A GL reader sent us some new photos of Park Slope’s Brownstone Bride yesterday and we thought that, since they’re different angles than the ones we’ve previously run and since they’re exclusively ours, we’d offer up a couple of them. If you’ve got vids of the odd bridal incident or more pics, shoot us an email at thegowanuslounge (at) gmail (dot) com. Naturally, we always welcome your informational tips and photos on any matter of interest and stand at the ready to help you get the story out there.

Why, you might ask, is this picture interesting? Our answer: Because it shows what happens to the Gowanus Canal every time it rains as countless hundreds of thousands of gallons of stormwater runoff and untreated sewage flow directly into the canal. This photo and the pics in this flickr set were shot by Raymond Tan and posted by Gowanus Canal on flickr, aka Ellie Hanlon of the Gowanus Dredgers. The Dredgers have taken an active role in trying to get the Gowanus cleaned up so that, someday, you can use it and not have to go to the emergency room if you fall in. The shot above was taken at the Third Street Bridge, which is adjacent to the site where Whole Foods will build its Gowanus store. Ms. Hanlon writes of the photos:

These photos show what happens around the canal when it rains. However, this situation is not hopeless! Incorporating storm water best management practices (pocket wetlands, street trees, porous pavement, swales, rain barrels) around the canal will tremendously reduce the amount of runoff and raw sewage that enters the canal every time it rains. Our city agencies (including the Department of Environmental Protection) are studying the area and making plans to reduce the amount of combined sewer outfall events.

The photo below shows water flowing directly into the canal from the end of a Gowanus Street. Of course, if the situation is bad enough water can also flow from the canal into the streets, creating an entirely different set of issues. It’s all especially fascinating given the push to build luxury condos in the neighborhood.

We got the photo above from the Concerned Citizens of Greenwood Heights mailing list. The email that came with it said:

Passed by this stunning new establishment today. See attached. I Guess you could call it “hanging out your shingle,” except it looked like scrap of aluminum siding and a sharpie doing the magic. Gotta be in the game to play, right?

Definitely in the game, in a manner of speaking.

Perhaps you’ve followed the tale of the hydrant being used for water by The Modern on N. 7th Street in Williamsburg. If you haven’t, all you really need to know is that neighbors complain the luxe condo building has been a huge pain in the ass and that, now, a water leak threatens possible problems for some of them. We don’t know if there is a causal relationsip with the nasty tree trouble in the email below, or if that’s just a cautionary tale for people with old trees on their property. Regardless, it’s a miniature Williamsburg tale of woe:

On Wednesday two inspectors from DEP came out to look at the Hydrant again. Although they validated all of my concerns, I was told that they could not make the contractor stop since he has a permit. So the hydrant has been used despite the damage being done to my home. The pictures below were taken at 9:10am today. I also have to deal with the sudden imploding of my hundred plus year old Apple tree. I inspected the tree today and the trunk of the tree is rotted and very wet. Could the water from the hydrant cause this?

It’s heartbreaking to my family to lose this once beautiful tree. And my insurance company has told me I am on my own since they would only pay to remove the tree if it was hit by lightning. So now I am facing a bill of at least $2000.00 to remove the tree. I’m on quite a roll. Anyone handy with a chainsaw?

Only if the tree is hit by lightening? They sure know how to write policies to make sure the odds are in their favor. As for the hydrant, we have a feeling we haven’t heard the last of it or the damage it will do if the city doesn’t address the issue. And, as for The Modern itself, we suspect we’ll be running posts about it until people start moving in.

