There are two chances to catch the excellent documentary Brooklyn Matters tonight and tomorrow. Tomorrow night’s screening in Park Slope, in fact, includes a special panel discussion that’s sure to be interesting:

Wednesday, June 20, 6:45PM
St. Gregory’s Roman Catholic Church
991 St. Johns Place (Near Brooklyn Avenue). Crown Heights.
Sponsored by the Crown Heights North Association

Thursday, June 21, 7PM
Park Slope Jewish Center
1320 Eighth Avenue (at 14th Street) Bklyn.
Sponsored by the Park Slope Jewish Center , Jews for Racial & Economic Justice and Kolot Chayeinu

A special Panel Discussion to follow with:
— City Council Member Letitia James
— Ron Shiffman, FAICP, Former City Planning Commissioner
— Michelle de la Uz, Executive Director of the Fifth Avenue Committee
— DDDB Spokesman Daniel Goldstein
— Filmmaker Isabel Hill

The schedule for the Seaside Summer Concert Series in Asser Levy Park in Coney Island/Brighton Beach is posted online. The B-52s are playing on August 9. (Last year we didn’t go because a monster thunderstorm was about to happen and this year we’ll be out of town.) In any case, here’s the summer schedule, which we retyped from a jpeg with our very own fingers just for you:

Thursday, July 12, 2007
Tommy James and the Shondells/Jay Black/Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge

Thursday, July 19, 2007
Billy Ocean/Air Supply

Thursday, July 26, 2007
The Turtles featuring Flo & Eddie/The Rascals/The Zombies/Melanie/Country Joe McDonald

Thursday, August 02, 2007
“Mystery Show”–Performers Not Announced

Thursday, August 09, 2007
The B52s

Thursday, August 16, 2007
Mystery Night–“An Evening of Heart and Soul”

Thursday, August 23, 2007
Salsa by the Sea, Performers TBA

The shows start at 7:30. They rent chairs for $5.00 at the July shows, but for $10.00 at all the August shows. The performances take place at Asser Levy/Seaside Park, which is at West 5th Street and Surf Avenue in Coney Island/Brighton Beach, across the street from the New York Aquarium. Shows are free.

Okay, this is absolutely, positively, the last street fair we note until the Atlantic Antic. We think. It’s the Smith Street Funday Sunday, which is taking place this Sunday, June 24 from 11AM to 6PM on Smith Street from Bergen Street to Union Street. It’s produced locally rather than by the big firm that does most NYC street fairs. So, the eight block event should have a more local flavor like it usually does.

Also coming up, although not until July 15 is Smith Street’s Bastille Day. That takes place from Noon-8PM, with the epicenter being at Smith and Dean Streets.

The film features interviews with Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff about the city’s “major effort to open the waterfront” and how development on “every inch” of it will make it unrecognizable 10 years from now. U.S. Rep. Nydia Velasquez voiced concerns about “the big rush to reclaim” the waterfront, asked who it’s being reclaimed for.

The screening is free. You can read more about the documentary and find directions to Pier 2 here.

Hello everyone,

Below is the text of a letter asking the State DOE to revoke Scarano’s Licence. All you have to do is cut and past, ad your name to the end and mail it to Commisioner Mills. Below the DOE letter you will find a letter to Governor Eliot Spitzer asking for his help. If you can help get the rest of the neighborhood to write maybe we can get his license pulled before the plans for 360 Smith are approved.

Tom Gray
District Director
City Council Member Bill de Blasio

The email to the Governor itself says:

I am writing in regard to Robert Scarano of Scarano Architects located at 110 York Street, Brooklyn. Mr. Scarano has been a problem in the City of New York, and I am asking that he be no longer permitted to practice as an architect within the State of New York.

Mr. Scarano has knowingly violated zoning regulations and building codes. Throughout the city, Mr. Scarano is synonymous with bad contractors, dangerous job sites and out of scale development. In my neighborhood, the New York City Department of Buildings has repeatedly required Robert Scarano to change his plans for the same infractions. He has also been relieved of his self-certification privileges because he consistently certified plans knowing they did not comply with all city and state regulations…

Local blogger Pardon Me for Asking reacts with skepticism to the latest development:

Though I agree with De Blasio that Scarano is a bad seed, I am skeptical of the councilman’s motives in all of this. Going after the architect is an easy way for Bill to get some great coverage in the local press and even the New York Times. It is a masterful P.R. stunt. Here is a pro-development politician looking anti-development without actually doing anything against development. Keep in mind that in this case, he is not going after the developer or the contractor, only the architect. It will earn him points with some less politically savvy neighborhood residents but those involved with the Carroll Gardens rezoning issue will look right through this little game. After all, this is the same guy who is supporting the bending of existing landmark rules to allow a huge residential tower at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street.

