Look:

• Double D Desktop Day [Brit in Brooklyn]
• 327 Bond [seriously excited!]
• Coney Posing [lornagrl/flickr]
• Waiting for a Big Hug on Fourth [Bklynking]
• Boardwalk Sundown [ConeyHOP/flickr]
• Minerva [Atomische]
• Underground Blues [For the Love of Brooklyn/flickr]
• Key Food [No Words/Hugh Crawford/OTBKB]

Read:

• Attention Department of Buildings: Some Greenpoint Issues [newyorkshitty]
• Open House New York: Brooklyn Edition [Brownstoner]
• Old Fulton Street Buildings in Contract [Dumbo NYC]
• Recurring Coney Boardwalk Mess [Kinetic Carnival]
• Gossip Girl Does Brooklyn Heights [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
• Working Turntable Found at Union and Hoyt [Found in Brooklyn]
• New Store Alert: Exit 9 on Smith [A Brooklyn Life]
• What’s Up with Loew’s Kings Theater? [Brownstoner]

Last week wasn’t a good one for the Gowanus Canal’s image. In fact, if the Big G were a person, it would be headed back to therapy for some self-esteem related issues. The onslaught culminated yesterday with a story in the Daily News featuring a biology professor calling the strains of gonorrhea and other things in the canal “aggressive” and saying she wouldn’t live near the water:

A biology professor whose students found gonorrhea in the Gowanus Canal said the water is so ridden with “aggressive” strains of bacteria she wouldn’t live anywhere near it. The news comes as developers are hungrily eyeing the banks of the long-polluted canal between pricey Carroll Gardens and Park Slope for luxury condos.

“I wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t eat the fish either,” said Niloufar Haque, a biology professor at New York City College of Technology, who has tested the canal’s water for three years with her sister, Nasreen, also a professor at City Tech. “We were just saying we wouldn’t want our child growing up around that water,” added Haque.

Besides gonorrhea, Haque and her students have found flu viruses and other “disease-causing” bacteria in the canal’s fetid waters. But Haque said she is most disturbed by how virulent the strains appear to be. “These are species of microorganisms that are very aggressive,” said Haque. “When you take the samples and analyze them back at the lab it is scary.”

The original story that started all this appeared in Scienceline. Our poor, poor canal.

There’s either something weirdly charming or alarmingly strange about an establishment in which the installations of debit card readers in 2007 can be a topic of much excitement. Yet, that’s the case at the East Berlin People’s Food Coop Park Slope Food Coop. The Coop, as many people know, is either a beloved institution with anti-corporate values or the reason Park Slope craves a Whole Foods built in a toxic hole in Gowanus, depending on one’s point of view. Readers at OTBKB have been reporting in about some pretty long lines and the Brooklyn Paper has a full story on the Coop’s brave journey into the Reagan 80s. Miraculously, members can now circumvent the cashier’s line by swiping their card at the checkout. The normal routine, which always brought to mind buying North Vietnamese vodka in a state-owned store in Bucharest in 1988, goes like this: Wait on checkout line so items can be totaled. Take receipt to cashier to pay by cash or check. Take that receipt to worker at door who mysteriously looks at one’s bags and stamps the receipt. (Can you say, “create employment by bloating the staff, comrade”?) The glitches–freezing readers, cards not going through, lines around the store, should be cleared up shortly. The story, however, is priceless.
[Photo courtesy allysonmurphy/flickr]

Mayor Bloomberg had a “town hall” meeting in Greenpoint last night. Brooklyn 11211 has a great report on the session, including the observation that there was an audible hiss in the room when architect Robert Scarano‘s name was mentioned. The one neighborhood headline to come out of the meeting is that a contextual zoning study for Greenpoint and Williamsburg has been completed. Here’s a sample of 11211’s coverage, but we suggest clicking over and reading it in full:

It may have been overlooked, but if there was a single newsworthy item, it was that City Planning has finally completed its contextual zoning study for Greenpoint & Williamsburg. This is something the Community Board has been working with DCP on for over a year now, so we are anxious to see the details. DCP Commissioner Amanda Burden did announce that all of Greenpoint would be getting contextual zoning (as recommended by the Community Board). That means no more finger buildings, no more community facility bonuses, and more opportunities for inclusionary (affordable) housing.

