Exciting (if late) news for those in Boerum Hill that want to chip stuff today:

Jaws, the Hoyt Street Association’s chipper/shredder, will be at the Hoyt Street Garden tomorrow (Saturday, Nov 8) from 11 am to 1 pm. Neighbors are invited to bring their DRY leaves, twigs, vines, branches (max 1.5″ diameter), and other organic garden debris to be shredded and/or chipped into a nice mulch. Please also bring along a bag to take your mulch home. The mulch will not only help make your
gardens and street trees more beautiful but will also leave a little more room in the NYC landfills for real garbage.

You are advises to try to avoid including rocks adn such things that can hurt jaws and that the debris be dry. (Good luck with that.) If the stuff is wet, bag it and wait for the next date. The remaining fall sessions are:

Saturday, November 8 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM, Hoyt Street Garden (corner of Hoyt St. and Atlantic Ave.)

Saturday, November 22 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM, David Foulke Memorial Garden (Bergen, just west of Nevins)

Saturday, December 6 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM (only if temperature is above high 30’s) Hoyt Street Garden (corner of Hoyt St. and Atlantic Ave.)

Council Member Dominc Recchia, with whom we disagree violently about Coney Island redevelopment, has put up an online petition to beat back Mayor Bloomberg’s effort to kill the property tax rebate. It can be found here. [GL Inbox]

Smack Mellon in Dumbo Presents First Thursdays [Flatbush Pige
Interview with Dennis Spina of Roebling Tea Room [Brooklyn Based]
Development Watch: 277 19th Street [Brownstoner]
A Greenpoint Terminal Market Movie Studio? [Curbed]
Sunset Alliance of Neighbors Hosts Town Hall Meeting [BVIB]
Streetlevel: Art Space for Greenwood Heights [Brownstoner]
Wellness Lounge to Open at 133 Water Street [Dumbo NYC]
Tabla Rasa Gallery in Sunset Park Opens New Show: Nobis Solo [BVIB]
The Flatbush Daffodil Project Continues This Weekend [Flatbush Pigeon]
NYC Dept. of Education Includes Dock Street in Capital Plan [Dumbo NYC]
—Compiled by Lauren Fairbanks

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To check out this incredible collection of front page images, click here.

Here’s this weekend’s tour from our friends at the Center for the Urban Environment:

Written in Stone: Tales of Green-Wood. Sunday, November 9, 1 – 3:30 pm – with Ruth Edebohls. The monuments and mausoleums of Green-Wood have many fascinating stories—and not just about the many famous figures buried there. Visit final resting places and hear the stories of the Indian Princess, a hero dog, the heart-broken husband who waved good-bye to his wife in the morning never to see her again, the man who built “The Funny Place,” and many more. Walk may be hilly and strenuous. Meet at the Gothic Arch inside the entrance at 25th Street and Fifth Avenue. Take the R train to 25th Street and walk up one block to the cemetery. Fees: $13.00 Non-Members, $10.00 CUE Members, $8.00 Seniors & Students. For information call (718) 788-8500, ext. 217, www.thecue.org.

This street couch comes to us courtesy of our contributor and dear, dear friend Miss Heather. She writes: “The attached couch hails from Greenpoint Avenue 11/4/08. I like to call it the ‘Barack Couch’.” And so it is.

Today (11/7), Brooklyn Artists Gym (BAG) is having its inaugural fundraiser at the Center for the Urban Environment (168 7th Ave b/w 1st St & Garfield Pl) to help raise money to award high schoolers and single parent artists with studio space to create a new body of work, and to help suppose the creative ecosystem – promoting sustainability for art and artists, while enriching the green movement. $125 (or $200 for two) gets you into the VIP catered reception with a 100% recycled material Shades of Green bag and t-shirt. Or, for $45 ($50 at the door), join everyone from 8pm to midnight for sounds from DJ Miss Mocha, and performances by Mike Gamble, Chen Lo and Baba Israel with Yako 440. If you’re a Brooklyn artist (and we know there are plenty of you out there), this is a great opportunity for you to come out and show support to an organization that’s built to give the same support to your art community, not to mention a great place to network.
—Vaduz Uvunt

Neighborhood Watch is urging people to attend a community meeting about the violent conduct of the police in Williamsburg on Tuesday night and to file complaints with the Civilian Review Board. We hope the officer in this despicable video behaving in a disgusting fashion is brought up on charges and, frankly, losses his job for what is nothing less than (mild) brutality.

