Charles Denson, executive director of the Coney Island History Project, grew up in Coney Island and started documenting the neighborhood when he was a teenager. Native Brooklynites Richard Eagan and Philomena Marano formed the coney Island Hysterical Society in 1982 to preserve the visual culture of America’s famous amusement beach.

The Library is also hosting the Coney Island History Project Memory Booth, where people can share their Coney Island stories. Visit the Memory Booth to sign up for a session to record (in sound) your own Coney experiences.

Pictures:

• Player [Lex’s Folly]
• Sunset Park Gem [Sunset Parker]
• Five Pointz, Jackson Avenue, LIC [Pro-Zak/flickr]
• Brooklyn AC [Frank Lynch/flickr]
• Back Deck [e-liz/flickr]
• Borough Hall [your pal matt/flickr]

Words:

• Old Timers Day at the Red Hook Houses [NYT]
• Good Eating in Bay Ridge [NYT]
• Put Bar Cars in the New Subway Trains [Bloomberg]
• Crown Heights Riots Turn 15 [Gothamist]
• South Slope Mail Delivery Sucks [Daily Slope]

The LA Perspective on Borough Warfare: We All Suck (above)
Brooklyn Teens Do Urban Memory Project
Supersizing Williamsburg: Pictures and Maps
Curbed Field Trip: Greenpoint
Curbed PriceChopper: Babs Goes Lower in Red Hook
From the Sidewalks of Greenpoint: The Crap Map
Brooklyn Sub-Zero Building Cousin: The Kenmore House
Yale Red Hook Plans Get Some Local Love
Domesticated Pig Still Walking Streets of Fort Greene

This video is part of the turnhere.com collection of video and features our friend Steve McFarland, the Red Hook resident behind B61 Productions. Definitely worth three minutes and 27 seconds of your time. Click on the embedded video below or on this link.

The NYPD has backed off, for now, from the proposed rule that would have defined two or more pedestrians or bicyclists as a parade subject to ticketing or arrest under certain circumstancesmade. On Friday afternoon, the NYPD withdrew the proposal for a re-write and cancelled the hearing on it scheduled for Aug. 23. You might recall that opponents have been asking people to send emails and make phone calls about the proposed rule. And, on Thursday, there was a rally at St. Mark’s Church against the proposal. Several City Council Members had also come out against the rule, saying that legislative oversight was needed.

The NYPD’s notice said:

In view of comments already received on the proposed revision to Chapter 19 of Title 38 of the Official Compilation of Rules of the City of New York, the Police Department has withdrawn the proposed revisions regarding parade permits and will publish new ones in the City Record narrower in scope with a new hearing date. As a result, the public hearing scheduled for Wednesday, August 23, 2006 has been cancelled.

A coalition including the NYC Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, Transportation Alternatives, Times-Up!, the NYC Bicycle Coalition, FreeWheels and other groups and blogs were lined up against the proposal and remain engaged on the issue.

For more information on all of this, you can see AssembleForRightsNYC, a site to which we link.

Under the rules that were withdrawn, any group of two or more cyclists or pedestrians traveling down a public street, who violated any traffic law, rule or regulation could have been arrested for parading without a permit. In addition, any group of 20 or more cyclists would have had to obtain a permit and approved route from the NYPD, and any group of 35 or more pedestrians would have needed a permit and approved route from the NYPD.

The issue is coming back in some way, shape or form, but for now, it would appear that the broad coalition of opponents raised enough of a ruckus to force a rethinking of the proposal and an opening that could lead to some City Council review.

• Cops Step Back on Parade Plan [NYDN]
• Sidewalk Crowd Fix [NYPost]

Single Images:
Gowanus Pool Revisited [f.trainer/flickr]
Rat Graffiti at the Q Station [Daily Heights]
Reverse the Curse [justiNYC]
Out to Dry [A Test of Will]
Praying Statue [Joe’s NYC]
Wide Open [Lex’s Folly]

Interesting Flickr Slideshows:
The Gowanus Kentile Sign
Humongous Coney Island Collection
Ye Olde Gowanus Canal
Greenpoint, Baby
Some Bensonhurst Flavor

Words:
Cops Step Back on Parade Plan [NYDN]
NYPD Backs Away from Sidewalk Crowd Fix [NYPost]
Marty Gets Schooled [Dope on the Slope]
Unmentioned Costs in ESDC Atlantic Yards Study [AYR]
Senegalese Food in Clinton Hill [Brooklyn Record]

From the “shrill” Brooklynites over at No Land Grab comes the following “email” with an “edited” version of the flyer circulated by the pro-Atlantic Yards group BUILD about the upcoming public hearing. Are you getting the sense that even though the August 23 hearing is more show than real effort by the Empire State Development Corporation to get meaningful public input that will figure into the decision on Atlantic Yards, that it’s going to be civic theater of the highest order?

