October 12th, 2006 · Comments Off on Brookinks: Thursday Focus on Food Edition
Brooklinks is a daily selection of news stories, blog items and images. On Thursday we focus on Brooklyn restaurants. (Today, with a nod to yesterday’s Upper East Side tragedy, which is heavily covered elsewhere.)
October 12th, 2006 · Comments Off on Another View of Coney Island Pier Jumping
On Tuesday, before Google bought youtube.com for $1.65 billion, we posted a video we shot on Columbus Day of some cool kids jumping from the fishing pier in Coney Island into the water. Turns out, via a comment they left on the vid, that they say they’re all lifeguards at Coney. Meantime, they posted their own up close video of the jump, which we find compelling in the way that jumping into about seven feet of water at low tide from high up in Coney Island in October is interesting. Click on this link or just hit the embed.
The back part of today’s Metro–well, an advertising section–has an amusing Q&A about Gowanus called “Canal Days, Gowanus, Brooklyn: The meat in an awesome neighborhood sandwich.” Quite the headline, that.
In any case, it’s an interview with Tammy B. Shaw who’s the co-owner of Brenton Realty. We’ll include a bit of it, because it’s only in the print edition, not on the website (as far as we can tell), with big thanks to the wonderful DumboNYC blog for sending it along.
Q: The neighborhood’s boundaries are kind of hard to define. How do you?
A: How do I define Gowanus? Fourth Avenue on the Park Slope side, and Hoyt on the other side. It is kind of hard to define, but on the Park Slope side it’s Fourth Avenue.
Q: The neighborhood has gone through a fairly big explosion. Has it peaked yet?
A: I don’t think it’s peaked. I think it’s still growing. It varies block to block. On the mixed-use blocks, I’d say there is still room for growth. When you have a neighborhood that is surrounded on both sides by outstanding, established neighborhoods like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, it reaps the benefits. Over the years, walking and riding a bike from Park Slope to Carroll Gardens have become common practice. It was not that way 10 years ago.
Q: Besides being bordered by two such attractive neighborhoods, has the neighborhood become so attractive itself?
A: I think you’re getting a lot of artists coming in who want to be near Park Slope and the cultural benefits there, but they probably can’t afford the high Park Slope prices.
Q: What kind of buildings, generally, are you selling?
A: One- to three-family homes and mixed-use — commercial space with two apartments. That would be the most popular. They’re modest homes, but solid homes.
Q: What kind of price ranges are you talking about for those?
A: I’d say $750,000 to $1.1 million…The higher number would be for mixed-use. For a two-family home, I’d say $750,000 to $900,000. Although we just had one sell for $1 million. Are you going to ask me anything bout the canal? That’s my favorite part.
Q: Please, tell me about the canal.
A: The canal offers the potential for people in Park Slope and Carroll Gardens to anchor their boats, so they don’t have to drive to Long Island. They can walk to their boats. There are several boats right now that are parked in the Gowanus Canal. It’s wonderful. You’re out on open water in about two minutes.
We could poke fun at that last bit of hyperbole, but no way we’re going to. We dig the boats in the Gowanus. We wish there were more. And, of course, we wish we had one and could walk to our dock in Meaty Gowanus.
We’re not entirely sure what the second graffiti writer–working in chalk–found offensive about this particular bit of tagging as opposed to all of the other tagging on Fourth Avenue and in the many blocks of Gowanus. But, we’re amused when we find graffiti that responds to graffiti, especially when it’s laced with political or social commentary. The school system-bashing graffiti, by the way, is on the construction wall in front of Shaya Boymelgreen’s Park Slope Tower on increasingly trendy Fourth Avenue. It’s across the street from the new Gowanus boutique hotel.
October 11th, 2006 · Comments Off on Crane Collapses, Demolitions and Fires in Brooklyn
Nasty day in Brooklyn yesterday. First, we had the collapse of a crane at the old Todd Shipyards site where Ikea is building its big box. (Or a “lift accident,” depending on the source of the information.) Ikea is continuing to clear the sprawling site in Red Hook and preparing to fill the Graving Dock on the site. The retailer has rejected calls to preserve it as a working ship repair facility and will be filling it in to use as part of its parking lot.
