It almost hurts to type “Holiday Craft Fair” as we’re still getting over the end of summer, yet there it is. The Brooklyn Friends School is having its Annual Holiday Craft Fair on Saturday, December 1st from 10AM to 5PM at 375 Pearl Street in Downtown Brooklyn near the Marriott. It will feature ceramics, sweaters, scarves, jewelry and one-of-a-kind items from more than 40 vendors. There will also be activities for children. More info is available at www.brooklynfriends.org and there’s also a great item on the fair over at Pardon Me for Asking, which does a superb job of chronicling things in Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Gowanus and environs.

Someday, this waterfront land in Sunset Park will be a magnificent $36 million public space, but it will require users to overlook a very toxic past. In the meantime, there are some incredible photos to be had.–Nathan Kensinger Photography

The Learning About Multimedia Project (the LAMP) will be running a “Town Hall” discussion on Thursday, November 29th, at 7 PM at the Park Slope YMCA, about how people use media, how they shape us and how parents, educators and children need to think about them. LAMP has run a series of workshops at the Park Slope Y this fall. The session will be lead by LAMP education director Dr. Katherine Fry, who will lead a discussion about current trends in media, new ideas and uses for media, and how families can handle all of the media circulating in their lives. The Park Slope YMCA is on 9th Street in Park Slope between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

We spotted the actual Gowanus Canal swans and got them in photos and on video. We watched one of them swim from the Union Street Bridge to the Third Street Bridge, where it joined its mate and paddled around for while. We don’t know if they understand that Prospect Park Lake is just a short flight away, but they’re certainly a lot of fun to watch. The vid is below.

The Underground Railroad Houses on Duffield Street in Downtown Brooklyn may eventually fall to bulldozers, but it’s looking more and more likely that the city is putting up some sort of museum or other commemoration at the site or in another location. The New York City Economic Development Corp., which is in charge of the project at Willoughby Square, has issued an RFP,with responses due on February 1. The EDC’s website says it will:

select an existing New York City-based Section 501(c)(3) arts, cultural, educational, or historical organization to develop and manage a commemoration program dedicated to the ‘historical friendships’ among people of different backgrounds created during the 19th century Abolitionist Movement, with particular attention paid to the Underground Railroad and its ties to the Borough of Brooklyn.

Duffield Street Underground, which covers all things related to the Duffield Street project writes:

It’s unclear what all this means so soon after the RFP was released. On the one hand it’s a great victory that the EDC will allow for a museum on the site of their planned parking lot that until this week would have destroyed the Duffield Abolitionist homes. On the other hand, the RFP does not appear to require a museum, so 227 Duffield is not yet safe.

The RFP itself says a proposal has to:

Provide an interactive, public gathering venue where individuals and groups of all ages can learn about the Abolitionist Movement and the Underground Railroad in
Brooklyn.

The Duffield Street buildings are on land that would be part of a 1.25 acre park which would sit atop a 700-car parking garage.

In case you haven’t had your fill of Gowanus Lounge today, you can check out today on the Brian Lehrer Show. We’ll be on at 11:40AM, although the segment could be on at 11:40AM. We’ll be talking about one of our favorite topics: Coney Island redevelopment. The segment is called “Is the Future of Coney Island Set?” Listen in at 93.9 FM or 820 AM.

For those who want a quick look at the many recent iterations of Coney Island renderings and plans, we present a short, selective look:

1) Here’s the original Thor Equities Coney Island 1.0 (Beta) that was released two years ago. It’s the one with the blimps landing on the hotel roof. It was also called Vegas Coney.

2) This is Coney Island 2.2, floated by Thor Equities in the heady days of June and July when developer Joe Sitt went announced he was dropping his plan for condos.

3) Last November’s Coney Island 2.1 release. It didn’t help the developer make much headway.

4) This is another example of Coney V2.2 as shown by Thor Equities in early summer. We did like the Elephant on Stillwell Avenue.

5) This is the Coney Island V. 1.6 (Alpha) release. It was released to the market by mistake and quickly pulled.

6) This, of course, is Coney V3.0 (Beta) released last week. It still features a big, looping roller coaster through the project and now has a big swinging ride and an ice skaking rink at the base of the Wonder Wheel.

