday evening by sending photos of the sign in question, perched above the “Give Peace a Chance” street mural. It’s a great juxtaposition and a wonderful reminder of an bygone time.

Earlier this week, the obscure yet powerful Board of Standards and Appeals okayed the continued construction of the Finger Building on N. 7th Street in Williamsburg to ten stories. (The growth of the building to 16 stories is in the hands of a judge and a legal appeal. A decision in February denied the 16-story height. A final decision has not been made.) Opponents are now planning to file an appeal of the BSA decision having gotten a formal letter from the Department of Buildings. Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

The permit is valid as it was issued based on approved plans that reflect access to open space on the same zoning lot. While we understand that you are claiming that the residents will not have access to the rooftop spaces, the applicants believed that they did have a right to such access. Upon learning that owners of these rooftops were taking the position that they would not grant access, the Department issued a Stop Work Order that limits work beyond the 10th story. If after all the court appeals are concluded the applicant can not guarantee access to the rooftops, the applicant may file a Post Approval Amendment to amend the plans to ten stories, a height that will not need access to the rooftops for purposes of compliance with the open space requirements, or the permit will be revoked.

In plain English, Finger construction can continue to ten stories and, if a judge okays the great height, is good to go to 16. Meanwhile, an appeal of this week’s ruling is in the works. The Finger saga continues.

Is Gowanus becoming Brooklyn’s other hotel district, after downtown? It just might be. Our friend Gabby Warshawer at Brownstoner scored a huge scoop with news that not one, but two, hotels are being planned for President Street between Third and Fourth Avenues. SAI Hospitality, which specializes in budget lodging is building a 105-room hotel at 529 President Street and a 120-room hotel at 551 President Street. Counting another hotel planned at Third & President, it would be the third hotel within a block, and make President Street South Brooklyn’s Hotel (Motel?) Row. SAI told Brownstoner they’re going to try to lure an operator “like Hilton.” A Gowanus Hilton? Eh, they’ll probably call it the Park Slope Hilton. Regardless, if all the projects end up being built, there will be six hotels in the Greater Gowanus Hotel District.

One might agree or disagree with the activists over at CORD in Carroll Gardens, but they are one of the most tireless groups in South Brooklyn. (Not to mention the fact that they are the community activism story of the year, having come out of nowhere in late May.) The group’s latest effort is a letter to Borough President Marty Markowitz that they are encouraging residents to send. Here is some of the text:

Dear Borough President Markowitz,

I am a Carroll Gardens resident. I am very concerned about the out of context development in my community. I understand that Amanda Burden, Chairperson of the Department of City Planning, has indicated that your guidance in setting priorities that appropriately address the critical need for zoning adjustments within the borough would be welcomed…

…I appeal to you, Mr. Markowitz, as our Borough President, and as a fellow Brooklynite, to request that Carroll Gardens be positioned for immediate study. I further request, that once the study has begun, all projects which would be inappropriate under the new zoning, be halted as not to mar our community any further.

My neighborhood is, for all intents and purposes, under siege. What could be more critical than that?

For those unfamiliar with the Carroll Gardens School of Community Activist Art, the photo above is of one of their most recent works.

Since prime Brooklyn Holiday Light viewing season is in full swing, we thought this would be an ideal day to put up a little guide to spots where you can see some Christmas lights, Brooklyn-style:

Dyker Heights. First among equals in Brooklyn, the Lights of Dyker Heights are something to behold. They’re insane, over the top and so Brooklyn you’ll want to scream. And, you’ll have plenty of company because they’re estimated to attract 100,000 visitors during the holiday season, including bus loads full of kids. The area where the lights are centered is between 80th and 86ths Street and 10th and 13th Avenues, with 84th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues having some displays that words simply can’t describe. If you’ve never been, Dyker Heights is next to Bay Ridge. You can click on this Google Map for help finding the area. You can also check out our photos from last year and this vid we made. Needless to say, we’ll be updating.

Carroll Gardens. Among the many things we love about Carroll Gardens is the exuberant nature of the Christmas displays, particularly on First Place and Second Place. Take a walk through the neighborhood and see for yourself. There are some very enthusiastic displays not far from the Gowanus Canal.

Williamsburg. Some people in the Burg pull out all the stops to decorate their houses. There are some very lit up houses in South Williamsburg around Berry Street and around S. 4th and near Wythe. One street that is also heavily decorated is Ainslie between Graham and Humboldt.

Bergen Beach. We haven’t personally seen the Bergen Beach lights, but the lights on National and Arkansas Drives are said to be one the borough’s “biggest and brightest displays.” If you have a car and you have a Google Map, you’re right there.

The first concrete is being poured at the site of the big Edge development on Kent Avenue, which is destined to have about 900 apartments and 100,000 square feet of retail. “Consider it Battery Park City’s cousin Vinny from Brooklyn.”–INSIJS