The firm doing the Ikea demolition is the same one that is tearing down one of our favorite buildings in Williamsburg, the Old Dutch Mustard factory, whose impending demise at the hands of Breeze Demolition we came across this weekend.
Then, there was the fire at the wonderful Broken Angel on Clinton Hill. It was started accidently during work on the building and, fortunately, didn’t spread to the entire building.
All in all, not the best of days.
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October 11th, 2006 · Comments Off on Prospect Park Update: Environmental History Tour + Halloween
There’s an “Environmental History Tour” of Prospect Park on Saturday (10/14) from 10:00AM-11:30PM that starts from the Vanderbilt Playground, which is at the Vanderbilt St./Prospect Park Southwest entrance. According to the Prospect Park Alliance, it’s a chance to “learn about the history of Brooklyn’s constantly changing landscape firsthand. Join an invigorating hike through some of the Park’s least-explored regions, including the second highest point in Brooklyn, Lookout Hill. Learn about the Park’s watercourse, including the Wellhouse that once supplied all the water to the Park.” For more information call (718) 789-2822, Ext. 10. The price of the tour is $10 and it’s said to be “moderately strenuous.”
As for the park’s Halloween activities, the Haunted Walk will take place on Saturday, October 28, from 12:00PM-3:00PM. It’s free and suitable for young children accompanied by parents/guardians. The Haunted Carnival is also happening that day from 12:00PM-3:00PM. It includes games and music and takes place at the Nethermead, which is at the park’s Prospect Park Southwest and 16th Street entrance.
Plus, on Saturday (10/28) and Sunday (10/29) there is the Haunted Carousel from 12 – 5 PM. ($1.50 per spin.) Scary stories at Lefferts Historic House from 2:00PM-3:00PM. And something described as “a critter-fest in Prospect Park with lots of spiders, worms, and other creepy creatures that are sure to make your skin crawl! Creepy crafts, live critters and hands-on experiments” at the Audubon Center from Noon-5:00PM. Also, there are special activities at the Zoo, including a “legendary haunted barn.”
And, you can still catch a ride on the electric boat Independence through October 31. Prices and length of ride vary. You can check out the options here.
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October 11th, 2006 · Comments Off on Gowanus Lounge Slowed by Lack of Meep
So, as we enter Day Two of life with really, really messed up Time Warner Road Runner service, we want to tell you that the on-and-off service is definitely putting a crimp in our style. Bear with us as we try to get back up to speed today, using a different internet connection than that on which we normally depend. And, here’s hoping that we can actually get this post up before the connection cuts out again.
Let’s simply say that Time Warner was never on our Top Ten list and now, well, what good would a string of foul curses do? Tales of your own “Road Runner” horrors are welcome, just like they were yesterday, because it clearly isn’t just us and sharing unburdens the soul.
Godspeed, Brooklyn internet users afflicted by creeping meep.
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We make a point of doing a weekly wander past the Old Dutch Mustard factory on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg. To us, it’s one of the most superb remaining historic industrial buildings in the neighborhood, a constant reminder of the way this part of Brooklyn once looked.
Hope you have some pictures, because the Old Dutch is being demolished. (We knew it was part of a larger project, but were hoping for a restoration.) On our latest walk, we noticed that netting had been installed around the building (after windows were removed and asbestos removal done). Then we saw blue sky through the roof, where it hadn’t been before. Then, we noticed a bunch of permits on the plywood wall out front and a sign for Breeze out front. It rang a very bad bell–from Red Hook and the Ikea demolition of the Todd Shipyards. Sure enough, we wandered across the street and found demolition permits. We were so stunned we must have stood there moronically for about five minutes, taking photos and trying to make sure that we weren’t seeing things or terribly misunderstanding.
We normally try to watch our language a bit, but we’re not going to do so here because we are absolutely beside ourselves. Destruction of the Old Dutch Mustard factory is an ugly act of vandalism. Shame on Steiner Studios for doing to the Old Dutch with jackhammer and shovel what was done to the Greenpoint Terminal Market with a match and shame on every New York City official that has let this happen. What a sad and awful loss of a building that could so easily have been converted to new use.
If we’re missing something here–like a planned facadomy rather than a demolition–please do let us know.