Elsewhere, the DOB discussion focused entirely on the issue of construction safety, as illustrated by the case of one homeowner whose foundation was undermined two years ago and is still homeless. DOB Commissioner Patricia Lancaster had, frankly, the usual response – we have more inspectors, new special enforcement teams, the ability to hold contractors criminally liable, blah, blah, blah. Bloomberg did step forward and promised to get involved in this particular case “next week.”

We will add other coverage as it’s posted today.

So, how many places can you be in at once on Saturday an Sunday? And how quickly can you get from Point A to Point B to Point C? Of course, it’s Open House New York Weekend, and to that end, we figured we’d point out a few of the Brooklyn tours that look especially interesting. We’ve avoided listing the tours that require reservations as many are already booked–best to check on those via email or contact info on the OHNY website’s Brooklyn listings. In any case, here’s a very random selection of a few we like:

Litchfield Villa–95 Prospect Park W
neighborhood: Park Slope
Sun: 1pm-4pm, opendialogue Sun 2, 3 pm, tours with Prospect Park Alliance architect.
Currently the Brooklyn headquarters of the NYC Dept. of Parks & Recreation and the Prospect Park Alliance, the villa still retains original Italianate details and finishes.

Mark Morris Dance Center–3 Lafayette Ave/ Ashland Pl
neighborhood: Fort Greene
Sat: 10am-5pm
Observe dance classes at this contemporary performance and studio facility, the first built in the US for a single-choreographer company.

Montauk Club–25 Eighth Ave/ Lincoln Pl
neighborhood: Park Slope
Sun: 1:30pm-5pm
The architecture of this venerable club was inspired by a Venetian Gothic palace. Founding members included Charles Pratt (founder of Pratt Institute) and Richard Schermerhorn, who oversaw the construction of Prospect Park.

One Hanson Place
neighborhood: Fort Greene
Sat: 12pm-5pm & Sun: 12pm-5pm
This landmark skyscraper has a ground floor main banking room in ornate Romanesque Revival style, with soaring 40-ft arches.

Pratt Institute Caroline Ladd Pratt House–229 Clinton Ave/ Willoughby Ave
(There are several other Pratt sites also open at the same time)
neighborhood: Clinton Hill
Sat: 1pm-3pm, Tours on the hour 1 – 3 pm.
One of Brooklyn’s grandest private homes, the neo-Georgian style residence, is now part of Pratt Institute. It was once home for the institute’s second president, Frederick B. Pratt.

Sixpoint Craft Ales–40 Van Dyke St/ Dwight St
neighborhood: Red Hook
Sat: 1pm-5pm, Tours on the hour (proof of ID required).
The Brew Master describes how artisanal beer is produced from mash to bottle in this repurposed industrial building.

Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza
neighborhood: Park Slope
Sat: 10am-4pm & Sun: 10am-4pm
NYC’s grandest arch commemorates the Union forces of the Civil War. Climb up to the top for views of the surrounding park and skyline.

Here’s a cool video about Fillmore Place in Williamsburg. It was recently submitted for landmarking and the Waterfront Preservation Alliance of Greenpoint and Williamburg posted this video created by Sarah Nelson Wright, which is where we found it. It’s got hipsters, yuppies and longtime residents talking about their block and it’s totally worth a view. For more on the Fillmore Place landmarking effort, read this post over at Brownstoner and this post over at the WPA’s blog.

Click To Play

The Argyle at Seventh Street and Fourth Avenue is setting up a sales office on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope as was noted yesterday over at Brownstoner and on Curbed and at Bklynking, even though it isn’t located on a block that we’d personally define as being in the Slope. (For starters, it’s on the west side of Fourth Avenue, which we don’t think is Park Slope. More on this below.) Our point here, however, is two-fold: One is to share the rendering of the Argyle, which we’ve run before without knowing it was the Argyle and which Brownstoner ran back in September, describing it, quite amusingly and appropriately we thought, as “yet another big-ass condo” on Fourth Avenue. The other is to note that The Argyle already run into problems. There’s a Stop Work Order on the property as of September 24 because construction appears to have significantly damaged an adjacent home. The 14 complaints (so far) have been for things like scaffolding that might not be up to snuff and debris ending up on neighboring properties. The Department of Buildings wrote some violations for some of the problems. So, here’s our question: Is a development on the west side of Fourth Avenue and Seventh Street, some of which is on Seventh between Third and Fourth Avenues, a Park Slope building? We’re curious what readers think.