Subject: Edits to BUILD Flyer

Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2005 02:38:46
From: NoLandGrabby
Subject: edits to BUILD flyer
To: info@buildbrooklyn.org
CC: bruce@fcrc.com, jim@fcrc.com, askmarty@brooklynbp.org, mbloomberg@cityhall.nyc.gov
Attachment: See below
X-JunkMail: NotJunk

hey there.

thanks for the flyer – the pics of jay-z and the nj nets in action are mad cool and are hanging up in my locker next to beyonce and my autographed portrait of marty markowitz.

i don’t mean to by pushy, but (imho) i think you guys may have forgotten a few things on the flyer, so i made some edits/corrections (see below).

[btw: the esdc web site sez the hearing is @4:30, but you probably know best.]

ttyl 🙂

Here are some of the events planned at the Old Stone House in J.J. Byrne Park in Park Slope. (Go to oldstonehouse.org for the full schedule):

Saturday, August 19, 10 am – 3:00 pm, Battle Week Opening Ceremony–Maryland 400 Remembrance followed by a parade from the Michael A. Rawley American Legion Post, 193 9th Street, to the Old Stone House where an encampment of Revolutionary war soldiers – American and British – will host demonstrations for children of all ages.

Sunday, August 20, 11:00 am, Walking Tour, Cemetery of the Evergreens–Visit the site of Howard’s Inn and the original path of Cornwallis and his troops through Jamaica Pass.

Tuesday, August 22, 12:30 pm, Fraunces Tavern Museum Lecture: The Battle for New York–National Park Service Ranger Mike Callahan will talk about New York’s strategic importance based on its location, natural resources and defenses.

Friday, August 25, 6:00 pm, Neighborhood Walking Tour–Meet at Grand Army Plaza Arch with historian/archeologist Bill Parry for a walking tour of Park Slope sites related to the Battle of Brooklyn. $12. Reservations suggested. 718-768-3195.

Sunday, August 27, Green-Wood Cemetery–Several events through the day, from 9:30AM-2:00PM.

The ongoing demolition nastiness in preparation for construction of a 12-story building on the border between Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant is moving into the demonstration and rally phase. Residents report they will be having a rally and press conference on Sunday, August 20 at 2:45PM in front of the building site, which is at 335-345 Greene Avenue between Classon and Franklin. A neighbor writes:

I live on Clifton Place between Franklin & Classon. There is a large old 1 story commercial building next to my house that goes through to Greene Ave. It is currently being demolished to make way for a 12 story building that the developer has gotten approved using the “community facilities” FAR boost. All of the buildings on these 2 blocks are 3 or 4 stories, except for a couple of five story buildings. We’ve got a good group of neighbors together that are trying to fight this…

There is more to this story, some of which has been reported by Brownstoner in his always insightful way and by the superbly community-oriented Clinton Hill Blog, including the cavalier manner of the tear down, which has resulted in 31 complaints to the Department of Buildings so far for things like working after hours and unsafe demolition.

Wonder what it would be like to live next door to this baby? Read on:

The demo, being done by the fine folks at MMG Design, has been extremely unsafe and unprofessional. They are the most unpleasant people I have ever spoken to. I called and spoke with the owner Marie Grasso one day when I looked out our back window and they had workmen 20 feet up on the wall above our yard, prying off cinder blocks off directly above the head of my 2 year old son who was playing in the yard and my wife who was hanging the laundry. This is without any kind of protective fence or netting, or even the human decency to yell down and let us know they were working and that maybe we should move the kid.

Council Member Letitia James is helping out with the rally on Sunday, which is billed as protesting “out of context development.” Clearly, however, there is more than just a 12-story building that will tower over its three- and four-story neighbors to this Clinton Hill/Bed-Stuy story. As our e-mailer put it: “We are fighting 2 battles, one to try and keep a 12 story building from being built on our block and another to make sure our houses are still standing if it is.”

