This is a Judith Supine work on Kent Avenue near Metropolitan in Williamsburg. Like much of her work, we dig it a lot. The interesting, non-art-related back story involves the building to which it is affixed. It is a paint factory with enough toxic issues to keep environmental regulators busy for a long time and it across the street from the site of the newest part of the 80 Metropolitan development. But, it is a great piece of work, especially on that yellow background.

[Photo courtesy of Miss Heather]

Our dear friend and valued contributor Miss Heather, who is truly the Queen of the Street Couch, among a great many other things, sent us this goodie, which she called “A Study in Denim” and the “Gonzo Couch.” It comes from N. 15 Street in Greenpoint.

Latin American Cafe, 661 Sackett Street at 4th Avenue, has had a seven-year history with the Park Slope neighborhood. Now just a dark and divey watering hole, it once offered a rich selection of Latin brunch and dinner options and was even recommended as a spot to take mom out for Mother’s Day by GO Brooklyn. Just as the food had it’s moment and then disappeared, it seems Latin American Cafe is moving on as well. The owner has sold the business to what he curtly described as “a lady” that may, or may not, reopen the space as a cafe and bar again.
—E.C. Stephens

We think it may be safe to call this the slowest Karl Fischer building going up in all of Brooklyn. The building is at N. 8 & Roebling, only a few blocks from the architect’s master work on Karl Fischer Row, and work has been going on since late 2006 (a basement was never excavated). The green stuff on the exterior has been there most of the year, but what will cover it hasn’t show up. In the meantime, it looks like interior has been going on and some windows have been installed. Very little progress that is visible to the eye has happened since we checked it on Curbed a little over a month ago. (Well, to be fair, more windows have been added.) Although, we’re willing to admit that maybe our eyesight isn’t so good and that the real work may be going inside where it can’t be seen. Still, where the heck are the windows and the rest of the facade? If it’s done before the Dow drops to 5,000 there will be 53 units to sell and/or rent.

[Photo courtesy of Adrian Kinloch/Brit in Brooklyn]

Once again our friend and contributor Adrian Kinloch graces us with an evocative photograph. This one comes from Coney Island and is truly a magnificent pic combining nature, man and machine.

Maria’s Mexican Bistro at 669 Union Street recently closed for renovations. With the constant flux that Park Slope establishments are known for, “renovations” took on a new meaning when Maria’s reopened as Mercado Social instead. We contacted one of the new owners, Antonio Lara, to talk about the restaurant. Some foodies might recognize Lara’s name. He’s an old friend with Pedro Munoz and Vivian Torres of the Pan-Latin restaurant Luz in Fort Greene, and he has teamed up in the past with the godfather of Nuevo Latino cuisine award-winning chef Douglas Rodriguez. Lara tells us that most recently he’s worked with Danny Meyer at The Modern and says in regard to this new endeavor, “I hope to share my hospitality experience with the wonderful people in Park Slope.” With a background like that, if Mercado Social plays its cards right, the bistro can easily make its way up to be one of the better Latin restaurants in the neighborhood. Some appetizers include the Mexican street-cart favorite elote asado (grilled ear of corn with mayo, chili, and cotija) and an exciting Pico de Mango (chopped mango, red onions, tomatoes, chili and limejuice). Classic Mexican dishes are also present like pozole, sopes, tamales, mole poblano and chile rellenos. Some new twists can also be found in the Vera Cruz inspired red snapper with capers and a red pepper sauce on a bed of rice. Has anyone else had a chance to try the new menu? Let us know in the comments.
—E.C. Stephens

We will not turn this into a pro or con rant about the Park Slope Food Coop. The Columbia Spectator took a look at it and wrote many nice things. For instance: “The Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn holds the reputation of best food co-op in the Northeast.” And: “The co-op is extremely well-organized, and has expanded over the past few years from one building to four buildings. Free from the tyranny of the demand curve, the co-op marks up all their food only 15 percent from wholesale prices, making for affordable products.” But what caught our attention was this quote, which we present without much comment: “Joseph Musacchia, a member for over 30 years, described the co-op membership as ‘extremely diversified—but don’t get me wrong. We have yuppies.'” What is the Slope coming to?

