No Land Grab calls the brochure “the latest ‘liar flyer'” and continues by saying, “Forest City Ratner has dropped another bundle of dough on a fourth direct mailer, trying to convince residents of Brooklyn, with a mere four pages, that Atlantic Yards isn’t as bad as they think. This time Ratner lets the daily papers do most of the talking…The joke is that Ratner didn’t include any pictures of tall buildings… again.”

If you live in Brooklyn, it will be arriving in your mailbox soon.

Here are Brooklyn scenes, mainly from Greenpoint (including the Greenpoint Terminal Market before the conflagration) and Dumbo, with music by Sparklehorse. Click on the embedded video or on this link.

This gem, which features the Gowanus Canal, may qualify as one of the stranger videos we’ve seen recently. It is from municipal bond salesman Jim Lebenthal, who functions as the pitchman for the Gowanus both onshore and on a boat crusing the canal with a classical music backdrop. Lebenthal, apparently, wants to sell tax-free bonds to finance Gowanus redevelopment. The video is called “Coming Clean on the Gowanus Canal” and is part of a series of NYC and other videos that Lebenthal has posted on You Tube, and we sort of stumbled upon it. It’s a definite four-star vid, if only for the unintended oddness and humor. Watch by clicking on the embedded video or on this link.

Shrinkage Strategy:

• Pressure Mounts to Curb Size of Atlantic Yards [Sun]
• Scale Scam [DDDB]
• The Murmurings of a Scaleback [AYR]
• Yassky Calls (Almost) for a 50 Percent Atlantic Yards Scaleback [AYR]
• New Hearing, More Questions [Metro]
• Handy Overview of Environmental Review Process [DDDB via No Land Grab]

No Strategy, Shrinkage or Otherwise:

• The Suburbanization of NYC’s Waterfront [Streetsblog]
• Sunset Park Katrina Connection [Sunset Parker]
• Smoke Joint Coming to Fort Greene [Set Speed]
• New Bonita Opening in Fort Greene [Brooklyn Record]
• Serious Park Slope Parking Blues [Brooklyn Record]
• New Crap Map [New York Shitty]
• Subway Searches [Gotham Gazette]
• New Flickr Geocoding Feature Rules [Gothamist]

Officer 757 asked me if I had ID, and I said sure and handed him my drivers license. I asked him if I was being stopped for something and he didn’t really answer. He was giving some direction to other police, so he must have been a more senior bike harassment. At this point I could only imagine the sense of pride he must feel having gone to the academy to fight crime and protect the public and after probably ten+ years on the force he has now graduated to lieutenant of bike busters. But I digress. We moved to the curb and he told me I was being ticketed for not being far left enough. Oh, he must be very proud I thought!

“Not far left enough?” I said, “I was left of the car lane waiting at the light.” Top bike buster 757 said I was not far left enough. I wasn’t really clear on this far left enough, I mean did he want me to ride against the curb, two feet from the curb, two feet from the parking lane? I decided to try a curve ball and I said there was another cyclist to my left. He said, then you can’t be there, he then said some flim flam about that I had to ride in single file. Which IS flim flam and not what the law says.

While Gowanus Lounge is ambivalent about Critical Mass, we are less ambivalent about the incredible amount of police resources that dedicated to hunting down and busting the bicyclists. (We also oppose the effort to impose new regulations that would make it easier to selectively target and ticket or arrest bicyclists, pedestrians and protestors.) It is worth noting that at the same time onNYTurf and other cyclists were being ticketed, two people were run down not very far way (one was killed) by a hit-and-run driver. Just some food for thought.

If you dig the Forgotten New York website and its exhaustive information and photos of New York City neighborhoods and places–many of which no longer exist–then the publication of Kenneth Walsh’s Forgotten New York book (Harper Collins) should provide some good reading. This may be old news to some that pay attention to Walsh’s excellent work, but it’s the first time we’ve noticed it. We haven’t seen a copy of the book yet–and the official publication date is October 1–but it should be interesting.

No Land Grab, which keeps tabs on the Empire State Development Corporation’s website, is reporting that a second Community Forum on Atlantic Yards has been added. The new forum is slated for Monday, September 18, 2006, from 4:30 pm–8 pm at the New York City College of Technology (Klitgord Auditorium), 285 Jay Street, Brooklyn. The previously scheduled forum will be held on Tuesday, September 12 at the same location and the same times.