“Park Slope’s South Slope, for example, is rapidly becoming condo-ized. Over the past year, at astonishing speed, sleepy little blocks long made up of working-class, aluminum-sided townhouses, brick and tar-paper tenements have been systematically leveled and rebuilt to look like the rest of the former city.”–Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York

Things are moving forward at the Public Place site in Gowanus. A reader emailed us the other day to note that work crews were still on site with a drilling rig taking soil samples or digging test wells, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle has reported five developers have submitted proposals–including many heavyweights–to develop the environmentally challenged site between Smith Street and the Gowanus Canal on the fringes of Carroll Gardens and Gowanus. The project that will include up to 1,000 units of housing and buildings up to 10-12 stories tall. The six-acre site was the site of a manufactured gas plant and toxins are said to be up to 150 feet underground. (To us, it looks like the crews on site have been drilling wells, as there seem to be metal tubes coming out the ground that weren’t there a week ago.) The Gowanus Canal Community Development Corp. is listed as a partner in four of the proposals and is apparently working to get into the fifth one. The developers include Time Warner Center developer the Related Companies, Two Trees Management, Strategic Development with Avalon Bay Communities, The Hudson Companies and The World-Wide Group. Hudson is developing a project at Third and Bond, and has teamed with the Fifth Avenue Committee for this one.The development has to include affordable housing, senior citizen housing, ground-floor retail and open space among other things. We don’t have the complete list of which local groups are partnering with which big developer.

What would happen if the Park Slope Pigeon Serial Killer ran into the Greenpoint Rat Man? Once upon a time, perhaps nothing. But ever since the Rat Man’s lot was baited, he’s become a lover of pigeons.–New York Shitty

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

Police Shooting:

• A Troubled Man and 20 Police Bullets in Brooklyn [NYT]
• Cops say slain teen claimed he had a gun [amNY]
• Rage in Brooklyn [Metro]

Not Police Shooting:

• A Sad Day on 12th Street in the Slope After a Killing [Brooklynometry]
• Charges in Fatal Brooklyn Stabbing [NYT]
• Man Stabbed to Death in Slope [NYDN]
• Duane Reade Will Anchor Big Tower on Myrtle Ave. [Brownstoner]
• Tax Exempt Atlantic Yards Funding is Uncertain [AYR]
• Plywood at 340 Court as Nabe Awaits Word of Replacment [Pardon Me For Asking]
• The Biggest Hanging Sneaker Collection in Brooklyn? [New York Shitty]
• Coney Hoopla Links, Part II [Kinetic Carnival]
• Landmark Bensonhurst Catering Hall Shuts Down [NYDN]
• Halloween Leftovers on Sackett Street? [Found in Brooklyn]
• Town Hall Meeting Report [Sustainable Flatbush]
• Kindly Place Your Used Propane Container in the Corner Trash Can [Bay Ridge Rover]
• Inky the Roebling Oil Field Cat Like Miranda July [Bad Advice]
• Winter on a Flatbush Farm (in Prospect Park) [About Brooklyn]

That big Carroll Gardens meeting that appears like it will primarily be dealing with the issue of expanding the small neighborhood landmarking district will be taking place next Monday, November 19, at PS58 in Carroll Gardens. It will run from 6:30PM-8:30PM and is described as “an opportunity to learn about landmarking from the experts.” There will be a “diverse panel of professionals and residents” to explain landmarking, its benefits, how the process works, its impact on buyers and renters and other questions. An effort to increase the size of the neighborhood landmark district is underway, so the meeting is an important one.

This sign is a construction victim. First, it was lowered in order to accommodate the scaffolding at 125 N. 10 in Williamsburg. And, now, it’s just sort of hanging there.

With photos, it’s all about timing and placement. Take for instance this truck for Bimbo product. It wouldn’t seem nearly as interesting if it had been parked somewhere else.–Icky in Brooklyn

Street couch week at GL continues. We found this specimen on Roebling Street at N. 10th Street in Williamsburg, the neighborhood where we have found many, many street sofas. This one has had a run approaching two weeks near the Roebling Oil Building Warehouse 11.