[Photo is courtesy of the Clinton Hill Blog.]

UDPATE: Check out the Demolition Porn Video from this afternoon. Click below to watch the contractors get shut today for doing a mechanical demolition without a permit. Note building pieces on the sidewalk where they could have hit someone.

We’ve previously delved quite a bit into Quadriad’s plans, and this week, onNYTurf posted some eye-opening renderings of what buildings with the density the developer has discussed (after “community incentive zoning”) could look like. The graphic above, taken from one of the developer’s documents, shows the massive nature of the projects they’re suggesting. (Whether the proposals are realistic or a bizarre political or PR ploy is another matter. If the intent was to capture attention, they’ve done it.)

We’re not sure what “community incentive zoning” is in this context, other than an attempt to dress up “incentive zoning” with an extra word to make it sound more community-friendly. There is nothing new about “incentive zoning,” a practice that has developers build certain amenities–such as parks and plazas–in return for a density bonus. The bonus, in turn, allows the developer to build more space than zoning allows and to make more money.

Incentive zoning is either a good or bad thing depending on one’s point of view and on the project to which it’s being applied or the purpose for which it’s being use. In many communities, though, as the Era of Public Cheapness has progressed and the Public Policy School of Diminished Expectations has held sway, incentive zoning has been used to good effect. It’s a tool for an age in which government throws up its hands and says to developers, “You build the damned park, and here’s five extra floors on your building for your trouble.”

The potential ugly side of incentive zoning or “community incentive zoning,” if you will, shows itself in the Williamsburg proposal. Why? Because the developer treats the community like a remote Third World village, promising goodies like schools and day care centers in proportion to the extent to which they can build towers in a low-rise neighborhood. It’s not hard to envision an early 20th Century European industrialist tracking down the village leader and promising four cartons of dirty French postcards and a case of Merlot in return for twice as much land for the itsy-bitsy strip mine that he wishes to excavate on village land.

Of course, the proposal puts it differently. “In exchange for reasonable upzoning for the building of other market-rate housing, the public facilities are built without city financial involvement,” says the Quadriad proposal, which was written by Steven L. Newman of Baruch College at the City University of New York.

(IE: “So, you see, Mr. Leader, the village doesn’t have to pay for the French postcards. We’ll give them to you. Look at this one. Isn’t she something? Just an extra five acres, Mr. Leader, and all four cartons are yours. And don’t forget the case of Merlot, Mr. Leader. Whoopee juice and dirty postcards! Nobody will even notice the mine. Trust me.”)

The “incentives” in the case of Williamsburg go as follows: For twice the allowable density, 25 percent of the housing will be affordable. For three times the allowable density, you get 25 percent affordable housing, another five percent of affordable housing, community retail space, community open space and land for a “key community facility.” For four times the allowable density, you get everything above, plus land for “key community facilities” (plural), and the facility is built at no public cost.

The thinking behind this is that the community will find the incentives so appealing and hard to resist that they will work with the developer to push for the zoning changes. After all, what’s a 30-story building on Bedford Avenue if it contains a community center?

For all these reasons, and so many more, “community incentive zoning” is GL’s Double Speak of the Week.

Banging the Supersizing Drum:

• Flatiron on Flatbush [Brooklyn Papers]
• The Mystery of the Claimed Atlantic Yards Financial Benefits [AYR]
• Are 28 New Shiny Towers Planned for Williamsburg? [justiNYC]

Playing the Keyboard of Change:

• Red hot Red Hook? How about ‘lukewarm’? [Brooklyn Papers]
• Openings and Closing on Myrtle Avenue [Clinton Hill Blog]
• Underhill Bomb Shelter Building Induces Clinical Depression [Daily Heights]
• The Score in Sunset Park: Taco Bell 0, Commerce Bank 1 [Sunset Parker]
• Attack of the Banks in Brooklyn Heights [1000 Bars via Sunset Parker]

Shopping for Noise-Canceling Headphones (and a Good Nursing Bra, Mouse Trap and Gas Mask):

• Trying To Catch Smith Street Mice, Advice Needed [423 Smith]
• Diary of a Park Slope Mommy: The Younger Generation [Gawker]
• 30,000 People Checked Out the BBG’s Corpse Flower [NYDN]

As for our own article, it’s headlined “Red hot Red Hook? How’s ‘lukewarm’?” We’re going to reproduce it here:

Dianna Munz knows hot.