There’s a new Greenpoint blog called Greenpointers, which may be one of the first Brooklyn neighborhood blogs produced by two actual sisters. (Or may not be. We can’t see we’ve tracked the phenomenon.) In any case, the two are natives or Greenpoint, so we’re sure the blog will be offering an interesting perspective one of Brooklyn’s more fascinating neighborhoods. Here’s a little sample of one of the early posts, which dealt largely with landmarking:

I think it’s great that they’re considering these types of buildings to be saved from demolition – or God forbid more Belvederes. Not that I hate the Belvederes all that much, they’re pretty nice, actually. Compared with some of the row housing that Greenpoint is made up of, they might even be better. The true monstrosity is that Eckford & Engert. They remind me of those old commercials for termites where the people live in all concrete housing – even the couch.

I live in a landmark myself. A landmark building that has waterbugs, bed bugs and live mice that are apparently stuck in glue traps and tossed from windows so that you are privy to a dying, writhing little critter on your fire escape. Or so the handwritten note on the mailboxes suggests.

We look forward to more.

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

• $10B in Investment & 14K New Apts Downtown in 10 Years [Brooklyn Eagle]
• About the (Corporate) Nightmare on Smith Street [Gothamist]
• Checking Out the Flatbush Junction Project [Ditmas Park Blog]
• Checking Out 111 Kent Avenue [Brownstoner]
• Underground Railroad Buildings Were Connected [Duffield St. Underground]
• Designers of Jail with Condos & Retail Face Challenges [Brooklyn Eagle]
• Who Will Help Injured Brooklyn Heights Pigeon? [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
• Clinton Hill Historic Photo of the Day [Clinton Hill Blog]
• Hot Mess on Lafayette Avenue [Bed-Stuy Blog]
• Etsy’s Recycled Fashion Show Tonight [Sustainable Flatbush]
• “The Walls Belong to Us” Art Benefit in Dumbo [Dumbo NYC]

There are a few more details on that condo project that is going to be developed in Gowanus by the Hudson Companies, which built the 33-story J Condos in Dumbo. Last month, we noted the sale of the property at 3rd Street and Bond for $7.75 million. The Brooklyn Eagle reported yesterday that the developer is planning 50 condos in “nine or 10 four-to-five-story townhouse-style buildings” on the property. Rogers Marvel Architects will design the project, according to the Eagle. Demolition on the site is expected within 45 days and the developer plans to start construction so they don’t “miss the amended 421-a tax exemption deadline” of December 31. which is Dec. 31.

There are many interesting vehicles to be seen in Brooklyn and a large number are to be found on the streets of Williamsburg. We think of many of them as Hipster Cars, although they may or may not be. Hipster cars are either exceptionally beaten up (and possibly deliberately so), tagged up, stickered up or of 1960 or 1970s vintage. A handful are older. If you walk around Williamsburg, you’ve seen some of them parked on the street for a long time.

[Photo courtesy of shi11/flickr]

The last time we took a look at the Floating Pool docked below Brooklyn Heights at the “Brooklyn Bridge Park Beach,” the line looked pretty abominable. Then again, it was a Sunday and it was hot. Regardless, the pool is hosting adult lap swim and water aerobics sessions in addtiion to beach volleyball and sand soccer organized by MetroSoccer. The Adult Lap Swim can take up to 50 people, but doesn’t take reservations. It’s held on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:00–10:30 AM. There’s also an Adult Water Aerobics & Lap Swim, also for 50 people with no reservations. That’s on Thursdays from 9:00-10:30 AM. In terms of the public swim sessions, they’re urging people to go during the week when the pool isn’t full. The sessions are as follows:

Weekdays
11 am-12:30 pm
1 pm-2:30 pm
3 pm-4:30 pm
5 pm-6:45 pm
Wristbands handed out 1 hour before each session.

Weekends
9 am-10:30 am
11 am-12:00 pm
12:30 pm-1:30 pm
2:00 pm-3:00 pm
3 30 pm – 4:30 pm
5:00 pm – 6:45 pm
Wristbands handed out a half hour before each session.