Okay, so here’s one way to have fun on Columbus Day. We were wandering around Coney Island on Monday enjoying the beautiful weather on our day off and the last day of the season in any form there, when we happened upon the scene pictured above. More than a half dozen males and females were jumping off the fishing pier in Coney into the freezing cold water, swimming back to shore and going back out to the pier and jumping again. We watched the cycle about three times, and they were still on the boardwalk end of the pier when we left around 4:30. Apparently, they do this from time to time, as one of them explained that the water wasn’t that cold compared to December and January. (The water temp was about 63 degrees yesterday.)
In any case, we’ve got a few pics here, plus a vid we put together in a hurry that is lacking in production values, but captures the action, including one young woman doing what was clearly her first jump. Click on this link for the vid or on the video below the photos. (The guy you hear in the background was someone standing behind us, offering his opinion that the jumpers should have been diving, not jumping.)
Of all the crappy stories that we come across, one that continues to bother us is the one about our beloved Brooklyn wild Monk Parrots disappearing–because poachers are taking and selling them to pet stores. Sadly, it’s the sort of problem that will be hard to stop, unless someone catches them and unless there are new penalties for parrot poaching.
In any case, one of our readers in Gowanus emailed us to say that someone on Third Avenue is either a big parrot lover, a pet store owner, or, well, something else. No crime in keeping a lot of parrots around, one supposes, but we thought it worth sharing his email:
I wanted to share my experience. I built a playhouse for my son in the backyard this summer, and while I was putting the roof on, I could see over many back yards. The yard of one house along 3rd Ave (btwn 10th & 11th St) was completely covered by netting, and full of at least half a dozen squawking parrots. I thought it was strange, but maybe the owner of a pet store, or just a crazy parrot guy? But now, to hear that parrots are disappearing…
Anyone else know anything about the parrot house on Third Avenue? It would be pretty hard to miss if you are nearby given the level of noise that Monk Parrots can make.
Meantime, the poaching story has been out there for a while. It was broken by Steve Baldwin, who is Brooklyn’s wild parrot expert back in July. We feel very badly that we didn’t catch it back then and help to start making a big stink about it. Back in July, Brooklyn Parrot wrote:
I have been able to verify through a source that these parrots have been stolen by thieves. According to this source, two men, one with a long pole, have been taking live parrots from the pole nests in Marine Park. They work at night, and have been seen by residents. If this is the same operation that has stolen parrots in Midwood, their MO is to sell the parrots to local pet stores for $25 a piece, where they have value not as pets, but as breeding pairs.
Mr. Baldwin is working with the Borough President’s office on ways to protect the wild parrots. Let’s hope for speedy action.
For more about our wonderful Brooklyn parrots check out brooklynparrots.com.
October 10th, 2006 · Comments Off on DDDB Holding "Walkathon Week" Starting Oct. 16
Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn is having a “Walkathon Week” leading up to its second annual Walk Don’t Destroy Brooklyn Walkathon. From October 16 to 21, venues in Brooklyn will host events to raise money for DDDB’s legal fund and impending legal battles against the proposed Atlantic Yards development.
The Walkathon itself will take place on Saturday, October 21, starting at the Prospect Park Bandshell. Walkers will go to Grand Army Plaza, circle the plaza and return to the Bandshell through Prospect Park. There will be a two-hour concerts afterward at the Bandshell featuring national recording artist John Wesley Harding and guests. The day’s events will include marching bands, childrens activities, games, community information sessions and vendors.
Walkathon Week begins on Monday October 16. Nightly events will be held in Prospect Heights, Park Slope, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Cobble Hill. Events will include films, music performances, literary readings featuring Brooklyn authors, comedy nights, restaurant promotions and community meetings. Click here for the complete schedule and here for more information about the Walkathon.
It’s a small miracle that Gowanus Lounge exists this morning, becuase our glorious Time Warner Brooklyn Road Runner service has been glitching up. Let’s just say it’s been a little slow, on and off, for a couple of days. In our experience, Time Warner provides a singularly awful, undependable cable internet connection. We know ISPs that have fewer bad days in a year than Time Warner has in a month. We can count on at least several days a month of dial-up speed or more. Not to mention the times our cable modem needs to be reset because service cut in and out when we weren’t online.
We can’t get DSL (not that we’re big fans of it) in our corner of South Brooklyn, so we’re stuck with our monopolistic cable provider. Or dial up, which ain’t happening.