GL Analysis
This is piggish, obscene and revolting conduct of the kind that causes problems and makes a mockery of the Constitution. Is this okay with you, Council Member Yassky? Congrats to the people who caught this behavior on camera. We can wait to see what the city does about it. (Probably nothing.)

[Photos for GL courtesy of Gary Mirabelle]

GL Contributing Photographer Gary Mirabelle usually sends us shot showcasing the beauty of Brooklyn, particularly of Windsor Terrace and Park Slope. Not so in this case. He doesn’t say much about the properties in question, but one can draw one’s own conclusions. He simply writes: “Hard to believe two properties on 18th St between 10th and 9th Aves.” Actually, it’s not so hard to believes as scenes like these, which are either related to the neglect of property or to pending development are the kind of things that drive neighbors and community activists a little nuts in the head. We’re going to assume, without being able to check out the properties in question, that the photo in the top shot is developer-created blight, which is a Brooklyn specialty, whereas the pic below is more of the garden-variety neglect sort of thing. Really, really nice.

This week, Eat It: The Brooklyn Food Blog takes us to our Number One Favorite Brookyn Restaurant, Dressler on Broadway in Williamsburg:

It was my birthday recently and my parents took me to Dressler (149 Broadway, 718-384-6343) to celebrate. I was looking forward to it, having heard such good things about the food there. Everything I had heard was true; our experience was SO nice, down to the smallest detail (like the claim check you receive if your leftovers are wrapped up, which you then pick up at the bar on your way out). The service was attentive but unobtrusive, the food was delicious and carefully prepared and the room was grand yet warm, with high ceilings, pretty iron work around the wall lighting and incredibly ornate chandeliers in the dining room. We were seated at one of the booths that line the right side wall.

My mom and I shared a plate of 6 oysters, three of each variety (Wellfleet and Bluepoint). The Wellfleet had a fuller flavor than the Bluepoint, brinier and saltier with a slight metallic taste, but both were fresh and delicious, especially with the horseradish and onion sauce that accompanied them. Such a treat! We also shared a Smoked Trout appetizer that came wrapped in crepes. This was unbelievably flavorful yet delicate at the same time. The fish was smoky, almost meaty, and came dressed in a perfectly creamy, tangy sauce. This was then topped with a small salad of frisee & micro greens. For Pork Shank, Steak and Cod, click here.

Oh Craigslist, even if you’re going to stop being the place where everyone goes to find, uh, erotic services, you will always continue to entertain us in so many other ways:

F*cking yuppies and your ugly azz condos (Park Slope)

Get the fuck out of my neighborhood. I am the 4th generation in my family that lives here and because asshole bloomberg took advantage of what was orignially cheap real estate here and built all the ugly 15 – 20 story condo buildings in an area famous for 3- 4 story brownstones I can no longer afford to live here. where myself my mother and grandmother were born and raised. No one! not one person that was born and raised here wants you here. Please please leave!!! all of these buildings were put up in only the last 3 years how sad is that 30+ buildings in park slope in 3 years…. Please just go away!

Any questions?