She was a founding member of Smith Street’s “Restaurant Row” when she opened Panino’teca in Carroll Gardens and, then, took on Red Hook when she and her partner opened Hope & Anchor on Van Brunt Street.

“Good things are happening,” said Munz, whose diner sits at the intersection of Van Brunt and Wolcott streets in a two-block stretch that includes the restaurant 360, the Atlantis antique shop and the Kentler International Drawing Space, an original Red Hook pioneer.

“But smart people are looking around and saying, ‘It’s not there yet’,” Munz said.

Come again? Red hot Red Hook is “not there yet”?

Is Munz talking about the same neighborhood that Manhattan-based newspapers and magazines — even out-of-town ones like the Washington Post — have been proclaiming New York City’s newest hot and trendy neighborhood?

Yes, and with good reason. Even though the selling price of Red Hook properties has doubled in two years and its packs of wild waterfront dogs have been housebroken, rumors of the next Williamsburg are clearly premature or, at least, byproducts of the need for headlines about “hip” neighborhoods.

“I’ve seen people coming from the cruise terminal looking around like they’re wondering ‘What’s here?’” said Corie Trancho-Robie, a Red Hook resident who produces the blog Callalillie.

The hapless tourist venturing into The Hook, in fact, might not “get it” at all, especially on streets where the landscape still runs to post-industrial apocalypse. The reality is that despite the ongoing openings of new restaurants and shops, there are still far more empty storefronts and “for rent” signs than actual businesses on Van Brunt Street, the neighborhood’s main commercial drag.

“All the attention created very high expectations, but we could have used another year or two,” said Steve McFarland, a resident who runs B61 Productions, a Web site dedicated to community issues. “People coming down here might be disappointed.”

Generally, media hype about “red hot” Red Hook focuses on the galleries and shops clustered around Van Brunt Street or the Beard Street Piers, but the rest of the neighborhood has residents who have lived there for decades and businesses that fill the streets with trucks on weekdays.

“Red Hook is changing both as a business community and as place to live,” said Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce President Kenneth Adams, who measures the timeframe for Red Hook growth in years, not months.

Two-thirds of Red Hook’s residents live in public housing and, for them, businesses like Ikea that promise to produce jobs by the hundreds are of more interest than a wine bar that may attract Yuppies, yet hires just four people.

John McGettrick, who co-chairs the Red Hook Civic Association, called the neighborhood a “diamond in the rough” — and its rough edges stem from a lack of transportation and services; residents are fighting just to get a stoplight put in on Van Brunt Street.

“Everyone wants to do a sexy business like a bar or a cafe, but we still need a community bank,” said LeNell Smothers, an Alabama native who moved to Red Hook and opened LeNell’s, a high-end wine and liquor shop, in 2003. Smothers said her business does well, but that a significant online presence in her niche market has helped.

Because many visitors are weekend warriors, many Red Hook businesses are only open Thursday through Sunday. Artist Mary Ellen Buxton, who opened the Pier Glass studio in Red Hook in 1993, said the neighborhood needs more residents before it can support a large number of businesses.

“It’s a very fine balance,” she said.

Others were not certain the balance had been found.

“We’re happy that people want to come to Red Hook, but I hope they do more than fly down the street to Fairway to get a filet mignon,” said Florence Neal, whose Kentler gallery opened in 1990 when people were still terrified of venturing past the Gowanus Expressway or over the Battery Tunnel to visit the neighborhood.

Munz of Hope & Anchor and other merchants, though, are banking on Red Hook’s future. She and her partners are talking about opening another Red Hook eatery.

“When all is said and done,” Munz said, “things are happening here, but I think it’s a 10-year window.”

Ironically, one reason that change is so slow to come to Red Hook is that landlords aren’t willing to make a little less money now in exchange for riches later.

Ataur Miah, co-owner of Bombay Dream on Smith Street, said more restaurants would be moving into the neighborhood if landlords were open to long leases.

“Many restaurants are looking, but landlords now only want [short] leases because they know in a few years they will be able to charge more,” Miah said. “But restaurants need long leases.”

The owners of the pioneering restaurant Patois, which opened on Smith Street long before it became a destination for gourmands, are also looking into opening in Red Hook, according to local brokers and workers at the restaurant.

That didn’t surprise Miah, who says he is going to open soon in Red Hook.

“It’s a very good neighborhood and it will only get better,” he said.

