Is FAO Schwarz going to help shower Park Slope kiddies with toys like a $1,775 Titanic Ocean Liner with Steam Engine? That is what Crain’s New York Business is reporting today via New York 1 over the weekend. Specifically, the report says that the nation’s oldest toy store is planning two more stores in the city and that “the company is reportedly looking to have a presence in neighborhoods like Union Square and Park Slope, Brooklyn.” You might remember the big toy retailer filed for bankruptcy in 2003 and closed most of its branches. Apparently, they’re now ready to grow a bit again and think that the abundance of kids and affluent parents in Brooklyn will make for a good market.

Here’s a little Brookvid with footage of and views from the Third Street Bridge, Carroll Street Bridge and Union Street Bridge. Music is Death Cab for Cutie. Click on this link to watch over at youtube or just click on the embed.

Thanks to Kinetic Carnival’s excellent Coney Island coverage and the Coney Island Message Board, we found a fascinating Q&A with Coney Island USA Artistic Director Dick Zigun in NYFA Interactive. Mr. Zigun has been doing his thing in Coney since 1981. Mr. Zigun is both considered the unofficial “Mayor” of Coney Island, he is now a board member of the Coney Island Development Corp. and a voice for preserving Coney Island’s history as an amusement center and for protecting the handful of historic buildings that remain. He has also secured a new home for his Coney Island Museum. In other words, Mr. Zigun has been around so long and established himself as such a presence in Coney Island that he is now an insider.

The Q&A is worth a top-to-bottom read as is Kinetic Carnival’s item on it and Kinetic Carnival itself. We will simply copy and paste a small part of the interview:

Real estate in Coney Island has taken off over the last few years, tripled in price. Half the property has changed hands. And I’ve got a big smile on my face because the New York City leadership has put money in the city budget for us to buy real estate so we can go from being renters to being owners. We’re deliberately expanding our board, expanding our staff. We’re doubling the size of our budget. There is a plan to institutionalize the programs, so that the things I and other people have set in motion will outlive us. It’s satisfying to know that despite the neighborhood changes and the demographic changes we will really create something here to perpetuate certain art forms. New York is the cultural capital of the world, and if you are going to seriously make a national statement about American popular culture, Coney Island oddly enough turned out to be a smart place to base it. It works here, it belongs here, the history is here.

The rebuilding plans are yet to be seen–and we are deeply alarmed to the extent they will feature boardwalk highrises and luxury housing at the expense of Coney Island’s history as a beachfront amusement center–but we take some comfort in knowing the Coney Museum will have a secure place in its future.

Pictures:

• Good Morning at the Carroll Street Bridge [seriously excited!]
• Pink Wall [Park Slope Street Photography]
• Brooklyn [Joe’s NYC]
• Authentic Coney Island [Pixelopera]
• Brooklyn from the Rockefeller Center Observatory [New York Daily Photo]
• Verrazano from the Air [Bay Ridge Blog]
• Brooklyn Tile Supply [seriously excited!]
• Stillwell Avenue Terminal [Pixelopera]

Words:

• Perspectives on Atlantic Yards Through the Prism of Race [NYT]
• Times Race Story Considered [AYR]
• Panel Talks About Impact of Building Boom on Park Slope [P.S. Courier via No Land Grab]
• Boerum Hill Parking Space Murder [NYPost]
• Quadruple Sheephead Bay Stabbing [7Online]
• Pink Park Slope Brownstone Redux [NYT]
• Pizza to Go [Sunset Parker]
• Aesthetic Crimes of Henry Street [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
• November Flatbush Garden [Crazy Stable]

If it’s the weekend it’s time for our original weekly feature that samples the best of the of love, pathos and comedy of Craigslist Missed Connections. All week long, we scan the listings, choose the best and put them up on the weekend. This week, we feature two top-notch missed connections that revolve around food.

