Putting out a blog like Gowanus Lounge–and trying to do it right–requires an extraordinary commitment of time. To that end, we’re looking for contributors who’d be interested in posting about their neighborhoods, from Bay Ridge to Bed-Stuy and Sheesphead Bay to Sunset Park (and anyplace else in Brooklyn). If you’d like the join the GL Team, email us at thegowanuslounge (at) gmail (dot) com. We don’t pay, but it’s great exposure and you’ll get a lot of love from our readers. We’re also looking for someone that might be interested in handling weekend posting and in compiling linkage. Interns, of course, looking for some solid blogging experience are also welcome.

There was a pretty bad car accident on Smith Street over the weekend and it’s led to the formation of new group to talk about and try to do something about traffic safety issues on both Court and Smith Streets, which like many local streets, often feature drivers going way to fast for what are local streets. Here’s a description of the Friday night incident from an email circulated on BoCoCa Parents:

Last evening around 6:30 pm I saw a terrible car accident on Smith street. An SUV was barreling down Smith and hit a car coming onto Smith from Sackett, smashing into the turning car and pushing the car onto the sidewalk on the Southwest corner. Thank God no one was injured badly but if any pedestrian had been standing there on the sidewalk would have been certainly killed. I personally was about to cross the street with my husband and it is only a few seconds before we turned to cross that the accident happened. It could have been us.

This, in turn, led someone connected to Streets Blog, to start something on the Livable Streets Network called “Court and Smith Safer Streets Coalition.”

For a description of the group, click here.

Yesterday was Pulaski Day and while we weren’t in Greenpoint, some of the festivities made their way into neighboring Williamsburg. Here’s a short clip of some of the action at N. 11 and Bedford Avenue.

A forum on traffic in Park Slope and Prospect Park will be coming up on Wednesday, October 15 at 7PM at the Community Bookstore, which is at 143 Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. (The issue of banning traffic in the park is a divisive one in the community). Here’s an email about the forum:

All members of the Park Slope community are encouraged to attend a neighborhood forum on Traffic and the following question: Are Thorough-fares for Traffic, or Part of the Residential Landscape? The forum will address: Given that we recognize the multiple uses of our streets, what is necessary, and what simply isn’t working? What abuses are happening, and what Existing Controls could be Activated to Counteract? What New Ideas might be Effective, and how do we Move Forward Together to Make Change?

Read more by clicking here.

A lot of cup cakes and other sweet things were sold in Brooklyn this weekend to raise money for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. They may or may not have raised significants funds, but there was certainly a big “isn’t that cute” factor as a lot of the Obama bake sale personnel were very young. We have photos from Williamsburg above and below.

Check out the Park Slope sale, ahead.

GL is returning. Thanks from the bottom of my heart for the hundreds of emails and comments that I’ve gotten since I suspending posting last month. I had to hit the reset button on my plans for GL in the future. Your kind words and warm thoughts have touched my heart and reminded me of the role that GL plays.

And now, a few words of explanation. I have always preferred to keep GL as a place for news, observation, images and analysis, but I’d like to offer some insight about what happened. Life events left me no choice but to suspend GL for a time. I had hoped to partner with someone and create a very formidable news team in Brooklyn and beyond. This person was part of the GL team for a long time and is still deeply missed. The real point, however, is that blogging is a huge commitment of time and energy and requires a lot of focus. GL takes up an additional 6-8 hours a day beyond our “day job” at Curbed. It has always been a labor of love. So, it was time to endure some turmoil and reassess. All that having been said, I can no longer sit back and walk past neighborhood news and ignore it. So, I resuming posting with hope that GL will continue to grow.

On that front, I can’t do it all. I often post up to 20 items a day. While I’m deeply grateful to my regular contributors, I’d like to bring some more people on board to help. Since I don’t plan to go from zero-sixty in 24 hours, there may be fewer posts for a while. For now, I won’t be posting on weekends any longer, except for a couple of posts that I’ve always enjoyed. To all those that have emailed and asked what they can do to help, I say this: send me tips, photos and material. If you’d like to help, email me at thegowanuslounge (at) gmail (dot) com.

Finally, to the smartest and best Brooklyn neighborhood reporter I know: Please come back. It’s much less fun without you.

We believe we found word of this kitty’s disappearance on Seventh Street around Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. If he/she has truly been paying attention to the growing financial catastrophe that’s been building since we’ve been off the air, we understand why he/she took off. Little dude probably has a condo on the market that is deflating or is in tight with a developer working on an abandominium. There’s a hundred bucks in it for you if convince him/her to come home.

The Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association meeting tonight should be lively as, among other things, it will be covering two of the neighborhood’s favorite projects: 360 Smith Street and the proposed Toll Brothers residential development on the Gowanus Canal. Per an email:

Architect, John Hatheway will discuss the BSA case progress on 360 Smith Street/aka 131 Second Place/aka Oliver House. Architects, John Hatheway and Chris McVoy will be doing their Toll Bros presentation.

The meeting takes place at 7:30PM tonight at the Hannah Senesh Community Day School, 342 Smith St.

