Let’s say you’re a tourist and you want to visit Brooklyn. Where to stay and what to do? Well, park your bags at Le Bleu in Gowanus, of course, and then do some walking tours.–Wall Street Journal via McBrooklyn

On this somewhat gloomy Fall Sunday, we’re not sure a discussion of Gowanus Canal water quality–or of the long and uncertain time frame for cleaning things up–brightens things. Yet, here we are. Today’s Times considers the often reported topic of the canal’s water quality and a pending cleanup. The Times City Section story says, in part:

Neighbors have complained of geysers of water — the back flow when the canal floods — capable of lifting manhole covers on nearby streets. A group of biology students at the New York City College of Technology found gonorrhea in a water sample. And the canal’s smell, while weaker, is far from gone.

A new $125 million project, announced piecemeal over the last few months by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, is designed to address these problems. Starting in July, the city will widen the tunnel that brings harbor water into the canal, and install three pumps to replace the propeller, which turned out to be inefficient and prone to corrosion.

The city will also redirect to a treatment plant about 120 million of the roughly 370 million gallons of sewer overflow dumped in the canal every year. Ten to 20 percent of that mixture is untreated sewage.

In the meantime, the blog Erro(r) Ink also takes up the topic, including our own item about people fishing in the canal and taking the catch home for dinner. The blogger writes of the canal itself:

Though the canal looks, and smells, far better than it did prior to 1999, the view from the Third Street Bridge reveals the canal’s continued shortcomings. Weeds attempt to survive in the barren parking lots of factories littered with garbage and air filled with the scent of industry…On a typical weekday afternoon, pedestrians on the bridge come to cross the canal and continue on to their destination, not relax to the sound of dump trucks passing, horns blaring and the hum of industrial machinery.

As we previously noted, 2012ish will probably be a good time for the Big G cleanup. In case you missed them, you can check out our vid of the Gowanus Canal Swans.

There are several emails and communications to report in the Park Slope Pigeon Serial Killings situation. On Thursday night, the Brooklyn Paper published a story by editor Gersh Kuntzman–who had covered Park Slope pigeon killings in the 1980s. Several emails have subsequently hit our inbox. Two of them are from the “Pigeon Advocate” (PA) who has long been at the center of the feather storm, feeding the neighborhood pigeons and posting the recent fliers about the killings. One email was written by Mr. Kuntzman and forwarded by the PA. The first email from the PA said she had only agreed to help with the Brooklyn Paper story “on the strict terms that he would not publish my face” and said that the paper had violated that agreement by publishing a photo showing her with individuals involved in the nasty little dispute on Eighth Avenue.

Mr. Kuntzman’s forwarded response, in part:

You said take the picture off the website. It has been done…My goal was NEVER to violate my agreement with you — and to the extent that you feel I did, I am sincerely sorry. I believe I have made it better by removing the photo, but that’s your call. As the editor of a COMMUNITY weekly, my goal is NEVER to alienate the people I interview because, indeed, they are also my readers, critics, fans and sources. As a Park Slope resident, I am very committed to the notion of community, so I am very sorry to have disappointed you in this respect.

In addition, we got two personal emails. Here are excerpts from one of them:

As it stands I have been notified that I will be invited to a forum (if it materializes) where arguments (on both sides) will be heard. If not for your posts, this would not have happened and I am sincerely grateful…Albert Schweitzer said — you can tell a lot about a society by how it treats its animals – and so, it is my sincerest motivation to continue to be kind to any and all animals that happen to cross my path. I do my best to treat humans with kindness as well – although it becomes a little more difficult given what they are capable of doing.

Even if the Park Slope issue goes dormant, the bigger pigeon feeding issue, will probably stay in the news.

[Photo of an injured pigeon named Broadway with a splint courtesy of the Pigeon Advocate]

It’s Sunday, which means we turn our attention once again to that sad-funny-strange world known as Craigslist Brooklyn Missed Connections. We settled on this one because it proves that missed connections can happen anywhere and at any time, including watching Mayor Bloomberg talk about Coney Island zoning at Gargiulo’s Restaurant:

Brooklyn Coney Island Revitalization last week – m4w

You were at the Revitalization meeting Mayor Bloomberg hosted. I think I watched you more than him. You for some reason had me stunned. You have the sexiest walk I have ever seen. I am not sure why I am writing this other than to say you were absolutely beautiful, and wish my group stayed longer. It has been a week and I still think of your beauty. Have fun.