So, our question is: Is it just us? Are we just on a node with 150 neighbors all downloading 5GB DVDs at once? Or do others in Brooklyn get the same generally sucky on-and-off performance from their Road Runner (so called)?
October 9th, 2006 · Comments Off on A Taste of Old Brooklyn in Cobble Hill
We just happened upon the “Italian Apostolate of the Diocese of Brooklyn Annual Mass and Procession” in Cobble Hill yesterday, and found hundreds of people parading up Henry Street and, then, back down Court Street. There was a band in the lead and, then, the marchers, praying and singing. Everything was in Italian and, if you look at the video, you’ll notice that most of the people in the procession were elderly, which may or may not say something about the parishes from which everyone came. In any case, it was a surprising and wonderful taste of Old Italian Brooklyn, before hipsters and million dollar real estate deals. Enjoy the photo above, or click on this link or the embed below for a short video of the procession.
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October 9th, 2006 · Comments Off on Visiting the Mary Whalen
We took advantage of Open House New York to visit PortSide New York’s future new home, the Mary A. Whalen. A former tanker, the ship was docked at the Red Hook container port and open to visitors as part of the Open House New York Weekend. She will be renovated and return to Red Hook to serve as PortSide’s new home, complete with a cafe and other amenities. You can read more details here in our Friday post or over at B61 Productions or, of course, at PortSide’s website. Meantime, you can click here for a flickr sideshow, or just enjoy the one we’ve embedded below.
October 9th, 2006 · Comments Off on Brooklinks: Monday Columbus Day Edition
Brookinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related news stories, blog items and images. We wish all that have the day off today, like us, some extra sleep and good fun on a beautiful day.
October 9th, 2006 · Comments Off on Bedford Cheese Shop’s New Home
Here is it, the new Bedford Cheese Shop, which is out of the Mini Mall on Bedford Avenue and North 5th in Williamsburg and into its new digs at the corner of North 4th. The move was originally supposed to happen in August, but now the deed is done and the new digs are indeed very, very cool. The space used to house the wonderful Clovis bookstore and, once upon a time, a pharmacy.
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We stumbled across this post, which is compellingly funny in a weird misadventures and ranting sort of way, as long as you resist the urge to take umbrage at the digs at Brooklyn and, particularly, at Red Hook. It’s from an NYU student’s blog called I Don’t Do Due Dates and the entry is Brooklyn (Ad)ventures, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook Edition. We’re going to present a couple of excerpts without further comment:
There is a reason I rarely venture into Brooklyn, independent of the unrealiableness of the subway system in that borough. No, every time I go to Brooklyn, I seem to have to experience something that simply scares the shit out of me. And, no, I’m not just talking about a run-in with hipsters.
First, I took the F last night to Carroll Gardens for Jess and Stefan’s birthday party. I’ve been on the F before; hell, I’ve even been on the F going to Carroll Gardens before. So that wasn’t a big deal. What WAS a big deal, however, was when I took a photo of the approaching station and heard a short, older woman called me a terrorist. Uh, what? Then she FOLLOWED me out of the station, down the street, and then walked up to a brownstone and WATCHED ME walk further down to Jess’s place. Because I really look like I want to blow something up.
What is interesting is the walk we took to get from Jess’s place in Carroll Gardens to a wine bar in Red Hook, which is aparently “so cute”. Oh, yes, Red Hook is adorable if by “cute” you mean “ghettos filled with people who look like they would knife you over a piece of unbuttered toast”. Then it’s like puppies and rainbows and children dressed in blue bonnets bouncing happily to nursery rhymes. Alas, I’m not particularly fond of this definition of “cute”, so walking to this wine bar was, in a word, terrifying.
(Apparently, today I’m bolding words that start with ‘terr’.)
Besides the tall blocks of projects, the idle cars parked along the sidewalk, the junkyard dogs lunging at us, and gangs that looked like they belonged in West Side Story, sans the flashy dance numbers, there was the random creepy man who pulled up alongside our group in his van and said, rather casually, “Where are you guys going?” Now, any sober person would continue walking, and the sober individuals in our group did such a thing. Except we weren’t all sober. So, suddenly, I heard, “WE’RE GOING TO RED HOOK!” and this creepy man, who had red-crayon-colored signs saying “Hook” taped to the windows of his van, began enticing us to “get into his van” because he was the “free shuttle”.