Williamsburg Girl Who Shared a Brooklyn-Style Pizza With Me – m4w – 26

We were at the pizza parlor, ordering sodas, debating the merits of dominos’ Brooklyn – style pizza. I was the non-tall dude with the dark hair who rode in on his single speed bike, handing out voter information, and you were the ipod belle with the attitude. We had so much fun together eating that pie that we forgot to exchange telephone numbers or emails or AIM info. But we did exchange knowing glances, the kind that say “yeah, I’m digging you today so much I could dig myself a hole to jump into if you would jump in with me.” People around us felt our kewl vibe.

So let’s meet, and let’s have a pizza in Little Italy, which is where all the real Pizzaria are. I want you to have a taste of a slice of my life, and it comes both with veggies and sausage.

Number Two is not about foul corporate pizza coopting the Brooklyn name, but about one of our fave vegan spots in Williamsburg, Foodswings:

You work at Foodswings – w4m – 20

I always see you through the hole in the wall to the kitchen at Foodswings. You have black hair, a septum piercing, and neck tattoos of trains or planes, some form of transportation. I guess you like to travel? I sure do. Any way, I think youre really cute, but I’m kinda overweight.
But I’d def work it off for you.

Seriously, I wish I could you wear your apron and drizzle buffalo sauce all over your thighs.

Get back to me, my name is Fiona, I’ve got black hair cut short with side bangs and I’m always wearing an Oi Polloi shirt.

And there you have it, this week’s installment of Disconnected in Brooklyn on Craigslist.

Once there were elevators gliding up the sides of the towers to reveal a city unfolding; now they are rusted in mid-rise. Once there were stairwells winding within those towers; now they are rotted through. The call for a better tomorrow, for “Peace Through Understanding,” is answered by the flutter and coo of its hidden inhabitants.

Seeing again the New York State Pavilion, the massive space-age remnant of the 1964 World’s Fair that looms just beyond the Grand Central Parkway, seeing it in all its premature decrepitude, you cannot help but wonder: If this was built to evoke the future, then may the gods have mercy on us all.

The city’s neglect of this gift bequeathed to it in 1967 has long been a prominent embarrassment, the elephant in the room that is the borough of Queens.

One of our fondest wishes is that someone step forward to save this building and to repurpose it as a museum or venue or peformance space and that a wealthy patron who might have gone to the World’s Fair and wants to do something for the city invest some money in it. Of course, we say this because we have no hope the city itself will do the right thing and invest in this landmark. It is wonderful that a new $62 million rink and pool are opening in the park, but the Pavillion should be a priority too.

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related news and, especially on weekends, images.

Pictures:

• NY Foreign Trade Zone No. 1 [Bluejake]
• Manhattan Skyline from Greenpoint Roof [My Brooklyn Year]
• Northside Piers Rising [A Test of Will]
• Leaves in Rain [Brit in Brooklyn]
• Shopping Carts in Coney Island Creek [Frank Lynch/flickr]
• Sunday Double Dip [Runs with Scissors/flickr]
• Gowanus by Night [webchango/flickr]
• No Words_Daily Pix [Hugh Crawford/OTBKB]
• B63 [Park Slope Street Photography]
• Fishfitti and the Finger (Building) [jUSTINYC]
• Fisherman [Lex’s Folly]

Words:

• Report on Green Brooklyn 2006 [I’m Seeing Green]
• Atlantic Yards Community Forum 11/16 [No Land Grab]
• More Ethical Challenges at Society for Ethical Culture [Park Slope Courier]
• Shooting at Indigo Blu [Daily Heights]
• More Toll Brothers Action at Northside Piers [Brownstoner]
• Condos to Rise in Front of Candy Factory [Brooklyn Papers]
• This Weekend in Brooklyn [Brooklyn Record]
• Pols Request the Park in Brooklyn Bridge Park [Brooklyn Heights Blog]

Out-of-Borough, But Important:

• A Monument to Municipal Shame in Flushing Meadows Park [NYT]

We like the Socrates Sculpture Park in Astoria, particularly because it’s a little out of the way and a bit rough around the edges. Truth be told, it’s our favorite city park built on a former waste dump. In any case, the current Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition is a lot of fun and totally worth checking out. (We actually shot these photos a few weeks ago, but they’re still worth checking out.) The show actually runs through March. Click here to go over to the flickr set or here to see a popup slideshow or just watch the embed below.