You can’t say it any better than that. It looks like Flashbush has itself a new sweet spot. Salud Organic Juice Bar is open for business at 1308 Avenue H. And this isn’t just one of those juice chains who’s name shall remain anonymous. We’re talking healthy options in a beautiful, relaxing atmosphere where you don’t have to listen for your name to be yelled. – Flatbush Pigeon

[Photo courtesy of Kinetic Carnival]

As the holidays are fast approaching, so is the time for the Union Square Holiday Market. In addition to the candles, sweaters, hats and puppet booths, there’s one more that everyone should get excited about – the Lola Staar Holiday Boutique will also be there. T-shirts, jewelry, tchotchkes and mementos from our beloved Coney Island are now a shorter train ride away. Come on… it’s one stop shopping to buy all your out-of-town family and friends’ xmas gifts. As our friends at Kinetic Carnival advised it will be open every day except Thanksgiving from Saturday, November 22nd
until Wednesday, December 24th! You go, Diana!!
—Vaduz Uvunt

· Mortgage Rates Plummet, Especially in Minority Communities [NYDN]
· Mayor’s Grocery Bag Tax Plan: Annoying or Visionary? [NYT]
· The Obama Victory Through the Lens of a Brownsville Native [City Room]
· Park Slope Mommy Mummy Terrifies [BiB]
· New Slope Boutique, Wndrlnd, Is Open [Racked]
· New Challenges for Community Gardens [Flatbush Gardener]
· New Chinese Place Decent, Says Area Vegan [Flatbush Vegan]
· Fulton St. Big Dig May One Day End [Brownstoner]
· Country Living in Prospect Park [A Year in the Park]
· Broke A$$ in the South Burg [New York Shitty]
· Does this Fourth Ave. building live or is it putrid road kill? [Brownstoner]

As regular readers of our Saturday Adoptable Cutie of the Week Feature know, we have a soft spot in our heart for creatures adopted from shelters. We don’t get spending thousands of dollars on bred dogs when there are so many lovable creatures in need of homes. Heck. Some of them are even pure breeds. So, why buy from puppy mills? But we digress, a GL reader passed along an email going around via FIDO, which is the Prospect Park off-leash owners email list. They think the Obama White House should have a shelter dog. Let’s face it, it would be a very democratic (with a little d) gesture. Here’s the emial:

Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008, 3:38 PM

Pres. Elect Obama has promised his daughters a puppy. Wouldn’t it be nice if this president adopted a Shelter dog? What a simple way to show awareness and concern for American animals sitting in pounds and shelters across this country! In my book, one act of compassion is worth more than a thousand speeches, no matter how poignant. A Shelter pet in the White House would inspire the whole country to remember the the millions of homeless pets waiting out there!

The email even invokes Ghandi.

[All photos for GL by JP Pagán]

Earlier this week, we had a post about the foul smelling ginkgo tree droppings in Cobble Hill. Today, corresspondent JP Pagán explains a unique experience last night:

So, for the last few weeks my wife and I have been noticing mostly elderly Asians gathering up what appear to be little fruits from a certain type of tree in the neighborhood. The leaves look like ginkgo leaves, but not knowing much about plants I couldn’t be sure. Well, last night I passed a young lady and an older man on the corner of Hoyt and 3rd St, gathering more of this stuff up off the sidewalk. There was a more than faint smell in the air of what I took to be feces. I figured I’d stepped in dog poo, but decided to take the time to finally find out what they were gathering.

The young lady couldn’t tell me what it was they were picking up, except in Chinese: it sounded like “pok-kor.” As I watched, the older man was throwing his hat and even his jacket into the tree to try to knock down more of the fruits. The young lady let me take some pictures of what they were harvesting off the tree, which turned out to be seeds, and offered me, with a warning, a whiff. Suffice it to say I had not stepped in dog poo. She said her mother makes soup out of the stuff, and you can buy the seeds in Chinatown, but that she’d stopped off on her way home from work to get these for her because last night’s rains had knocked many of them out of the tree. They’d picked up as many seeds as they could and weren’t able to get any more of them out of the tree, so they moved on and I went home.

Lucky me, it didn’t take long to figure out what the seeds were. A couple seconds of Googling and I had my answer: ginkgo nuts! Apparently, they’re a delicacy in China, often used to make a soup for desserts and special occasions, like the New Year. Here’s a few recipes. If you’re feeling brave, track down one of these trees (bring surgical gloves ’cause otherwise the funk sticks to your hands) and get cookin’. mànmàn chī! Check it out here, here and here.
—JP Pagán

A stinky gallery ahead, if you click here.