This comes from Pistols & Popcorn, which is a relatively new Brooklyn blog that we really like a lot. It’s got great personality and a nice vibe. In any case P&P has posted her story of being a kickboxer. Do read the excerpts and click over to the full story:

When I lived in Utah I was bored. So I let my fingers do the walking in the yellow pages and I found myself looking at Muay Thai Kickboxing. I was kind of feeling punk-rock and like I didn’t want to do the whole “nice gym” thing, so I signed up for a Full Contact Muay Thai Kickboxing trial at a gym that looked like it was lifted from a prison yard…

And now, she’s teaching people to kick each other in Brooklyn.

We found this via Park Slope Parents from a local film maker named Sue Kramer. It’s an uplifting message to get out there on Election Day and to be part of one of the most historic elections that any of us will likely see in our lifetimes. Ms. Kramer writes:

Please go www.youvotevideo.org and watch a vote video that I conceived and directed called youvote. I believe it to be a call to all for voting without preaching to anyone. The only way this video will have legs is to send it to everyone you know—to keep the message going. I hope you appreciate it.. Jessica Cohen, another Park Slope Mom graciously helped out on the PR efforts. Signed, Sue Kramer, Park Slope Mom and Film maker.

Watch it. Or, more importantly, please, please, please, please send the link to friends in battleground states where history will be determined and our future will hang in the balance. The vid can be found on YouTube directly by clicking here.

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brookyn-related information and images.

Pro-AY Groups Have Contributed $680,000 to Marty’s Coffers [NY Post]
Today is the Last Day to Register to Vote in New York [Gothamist]
A Con Ed Worker in ENY Was Killed in a Manhole Explosion [City Room]
Cops Are Ticketing Bikers Exiting the Manhattan Bridge [Streetsblog]
What’s Next for the Busy Chef Spots in the Heights? [McBrooklyn]
Demolition of the Green Church Has Begun [Bay Ridge Rover]
‘CSI’ Was Filming on Cranberry Street [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
The Bed-Stuy Alive! Community Fest is This Weekend [Bed-Stuy Gateway]
Columbia Street Restaurant Jake’s is For Sale [Brownstoner]
Spooky! Gates Avenue’s Haunted House [Clinton Hill Blog]

“There was a massive youth street battle yesterday right by the Williamsburg Bridge street entrance, that ended with some bloodied faces and frightened cops. A reader wrote in and said that while sitting at a traffic light just outside Ortis funeral home, they saw a bunch of kids (12-15) acting rowdy and yelling, while a funeral was going on! After expressing some disbelief between him and his girlfriend, things turned ugly.” There is a great deal of additional detail to this one.–Free Williamsburg

Anyone that drives on Fourth Avenue or rides in a cab or car service vehicle down it knows that it’s a scary street. (As do pedestrians, of course.) On of the most awful parts of the Fourth Avenue Experience (other than the hideous architecture of some of the new buildings and the wretched planning decisions that allowed developers to create dead walls of nothingness at street level if they wanted) is the dreaded left turn. Cars going in both directions trying to make left turns at the same intersection block the view that each other has and a game of Left Turn Russian Roulette ensues. The city hasn’t seen fit to install many left turn signals that could prevent carnage or even to give pedestrians enough time walk across the street on a red light. This is the result of one such incident yesterday, captured not long after it happened by a special Gl Correspondent. Our correspondent wrote: “Nasty car accident on 4th and 3rd. Looks like driver of car might be seriously hurt.”