The pool is on the water between Piers 4 and 5 (near Furman and Joralemon Streets), two blocks north of Atlantic Avenue. If you want to map it, look up 334 Furman Street. The closest subways: You can take the 2/3/4/5 trains to Brooklyn Borough Hall or M/R trains to Court Street, then take the shuttle bus or walk straight down Joralemon Street to the waterfront. The free shuttle stops at the Borough Hall subway station (Joralemon Street) and the High Street (Cadman Plaza West) subway station (A/C trains). It runs every ten minuts from 11AM-8PM. Car parking at the site costs $20.

• Something is Wrong at Enid’s in Greenpoint (above) [Eater]
• RIP Red Deli [BK 11201]
• DeFonte’s in Red Hook Is Not Finished [Lost City]
• Flatbush Farm & the Farm on Adderley [New Yorker]
• Vinnies Pizzeria is a ‘Model for Changing Neighborhoods’ [11222]
• Check Out Golden Loaf Bakery in Crown Heights [Porkchop Express]
• New Black Mountain Wine Bar Has 1/2 Inch Thick Polish Bacon [Eater]
• Nova Café Open on Court Street [Chowhound]
• Birthday Dinner at Bocca Lupo [Clinton Hill Gastronome]
• A Dozen Brooklyn Restaurants Make “Best Cheap Eats” List [McBrooklyn]
• Woman, Vegetable, Miracle [Brooklyn Based]

What’s in a developer’s website? Well, it’s about the product that the developer is trying to sell. In the case of The Future of Coney Island, the Thor website with the very long name that’s hard to type, the image is now 1960s Groovy. We take zero credit for this find–that goes to the superb Coney blog Kinetic Carnival, which does a tremendous amount of heavy lifting in covering the local happenings. In addition to proclaiming “Coney Island Love” and the 1967 Northern California Jefferson Airplane/Jimi Hendrix concert fonts, it also has info about the water slide, Friday night movies and the Cole Bros. Circus if you click on the right hand side of the intro screen. Feel the shagadelic Coney Island Love, baby. We expect to see Austin Powers popping out of the splash screen at any moment with a “groovy, baby.” Now, please excuse us, while we kiss the sky.

We got an email from one of the producers on Brian Lehrer‘s superb staff at WNYC asking us to put up a post about a fascinating experiment they need help doing, starting today. They’re asking listeners to count the number of SUVs on their block as a way of getting at how many gas guzzlers are out there in this era of talk about environmental sustainability. Obviously, Brooklyn is fertile territory for such an SUV count. It’s part of something called “crowdsourcing,” where listeners are recruited as street journalists. Here’s more from Brian’s WNYC web page on the effort:

We want you to go outside and count the number of SUVs on your block, as well as the number of regular cars, at any given moment. This is our experiment in “crowdsourcing,” where we employ you, the listener, in an act of journalism. We’re trying to find out just how much gas-guzzling SUV use there is throughout the New York area, with all the talk of environmental sustainability in the city. We’re giving you until next Thursday to do the counting, but please, just count the cars the one time. If you want to take photos, feel free to upload to Flickr and tag the photos blsuv. Post your results in the comment section below and we’ll analyze the results next week.

You can find the full post about it by clicking here and, of course, by tuning in to Brian’s show this morning. What are you waiting for, Brooklyn? Get out there and help BL and all of us out by counting the SUVs on your block.

No, not that kind of Gawker. This kind of gawker. Our Greenpoint correspondent forwarded these images she’d captured in the neighborhood during a morning constitutional on Huron Street, where a crane is hard at work lifting material for 143 Huron, which may be one of the most glared at construction sites in all of Brooklyn. (For now.) Generally speaking, however, there’s something we love about these pics of people gawking at construction sites, most likely the sense of resignation about the inevitable that seem to convey so powerfully with those blank stares.