Coney Island, Zoning & Lust. Perfect together.

This email was circulated yesterday via the Park Slope Parents group and sent along to us by a reader along with a couple of responses. It is written by a Kensington resident, occupying an apartment on a month-to-month basis, who may be losing her place. She says her landlord would like to evict her from her apartment, possibly because she complained about “inconsistency of heat.” The email carried the subject line “I’m being evicted with no reason – and I have a baby – I need help.” Here it is:

I’ve been living in Kensington in the same apartment for 3 years, the same apartment where my husband has been at for 7 years, and we just received an eviction notice from our landlords. I need to find out what are our rights.

We live on the top floor of a 2-family home, our landlord lives downstairs. We don’t have a lease, it has been a month to month agreement, and we have never skipped on the rent. We have been sharing satellite tv, internet, it has been a very good relationship so far.

Last week, we had to leave the landlord a letter because of the inconsistency of heat in the apartment. I was very worried that my 6-month old son would get sick in what traditionally has been a pretty cold environment in winter.

I do not know if my landlords are being vindictive, but it came as a surprise that 5 days after we told them we needed more heat, they came to our apartment on Friday the 16th at night, and told us that we have until January 15th to move out because they have some family members moving in.

Can anyone help us? It really hurts that they’re doing this right before holidays season, and they know that we take a 2-week vacation out of the country, which will make it hard for us to get a place. Thank you in advance for anyone who can assist me.

A follow-up email indicated that per New York regulations, a month-to-month tenancy can be terminated with 30 days notice, although any eviction can be challenged in court and, likely, be delayed for a few months. A PDF of frequently asked tenants rights questions and answers from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development is available by clicking here (WARNING PDF). It’s a little off the mark in terms of this specific question, but an interesting document nonetheless, that provides authoritative answers to a number of questions.

We have no idea where this was shot in Brooklyn, but it’s from a group of recovered private photos passed along by our Greenpoint correspondent. The combination of flag, planes overhead and skywriting are classic.

Given that it’s been the week of Red Hook and “degentrification,” we thought it appropriate to offer up some vids of the neighborhood.

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images:

• Brooklyn Brewery Founder’s Son, Sam Hindy, Killed Manhattan Bridge Bike Accident [NYT]
• Bodega Owner, Employees Beat Robber with Bat [7Online]
• Someone Shot at Seventh Avenue Pool Hall? [OTBKB]
• Red Hook Highlights [A Test of Will]
• Slave Theater at Center of Court Dispute [NYT]
• If You Have a Hankering for Dog Photos, Go to Marine Park Dogs [GerritsenBeach.Net]
• Upon Finding One’s Doppelganger [Found in Brooklyn]
• Dumbo Weekly Links [Dumbo NYC]
• Great Pizza at Graziella’s [Clinton Hill Foodie]
• Digging for Gold at Colson Pattiserie [Brooklynometry]
• Jake Mooney Writes About the Demise of Mooney’s Pub [NYT]
• You Actually Can Catch a Cab at McCarren Park [A Test of Will]

Brooklyn Heights Promenade, Brooklyn

Once a week, we like to highlight a few comments left by Gowanus Lounge readers during the previous seven days. Here’s a sampling of this week’s reader comments:

Park Slope Pigeon Mania #2: Serial Killing Evidence Thrown Away. “It is people like “anonymous” who posted, “they should give the ‘vermin’ exterminator a medal” that remind me why we live on a planet where there is war, violence, killing and injustice…People who care for animals lift themselves up to a higher level, alas “anonymous” will have to wait his turn — maybe in his next life. Perhaps he will come back as a pigeon.” [Reply to “Anonymous”]