We think we will see more of these emails before the day is out, but it seems like several of the 100+ people turned away from the Brooklyn Navy Yard Tour this weekend (because they only planned to accommodate 22 people) are somewhat peeved. Here’s one email:

Obviously a lot of us wanted to do this. I think to schedule just one tour of the Navy Yard for the entire OHNY weekend – allowing just 22 people to participate – is not a good way for the Navy Yard Development Corporation to begin developing its relationship with the community. I fear much will be destroyed before tours are more available.

And, here’s another on the same subject:

I would be interested to know: (1) how the 22 who will be going were selected: and (2) why you failed to indicate earlier, on the OHNY website, that the tour was full. I ask because I was among a group of 40 or so people who, earlier this year, signed up for a walk through Williamsburg that was organized by the New York Restoration Project (Bette Midler’s group) which walk was promoted as including an inside the walls tour of the BNY. We weren’t told until we arrived for the walk-tour that BNY had decided not to allow us in. I feel like I’ve been taken for a ride twice now on this same subject.

And there is this one that arrived this morning:

I wish to add my own complaint about the OHNY tour. I sent my email to sign up for the tour at 2:43 AM on September 28. Remember, the program for OHNY was released at midnight on September 28, which means that I tried to register less than 3 hours after the official opening of the program. Many days later, I received a response that the tour was full. All this is very suspicious to me.

And there is this followup that just arrived:

I am a volunteer with OHNY this year who very much wanted to do this tour. I am forwarding this chain to OHNY staff. It would be a shame for people to walk away from OHNY with a negative experience because of a single tour we all wanted to do. I hope that OHNY will send us all an email explaining how [the] 3am email failed to result in a spot for the tour. Obviously they go to great lengths to make this event free and open to the public and I am sure they’ll take this issue seriously.

People were certainly looking forward to their Navy Yard tours. We will see if any responses are forthcoming from the person that wrote the email. In the meantime, mention of the tour appears to have disappeared entirely from the OHNY website. Developing.

• Is Park Slope Too Successful? [AYR]
• Lead, Cyanide, Gonorrhea Found in Gowanus [Gothamist]
• Grades are in for J/Z Lines [Metro]
• Another Gowanus Hotel Taking Shape [Brownstoner]
• Bicycle Quarantined in Orange Ribbon [BK 11201]
• Army Cadets at Playground [Brooklynometry]
• Tree Petition Goes to Astoria Federal [Kensington Brooklyn]
• Bay Ridge Victorians are DOA Thanks to Developer [Bay Ridge Rover]
• Underhanded Businessmen are Wrecking Bay Ridge [Right in Bay Ridge]
• Week 8 at Third & Bond [Brownstoner]
• Great Stuff on Sunday at Community Books [OTBKB]
• Gossip Girl Takes Brooklyn Heights Field Trip [Gothamist]
• Bushwick Real Estate Roundup [Bushwick BK]
• Elevator Coming to Jay Street Station [McBrooklyn]
• More Coney Island News Coming from Guest Blogger [Kinetic Carnival]

These signs are the apparent victims of the development site at 99 Havemeyer (at the corner of Hope Street), where the building that can be seen on the scaffolding will rise. Someone’s been doing very good work.

Big Movies for Little Kids is billed as “Brooklyn’s only-of-its-kind classic film series for children.” It takes place at the Cobble Hill Cinemas at 265 Court Street. Here’s the fall schedule:

• October 15th Microcosmos
• October 29th Dem Bones – based on the African-American spiritual + other not-so-scary Halloween short stories
• November 19th Krtek (The Mole) w/ The Balkan Brass Band Sponsored by Czech Center NY.
• December 3rd The Little Prince (Opera)
• December 17th Knufflebunny + The Adventures of Prince Achmed

The shows are at 4PM and are especially aimed at children from 2-7. Tickets are $6.50 per person “for all walking humans.” And, there’s “easy access stroller parking” and booster seats. The series has a Blogger page as its website which you can check here.