Thanks from the bottom of our hearts to the dozens of people that have emailed or left a comment since yesterday morning. GL is still suspended indefinitely. It is a personal decision that we’ve made. We hope to reverse it at some point, but we don’t know if that means 24 hours, three days, a week, a month or never. From the moment we started GL, we’ve had the support of a wonderful set of readers, tipsters and contributors. During that time, GL has been a complete labor of love and an exhausting 8 hour a day commitment in addition to our regular blogging job. Right now, we have stepped away from our little blog until some personal things are sorted out. We are so grateful to all of you for having taken the time to read GL. Since it felt like fall for the first time this morning, and made us even more wistful about things, we will leave you with a photo that reminds us of the best summer ever.

Our apologies up front: GL will not be publishing today, having lost a very big supporter and source of inspiration and intellectual kinship, except for possibly posting some items submitted by our faithful contributors. We are very, very sorry. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for reading these last 2 1/2 years.

And now, a selection of musical events between today and Sunday:

Thursday 9/18/08
The Bell House: The Lily’s, Matt Pond PA, Robbers On High Street, and Special Guests (Indie)- Free!!, 8:00pm (Gowanus Grand Opening!!!)

Friday 9/19/08
Union Hall: Oppenheimer, Merz (Indie Rock via Dublin)- $10, 8:00pm

Saturday 9/20/08
Southpaw: 5th Annual Brooklyn Country Music Festival Featuring Alex Battles and The Whiskey Rebellion, and many more (Country & Western)- $10, 6:00pm

Barbes: Smokey’s Roundup (Western Swing)- $10, 10:00pm

Sunday 9/21/08
Union Hall: Tearing The Veil of Maya–Eugene Mirman & Friends (Comedy)- $7, 7:30pm

—Dan Bennis

Get excited, people! Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers (band name– we’re not getting that excited) have two shows in the next few days, tonight at Rehab and Saturday at Pianos. This gal, Brooklynite Shilpa Ray, is the next Janis Joplin. If Janis Joplin had a love child with Ella Fitzgerald. Her aptly-named band Beat the Devil broke up, but she’s the part that counts: that voice roars through the air, exorcised from her body with impossible grace. A harmonium serves as an extension of her spellbinding vocals.

Back in 2006 when Ms. Ray earned The Village Voice’s “Best Of” title, “Best Lead Singer Who Doubles As An Air Raid Siren,” the paper had this to say of Beat the Devil:

You wanna get there right as a [Beat the Devil] set begins, because half the fun in seeing this volatile NYC jazz-folk-blues-punk outfit lies in watching the unfamiliar react the first time lead singer Shilpa Ray opens her mouth. Typical reaction: shock and awe.

The Saturday concert will double as a drive to register voters.

There are many ways to get parking tickets in Park Slope, but most of them involve people on foot, in carts or in cards. Not in this case. A Special GL Correspondent writes that this ticked was announced by the sound of horse hooves and of neighing. There is irony in that it was a pet supply delivery truck, we suppose.

We do know there is work going on at Frankies 457 on Court Street on the major expansion that will make it easier to get a table at one of the more popular Italian restaurants in South Brooklyn. What we don’t know is when the work will be completed. In any case, a Special GL Correspondent had a look and returned with these photos updating the situation.

There was a ribbon cutting ceremony and press preview this morning for the redone Brooklyn Children’s Museum’s $49 million new building designed by Rafael Vinoly. The museum officially reopens to the public on September 20. The building, clad in a new exterior made up of 8 million daffodil yellow tiles, has doubled-in-size to 102,000 square feet. It’s located at 145 Brooklyn Ave. (at St. Marks Ave.).

The site of the 360 Smith Street development has been quiet for some time. A new piece of artwork popped up during the last 48 hours. We have no idea about the placement or the placer.

The good vibes will be buzzing tonight when Earl Greyhound plays at Public Assembly for the Blown Speaker Presents: Handsome Devil showcase. These guys (and a lady) will, ahem, “rock your faces” with irresistibly sing-a-long-able, fuzzed-out songs. Their recorded music bounces and swells with thunderous guitar riffs and stylistic influences of eras past; it’ll steal the live show. When headliner Tigercity hits the stage, we’ll probably still be wondering if Earl Greyhound reminds us most of Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens, or early Aerosmith. But by then we might not care, either– we’ll have been too busy getting our faces rocked off. There will be more Earl Greyhound shows in NYC: Gimme Shelter Rock And Rescue”>October 6 @ Highline Ballroom and Portugal. The Man“>October 31 @ Bowery Ballroom.
—Katie Lee Rush

There is much competition for the Slowest Building in Williamsburg title, but one of the Top Five Contenders is this building going up at the corner of N. 10 and Berry. If it seems like it has been under construction forever, it sort of has. Work has been underway for more than a year and a half. This is where things were at last July. The building is 128 N. 10 and it’s one of two at that intersection designed by architect Armand Quadrini of KSQ Architects. Mr. Quadini is the architect who replaced Robert Scarano on a couple of South Brooklyn jobs including 360 Smith Street and this building on Fourth Avenue in Park Slope.