Don’t get me wrong. I have said it here before, revoking Scarano’s license is a worthy cause. Brooklyn should not have to make space for another one of his buildings. However, Bill DeBlasio should not try to use the revocation of Scarano’s license to make himself look like Mr. Anti-Development, when in fact he is not.

Meanwhile, local residents are starting their own petition drive against the proposed project.

Related Posts:
New Shots Fires in Battle of 360 Smith Street

The view below depicts Stillwell Avenue and Surf Avenue. Nathans is seen on the right. We deal with some of the major points of the rendering in another post today comparing this new rendering to older ones.

Related Posts:
Redone Coney Plans: The Devil is in the Details

There are more developments to report in the ongoing saga of the very threatened Underground Railroad buildings on Duffield Street. As reported on Brownstoner and in amNY yesterday, a lawsuit has been against Mayor Bloomberg and the city–which want to take the buidings via eminent domain in order to building an underground parking garage–alleging they failed to fully examine the history of the site. Today, City Council Member John Liu (who represents Flushing among other Queens neighborhoods) is holding a press conference at 1PM. The release says “Experts to Dispute City Report Denying Existence of Underground Railroad Site.” It reads in part:

On Juneteenth – a national celebration that commemorates the end of slavery – elected officials, historic preservationists, and local residents will rally at Duffield Houses to challenge the conclusions of the City’s Economic Development Corporation report, which denies the existence of a historic Underground Railroad site at this location. Many of the nationally-renown expert witnesses who worked on this report will directly repudiate the City’s conclusions – which will now allow a private developer to demolish the Duffield Houses and build a parking lot at the site.

On January 7, 2004, Duffield Street residents found notices taped to front doors informing them that their historic houses would be taken by eminent domain and demolished to make way for a new parking lot. A growing number of historians, archaeologist, and Underground Railroad experts are outraged at the concocted conclusion of the City’s report by a consultant firm unqualified to make such an analysis. Many consider this Underground Railroad site to be hallowed ground and a
vital cultural treasure that should be preserved. The Underground Railroad was the network of people and places in which fugitive slaves sought refuge when escaping from the plantation system in the South.

The event takes place from 1PM-1:30PM at 227 227 Duffield Street (between Fulton & Willoughby).

Related Post:
State Historic Preservation Office Never Contacted About Underground Railroad Houses

1) The photo above is of Mura, a new Japanese on Fifth Avenue between 5th Street and 6th Street that opened recently. (369 Fifth Avenue, specifically.) It’s not so much that it’s new, like, within the last 48 hours, so much as we walked by it with our camera. We hear the peanut avocado roll is good if you like that kind of thing.

2) A couple of blocks away there’s Jpan Sushi (287 Fifth Avenue between 1st and 2nd Streets), which we mention, not because it’s new, but to prove a point that more and more Japanese places are opening in Park Slope. How deep is the sushi marketplace in Park Slope? Stay tuned.

These places join a list that includes Blue Ribbon, Nana, Sakura and Ginza, among others.

We were so surprised to get an email from Thor spokesperson Tom Corsillo that we delayed posting until we checked out the IP address on the email and checked with another blogger.

Has Thor’s PR strategy entered a new phase? At least for now, it seems that the answer is yes. Thor made more renderings of its Coney Island plans available to GL and other blogs yesterday morning, and new lines of communication appear to have been opened. While the new plans have received mixed reviews–and the most skeptical reactions were quoted in the New York Times–this new, more inclusive approach to communications is a step in the right direction.

Is the inclusion of online media in the communication plan an affirmation of the role that blogs are playing in coverage of development projects in Brooklyn, and in New York City generally? We’d suggest that it is and that’s a good thing, generally, because any attempt to promote community dialogue is healthy.

GL Analysis
We’ve been tough on Thor and Mr. Sitt in the past, so we think it’s only fair to say that this new and inclusive communications strategy is a positive thing. The debate about Coney Island redevelopment has never been an issue of pro or con. There are few people around that don’t want to see Coney Island improved and don’t want to see all those vacant lots (and ones used for school bus parking) returned to productive use. The discussion is clearly about the nature, density and design of the new developments. In that context, intense public discussion is a very good thing.