New Domino Marketing Campaign Underway. “Guess they know they can’t make money on the luxury market so will try and leech some tax money for “lower” income folks. I can just hear the tax dollars getting sucked away into the coffers of the developers.” [nesNYC]

Park Slope Pigeon Serial Killing Mystery & Controversy Continues. “Psycho Pigeon (with apologies to The Fools): I can’t seem to face up to the facts/ I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax / This Colonel Sanders job is gettin’ me down / A crazy pigeon chasing me all over town / CHORUS: Psycho Pigeon, qu’est que c’est / Coo coo coo coo coo coo / coo coo coo coooo / Better run run run run run run run away…” [Anonymous]

Red Hook’s ‘Degentrification’: Was It Ever Gentrified? “This is really a silly article. Its entire premise is that other people wrote that Red Hook was becoming fill in the blank and when that didn’t happen, the same journalists are asking what happened to Red Hook? Shouldn’t they be asking, what happened to what we wrote?” [Red Hook]

Here’s an oddly amusing travel magazine vid about Bedford Avenue and Williamsburg. It’s from Colorado Magazine Online, posted to YouTube. It’s scenes and music without any narration. The accompanying story and photos on “Williamsburg’s Hip Scene” can be found here.

Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn

We received a call from one of our many Williamsburg sources this morning at an hour on a Saturday morning when no one should be getting calls about this kind of thing: The work crew at 5 Roebling (aka The Giant Fart Cloud Building) was at the site around 8:30AM, working. The regular reader might recall that the building was hit with a Stop Work Order for unsafe demolition work on Thursday after neighbors complained that mechanical demolition was threatening to severely damage their homes. The Department of Buildings stepped in to halt the work. The order, as far as we can tell, has not been lifted. According to our special correspondent, a work crew of four men was removing debris from the site and tossing it onto a truck. “And it’s really loud,” he added. “So much for that Stop Work Order.” One hopes the much-publicized Stop Work Order Patrol wanders over and catches the Giant Fart Cloud Building as it cuts cheese in violation of the city order. A photo of the workers in action is to the right. The photographer reports that “the guys immediately started yelling…they said they had nothing to do with the demo and that they were only from the scaffolding company.”

Wonder what’s going on with the controversial Brooklyn Bridge Park? The short answer is: nothing but a lot of infighting and wrangling that has stalled the expensive and contentious project. It is “stalled while the city and state wrangle over control of what would become Brooklyn’s first major park built since Prospect Park 135 years ago.”–Brooklyn Daily Eagle

PortSide New York’s headquarters, the Mary A. Whalen is moving to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The retired tanker, which is being converted for a variety of uses, will be docked at GMD Shipyard in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. True to form, PortSide–which hosted a Puccini opera aboard the Whalen at the Red Hook Container Port–will be hosting readings of The Graving Dock by author Gabriel Cohen as its inaugural event at the Navy Yard. It’s billed as “A Book Launch Where Ships Launch” and “the first cultural event ever at GMD Shipyard.” It will take place at the Tailshaft and Valve Shop on November 27 at 6:30.More information is available here at PortSide’s website. It’s actually the second event in PortSide’s H2O Arts Series (Puccini being the first). Graving Dock is Mr. Cohen’s third novel. The release for the event says that “In addition to hearing the author Gabriel Cohen read, guests will be able to peer into a massive graving dock, talk to shipyard workers, and enjoy beer and chow during a sound and light show about the harbor. Moving to GMD will enable PortSide to offer more opportunities for people to get to know Brooklyn’s waterfront and maritime history and contemporary activities. PortSide’s home, the retired oil tanker Mary A. Whalen, is a familiar site at GMD. She spent five weeks at GMD this past winter…” Having been there, we can say it’s a fascinating place. We’re also big fans of Mr. Cohen’s work, so who can resist a reading from his new novel in this locale?