Rubenstein picks up the narrative:

But this Wednesday, Clinton sent a painstakingly nuanced letter to the Brooklyn Bridge Development Corporation — the state agency overseeing the project — suddenly expressing support for the self-sustainability requirement.

“Although I believe public revenues should support public assets … like parks and their maintenance, I understand that cities across the nation, including New York, have had to struggle to find dedicated revenue sources to fund park maintenance,” wrote Clinton.

Going further, Clinton also took at face value a state contention that the amount of luxury housing could decrease if revenue from it exceeds current projections — a prospect that some opponents of the state plan believe is laughable.

“I was joking about how long it would take all of the Brooklyn elected officials to get to Hillary [to make her change her position]— I was guessing it would be less than 10 days,” said Roy Sloane, a Cobble Hill community leader who was involved in an earlier park design, but opposes the current plan.

“I think every mayor and governor across America will look at this project and say, ‘Look, all we have to do is add a couple of luxury apartments, and we can get parks off our tax rolls,’” added Sloane.

Today’s Daily News also has a story about Sen. Clinton’s flip on the plan. Jotham Sederstrom writes:

Under fire from Brooklyn Democrats, Sen. Hillary Clinton has backed off her criticism of plans to build 1,200 luxury condos in the controversial Brooklyn Bridge Park.

The housing would provide “an ongoing revenue stream” to maintain the park, Clinton (D-N.Y.) said she had learned since her initial comments when she had concerns about the housing.

“I do not support legal action to oppose the park,” she wrote in an Aug. 16 letter to Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corp. President Wendy Leventer,

Clinton’s reversal on Wednesday outraged opponents of the plan, who have charged building private high-rise condos in the 1.2-mile public park is illegal.

“We think she’s been grossly misled by her political cronies and handlers,” said Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund President Judi Francis. “I think she spoke the truth at first, and I think she spoke from the heart.”

Borough President Marty Markowitz, Millman and Brooklyn Bridge Conservancy President Marianna Koval spoke to Clinton staffers about her comments, sources confirmed.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer has said he is “open” to the plan to finance open space with luxury housing.

Streetsblog has come up with the urban planning scoop of the week, making available a report prepared by Alex Garvin & Associates that has helped Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff develop the new urban planning vision for the city as discussed this week in the Observer. The paper compared the ambition and scope of the plan to the 1811 layout of Manhattan’s street grid system and the 1929 Regional Plan that led to some of today’s parks and highways. (And now, we know for sure what the city’s Make No Small Plans Deputy Mayor has been focusing some of his attention on since the 2012 Olympics bid and all its related mega-developments didn’t cut the mustard with the IOC last year.)

The Garvin firm was the lead planner for…the NYC 2012 Olympics bid. Says Streetsblog:

Streetsblog was given a copy of the Garvin Report by a City Hall insider in June. Not wanting to jeopardize the potential for this innovative plan to move forward, we held off on writing about it. But with the Mayor’s long-awaited speech on land use and transportation four months late and postponed indefinitely, with transportation and public space issues nowhere near the top of the Bloomberg Administration’s second term agenda, and with the story out in today’s Observer, there doesn’t seem to be any point in continuing to hold this.

The upshot, as reported on Curbed earlier today, is that Streetsblog scanned the entire 91-page document, converted it to PDF and is making it available on their site. (The full PDF is available by clicking on this link, but PLEASE NOTE, if you click, you’re going to downloading a 6.5M document. Or you can go to Streetsblog and download the whole document or individual chapters)

Streetsblog does add that they have no idea if the report has influenced any real city policy.

One particularly interesting part of the report is the segment that targets the Sunnyside Railyards in Queens as “the city’s single greatest opportunity to increase the housing supply and simultaneously improve the quality of the public realm.”

We always suspected that Queens was going to be the new Brooklyn. Or, is it the Bronx?

Some Fairway trash and garbage scent with your waterfront view of the Statue of Liberty?

Nas-tay.