• Northside Piers Renaming Williamsburg Streets
• Mill Building Williamsburg Cabanas: Coming Along Nicely
• Williamsburg Building Not as Ugly as Rendering?
• Mill Basin Redux: Homes on Dry Land
• Will the Real Finger Building Please Flip Us Off
• Selling Point for Meier’s OPP: Excellent Accidents
• South Slope Building Still Cracked Out
• Meanwhile, in Dumbo: Ain’t No Bubble Burst
• Williamsburg Developer “Behooved” to Trash the Mustard

Someone going by the name of Coney-Isle-O-Phile on the Coney Island Message Board makes a persuasive case that the evictions are part of a strategy to level as many buildings and attractions as possible on Thor’s land to create pressure on the Coney Island Development Corporation. It’s not that off-the-wall, especially if the CIDC isn’t inclined to go for Thor’s plans in their entirety. Have a look at the logic:

The CIDC’s plans would depend on the amusements that lined Stillwell Ave. If instead what they ended up with was two massive vacant lots that lined both sides of Stillwell as well as a huge vacant lot on the Southeast corner of Stillwell & Surf, then all their plans would be off. How do you revitalize Coney if what visitors exiting the terminal have to look at is vacant lots? Even if they did develop the land behind Keyspan, would anyone want to walk past vacant lots? And Thor could further devalue the area by tearing down the buildings they own on the boardwalk.

This is Thor’s bargaining chip with the Mayor. Either let them build what they want to build or they will simply ruin the area. And as they own the land they can do what they want with it, even if that means fencing it off and allowing grass and rats to grow…Thor has already said that they wanted to build Condos and a resort, something they can’t even build on the land they now own without it being rezoned…

We’re not convinced that City Hall’s economic development operation is going to oppose Thor’s plans unless they’re utterly objectionable. But it’s interesting food for thought if you are trying to understand why a developer would want to create a Coney Island that is even more empty than it is today when, at best, its project is still 1-3 years from breaking ground. (This is New York, after all.) All that emptiness and desolation would definitely work in Thor’s favor to apply pressure and speed things up.

Related Posts:

• Coney Island Deathwatch: The Big Eviction Story, Continued
• Coney Island Death Watch: Reaction to the New Renderings

• Voters Overwhelmingly Pass Eminent Domain Reform [No Land Grab]
• Ratner Job Projections Fall Short [Brooklyn Papers]
• Ribbon Cut on Gowanus EMS Station [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
• Officials Deny Intersection Where Child Killed is Dangerous [streetsblog]
• Landmarks Commission Denies Status to Ward’s Bakery [Brooklyn Papers]
• Adelphi St. Condos on the Market [Set Speed]
• Gowanus-Style Pizza [Toilet Time for Tiny Town]
• Markowitz in the Land of Queens [Brit in Brooklyn]
• Art Meets Science at Gowanus Canal Conference [Brooklyn Record]
• Aviator Sports Complex Comes with MSG [NYPost]
• Green Brooklyn 2006 [OTBKB]
• Media Discovers Greenpoint [My Brooklyn Year]
• More Greenpoint Polish Jokes [East Village Idiot]
• Seventh Avenue Bank of America Watch: Trashcan Relocated [OTBKB]

The first week of November, 20006 was the one in which Democrats wrested control of the legislative branch in Washington from the Republicans–which has absolutely nothing to do with the development issues that concern us, although it has a lot to do with a significant number of other things. Unfortunately, the recapture of the Governorship by a Democrat may have little impact on major developments too.