The ESDC website says the session was added “as a result of the significant turnout” at the August 23 Public Hearing “and numerous comments received from the public.” About 470 people registered to speak at the “raucous” hearing on Aug. 23, without about 100 actually snagging some mike time. Registered speakers that didn’t speak will be given priority for the forums.

It was widely reported that Atlantic Yards supporters brought in busloads of people for the public hearing and dominated the early stages of the meetings.

Does the additional “community forum” mean that ESDC has felt some heat from prominent local and New York State officials that have asked for more time for public comments and analysis of the massive Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the project?

Gowanus Lounge would suggest that they’ve felt it enough to try to create an appearance of sensitivity to the depth of sentiment in Brooklyn both for and against the project without actually altering the fundamentally top-down, anti-democratic nature of the decision making process. But, yes, it would appear that even the ESDC is anxious to avoid a process that looks more like Moscow circa 1986 than New York City circa 2006. In the end, though, unless the fundamental dynamics of the process are altered to allow genuine community input and a deliberate process that allows for full and honest analysis of the benefits and negative impacts of Atlantic Yards, then the ESDC’s review and “vote” will still have a distinctly Soviet smell about it with a touch of Robert Moses mixed in.

What’s good for Gowanus isn’t good for the Bronx. The Norwood News reports that some Bronx residents are up in arms about plans by the same developers that built the Holiday Inn Express on Union Street in Gowanus to open a 42-room, five-story Comfort Inn on Webster Avenue in the Bronx.

While Brooklynites might dig the hotel boomlet taking place in South Brooklyn, Bronx residents say they don’t need a hotel and/or motel. According to the Norwood News, they say the Comfort Inn:

will become a ‘hot sheet’ motel and a breeding ground for illegal and unsavory activity, including prostitution and drug abuse. Across the Bronx River in Wakefield there are already a dozen such motels, which offer hourly rates and no questions asked. Opponents are especially concerned about the location of the planned motel, which is a half block from a school, PS/MS 20, and will neighbor private residences.

Comfort Inn, meanwhile, says it has no intention of opening a “hot sheet” hotel and won’t offer “short stay” or hourly room rentals. The hotel developer, McSam LLC, has 30 hotels in the works in the New York metro area. The firm built the Gowanus lodging that opened recently.

Community leaders say that while Brooklyn might be getting enough tourists for new hotels, the Bronx doesn’t, and they’re worried about what will happen if the developer and the hotel chain don’t get enough guests and decide to sell the hotel.

The Parks Department showed its preliminary Master Plan for a 25-acre Bushwick Inlet Park in Greenpoint and Williamsburg to Community Board 1 last week. The ambitious plan would involve acquiring waterfront land from five private owners, including a parcel that was once the proposed site of a highly controversial power plant. The plan would include a waterfront esplanade, ball fields, a boathouse, a performance area and other amenities. It would also include a USS Monitor museum and memorial plaza. (The Monitor was built in Greenpoint during the Civil War.) The New York Post published one of the Parks Department’s drawings of the plan (reproduced here) yesterday. Photos of the Master Plan slide presentation are available in justiNYC flickr photoset.

One of the current uses of the space is the Bayside Fuel tanks, which will be removed. The performance space would be in the footprint of the tanks.

Development:

• Atlantic Yards Fallout [Gothamist]
• YIMBY! The Williamsburg Hasids Want an Arena? (Not Really.) [AYR]
• DEIS Bogus Points: Bogus Blight [No Land Grab]
• Discussing Coney Island’s Future [Bay News]
• Residents Decry 12 Story Tower [Fort Greene Courier]

Everything Else:

• Barges Making a Comeback [Gotham Gazette]
• Markowitz Shedding Pounds [NYDN]
• I Heart Brooklyn Pinup Girls [Metro]
• Body by Brooklyn–At Manhattan Prices [Set Speed]
• Dumbo Then and Now: Washington and York [dumboNYC]
• Wine Exchange [3 Bikini]
• New Neighbor–Food Maestro [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
• $270K Studio in Windsor Terrace–Deal or Not? [Daily Slope]
• Sunset Park Gem [Sunset Parker]
• Brooklyn Industrious [The New Yorkest]
• Goodbye Soundtrack [OTBKB]
• Newish Brooklyn Mag: Edible Brooklyn [A Brooklyn Life]

Here’s an interesting little video from a report on Coney Landmarks that aired on Channel Two. You can watch by clicking on the embedded video below or by clicking on this link.