It only took…well…forever. Dumbo now has a drugstore, the Bridge Apothecary, which is now open in the J Condo. Jane Walentas is a customer.–Brownstoner

There have been no breaks that we know of in the case of the alleged Park Slope Pigeon serial killings. However, we heard from the woman at the center of the feather storm, who is known as the Pigeon Advocate. She says she wasn’t serious about installing surveillance cameras as her fliers say, but was hoping the threat would be a deterrent to whoever is killing the local birds. (She says the she borrowed the tactic from Conde Nast where she used to work.) She also now says the birds aren’t being run over, as per the fliers she posted, but are being poisoned and that she collected five-ten dead birds a day last week on Eighth Avenue in Park Slope around Sixth Street.

She writes:

Yes, there is someone on 8th Ave who has been poisoning pigeons. Last week (week of 11/5), I collected 5 – 10 dead pigeons every single morning. What a joy to wake up to. I am not a pigeon fanatic, I am a licensed New York State Wildlife Rehabilitator. I spend months just mending and nursing back to health one injured or sick bird. To find literally piles of dead birds was horribly upsetting. The Catholic School is right there and young girls were walking by, horrified. I was too upset to “keep” the dead birds (ASPCA now says I need them for “proof”) but stoic — placed them all in a garbage back EVERY MORNING last week. I have reported this to the police, to the ASPCA humane law enforcers and to the Dept. of Env Conservation. No, there are no surveillance cameras. That was meant as an attempt to avert further poisoning. When I worked at Conde Nast there was vandalism in the bathrooms. We put up signs saying there were cameras. There were never any cameras. The Methodist Hospital “goons” come on their mini-sweepers and try to run over anyone who leaves bird seed for the flock that have historically lived on that block for decades. Pigeons are homing birds, they don’t migrate, and they have been adored by many people in the neighborhood for years. There has to be some compromise, some middle ground. I am not a pigeon fanatic, but an advocate for all animals and a vegan as well. This one man has killed approx 30 pigeons last week and with no consequences to himself. That would seem to me wrong by any account. Anyone who wants to help can email me at fieldjo@aol.com.

Our question remains: Is the alleged Pigeon Serial Killer of 2007, the same one that attacked birds with a dart gun a block away in 1998? Meanwhile, the proposal to ban the feeding of pigeons and to install a Pigeon Czar continues to get press today. The proposal, which would create a $1,000 fine for feeding the pigeons is described as facing an uphill battle although Mayor Bloomberg supports the idea. Council Member Simcha Felder suggests displaced birds might “go to New Jersey.”

What the media giveth, the media taketh away. So it is with Red Hook’s moment of gentrification, which ran for nearly two years in the press. Now, in the same way the pendulum swung too far in the direction of declaring Red Hook the Next Big Thing, there are jokes about Dead Hook and the interesting phrase ‘degentrification,’ which we think may be a decade or two before its time. (Way ahead of the curve of the next great urban death swoon of the ’20s or ’30s or ’40s that will be this century’s equivalent of that of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. We don’t hope this is the case, but understand that urban history runs in great cycles.)

The fact is: Red Hook was never gentrified in the way that the press made it out to be and it is not degentrified now.

In fact, the big New York Magazine story about the failure of gentrification in Red Hook, while interesting reading, misses the target by a mile: The immediate issue isn’t gentrification or degentrification, per se, it’s the fact that part of the neighborhood’s historic waterfront has been literally reduced to rubble in the last 18 months and that an onslaught of Ikea shoppers and others drawn to big box retail outlets will turn the neighborhood into an on/off ramp. The waterfront plans are for upscale housing and suburban-style retailing.

We said it last year multiple times when the issue came up and we’ll say it again: Red Hook gentrification, as defined in the media has always been about a few blocks on Van Brunt Street. A few places have closed. A few have opened and a lot of spaces are still being renovated. The rest of Red Hook is a place where 2/3 of the people live in public housing, where there still isn’t a bank branch of a pharmacy of any scale (in the heart of the neighborhood), that has functioned as a Brooklyn dumping ground for unwanted things like trash transfer stations for generations. The neighborhood’s industrial character–and there’s still plenty of it–is ignored

What has happened in the meantime is that the Todd Shipyard is gone. The Revere Sugar site has been flattened. Ikea is coming. And, Bed, Bath & Beyond will probably go up next to it. The borough president boasts that no one will be able to recognize Red Hook ten years from now. The ultimate issue isn’t gentrification or degentrification–gentrification will continue to the extent in can happen in a fairly remote neighborhood cut off from public transportation. The real issue is a planning vision that will make the neighborhood more like Elizabeth, New Jersey than a corner of Brooklyn. It’s more about the dehookification or the debrooklynization of Red Hook than anything else.