Eat:

• Weekly Food Roundup [Brooklyn Record]
• Farm Flourishes in Crown Heights [Brooklyn Downtown Star via Eating for Bklyn]
• Planet Thailand’s Manhattan Offspring, PT212, Sucks [Cuozzo/Post]
• Wombat + San Loco in Williamsburg [Eater]
• Artsy Brunch and Movies at Monkey Town [NYPress]
• Rice to the Occasion [Dope on the Slope]
• Honeymoon’s Over at Fujiya on Court Street [Brooklyn Record]

Don’t Eat:

• Hope St. Warehouse in Williamsburg Getting Condo’d [Globe St. via The Real Estate]
• Hagan Sisters Do More Anti-Ratner Street Art [No Land Grab]
• More Calls for Extension of Atlantic Yards Review [AYR]
• Open Space in the Atlantic Yards Development [Gotham Gazette]
• Is This Blight? [3 Bikini]
• Thousands Trapped on Subway on Manhattan Bridge [NYDN]
• Bookish Brooklyn Party to Feature Jonathans, Maclarens [Gawker]
• Bungalow Art Colony in Far Rockaway [Sun via No Land Grab]
• Bay Ridge Businesses Do Door-to-Curb Delivery to Beat Parking Problem [NYDN]
• Vest Me Once, Shame on You… [Brooklyn Downtown Star]
• Tucked Away in Vinegar Hill: Harrison Alley [Brooklyn Record]

Blow Chunks:

• What Would 28 Towers in Williamsburg Look Like? [onNYTurf]
• Quadriad Proposal for Williamsburg [onNYTurf]
• Supersizing Williamsburg: Pictures and Maps [Curbed]

The e-mail campaign that we wrote about to help the Empty Vessel Project boat keep its berth at the foot of First Street on the Gowanus Canal is still going on. And, we can report that, for now, the World War II Navy Rescue boat that is being rehabbed and used as a community-oriented space is still there, but the trigger can be pulled at any moment. The latest Empty Vessel Project e-newsletter ask people to keep sending e-mails to Dockmaster Dennis Cotto at dcotto@sbs.nyc.gov expressing approval of EV’s berthing and asking him to forward your message on to anyone who has the power to let the historic little boat stay. They request that e-mails be cc’d to pz@emptyvesselproject.org and that anyone with tips about a new home e-mail EV to as@emptyvesselproject.org.

The new e-newsletter says the group is still looking for “a free and safe new home” for the boat. Specifically:

We hope you can help us find the right person to talk to. There is a place on the Gowanus Canal, a mythical space called Public Place. Public Place is a 6.5-acre city-owned brownfield site situated along the west side of the Canal and bounded by Smith, 5th, and Hoyt Streets. It is bound for redevelopment in service of the community. Check out publicplace.org for some fabulous research into the space and the community by students from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

We think EV would be a happy boat if we could perch her at the watery edge of this Public Place. Our home at 1st Street, picturesque and convenient as it is, is surely temporary. We would love to align ourselves with the powers deciding the future of Public Place and become part of that future. This is an appeal. Can you help us find the right person to talk to? Email as@emptyvesselproject.org with your connections or ideas.

We’re not so sure about the Public Place space, given that Keyspan and others are still trying to figure out what toxins are on the site and leeching into the Gowanus, and that a battle over the site’s future is ahead. Or, maybe, it’s a great spot for the EV boat.

We hope that one kind soul reading this might know someone who knows someone who knows someone that could help a boat with a proud history find a good, permanent home on the Gowanus. We do not want to cross the Carroll Street Bridge one day and find the boat gone, then check our email and discover that it was forced to set sail for Staten Island.

Ahoy Hipster Photographers! Show us your pix!

Yes, the Water Taxi finally made it’s way to Williamsburg. Now all those Williamsburg (or Red Hook, or any other waterfront hood) photographers can win a year of free rides and more for taking the best picture of or on the Water Taxi or the Water Taxi Beach at the New York Water Taxi and Water Taxi Beach photo contest.

Enter pictures with people, without people, on the beach, on the boat, from the beach or from the boat. It’s free to enter (one only need be or become a flickr user), anyone can enter as many times as he or she would like. Prizes are valued at $9,140.00. Winning photos may also be used in New York Water Taxi and Water Taxi Beach promotional materials.

The Grand Prize is a one-year unlimited NY Water Taxi pass for one and a $250 credit for food and drink at Water Taxi Beach. First Prize is a one-year unlimited New York Water Taxi pass. Second prize is a $250 credit for food and drink at Water Taxi Beach.

More information about how you can spend the next year floating around Brooklyn and Manhattan for free is at the flickr New York Water Taxi Pool where entries can be added through September 15.