It’s been a relatively good week in terms of Brooklyn landmarking efforts making progress. As you’ve probably heard by now, McCarren Pool finally gained landmark status. In addition, the Sunset Play Center and Bath House were also landmarked. (That’s the interior pictured here.) The protected structures include all the pools at the Sunset Park facility, the bath house, outside walls and everything else in between. It is another one of the WPA era pools built by Robert Moses and, like the others, is a vital community amenity and also an important piece of New York City history. Here’s a bit from the LPC’s press release about the landmarking, a link to which can be found in a Historic Districts Council Newsstand post on the pool preservation progress:

The enormous center, which displaced a small lake, officially opened on July 20, 1936, the sixth of the 10 WPA pool complexes completed that summer, and the first to open in Brooklyn. The swimming pool measures 256 by 165 feet and the small semi-circular wading and diving pools at either end each measure 165 feet in diameter.

The Sunset Park Pool is on Seventh Avenue between 41st and 44th Streets. (If you’ve never been to any of the WPA pool, check them out; they truly are a unique piece of New York City history and in the column of Moses legacies that don’t cause your blood pressure to spike.) The Red Hook Pool is still up for landmark consideration.

In other landmarking news, the creation of a Historic District in Dumbo moved forward by a unanimous vote. It will be up for consideration later this year. Also, according to the Historic Districts Council Newsstand, the Fiske Terrace-Midwood Park Historic District proposal will have a hearing on October 16.

The mysterious story of the Park Slope Brownstone Bride continues to attract attention. We got an email and a call from an Inside Edition producer yesterday asking if we knew of any videos of the bride. We don’t. And, for all the people said to have taken photos of the incident, the only photos we’ve seen are the ones that we posted that were sent to us. In any case, if you were there and you shot video, send us an email. The story hasn’t run its course yet, apparently, as bride-related weirdness and/or drama can clearly attract a national audience. Although the Brooklyn Paper reported the bride is bi-polar and had been engaged and was then dumped, we still have a major question: How did she get up there? The height of the ledge on which she was found would indicate that there is no way she could have gotten up there without help unless (a). she’s Spiderbride or (b). a ladder was found at the scene and it wasn’t reported.

The City Council voted to approve a rezoning of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill that will make it harder to put up tall buildings on residential blocks in the two neighborhoods. The Council held a hearing on the plan on Monday and voted to pass it yesterday. The City Planning Commission had voted in favor of the plan on July 11. An 18-story as-of-right building under the old zoning helped propel the rezone to the forefront. Brownstoner has been following the 163 Washington saga, including the posting of a mashup rendering showing how the building would look. In a variation of what happened when rezoning was considered in the South Slope, the developers have been racing to pour a foundation before the rezone passed. The rezone will allow taller, denser buildings to rise on Fulton Street and Myrtle Avenue. Rezonings of Dyker Heights and Fort Hamilton were also approved. The rezones contain provisions encouraging developers to include affordable housing in return for density bonuses. The technique has met with mixed success in neighborhoods such as Williamsburg, where many developers have opted not to take the density bonuses and are putting up buildings that exclusively cater to high-end buyers.

Yesterday’s story about how Thor reached an advanced point of negotiation with Coney Island USA about selling a building to them and, then, backed off as the contract was about to be signed has provoked quite a reaction from the Coney Island crew via the Coney Island Message Board. The negative reaction to this latest tale of what appears to be using Coney Island buildings and institutions as pawns in a larger real estate development game comes from both opponents and supporters. Here’s a sample of the commentary:

I’ve been very vocally wary of CIUSA being quiet about Thor and what they are doing to Coney Island. And now the curtain is finally pulled back a bit. I can’t tell you how bad I feel for everyone involved in this fiasco, but it’s been clear for months that Thor has been playing one person against another in the neighborhood. And the end result? This mess. [Jack]

If any of this is actually true..its beginning to disgust me.. [Joe Sitt Friend]

The first thing to do is contact as many people in city government as you can to tell them your feelings on the matter. Be sure to include where you live, its better if you live in Coney Island, that your a voter and pay taxes. [Captain Nemo]

BONUS: Coney Island Development Corp. President Lynn Kelly will be talking about the Coney Island Strategic Plan at the Coney Island Museum at 1208 Surf Avenue on Sunday (7/29) at 4PM. While she isn’t going to deliver any “news,” it should be an interesting opportunity to listen to the person heading the CIDC. The donation is $5.