Work is moving ahead at 40 Berry Street, which will be a seven-story, 142-unit rental building from the studios of Perkins Eastman. The site has had its issues both with oil on the site from ruptured tanks and with dangerous conditions at the site itself, which led us to dub it the Mud Pit of Death. It’s even more interesting because the investors include the California Teachers Retirement Fund and the obscure Wall Street firm called Lehman Brothers. Work is clearly plowing ahead, so it looks like the financing is safe even if former Lehman Bros. employees may not be able to afford the rent once it’s done.

See what it’s supposed to look like by clicking here.

We found this brave flower on Bergen Street near Fourth Avenue. You hang in there, baby.

If Halloween is approaching, it means many things and one of them is the return of Creepshow at the Freakshow via Coney Island USA. This year’s edition is called Phantom of the Presidential Wax Museum. Per the email from CIUSA:

PHANTOM OF THE PRESIDENTIAL WAX MUSEUM is an interactive show (allow 45 minutes for the complete experience) that tours various rooms at the Coney Island Sideshows by the Seashore building generally not available to the public such as the creepy basement, back stairs, etc. Audience members will take a “tour” of the “historic” wax museum and meet Presidential and First Lady ROBOTS along the way including Lincoln, Clinton, Hillary and Laura, Nixon and finally robots Obama and McCain. Audience will also get to partake in a Presidential Shooting Gallery and fire ping pong ball rifles at Kennedy, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. The show concludes with the funeral for an “almost” dead president with Obama and McCain robots competing to give the better funeral speech. Along the tour the audience will hear the “true” story of murder and fire that closed the famed Coney Island Presidential Wax Museum in 1971.

The show runs from October 17-31. Times are Mondays – Thursdays: 7-10 PM, Fridays: 7-11 PM, Saturdays: 4-11 PM and Sundays: 4-10 PM. Admission is $10 for adults, $5 for children and it’s not recommended for small children. Also, on Halloween Friday, October 31st, 6-12 PM, All Tickets are $15 and include midnight Horror Movie Party! There’s continuous admission and the “complete experience” takes about 45 minutes. Sideshows By The Seashore is located at 3006 West 12th Street off Surf Ave.

[Photo courtesy of mugsniffer/GL Flickr Pool]

The photographer and GL Photo Pool contributor writes: “Me mums looks at the large photographic mural in the Capital One bank building at the corner of Calyer and Manhattan. I got snapped at by a security guard that I couldn’t take pictures. I took some anyway.” We do love those “you can’t take pictures” moments on public streets.

Prices are coming down at Satori in Gowanus, the building we used to call the Bunker. “Let’s take Unit A-3B, the top priced 2BR originally listed at $925,000. It’s taken a $100,000 hit. On the other hand, the mid-range 1BR Unit C-4B originally out there for $560,000 has only been trimmed to $530,000. It’s a little bit more dramatic with the studios, though. One listed at $475K has come down to $399K for its 499 square feet. That one kind of screams, ouch, and not in a very zen way.”–Curbed

The 2008 Red Hook International Film And Video Festival, which is being directed by our friend and GL Contributor Nathan Kensinger is taking place this weekend, October 11 & 12. The screenings will be happening at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artist’s Coalition’s Screening Room, 499 Van Brunt Street in Red Hook. The schedule rocks and we’re proud to be a sponsor of the fest. Check out the screening schedule here and go out and support this excellent film festival.

Bummed that you won’t be at the sold-out Beck/MGMT concert tonight? Shed not a tear, because Luke Temple is here to ease your sorrows. Luke Temple’s simple melodies ease a person’s sorrows, truth be told, whether or not they’re missing a kickass concert. With bittersweet earnestness, Luke stares straight into the crowd, telling tales of lost love and– well, even if not all his songs are about a lost love, they could be. See him tonight at Union Hall in Park Slope. While you’re there, you can get in a round of bocce ball. Bocce ball, eh? What do Beck and MGMT have to say about that, for $50 to see their show?