No matter. The paper that carries all the news that is fit to print finally saw fit to print what so many people in Brooklyn already know: That the pace of development is fast and furious and that promised benefits like affordable housing are not materializing and that quality of life and even safety is threatened. Certainly, our history is disappearing as highlighted by the abominable demolition of the Old Dutch Mustard factory in Williamsburg. The developer said he was “behooved” to rub out history and build from the ground up. And, of course, there are affronts like the Finger Building, which is going to court next week. That would be the Finger of N. 8th Street as opposed to the Finger of Richardson Street or the Really, Really Big Freaking Finger called Northside Piers that is now rising on the East River. Even Coney Island is getting fingered. Although, the Fulton Street Mall will simply get botoxed and the moms and babies in Williamsburg will get more lactation services.

Heath and Michelle, though, simply love Brooklyn and aren’t going anywhere. Not like those fair weather friend cruise ships that are done with Red Hook for the season.

We also learned that Domino’s Brooklyn-Style Pizza is clearly resonating in New York City, though not, necessarily, the way that the pizza company hoped. For an interesting take, check out Gowanus-Style Pizza.

Then, of course, we have the asshole that threw a cat out the window and was charged with a felony. And the A Train that provided the Ride from Hell with open doors.

And, finally, we got some mea culpas out of last week’s problem people–the Greenpoint Verminizer, David Langlieb, whose satire clearly fell flat, and the Goose Step Kid, who turned out to protest his own behavior.

They’re sorry.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

1) What’s the Number One bit of important information about Atlantic Yard that hasn’t gotten through to the public? According to Norman Oder, the creator of Atlantic Yards Report, and the reporter/blogger who knows more the project than anyone else, it’s the project’s scale. So, Mr. Oder returns to the topic of density via an illustration of the project that he says he intends to display prominently at the top of his blog. That’s the rendering above, as produced by the Environmental Simulation Center, as commissioned by the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods.

2) Blogger Sunset Parker raises an interesting question: What would happen if a referendum were placed on the ballot about Atlantic Yards? Sunset believes that given this year’s poor showing by anti-Yards candidates, that it would win handily:

Considering candidates who run on a purely pro Atlantic Yards ticket (Markowitz) win big and ones who run on a purely anti Atlantic Yards ticket (see this year’s democratic primaries) lose big, doesn’t democracy seem to be speaking here?

We noted in September that anti-Atlantic Yards sentiment had certainly failed to bring out voters in the Primary. A referendum–which clearly won’t happen, but let’s pretend–would be interesting, but we’d make two points: The first is that there is a fairly low level of public awareness about this very complex project and that, in turn, has an impact on public opinion. The second is that a referendum campaign would bring about a political campaign and advertising that would sway the numbers. Either more pro. Or More con. We don’t know.

3) Good thing Atlantic Yards hasn’t been proposed in Michigan, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon or South Carolina. All of them passed initiatives to restrict the use of eminent domain, in most cases overwhelmingly. No Land Grab offers an excellent roundup of Election Day eminent domain action, CNNMoney.com also reviews the landscape and Atlantic Yards Report has insight on the Michigan initiative.

4) Like many other assumptions used to sell the benefits of Atlantic Yards, the jobs the project may create are questionable. The Brooklyn Papers reports that developer Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls created 1,680 jobs, which is 42 percent, or 1,220 jobs, less than the state’s job projection formula says should have been created. That same formula is being used to project the number of Atlantic Yards retail jobs. The formula estimates 824 jobs, but experience says the real number could be around 477, which is 347 fewer than promised.

You might remember the rumors this summer that Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams had fled Boerum Hill. The rumors were quickly dismissed, but now, Mr. Ledger is definitively squashing them. He tells amNew York today that they haven’t moved and they love Brooklyn. The story isn’t online, so we’ll reproduce a couple of key parts:

“I love the real sense of community, I love my neighbors, I love the coffee shop down the road,” he told us at the Monday night premiere for his film, “Candy.”