The Green-wood Historic Fund is presenting Unexpected New York, which is about “87 New York City places you thought you knew. 87 surprising but true stories you’ve never heard before.” The event takes place tomorrow, Sunday, Nov. 18, 2007 at 1:00 PM at the Historic Chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery. The speaker and reader will be Chester Burger, “America’s first on-air television news reporter, former national manager of CBS Television News, founder of the nation’s first communications management consulting firm, a photographer whose works are in the collections of the New-York Historical Society and the New York Public Library, and author of the newly published Unexpected New York: 87 Discoveries in Familiar Places. The email promoting the event says:

One of those 87 places is Green-Wood Cemetery, which Burger has photographed for many years. The lecture and book signing will be followed by a walk, led by the author and Green-Wood Cemetery historian Jeff Richman, to “unexpected” Green-Wood gravesites.

Admission is free but space is limited (suggested $5 donation at the door). Call for reservations 718.768.7300.

The main entrance is located at 500 25th
Street (on 5th Avenue) in Brooklyn. Via subway, take the R to the 25th
Street station. More info at the Greenwood Cemetery website.

We bring back “Brooklyn Back in the Day,” our series of historic photos of Brooklyn, with this shot of the Brooklyn waterfront in the 1940s. Our Greenpoint correspondent is sending a treasure trove of previously unpublished Brooklyn shots our way, so we should have a lot more interesting and never-published photos to post in coming weeks and months. All we can say is, there is some incredible material in the collection.

Yesterday, our friends at Kinetic Carnival, who consistently post superb items about Coney Island, made a fascinating comparison between Coney Island and Blackpool, England, a beach resort that has a lot more current success than our own waterfront amusement area. Here’s a YouTube vid showing Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Community Board #7 is putting on its 20th Annual Holiday Gift Drive for the needy children in the Sunset Park & Windsor Terrace communities, and they are accepting donations. Their email says:

Over the years we have distributed thousands of toys to children but our success depends upon the kindness & generosity of everyone in the community.

We are seeking donations of NEW TOYS & CLOTHING for boys & girls from newborn to 12 years old. Donations must be UNWRAPPED!! Please drop off donations, Monday through Friday from 9am to 5pm at our office located at:

Community Board #7
4201 4th Avenue (Corner of 43rd Street)
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11232

Donations of money to purchase toys can be made too. Write a check to the Sunset Park 5th Avenue B.I.D. And send it to the attention of Jeremy Laufer, District Manager, Community Board #7, 4201 4th Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11232. Donations are due by December 10.

GL is happy to help community organizations get the word out about their holiday drives so that readers who in a position to help and of a mind to do so can help. Please send notices to thegowanuslounge (at) gmail (dot) com. It will put smiles on our faces to be able to post them.

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images.

Photos:

• Bergen Street [Seriously Excited]
• Hood Kiss [A Test of Will]
• Park Slope [Joe’s NYC]
• Brilliant Windsor Terrace Color [Icky in Brooklyn]
• Flame On! [A Test of Will]
• Dog in Park [Clinton Hill Blog]
• Disappear [Lex’s Folly]

Words:

• Legal Value of Nearly Being Decapitated in Park Slope: $2,750 [Brooklyn Paper]
• Brad Lander Running for De Blasio’s Council Spot [Daily Intel]
• About That Lander-De Blasio Article [AYR]
• A Katz’s on Fourth Avenue? [Brownstoner]
• Fifth Avenue Trolley Ride, 1938 [Pardon Me for Asking]
• Coney Island USA Responds Positively to Bloomberg Plan [Kinetic Carnival]
• A Blogged Week [Bay Ridge Rover]
• Manhattan Beach Intrigue [GerritsenBeach.Net]
• Still Time to Catch Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater in Dumbo [About Brooklyn]

Here’s a vid we came across featuring great vintage footage of Coney Island with Deathcab for Cutie’s Coney Island as the soundtrack. Why? Because we’re in the mood.

No, not the L Train. The Subway on Bedford Avenue. An email arrived with the subject line “Retail Darwinism on Beford” with a photo of the Department of Health closure sticker affixed to the door of the Burg’s favorite fast food spot. Which roll would you like with that?–Eater

Gowanus, Brooklyn

Forty Corcoran brokers are coming to Bedford Avenue in the Burg between N. 3 and N. 4 Streets. Their big new office is coming along nicely.–Curbed