Sheepshead Bay is not called “Sheepshead” because it’s shaped like a sheep’s head. It got its name, rather, from a fish called a Sheepshead that was once found in local waters, but is no longer. Now you know, in case you didn’t previously, which is one reason why you might want to click on over to Forgotten New York. The Sheephead Bay page is full of interesting photos and historical information.

Images:

• Closing After 25 Years [Frank Lynch/flickr]
• Elbow-Toe and a Door [justiNYC]
• Waterfront Living [i’mjustsayin/flickr]
• Old Bay Ridge [Sunset Parker]

Words:

• Pleasantville vs. Brooklyn and Other DEIS Footnotes [AYR]
• Bushwick Inlet Greenpoint Park Plan [NYPost]
• Brooklyn Greenway to Go Through Dumbo Waterfront [Dumbonyc]
• Nha Trang Palace Reviewed [Project Me via Sunset Parker]
• Sayonara Taku [Chowhound via Eater]
• Brooklyn’s Once Bustling Waterfront [Brooklyn Ramblings]
• Countdown to Carnival at Brooklyn Museum [NYDN]

Among the many odd subjects that fascinate Gowanus Lounge are the two World’s Fairs held in Flushing Meadow in 1939-40 and 1964-65. Here’s a random home movie we found of the ’39 event that you can watch by clicking on the video below or by clicking this link.

No Land Grab notes that there will be a rally today (8/26) from 3-6PM at 227 Duffield Street between Fulton and Willoughby at the Underground Railroad slave safehouse the city would destroy to create parking. The engineering firm involved in the project is the same one being used by Forest City Ratner and the New York Yankees.

“The rally is being hosted by one of our great community activists, Joy Chatel, and FUREE, a group that has been vocally defending the rights of public housing residents and other issues of economic racism,” No Land Grab writes. Tours of the historic site are included and there will be food and dancing in addition to some speeches.

Pictures:

• Green House, Plus Car [Joe’s NYC]
• Shutter [Lex’s Folly]
• Rent Strike in God’s Country [justiNYC]
• The Many Textures of Red Hook [mlik]
• Manhattan Bridge [f. trainer/flickr]
• Next Stop, Please [sixeight/flickr]
• Heavy [i’mjustsayin/flickr]
• Floyd Bennett Field [Gowanus/flickr]
• *cringe* [lesterhead/flickr]
• Above Park Slope [Alice Ayers/flickr]

Words:

• Democracy versus Demagoguery and Other Atlantic Yards Story Lines a Columnist Might Follow [AYR]
• Nobody Home on Atlantic Yards Chat Line [Brownstoner]
• Interesting Goings On at Williamsburg Edge Site [INSIJS]
• Conversation with Director of Letter from Greenpoint [Gothamist]
• Williamsburg’s Design Scene Goes Glossy [Brooklyn Record]

Driven the Gowanus Expressway lately? Here’s a view out a car window at the passing Brooklyn scenery. You can click on the vid below or on this link. There are other short Gowanus Expressway vids here and here.

INSIJS quotes a state official’s email:

The main concept behind our beginning level of park improvements is the integration of natural succession, through native meadow type planting and grasses, with the existing historic remnants on site…We are planning remedial seeding and replacement of some plants and trees during the fall planting season. Since this part of the work depends a lot on Mother Nature, I am reluctant to give a projected opening date estimate.

I understand everybody’s desire to get onto the site. We pushed ahead with this beginning level of improvements to get the public on site as soon as we could. We expect it to be a very popular spot once it does open. That is why we are taking the added time and precaution of giving the meadow a better chance to get established before we do open. We greatly appreciate everyone’s patience in the meanwhile.

We thank INSIJS for keeping us post all spring and summer on the progress of the waterfront green space. Meantime, everyone’s attention has shifted to the waterfront construction work and the fact that developers of The Edge will soon be marketing their condos out of a storefront at Bedford Avenue and N. 6th Street. East River State Park, by the way, figures prominently in the weird promotional brochure for the project.