BONUS II: In some happy Coney Island news, the Economic Development Corp. will be commissioning a study, using more than $3 million in federal transportation money, to determine the feasibility of ferry service to Coney Island and a new pier at W. 8th Street near the Aquarium. The idea has broad support, but there’s some sentiment to use the pier for amusements rather than just for ferry service.

Related Post:
New Controversy Over Thor’s Handling of Historic Coney Island Buildings

• Atlantic Yards Tax Break Deal in the Works [NYDN]
• Compromise on Ratner’s Special Tax Break, Behind Closed Doors [AYR]
• It Came from the Blogosphere [No Land Grab]
• Hakeem Jeffries Slowly Turns on Ratner [Daily Gotham]
• Ex-Barron Aide Barred from City Council Floor [Sun]
• Barron Will Have Company in Race for Brooklyn Borough President [City Room]
• Your Chance to Make a Film About Coney Island [Kinetic Carnival]
• Woah: Good Postal Service at Times Plaza Station on Atlantic!!! [Lost City]
• Condos Not Selling in Greenwood Heights [Brownstoner]
• 545 Washington Using Non-Union Labor [Set Speed]
• People Prefer the Green Bike Lines to Other Colors [McBrooklyn]
• The “Burden” of Making Dumbo a Historic District [Sun]
• 73 Pineapple Makes Landmarks Commission Docket [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
• Zen and the Art of Buzzer Maintenance, Bushwick Edition [newyorkshitty]
• Those Vines in the Bushwick Backyard? Grapes from Another Time. [Bushwick BK]
• Coney Island Monday Movie Madness [Kinetic Carnival]
• Watch Being John Malkovich Tonight at Brooklyn Bridge Park [Dumbo NYC]
• How to Clean Up So You Can See Your Floor [The Brooklyn Nester]

The 144-page report about Williamsburg and Greenpoint rezoning and gentrification from the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers is not the kind of reading you bring to the beach on Saturday. Within the pages of the study conducted for the New York City Community Council, however, are some fascinating pieces of information about what has been going on in North Brooklyn. Consider for instance that 3,800 units of housing have or will soon enter the market in 84 new construction or rehabilitated developments in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, that the units are largely aimed at high-income single people or couples without children and that the prices range from $199,000 to $2.37 million. Or this passage:

Between 1991 and 2002 Greenpoint lost 628 manufacturing jobs and 630 industrial jobs; Williamsburg lost 2,802 manufacturing jobs and 2,353 industrial jobs. While this would be a significant finding on its own, it is even more telling that no other nearby North Brooklyn neighborhood experienced the same kind of loss. This suggests that the industrial sector overall was stable and that something specific was happening in Greenpoint-Williamsburg. The culprit was the strong housing market putting pressure on Greenpoint-Williamsburg.

The report also found that residential prices jumped from an average of $538,000 to $638,000 between April and July 2005. Most interesting of all, however, is the finding that incentives for including affordable housing in “inland” parts of the neighborhoods have failed to yield any significant amount of housing. oNYTurf has both a post about the report and links to two different sites where the full document can be downloaded. Go there if you want it!

Could the nightmarish toxic sludge at the bottom of the Gowanus be frozen in place with a “clay-based seal” called AquaBlock? Well, it’s one of the less expensive solutions to detoxing the canal being considered by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps is coming up with options for dealing with the horror show of pollution that makes up the canal bed. The traditional solution would be dredging, but it would be far more costly. Dredging would also be controversial because it would stir up and possibly spread toxic sediment that currently sits at the bottom. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reports on a presentation made at a recent community meeting (that somehow did not appear on our radar screen). The downside of such a solution is that the technology’s effectiveness is unproven over the long run; it is relatively new and has only been used in a small number of places. It could also be unpopular with some people as it keeps all of the toxins in place. “Capping” toxic sites and leaving some pollutants, however, has become a fairly common practice as a less expensive alternative to full cleanups. Even if the solution were to prove acceptable to policymakers, however, it does not address the ongoing problems of pollutants leaching into the canal from nearby sites and the serious problem of raw sewage flowing into the canal during rainstorms. Those are very different and critical ongoing issues that will impact any canal cleanup efforts.