“There are so many people on the streets that no one’s looking as you walk past them, particularly in Brooklyn. People are just trying to get from Point A to Point B.”

There you have it: Heath and Michelle dig Brooklyn.

Among those invited to the discussion are Live Nation, (which produced the concert series that drew the most community opposition), Sens Productions, which staged Agora II, Jelly NYC, which ran the free concert series and L Magazine, which teamed up on some film events. Bowery Presents, which just bought the Northsix venue, has also been invited. (And a lot of others too.) One of the Parks Department employees included in the distribution is none other than the now modestly infamous and pretty apologetic David Langlieb, who wrote the Greenpoint “vermin” essay that was, um, widely misunderstood.

We noticed a whole bunch of community-oriented groups missing from the list, but since we couldn’t match all the email addresses to organizations, we won’t detail them. Suffice to say that someone connected to a community group that was on the list forwarded it to other people who forwarded it to other people, etc. The meeting is being held at the Parks Department Brooklyn HQ in the Litchfield Villa in Prospect Park at Fifth Street. Applications and proposals for next year are being accepted starting Dec. 1.

Here’s a fun video we came across on youtube of a commute across the Williamsburg Bridge on the J/M/Z. Great views of Williamsburg, plus music by Ranier Maria. Click on the link here or simply play the embed.

The events will feature “a variety of unique visions of a sustainable environment for the Gowanus Canal, in which the spirit of counterpoint creates an ongoing dialogue highlighting both aesthetic and ecological issues.”

Some 30 artists are participating in the event and there will be panel discussions and musical performances. A PDF of the full schedule is available by clicking here.

There will be discussions led by Park Slope author Steven Berlin Johnson, Daniel Pinchbeck, Douglas Rushkoff and Peter Principle. There will be a water quality discussion at 1PM on Saturday led by Dr. Franco Montalto, a member of the Gowanus Canal CDC board, and a green building conference at 1PM on Sunday moderated by Michael Ingui, the chairperson of the Gowanus Canal CDC board, with the panel chaired by Andrew Giancola, of Giancola Contracting, Inc.

Admission to weekend afternoon events (noon to 4 p.m.) is $5, including both the conference and an art installation. Admission to evening events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday is $15, including open forums, live performances and installations. For more, go to the Habitats website or call the Lyceum at 866-GOWANUS.

Food:

• Wednesday Food and Drink Roundup [Brooklyn Record]
• Domino’s ‘Brooklyn-Style Pizza’ Goes to Totonno’s [NYT]
• Nothing is Sacred, Least of All Brooklyn-Style Pizza [Gothamist]
• Slope Gets a Gastropub [Grub Street]
• Kate’s Joint Now in Williamsburg [A Test of Will]
• Mass Download Food Roundup [Eating Clinton Hill]
• Resurfaced Biscuit BBQ Ain’t Smokin’ [Eating for Brooklyn]
• More on Loucallie’s Instantly Popular Pizza [Chowhound]
• Tacos Nuevo Mexico in the South Slope [Project Me via Sunset Parker]
• La Lunetta: Great Food and ‘Consistently Incompetent’ Service [NYT]
• NoNO is SoSO [Chowhound]
• Fort Greene’s Pequeña [NY Press via Brooklyn Record]
• Po Coming to Smith St., Baluchi’s to Fifth Avenue [Chowhound]

Not Food:

• If This Were Michigan, Atlantic Yards Would be Dead [AYR]
• Grand Army Plaza Bollards: Saving Lives and Wrecking Cars [streetsblog]
• Doggie Stumps at Court St. (Saw him in Manhattan and he’s cute!!) [Bklyn Heights Blog]
• (Dutch Mustard Killer) Steiner Invests in Movies [Brooklyn Record]
• Clinton Hill Eyesore Rents Out [Brownstoner]
• Chronicles of a Lost New York (and Brooklyn) [Brooklyn Rail]
• Rejecting Gehry’s Design is ‘Disavowal of the Progress of Urban Life’ [n+1]
• Aviator Sports Center Takes Flight [NYDN]
• Brooklyn Cat Tosser Charged With Felony [Sun]

Baluchi’s, the Indian chainlet, which closed its Smith Street eatery this Spring and also shut down its Bay Ridge location, is opening a new branch on Fifth Avenue. The new Baluchi’s, as noted in Chowhound, will be at 310 Fifth Avenue in the Slope. It will be in the space formerly occupied by Lu Lu’s Cuts and Toys, which relocated to 48 Fifth Avenue some time ago.