On Saturday night, at about 11 p.m., as my husband and I were returning from the F train, a group of four youths started pelting us with pebbles and acorns on Dean Street, starting at Hoyt, and continuing as we were opening the door to our house. The four hoodlums continued east on Dean Street after we got into our house. In the past, I’ve tried the precinct, and I’ve always been told to call “911,” although I’d be taught as a child that “911” was for emergencies-in-progress like a robbery or heart attack. Knowing that the precinct did not accept these calls, I called “911,” and, predictably, got a very nonchalant response.

A couple days later, before work, I looked out my window and saw a dissheveled man sitting on the stoop of our neighbor’s house across the street. He was eating items out of a bag and throwing detritus (bones, bottles, wrappers) onto the sidewalk of my neighbor’s house and all over the steps. He was throwing the items as if it were sport to him. It was a disgusting mess. I went to get the phone to call “911” but by the time I got back to the window, the man was gone and my neighbor’s house was covered with litter (so I didn’t call)…

It occurs to me that we should have officers on foot, in uniform, patrolling our neighborhood. Then we could walk up to an officer and ask for assistance. (From time to time, when an incident has occurred and we happened to find officers in the area, they were extremely helpful and responsive.)

For those who have a liaison with the [84th Precinct], would it be possible for the precinct to set up a “hotline” we could call, and they could dispatch officers by foot or car for these non-emergency situations? I can understand how “911” has bigger fish to fry, but the status quo does not permit a rapid response to an anti-social incident in progress.

An “anti-social incident in progress”?

UPDATE: One of the regular 84th Precinct community meetings is coming up on Tuesday, October 16. It is at 7PM. The precinct is at 301 Gold Street.

Look out for 475 Driggs…adjacent to the Oil Field, it’s For Sale. The octogenarian seller is looking for big bucks and it looks like Mews will bite. Very likely the oil field will grow larger.

McCarren Park Mews is the name of the Roebling Oil Building indicated on Department of Buildings Document, although who knows what it will be when the condos come on the market. The 475 Driggs property occupies the entire western side of the block.

It’s October and that means that Coney Island is up to its usual Halloween thing. Specifically, the Creep Show at the Freak Show. It takes place at Sideshows by the Seashore Theater, which is located at Surf Avenue and West 12th Street. The dates are October 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21 and the entire week of October 25-31. The shows run from 7PM-11PM. Admission is $8 for adults and $5 for children under 12. Here’s some of the promo copy from Coney Island USA, which is a little themed to current events this year:

Oh no!! The quaint and quiet carny village of Coney Island is slated to turn into a Mega Theme Park?! The evil wizard wants more hotels around Dark Lord Amusement Park, and there’s no one who could possibly save us! But wait! Harry Potter is here to clean up! And Dummeldorf has a secret weapon the Dark Lord can’t possibly defend against. Save us Harry!

How will it all turn out? What will happen to our beloved hamlet? And who is that hot little number in the basement? There’s only one way to find out – and it’s SCARY!

CREEP SHOW AT THE FREAK SHOW is Coney Island’s only Halloween extravaganza and one of the best haunted tours in all of New York City.

Speaking of which, Thor Equities is going to be showing some Saturday night “Fright Fest” movies this month on that big vacant lot surrounded by the blue construction fence on Stillwell Avenue, between Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk. Here’s the schedule:

October 6 – The Birds (PG-13)
October 13 – Ghostbusters (PG)
October 20 – Psycho (R)

It’s bring your own chairs and the film screenings start “at dusk.”

Monumental sculptures of sinuous root forms are part of Tobin’s practice of exploring and recreating nature. Nature’s transient forms, like plant roots, are translated by the artist into the vernacular of bronze—making reference to classical sculpture and comparing nature’s forms with human-made beauty.