The Coney Island PR strategy has gone through many iterations–early attempts to impress the mainstream media with glitzy designs, slow and calculated leaks of updated renderings to select print publications and reporters, combative public statements and veiled threats, quieter negotiations and, now, an approach that includes blogs and the online community of Coney Island devotees. Hopefully, the latter approach is more than another passing phase.

We, personally, look at the latest plan and see condos that have morphed into hotel rooms and time shares and wonder how any Coney plan could pitch three hotels, given that one hotel has to be a sigificant financial gamble. If we were to wager, we’d look for the three “hotels” to be reduced in number along with the 400 “time shares” in the name of whatever zoning compromises and public subsidies for which Thor is angling.

We understand that it’s all about PR and political angling and wonder what this latest turn of events really means, still, the more informed discussion that takes place, the better off everyone will be.

• New Ratner Atlantic Yards Head Spotted Checking Out the Footprint [AYR]
• F Train Frustration [Metro]
• Another Old Local Business Gone [11222]
• Follow Up to GL and GerritsenBeach.Net Posts on Manhattan Beach!!! [NYP]
• The Really Cute Bushwick Four Get Adopted [newyorkshitty]
• Prospect Park Rapist [NYP]
• Livable Streets Exhibition to Open at Brooklyn Public Library [Streets Blog]
• Shopping the Red Hook Garden District [ABL]
• 84th Precinct Meeting to Discuss North Brooklyn “Crime Wave” [McBrooklyn]
• No Sleep ‘Til Bushwick [Bushwick BK]
• Zaytoon’s Opening Up on Vanderbilt [Set Speed]

Here’s a vid we found on the YouTube that takes a look at Gowanus in the context of planning and zoning issue. It has a college lesson video feel to it, but is worth a viewing is your interested in some of the neighborhood planning issues generally. You can click over to it here if, for some reason, the embed is being glitchy.

So, if you are feeling in an opera mood tonight, we want to remind you that the Metropolitan Opera is performing Gounod’s Faust in Prospect Park tonight. The Met in the Parks performance starts at 8:00 PM and will take place on the big lawn between the Third Street entrance to the park and Grand Army Plaza. Other performances are coming up too, although this is the only Prospect Park concert of the summer. You can check out the full schedule here.

Maybe you know about the Brooklyn Artists Gym, the facility in Gowanus offering studio space for artists? Well, they emailed to say they’re looking for artists, and the cost for space is $220 a month. Here’s some of their pitch:

Ours is a beautiful open studio space (3,000 sq. ft.) located in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. Brooklyn Artists Gym is a membership organization that provides a large space in which visual artists can, as members, do their artwork without the prohibitive expense of a private studio.

BAG is also a gallery where artists can, for a small fee, exhibit and sell their work, with no commission taken. It is, above all else, a place where artists can come together with other artists in a supportive creative community.

For only $220/month our artists have 24-hour/7 day a week access to BAG. (That comes out to only about $7.33 per day!) If you agree to join for a six-month period of time, your dues are only $195/month.

We provide tables, taborets, easels, and each member artist has one half of a large locker in which to store supplies. Additional storage space, including flat files for 2-d work, can be rented for a very small fee. Paintings, drawings, and other works in progress can be stored in our drying racks. Though you share the space with others, you’ll never feel crowded, and often have the space to yourself. Fellow members are truly community members, not roommates.

We have live-model figure drawing twice a week: a series of short poses on Monday evenings, and one long pose on Saturday afternoons. Although this is open to the public, members get a discounted rate. Try us for a month. There’s no commitment, and you can even take a break for a month if you’ll be away.

The Brooklyn Artists Gym is located at 168 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Ave. (Take the F to the Fourth Avenue stop or the M and R to 9th Street.) For more info, go to their website or email info@brooklynartistsgym.com.

UPDATE: BAG slipped us a Mickey on this one, with their verbiage about how Seventh Street between Second and Third Avenues is in Park Slope. It is most certainly not in Park Slope, except by the definition of real estate agents that would like to define every possible square inch of Brooklyn as “Park Slope.” The Brooklyn Artists Gym, in our book, is in Gowanus.

Gowanus. Gowanus. Gowanus. Embrace it. Feel it. Smell it. Wallow in it. Love it.

G-O-W-A-N-U-S.