Now, you might shrug and say ‘big deal,’ but with the utter medocrity of Indian food choices in and around Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, we actually welcome the reopening of Baluchi’s. At this point some of you will accuse of having no taste in Indian food. We do. We’re simply tired of having to hit up our fave Manhattan spots or of schleping to Queens and, specifically, to Jackson Heights to get it. If the right person is in the kitchen, Baluchi’s is not a bad option to have in the nabe on a night when you want some Indian but don’t want to go out of borough.

It’s the happiest morning after in years for Democrats, as they have finally managed to put an end to the total Republican control of Washington. The House is back in Democratic hands and the Senate is still hanging in the balance, with the final outcome contingent on sure-to-come recounts. Dems also scored a clean sweep in Albany.

What does this mean for Brooklyn? We’re tempted to say not much in terms of the projects that really matter. Governor-Elect Eliot Spitzer supports the most contentious projects with state involvement, namely the Atlantic Yards Proposal and the Brooklyn Bridge Park development. While he may tinker at the margins of both, he does not seem likely to work major changes in either. Candidates with opposing positions were dispatched during the September primary.

Long-term change, however, is a real possibility. A shift in Albany that would create a real state affordable housing strategy would have significant implication locally. A move toward more responsive state agencies (like the Empire State Development Corp.) would also have signficant implications. (Whether the changes come in time to impact ongoing projects is another matter.) A push to do something about horrors like the Greenpoint Oil Spill or to better enforce environmental regs as more and more developments go up on environmentally-challenged sites are also possibilities.

Norman Oder in Atlantic Yards Report offers the following insight today (among many):

…Old ways of doing business will change, and the state’s many public authorities, including enormous ones like the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), will face new oversight and perhaps consolidation.

But will Spitzer heed Ron Shiffman’s call, repeated yesterday, for a time-out on major development projects like Atlantic Yards and Columbia University’s Manhattanville expansion?

Spitzer’s campaign told The Real Deal that Spitzer seeks more transparency for the Atlantic Yards project, which is proceeding under the auspices of the ESDC. What that would mean exactly is unclear.

Of course, broad Federal policies that impact life locally–from the minimum wage and spending on critical programs like affordable–will change too.

Even changes at the margins could have some impact on Brooklyn projects like Atlantic Yards if they go forward.

The thoughtful–and far too infrequent blog–Brooklyn Views posts this week about “Learning From Newark.” Resisting the temptation to be glib about a city that has been robbed blind over the last several decades by one of the most venal municipal governments in all of America, what can Brooklyn learn from the sad case of the Devils arena?

Only that publicly-subsidized, one-sport arenas are a very, very, very bad idea. (Did we say, “very”?) We don’t want to fall into the trap of calling Atlantic Yards an arena project, given that it is a massive commercial and residential development that happens to include an arena. The Newark arena was the pet project of one of the nation’s slickest (to put it politely) public officials, the inimitable Sharpe James. Mr. James opted not to run earlier this year (after his arena was already rising out of the ground and after he’d been giving a job at the county college and a huge sum of money had been funneled to a nonprofit that he would control). He is now under investigation for the Jet Set lifestyle he enjoyed in his final days in office.