Today is as good a day as any to review the status of things surrounding that controversial development at 360 Smith Street in Carroll Gardens that would be built by developer Billy Stein and designed by architect Robert Scarano. Several members of the CORD organization, which grew out of the backlash against the new building, attended an open house yesterday at Council Member Bill de Blasio’s district office. Mr. de Blasio has prominently targeted Mr. Scarano, although he has been less vocal, according to many Carroll Gardens residents following the blow-by-blow, about the bigger issues they want addressed–rezoning and expansion of the tiny Carroll Gardens landmark district.

In any case, an email from CORD reports that a “Town Hall” meeting with Mr. de Blasio to discuss rezoning and landmarking issues won’t be held until after Labor Day. (Last week, they had said it would happen very soon.) In addition, Mr. de Blasio has told resdients that actual permits for the 360 Smith Street building are not imminent and that the process “has been slowed down due to recent investigations of the architect,” Mr. Scarano.

Instead of the “town hall” meeting, Mr. de Blasio will reportedly hve a smaller meeting with residents about the 360 Smith building. Residents say they are anxious to see plans for the building–which have been approved by the Department of Buildings–but that the developer has not offered to show them to anyone.

The group says it wants to keep up pressure on Mr. de Blasio:

CORD is suggesting our members call Mr. deBlasio’s office to persist in asking more questions and getting even more answers! The Borough of Brooklyn is our home, after all, and the Councilman is supposed to be there to help us constituents is he not?

So, based on that last statement, we’re guessing that not everyone is entirely content.

Some good news out of the Landmarks Preservation Commission meeting yestreday. The LPC has finally landmarked McCarren Pool, capping an effort to save the closed WPA-era pool that began in the 1990s. This is a good thing both because protection of the pool is now official and because any modifications, as per renovations that the Parks Department is planning to make, will have to be approved by the LPC. (The Parks Department supported the landmarking.) You can also check out Brownstoner and TRE for more detail.

Coney Island USA’s Dick Zigun, who founded the Mermaid Parade and is a member of the board of the Coney Island Development Corp. among other things, has been involved in efforts to landmark a number of significant Coney Island structures and has been seeking a permanent home amidst the redevelopment that will take place. In that context, the story in today’s amNY is a must read for those following the Coney Island story, both because Mr. Zigun speaks out about his dealings with developer Joe Sitt and Thor Equities and because it deals with the fate of two structures with fascinating histories, the Grasshorn and Henderson buildings.

The Coney Island USA organization has city grant money to buy a permanent home and, last year, was in talks with Mr. Sitt to use $2 million to purchase the Grasshorn building. (It has already purchased its building at 1208 Surf Avenue, but was looking to the other building as that the Coney Island Museum, which needs a bigger, better home, could expand.) We’ll let amNY pick up the narrative:

Zigun hoped to move the Coney Island Museum into the building that was best known as the home of Henry Grasshorn’s hardware store, which provided amusement owners with the parts they needed to keep their rides running. But Sitt broke off talks with Coney Island USA last month, saying the building was no longer for sale and that he planned to build a new structure there, Zigun said…

“He will not sell me any of those buildings because he intends to knock down every old building that Thor owns and only develop new buildings and not really be involved with any type of preservation efforts,” Zigun said.

Thor officials declined to comment.