Meet Brooklyn’s newest community garden. It’s the Flatbush CommUNITY Garden. “Brooklyn’s newest community garden broke ground at the beginning of July. We planted for the first time two weeks ago. Planning for the garden began at least as early as the Winter of 2007, when I first became involved. The Flatbush CommUNITY Garden is a project of Sustainable Flatbush. The Garden is located at 1522 Albemarle Road, at the intersection of Buckingham Road, on property generously loaned to the Garden by the owner.”–Flatbush Gardener

Yesterday, we had quite a bit about Park Slope crime. Today, we’re turning to something from Prospect Heights. It comes via Brooklynian and is about a mugging in the neighborhood:

So I just witnessed a mugging and I am all shook up and have to vent. Actually, I’m pissed off. First, I’m pissed because I didn’t do more. Second, I’m pissed because this happened right in front of where I live. And finally, I’m pissed because it is so fucking stereoTYPICAL that it feeds the worst thoughts in all of us.

I leave my front door (I dont want to be too specific, but I’m very close to Flatbush) and start walking my dog down the block. I notice 2 YBMs running down the opposite side of the street. My first impression was “what the fuck are they up to?” then I think “whatever, just goofing off”. About 5 seconds later, I hear a yell from behind me. I turn, and there are the 2 guys standing over someone who’s laying on the sidewalk.

So, he asks if I want some too.

[Photo courtesy of the Williamsburg Nerd]

· Disappointed with the Still Closed Kellogg’s Diner [Williamsburg Nerd]
· Slope’s Scottadito: Average choices, low prix fixe prices [Brownstoner]
· Stumptown Coffee Coming to Van Brunt St. in Red Hook [Gothamist]
· No Cuban Sandwich: Franklin St Store Closed for Renovations [New York Shitty]
· Renovated Carroll Gardens House of Pizza & Calzone Coming Along [Lost City]
· Rebuilt Heights Gristede’s Will Be Upscale with Coffee Counter [McBrooklyn]
· Top Five Food Finds Near Industry City [Industry City Creative Spaces]
· Union Street Cafe Considered [Best Street Brooklyn]
· Calexico Taking Schnack Space [Lost City]

[Photo courtesy of June Carter Cash Peep/GL Flickr Pool]

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images:

· More Schools Get “A’s” in Report Card [NYT]
· City Schools Make the Grade [NYP]
· PS 270 in Clinton Hill Goes From an “F” to an “A” [NYT]
· Work on LIRR Viaduct Starting Next Month [NYDN]
· Will Market Determine Atlantic Yards Timetable? [AYR]
· That 1920s Feeling on Governors Island [Urbanite]
· Fishermen of Sheepshead Bay in Fort Greene [Sheepshead Bites]
· Burg’s Decora is Rent-to-Own [Curbed]
· Scarano’s 110 Fourth Avenue is Topped Off [Brownstoner]
· 11th Avenue Mantis [Brooklynometry]
· Flatbush Frolic Environmental Fair Photo Gallery [Sustainable Flatbush]
· TJ’s is Really Happening [McBrooklyn]
· Gunpoint Robbery on Joralemon [BHB]
· Third Annual SoLA Sidewalk Soiree on Saturday [Bed-Stuy Blog]

The city’s annual School Report Cards are out and, overall, more schools got “A’s” this year. To find the rundown of Brooklyn schools, click here. Reports are also available here on the Dept. of Education’s website.

The much anticipated Brooklyn Trader Joe’s at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street has gotten signs, is being stocked and now has an opening date: September 26. The store, which is at 130 Court in the old Independence Bank building, will be open from 9AM-9PM. Except much fanfare on opening day.–NYDN

Don’t look now, but a nanny was spotted sleeping in Carroll Park in Carroll Gardens. The Sleeping Nanny of Carroll Park apparently didn’t just catch a few seconds of shut eye. She was quite out for quite a bit of time. Here is a first-hand account via the BoCoCa Parents Group:

Hi, If this person was watching my child, I would want to know: I was in Carroll Park playground this morning at about 10:00 AM and saw a nanny asleep sitting up on a park bench. The nanny was wearing a burgundy sweater with black shirt underneath, denim skirt, and black shoes. She had long braided hair. She was clutching a child’s backpack that was bright blue with red piping. I can’t even describe the child she was with because I never saw one nearby to her!! She fell asleep several times for lengths of 10 minutes or so. Long enough for something to happen! – anyway if you think this is your nanny contact me and I can tell you a little more.

The react on that one is rolling in quickly, including people that say they think they’ve seen the Sleeping Nanny of Park, you know, sleeping in the past. Others say it’s hasty to decide that it was a nanny. One response: “I do not want to drag this out, but I do think it is crucial to warn parents of what most likely, was a sleeping nanny. I have seen this kind of behavior at the park and I think is best to err on the side of caution and post these sitings. If it was truly a parent in distress, who was sleeping, I think they would be happy to know that this community looks out for their children.” More react as it comes in.