There’s more to this long ramble, but as we said, we’re just presenting a sample.
October 8th, 2006 · Comments Off on Some at Brooklyn Babies "R" Us Still Not Digging Breast Feeding
We know we’re not the only ones that are finding compelling irony in the results of the Daily News’ “breast feeding test” and, specifically, the finding about the Babies “R” Us on Brooklyn’s Bay Parkway. Seems like some employees at the store are still telling moms to put it away while shopping. And so, Babies “R” Us is one of the only places they checked in New York (including the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, Le Cirque and an MTA bus) that tried to stop a breast feeding mother. (In fairness, a guard at the Metropolitan Museum put the brakes on the feeding by saying there was “no eating or drinking” at the museum.)
To quote:
After Toys “R” Us was the target of a high-profile “nurse-in” protest and warned by the New York Civil Liberties Union, I expect that employees at its corporate partner will politely ignore my breast-feeding. In the back of an aisle at the chain’s Bay Parkway, Brooklyn, store, I feed my child quietly for five minutes – until a worker spots me.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” she bellows. “We have a room where you can do that.”
I explain that I had checked out the “mother’s room” and found the sofa dirty, but she’s undeterred.
“It’s not good in the open like this…for the other people who can see,” she presses.
When I remind her that I can legally breast-feed wherever I want, she changes her tune. “I just think you would be more comfortable,” she says. “If you’re comfortable here, that’s fine.”
Moments later, another clerk sees us and says, “Oh Lord!” She scurries off, perhaps to speak to a manager, and I brace for a new confrontation. But when she returns it’s with the offer of a chair to use in the aisle and when I refuse it, she leaves us in peace.
Corporate spokeswoman Kathleen Waugh said the first worker broke store policy. An internal review is under way, and the chain may revamp its training.
“Any mother may breast-feed her child in the place of her choice in any of our stores,” Waugh says.
So, all’s well that ends well, one supposes, but when is every corporate cog at America’s biggest kiddie/baby chainstore going to get the message?
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October 8th, 2006 · Comments Off on Watch Chairman Gargano Talk About Blight and More
We didn’t catch the New York Voices on Atlantic Yards on Friday night, being tied down by an Indian meal with one of our oldest friends in the world, so we’re going to have to wait until thirteen.org posts it this week. Meantime, there’s a clip of Empire State Development Corp. Chairman Charles Gargano spinning his web and putting forth the company line. (Click here to watch.) Both Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn and No Land Grab offer links to the clip too. Happy watching and listening. (It is strongly suggested you watch before, rather than after, a large meal.)
BONUS: The New York Metro Chapter of the American Planning Association has raised huge objections to Atlantic Yards in comments about the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Having written things for years for Planning magazine and having talked with hundreds of planners during the course of our career, we can appreciate how big a deal this is. Atlantic Yards Reports notes the comments at length, so we’ll simply pass along a snippet of the testimony from NY Metro president Ethel Sheffer: “As planners, we welcome grand visions and ambitious designs to bring higher purpose to underutilized portions of the city and help shape the future of New York. However, this proposal raises serious questions of good planning and design, public process, appropriate scale and density, respect for surrounding neighborhood character, and adequate transportation and infrastructure — all of which deserve careful study and modification.”
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October 7th, 2006 · Comments Off on Disconnected in Brooklyn on Craigslist: Lookin’ For Love on the G Train
So, having dug Gawker’s statistical anaylsis of Craigslist Missed Connections, we return to picking our weekly favorite(s) from the Ships Passing in the Night Chronicles. This week’s selection is:
If you haven’t noticed, missed connections on the G are few to none. But I was on the G train at 11:30am Tuesday, because I don’t have anywhere to be or anything to do. To pass the days I am trying to visit every station in the system. You seemed confused, like you were wondering how you ended up in the middle of nowhere. You were dressed pretty normal for New York I guess.
Let’s meet at a non-descript deli for bottled juice.
This seems to have happened somewhere around Classon and Flushing. We look forward to more G Train “missed connections” with the G replacing the F on weekends all month to Stillwell Avenue.
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