We digress, however. Brooklyn Views notes the New York Times article about the way that Mayor Cory Booker swallowed hard, held his nose and proclaimed that the project he had called a “boondoggle” and a “betrayal of public trust” had morphed into something with which he can live. Mr. Booker–who is a man of great intelligence, high ethics and even greater ambitions–concluded upon taking office that it would be suicide for the city government to try to undo the arena deal. And so, one of America’s poorest cities will end up paying $210 million toward the cost of its hockey arena.

Brooklyn Views addresses the planning and design flaws of the project–closing streets, surrounding it with parking, etc. The real point, however, is that with only a hockey team, Newark’s arena is going to be one of the Municipal White Elephants of the 2000s. A Nets arena would not automatically exude such a foul stench of financial death. Or would it? With a price tag of $637.2 million, it would be the most expensive arena ever built. That’s not quite double the cost of the Newark arena, but close.

Brooklyn Views says:

Why does the Atlantic Yards project need an arena? Would the project financing be more difficult without an arena? Actually no, most believe that the arena will not make money, it requires huge subsidies. Would there be less site area available to provide open space or build housing without an arena? No, there would be more space available; we could build more housing and provide more open space. Would traffic be worse without an arena? No, it would be better. What about the impact on the environment? Better. Opportunities for a vibrant mixed-use community? Much better.

There are those who might be nostalgic about the loss of the Dodgers, and think that Brooklyn has some inalienable right or obligation to host major league sports. If you don’t remember the Dodgers maybe you’re not really a true Brooklynite, and you shouldn’t have a voice in this debate. But most of us, especially those of us who are native New Yorkers, know that what makes us great is not our teams, but our ability to attract talented people, and our acceptance and integration of others. So maybe the new Devils arena is great for Newark, and will make it a great beacon for…sports. But crush loads driving in from the suburbs for sports, or rock concerts, or ice-skating extravaganzas drive out opportunities for a vibrant community, and are not compatible with a vision of a dynamic mixed-use street life in Brownstone Brooklyn. This is not an anti-development sentiment; it is pro-development, pro integrated planned growth that builds on the strengths of the existing urban fabric.

Of course, there is one significant difference between Newark’s disaster-in-the-making and Brooklyn’s: In Newark, Cory Booker was steadfast in his opposition to the arena, both on the City Council, in his first campaign for mayor and until he was forced to make nice with the Devils. In the case of Atlantic Yards, significant elements of the entire state and local political establishment have lined up behind it. Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer may, or may not, seek to make significant changes in the project. You can bet, though, that some people will be trying to bend his ear to convince him to do so. Meanwhile, taking a page from the Newark play book, backers of the project will be doing everything they can to finalize approvals and send in the bulldozers and construction equipment before anything can be altered.

One can imagine the day when a new mayor or Brooklyn Borough President take office in 2010 who might huff and puff against Atlantic Yards. And, if the project is approved and underway, they will find themselves, like Mr. Booker, unable to blow it down.

Meet the New Boss:

• After Spitzer’s Election: Day One, Everything Changes? [AYR]
• In Albany It’s Statehouse Quo [NYPost]
• Clinton and Dems Sweep NY Races [NYT]
• Now Dems Must Put Up or Shut Up [Sun]
• Election 2006 [Gothamist]
• It’s a Good Day to be a Dem [Z. Madison]

Not New Boss-Related:

• South Slope Crack Update [IMBY]
• Boerum Hill Block Needs Police Protection [NYDN]
• Why Bldgs in Atlantic Yards Footprint Shouldn’t Be Demolished [No Land Grab]
• New Park Slope Photoblog [OTBKB]
• Jackass, Park Slope Style [Brooklyn Record]
• Reverse Engineering Pedestrian Safety in Boerum Hill [streetsblog]
• On Moving From Staten Island to Greenpoint [A Day in the Life of Whirlygurly]
• Plowing the Fields on N. 6th Street [Brownstoner]
• The Unbelievable Truth [Sunset Parker]
• Snags in Greenpoint-Williamsburg Rezoning [Center for the Study of Brooklyn]
• Barely in Queens: Onderdonk House Visit [Gumby Fresh]