The Grasshorn and Henderson buildings are among six structures in the neighborhood that Coney Island USA has nominated for landmark protection, but the organization has received unofficial feedback saying the two buildings have been altered too significantly over the years to qualify, leaving their fate solely in Sitt’s hands.

“I thought we were over this, where developers and architects realize that, in a place like New York, a mix of rehabbed old buildings together with new buildings speaks a lot more to the history and culture of New York City than a suburban attitude, where everything is new and sort of uniformed,” said Zigun, who added that because Sitt led him on for a year and a half into believing he would sell the Grasshorn building, Coney Island USA faces forfeiting its grant money if it does not spend it before the end of the Bloomberg administration next year.

GL Analysis
One should understand that Mr. Zigun is not anti-development, but is fighting for development that makes sense for Coney Island, and for preserving a genuine amusement district. We understand that real estate negotiation is a tough game, but we’re especially at a loss for words in this case. We are pretty shocked that Thor would risk this sort of awful publicity. Our own personal reacation to the developer’s conduct as related in the story is confined to individual words: Reprehensible. Disgusting. Awful. Vile. While Mr. Sitt is under no obligation to provide more space for Mr. Zigun’s organization, as a major landowner and as one that has a number of structures that are of historic interest in Coney Island and as a developer that needs to cultivate public support, the sort of conduct reported in the amNY story is truly troubling, if not totally counterproductive. It is part of a troubling pattern of distressing behavior including evictions and premature demolition of attractions and the reported refusal to give Astroland another year without a zoning deal that has generated significant opposition to and concern about the Coney Island project. It plays into the hands of those arguing that Thor is playing a dangerous game of chicken with city officials and that the ultimate victim could be Coney Island itself if the city does not move quickly to safeguard its future.

We’re not saying The Modern on N. 7th Street is better or worse than any other development in Brooklyn in terms of the way it’s upsetting the neighbors, only that we’re getting detailed information about the problems related to it. In the last several days, we’ve had water leaking from a hydrant that could become a bigger problem and the machine using that water causing a major issue with a sewer line. Now, we’re back to the water itself, because it turns out the Department of Environmental Protection investigated the problem and decided there was none. In the meantime, the non-problem is getting worse, according to the email we got:

The Pictures you see were taken today. Last week the water was only coming out of a crack on my property. Now two holes on either side of the Hydrant have appeared with water coming out of them. Great Job DEP…The Modern site has broken a sewer main that caused all weekend construction…It’s ironic that the fine workers at the Modern broke the Sewer the same day DEP claimed to visit the hydrant that was providing water to the drilling machine that broke the Sewer. An ounce of prevention would have gone a long way. Meanwhile I hope someone who is competent from DEP will visit this site and fix this mess.

Of course, some sort of dramatic infrastructure failure, like an undermined sidewalk that collapses or water gushing uncontrollably from a ruptured pipe would make for a better story.

If you read GL, the name Harriet Zucker might ring a bell. She is the artist and kind soul who has devoted a great deal of time to caring for and saving Red Hook’s Revere Sugar dogs. Ms. Zucker is now organizing a cool photography project called “What’s the Hook.” It will involve photographers shooting Red Hook between August 12-18 and submitting them for display at different places around the neighborhood and on a website being created for the project. Her is some of what Ms. Zucker wrote to GL:

“What’s The Hook” is a community-based photography project designed to document one week in the life of Red Hook, Brooklyn, one of New York City’s most unique and rapidly changing neighborhoods. Open to locals and visitors alike, “What’s The Hook” encourages photographers of all backgrounds to submit digital images captured during the week of August 12th – 18th. This week has been selected as it begins with Red Hook Old Timer’s Day, an annual event that has been going on for more than 30 years. “What’s The Hook?” encourages submissions from photographers of all ages, backgrounds, and experience levels. “What’s the Hook?” hopes to feature images from every possible time of day, angle of vantage, and facet of life that exists in Red Hook.

The website has a lot more information and specifics. Go forth and photograph.