Yes, the headline is a cheap come on to get you to read, but some very cool-looking pics are up on display at Halcyon in Dumbo this month. The name of the show is, you guessed it, “Lost, Lonely and Vicious.” It opened a couple of days ago at Halcyon and will run until July 15. The photographer calls the photos “a series of fragmentary observations of new yorks people, places and pandemonium…I think the flicks capture the soul of the city and believe that hardcore new yorkers would find it very interesting.” You can find some of the photographers street work here at the photoblog fuzzyvision-ny. Halcyon is at 57 Pearl Street in Dumbo. Cool stuff.

GL got an email from Dan Lavoie at Bed-Stuy for Obama about the the Democratic Debate Watching parties the organization is having. The group is an organization of (obviously) Bed-Stuy Obama supporters. The first viewing party is at 8:30PM on June 28. The debate itself is being hosted by Tavis Smiley and broadcast from Howard University, and will focus on African-American issues. The parties are at Common Grounds, 376 Tompkins, which is between Putnam and Jefferson, and at Bread Stuy, which is at 403 Lewis Ave. Both cafes are just off the Kingston/Throop stop on the C Train. For details you can check out the group’s web page. And for more info, you can email bedstuy (at) brooklynforbarack (dot) org.

There were no details in the email that went out yesterday, but we immediately wondered how many hotel rooms were involved. That led us to wondering if luxury condos might be replaced by condo hotels and/or time shares. (The city’s best known such animal is a very controversial condo hotel tower being built in Soho by Donald Trump that skirt zoning barring residential buildings.)

Well, the New York Times fills in some detail on the new plans, including the fact that there are three hotels, that some building heights still exceed the landmark Parachute Jump and that Thor is looking for a $100 million public subsidy.

Here is the key verbiage in the Times story:

Robert Lieber, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, described Mr. Sitt’s new plan as a “wolf dressed up as a sheep.” Mr. Lieber, along with neighborhood leaders and other city officials, had expressed fears that residents of new apartment buildings would not fit comfortably with the noisy, all-hours amusement district that would be preserved between West Eighth Street and the Aquarium and the minor league baseball stadium at West 16th Street.

The new plan keeps the concept of a new glass-enclosed water park, but instead of apartments calls for three hotels, including more than 400 time-share units, along with restaurants, shops, movie theaters and high-tech arcades. The latest renderings depict a pulsating entertainment complex with an Elephant Colossus statue and architecture that evokes the old Luna Park and Dreamland amusement parks.

Mr. Lieber and others say that the time-share units look an awful lot like apartments and that the complex looks more like a mall than Coney Island.

“He came in last week and presented a plan that had essentially the same density, but dressed it up with hotels and time shares,” Mr. Lieber said on Friday. “The building heights still exceed the 271-foot Parachute Jump,” a Coney Island landmark. “And he’s looking for a huge subsidy from the city. North of $100 million.”

The plans are smaller than earlier versions and one of the towers along Stillwell Avenue has disappeared. We await the plans and all the details and are particularly interested in the $100M+ subsidy the project would require.

GL Analysis
While we’re hopeful that the Parks Department will avoid actions that result in the eviction of the Red Hook vendors, we’re rather surprised that officials haven’t rushed to embrace a solution and correct a what has become a significant public embarrassment and political burr under the saddle. Perhaps they’re trying to prove that they have thick skins and won’t buckle in the face of emails, press coverage and political pressure. Maybe they really haven’t figured a way out the corner into which they have backed themselves.

Regardless, this situation continues to demand a solution. If the Parks Department hopes the issue will fade from public consciousness in a week or two so that they can quietly act in a way that hurts the vendors, they are probably making a miscalculation. There are dozens of food and other blogs, for starters, that will keep the issue in the spotlight until a resolution is found.

In the meantime, if you haven’t emailed Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe to tell him what a lousy idea any action that would result in the displacement–deliberate or otherwise–of the vendors would be, we strongly urge you to take a couple of minutes out of your day. Click here and send Mr. Benepe an email. Or send one to him at adrian.benepe@parks.nyc.gov. One thing we learned a long time ago is that public officials know how to count, so every message matters. Keep sending emails until the Parks Department tells the Red Hook Vendors they have a long-term solution and a home in Red Hook.

Related Posts:
Red Hook Vendors Have Parks Meeting, Still No Resolution

The “Seventh Heaven” Seventh Avenue street fair took place in Park Slope yesterday. We covered about half of it and shot some photos in the early afternoon.