A little insider’s FYI: if you decide you want to catch Beck/MGMT tomorrow, concert organizers often reserve a few “secret” tickets for the night of. You can either call Ticketmaster at noon tomorrow, go to Mercury Lounge at noon, or go onto the Ticketmaster site –yes, at noon– if you get a sudden wind of desperation to see some wacky and legendary rock.
–Katie Lee Rush

Again, this is not a Street Couch per se, but it’s a damned colorful chair and it rocks. We found it on Bergen Street in Park Slope looking like it just came out of the rental furniture showroom.

This is an absolute freaking gem. Bobster1985, who uploaded this as a vid on flickr writes:

A fascinating bit of television history, as the Brooklyn Dodgers are used as a backdrop in this Lucky Strike cigarette commercial. I couldn’t tell if this was filmed in Ebbets Field or elsewhere, perhaps some sharp-eyed Dodger expert can offer his insight. The same is true of the players – a player wearing uniform number 12 is seen tossing the ball, but a check of the Baseball Almanac doesn’t show any player with that number on the ’56 roster. There was a first baseman named Frank Kellert who played 22 games on the 1955 Dodgers, backing up Gil Hodges, so perhaps that’s him. At the end of the commercial, a Dodger player signs autographs; he isn’t identified but he looks like shortstop Pee Wee Reese. This was made at a time when many celebrities endorsed cigarettes (including Humphrey Bogart, who eventually died of cancer). Cigarette commercials were finally banned from television in 1970. Can you believe they once had cigarette vendors wandering through the stands??

If you click on one vid today, make sure it’s this one.

This is Kenny’s Trattoria, which our friends at Eater reported on recently. It’s the successor to one of our Burg nabe favorites, the Brick Oven Gallery which closed a couple of months ago. Well, the owner has made good on his promise to return. The new places is described as “an Italian restaurant with a menu offering homemade pasta dishes, including a homemade ravioli of the day, and several chicken, pork, beef and seafood dishes. Patrons of Brick Oven Gallery will recognize some of the dishes such as the Brooklyn Caviar, Brick Oven Shrimp, Orichietti and the same over sized salads.” It’s at 7 Withers St., between N. 9 and Union Avenue. That would be Kenny, we think, sitting in the window. We’re relieved that Brooklyn Caviar lives!

[Photo courtesy of galvarez51/GL Flickr Pool]

Yesterday, we noted some meetings coming up in Gowanus and Carroll Gardens about zoning and affordable housing. Well, there will be sessions in Sunset Park presented by South Brooklyn Accountable Development Initiative, which involves the Fifth Avenue Committee and the Center for Urban Pedagogy. There will be a session on “Demystifying Affordable Housing” on Tuesday, Oct. 21st and one on “Demystifying Zoning” on Tuesday, October 28th. Both will take place from 6-9pm at Marien Heim Senior Center at 4520 Fourth Avenue. Both sessions will deal with the steamy topic of rezoning Sunset Park. Both workshops will be in English and Spanish. They’re free but require an RSVP to (718) 237-2017, ext 148 or via email to dpowell@fifthave.org. Once again, we think RSVP policies for such community events run counter to the spirit of community inclusion and that anyone interested enough to attend and learn about these critical topics should be welcomed with a smile and open arms. Maybe, someday, the organizers will get it. Or not. Because we’ve railed about their RSVP policy in the past to no avail. But today, we’re feeling frisky again: Mr. Powell, tear down this RSVP Wall.

[Photo courtesy of Adrian Kinloch/Brit in Brooklyn]

Yes, they are imagining how to Reinvent Grand Army Plaza, and our contributor Adrian Kinloch captured this great angle on the Arch and banner that’s hanging there.

This is 225 Fourth Avenue, which used to the be the home of an old SEPTA trolley car next to the Lyceum. Sadly, that was blow torched into scrap metal oblivion. Work is underway on the site however and the construction equipment is digging up a lot of concrete. The property is being developed and will be home to a new 12-story building with 40 units. No renderings of the building, which will rise above the Lyceum–a gorgeous old bath house–have surfaced. Given the other stuff rising on Fourth Avenue, we can’t wait.