[Click to enlarge]

CL Erotic Services Users: Yesterday was your Black Thursday. (Well, maybe, the screencap above is from 5:40 Thursday night.) The end of the world as you know it. Here’s the bad news as passed along by the New York Times:

The online classifieds company Craigslist said Thursday that it had reached an agreement with 40 state attorneys general and agreed to tame its notoriously unruly “erotic services” listings. Prostitutes and sex-oriented businesses have long used that section of Craigslist to advertise their services. Along with their ads, they often include pornographic photos.

Earlier this year, the attorney general of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, representing 40 states, sent a letter to Craigslist demanding that it purge the site of such material and better enforce its own rules against illegal activity, including prostitution. The two sides began a series of conversations about what Craigslist could do to prevent such ads from appearing. “They identified ads that were crossing the line,” said Jim Buckmaster, chief executive of Craigslist. “We looked at those ads, we saw their point and we resolved to see what we could do to get that stuff off the site.”

The rest is right ahead.

“Everyone experienced history on Tuesday night — but the crowd that had gathered to watch the returns at Prospect Heights’ Soda Bar experienced it in a slightly different way. Just when CNN was getting ready to call Ohio, a waitress turned off the volume, stood on a chair and made a surprising announcement: ‘You thought you were here for an election-night party, but really you are here for a naked party!'” Result: clothing shed. Photos taken.–Daily Intel

Well, there is a hotel coming to Union Avenue at the site of what is now a Getty Station and in the middle of one of the hottest development strips in all of Williamsburg. There are many buildings going up there on Union Avenue, including a huge and steamy Hot Karl. Now, a new hotel is planned for the current location of a Getty Gas station in from of the Hot Karl and across the street from the planned Gateway to Williamsburg and our favorite 24-hour, newly reopened eat greasy food after a night of heavy drinking and ironcially projectile vomit spot, Kellogg’s Diner. The application was filed Wednesday and we reported the exclusive on Curbed. The new hotel will be six stories tall and have 54 rooms. It’s being designed by Thomas Gilman Architects, the firm behind the big glass tower in Prospect-Lefferts Garden. Call the new place Hotel Getty or to predict they’ll have room service from Kellogg’s or Dumont? We’d be skeptical about new hotels at this point, but we think this is one that could work out quite well given the location.

[Photo courtesy of Eugene Gannon/GL Flickr Pool]

Sometimes photos need no words. This was shot on Fulton St. in Downtown Brooklyn.

Our special Carroll Gardens/Gowanus correspondent Max Casey sniffed this one out for us on Henry and Woodhull Streets in Carroll Gardens. Of course, our little yellow friend was just parked there, but was definitely looking like a UPS delivery.

The Brooklyn Public Library has been making the email rounds to promote a new blog it’s doing called Brooklynology. They’ve widely circulated email says:

I’d like to introduce you to a new blog on the block – Brooklynology. Created by the Brooklyn Collection, the local history department of the Brooklyn Public Library, this blog explores Brooklyn through photographs, maps, manuscripts, ephemera and more.

We think the name is disappointingly similar to the superb Newyorkology, then again, there is little shame in the blogging game from time to time when it come to, uh, engaging in the sincerest form of flattery. In fact, there seems to be less and less of it. And don’t get us started about the shameless fu… our really good and excellent friends in print media who are so scuzzy so ethical they always acknowledge where they steal find stories upon which they can expand without acknowledging those who worked so hard to ferret them out while they violate journalistic ethics work really hard reading blogs. We told you when we came back from our hiatus that we were both sad and cranky and less and less willing to pull punches. We are even more sad and more cranky and more cantankerous and raging than before and we’re only just starting to get loose and sharpening the knives.

We don’t know from exactly which store in Little Poland this image of Don Corleone comes, but it comes to us from Miss Heather, who knows every inch of Greenpoint. The Godfather does look a little different in a Polish storefront, doesn’t it?