Bear in mind, you’ll be giving NY Water Taxi the right to use your photo and agree to let them possibly use you in their advertising, but, hey, it’s a year’s worth of free rides.

onNYTurf lays some interesting images and an invaluable map of Williamsburg development on us today. Call it absolutely required reading if you are interested in what Williamsburg might look like in five or ten years. The image above, is the possible future view from Bedford and Metropolitan avenues if Quadriad Development’s plans for the neighborhood come to fruition.

You might recall the Quadriad plan for “Williamsburgh Square” on Bedford Avenue and its plan to build 28 highrises in the neighborhood. Well, onNYTurf decided to envision the future if the plans go forward, taking the plans right from the developer’s proposal. (The PDF and other documents are posted as part of the item.)

Williamsburgh Square would be between Bedford Avenue and Berry from North 3rd to North 4th streets and have four towers of 38, 36, 20 and 12 stories. The other 24 buildings would be from 12 to 40 stories in the area between Bedford and Kent Avenues from North Third to North Sixth Streets. Special approval is required for all: The entire area was downzoned last year as part of allowing highrises on the waterfront. (You can also see the current zoning for the neighborhood at onNYTurf.)

Back in May, we called Williamsburgh Square the “most outrageous” development proposal in all of New York, recognizing that there are many, many contenders for this title. After seeing onNYTurf’s renderings, we wonder if possibly we were too restrained.

More later.

(All images were created by and are courtesy of onNYTurf.)

In any case, the blogger known as Sunset Parker left a very cogent comment, reflecting on how his own Sunset Park community is being redefined–and slowly annexed by other neighborhoods–as real estate brokers and developers find it more profitable to identify part of the nabe as Park Slope or Greenwood Heights or Bay Ridge.

Sunset writes:

Now you must know what we feel like in Sunset Park. Our borders have been chipped away at by neighborhood imperialism and sheer ignorance (on both our north and south boundaries- by the Slope and Bay Ridge respectively).

The southern border of Park Slope is and always has been Prospect Ave (bet. 16th and 17th) where Sunset Park begins. However, the ridiculous Broker-created term “Greenwood Heights” or people who just elongate the south slope to the edge of the cemetery on 22nd is rampant. Just last week, OTBKB ran a “best of slope”. The Lopez Bakery between 18th and 19th on 5th Ave was listed, as the Slope’s best bakery, despite the fact that it’s three blocks into Sunset Park. The Slope doesn’t have enough that they have to claim our businesses as their own?

As far as Park Slope/Gowanus, to be clear, the median on 4th Ave is the official Western boundary of the Slope;Eastern boundary of Gowanus. Anything on the east side of 4th is in Park Slope. The ones on the west are in Gowanus…

But as you surely know, Brokers and Developers rarely constrain themselves with the truth…

Wonderfully said, Sunset.

In this Golden Age of the Early 21st Century Brooklyn Land Boom, there are those who look at our borough as nothing more than a huge real estate deal. This mindset says that if you can sell for more to someone buying in the “South Slope” rather than Sunset Park, well by all means, annex that street. And so, neighborhood borders are pliable and neighborhood names are marketing tools. What gets lost in the shuffle is that our communities are neighborhoods, many of them with long and proud histories and identities.

Gowanus is not Park Slope. Sunset Park is not Park Slope. Bay Ridge is not Sunset Park.

Oh, for a map of Brooklyn neighborhood boundaries upon which at least 51 percent of us could agree that shows lines of demarcation that don’t make longtime residents scream bloody murder.

How Many People Does it Take to Make a Parade?

• Police Parade Rules Pending: Protest Now [Daily Gotham]
• Fighting the NYPD’s Parade Rules [streetsblog]
• Assemble for Rights: People’s Forum on Thursday [onNYTurf]
• People’s Forum on Proposed Rules on August 17 [Assemble for Rights NYC]

Parade? Did Someone Say Parade?

• Owens Needles Yassky as 11th Cong. District Candidates Discuss Atlantic Yards [AYR]
• Greenpoint Gets Big, Modern Twin Condos [The Real Estate]
• Sodafine: So Long Dekalb, Hello Grand Street [Brooklyn Record]
• Fulton Ferry Condos–In Distress? [Set Speed]
• Korean Barbecue Coming to Prospect Heights [Daily Heights via Brooklyn Record]
• Shooting Stars [A Brooklyn Life]
• Water, from the Vantage Point of Rural California [OTBKB]
• Markowitz to Throw Party for Brooklyn ‘Literary Stars’ [Sun]