Tobin has worked in various media throughout his career, including glass, clay, bronze, and steel. His work often explores natural forms, and the artist cites nature as his earliest influence, one that continues to inform his work to date. The artist previously exhibited another of his works, Termite Mounds, at the Museum of Natural History in 2001.

We’re confident many opinions about it will be forthcoming in the Slope.

• What Would Edwin Litchfield Think about Gowanus Today? [Found in Brooklyn]
• Is “Ratnerization” a Word? [No Land Grab]
• Dolly Williams Being Honored by Brooklyn Public Library [AYR]
• Red Hook Port to Stay Put? [NYDN]
• “Wading in the Gowanus? Take Rubbers” [NYP]
• Stop Work Order Works Wonders on Box Street [newyorkshitty]
• Mr. Lenin Says “Welcome to Greenpoint…” [Greenpointers]
• Brooklyn Arabic School Still Has No Principal [NYDN]
• Hollyood Comes to Bed-Stuy [Bed-Stuy Blog]
• Windsor Terrace History, 1902 [Icky in Brooklyn]
• Brownsville Has City’s Highest Infant Mortality Rate [CityRoom]
• Doors Left Open in Buildings to be Demolished…Scary [Bad Advice]
• Will Brooklyn Rail Line be Used for Freedom Tower Steel? [NYT]
• Jay Leno Gift Benefits Paul Robeson Students [NYDN]
• Photo Graffiti #7 [Big Sky Brooklyn]

Boy, is Open House New York popular. We knew that some of the big ticket tours would be hard to access, but were holding out high hopes for a tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Until we got this email, which speaks to the incredible popularity of the event:

We regret to inform you that the bus tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Saturday, October 6, with space for 22, is full. The Navy Yard is developing a program about its history and its relationship with the community. When that program is established, tours of the Yard will be available more often. Thank you for your interest.

There were 123 names on the “We Regret to Inform You” list. (Each site is handling its own arrangements, capacity and reservations.) The tour is at 9AM on Saturday morning, and we sent in our email at, like, 7AM the morning that reservations opened. We’ve heard a lot of other tales of people that were too late for “reservation only” sites. This isn’t whining–we’re actually in awe of the popularity of the event, which is now in its fifth year, and that the fact that more and more people turn out every year. As a consolation, there are plenty of spots in Brooklyn and elsewhere that don’t require reservations. Here’s the list of the all the incredible Brooklyn spots, some of which require reservations and most of which do not, so there is still ample opportunity to visit a lot of sites.

If you’re interested in getting a sense of how bad the water quality in the Gowanus Canal is, then you need to check out a recent article in Scienceline, which is published by NYU. (We found it, actually, thanks to a post in Green Brooklyn.) It provides a nice history of the Gowanus, pollution, the current state of things and its future. While things are clearly much better, it still has a way to go. Students, for instance, found gonorrhea in a drop of water that was tested and a New York City College of Technology professor is said to be “particularly interested in fluorescent white gauze that lies near the canal’s bottom, and thinks that the substance is a colonizing life form that adheres to the contaminated sediments.” Also, the oysters being cultivated in the canal are “full of lead” and core samples from the muck at the bottom of the canal have a smell of oil “so thick it would cross your eyes.” As for the future cleanup:

Plans are slowly emerging to ease the waterway’s most intractable problems. Starting next year, New York City plans to give the canal a bigger flush. This will increase water flow and remove the mounds of smelly waste. The upgrade will require shutting down the pump for the winters of 2008 and 2009 and will cost $70 million over four years — work funded through the water bills of city residents.

“When we get done, I think the Gowanus will be in pretty good shape, then all we got to do is dredge it,” said Doug Greely, the deputy commissioner for waste water treatment at New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection.

The second major phase will probably take much longer. The Army Corps of Engineers has not finalized a dredging plan or secured funds. The Corps’ Richard Dabal thinks that other options, such as entombing the sediments with a clay substance, might be a quicker way to clean the canal. Another possible solution is a combination of dredging and cleaning technology that uses high heat or additives.

Of course, there are always the swans and other wildlife on the canal. The gonorrhea, by the way, is an improvement over cholera and things that were found there in the past.