There is news to report about the Roebling Oil Building. No, there is no new smell of oil coming from the property or test well being drilled. The building now has a name: Warehouse 11. The news was in a New York Magazine story yesterday looking at some new condos and who will buy them. It clearly looks to us, based on what Williamsburg prices have been, that the sellers are shaving a good 20-25 percent off what is being asked in comparable Williamsburg buildings. Surely, the target market will be the 98 percent of the market that hasn’t seen any of the Roebling Oil Field coverage and buyers so excited to be getting a relative bargain compared to other condos that they will pooh pooh the site’s environmental history. While the site has been cleaned up per regulations, we know the state still hasn’t figured out the source of the oil that seeped into the Oil Field nor how far it has spread. We understand that the contaminated soil was removed and that a protective membrane was laid, but we do wonder about the thoroughness of state regulation as well as the clean and cap method of site preparation. Studios starting at $399,000.

Could fresh heavy equipment tracks at a property that has had two Stop Work Orders since August be evidence of recent work? It’s possible, although it’s possible the order was lifted in the last 18 hours and hasn’t shown up on the Department of Buildings website. Regardless, our Greenpoint Correspondent sent along these photos of 93 Herbert Street, which is in a far off corner of Greenpoint on the east side of the BQE. She notes:

1. One stop work order torn off of fence.
2. A gap in the fence large enough for damned near anyone to crawl in.
3. Evidence some kind of activity has occurred recently.

Next month, we could add “and a partridge in a pear tree.” For now, we’ll just say that those are some very resilient mud tracks if they’ve been there since August.

The Tiffany Diner, a holdover from a different era when Bay Ridge was “a raucous free-wheeling bar town,” has been demolished. It’s a big hole now, waiting a new Commerce Bank branch.–Bay Ridge Rover

Matthew, the Bedford Avenue dancer, at work again, with some crowd participation.

If you like grande lattes, chain drugstores and bank branches, the following information will be a veritable symphony to your ears: Crain’s Insider, via a report last week on Brownstoner and the Prospect Heights Forum on Brooklynian, notes that Starbucks, which has 21 Brooklyn locations, wants to add 25 more in each of the next three years. Duane Reade, which has 30 stores, wants to double that number in the “next several years” and Chase is looking to add to the 46 branches that it already has, especially in “areas where income is rising.” Twenty-five new Bux a year?

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

• Teen Holding Hairbrush Shot Dead by Cops in Bed-Stuy [NYT]
• ESDC is “Stonewalling” on Atlantic Yards Arena Setback from Street [AYR]
• One Brooklyn Bridge Park Update [Brownstoner]
• DOT Rolls Out Fort Greene Traffic Calming & Bike Lanes [Streets Blog]
• Not Yet Renovated on Columbia St. is Now Renovated [Lost City]
• Checking Out Adorned in Williamsburg [Racked]
• The Bloomberg Coney Speech in Five Parts [Kinetic Carnival]
• Price Drop at 328 Plymouth [Dumbo NYC]
• Brooklyn Techn Makes the B List [NYP]
• G Train Tears [Greenpointers]
• Meet the Feel Good Super of the Year [New York Shitty]
• Abandoned Cats in Flatbush Building [OTBKB]
• Gowanus Camaro with Oil Trucks [Velvet Sea]
• Indie Film Shooting in PLG [Across the Park]
• Now Rising in Boro Park [Chaptzem Blog]
• What To Do With a Time Capsule Dug Up 47 Years Early [NYDN]

Here’s an opportunity to swap or (better yet) donate some clothing and books this weekend. There’s a children’s clothing Swap at the Park Slope Food Coop (782 Union Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues) on Saturday, November 17. Clothing can be dropped off for swapping from 10:30AM-1:30PM. Clothing that is left at the end of the day is being donated to Good Shepard Services on Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street. Meanwhile, we also understand that the Central library at Grand Army Plaza is taking book donations. The books will either be added to the library’s collection or sold to raise money.