[Photo courtesy of itsnothatfar/GL Flickr Pool]

This image of a man lounging against the background of a big brick wall comes to us from Red Hook. He looks very small on that big wall against the large building.

The second Northside Piers tower on the waterfront in Williamsburg is already four stories out of the ground. It’s situated behind the first building, which was the first highrise to go up on Kent Avenue. This one will have 270 units and sales are supposed to start sometime this month.–Curbed

[Photo courtesy of vaduzuvunt/GL Flickr Pool]

Looks like someone has been up on the Culver Viaduct at the Smith-9th Street station tagging up a message. Our Flickr Pool photographer Vaduzuvunt calls this pic “Votin’ time approachin’.”

Election Year To Do List

ELECTION YEAR TO DO LIST
ITEM No. 1:

ABOLISH THE BOARD OF STANDARDS AND APPEALS*
For many New Yorkers,
The BSA is
A totally unknown entity.

——-THE BOARD OF STANDARDS AND APPEAL
Yet its impact
Is felt in every neighborhood
In this City.

———–OARD OF STANDARDS AND APPEA
A quasi-judicial agency,
The BSA is comprised of 5 commissioners
Appointed by the mayor for 6-year terms.

Keep reading the first poem ever about the BSA.

Outside the Brooklyn Weather Observatory we have the makings of the perfect late summer day. The forecast is calling for it to be “breezy and pleasant with sunshine” and a high of 75. Tonight will be clear with a low of 57.–Accuweather

Williamsburg remains one of the epicenters of trashed bicycles in Brooklyn. This sad specimen comes from N. 11 Street right near Roebling.

Don’t look now, but the landmark Bossert Hotel on Montague Street has sold for $92 million. That’s not the interesting part, however. The hotel, which was called Brooklyn’s Waldorf Astoria, is owned by the Watchtower Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses) and has been on the market since early this year. The fascinating part is that the buyer intends to renovate the building and lease or sell it to a university for student housing. The academic institution wouldn’t be NYU, would it?–Real Deal

[Photo courtesy of The Loopweaver/GL Flickr Pool]

This interestingly altered sign comes to us from Park Slope. The photographer writes: “Another sign altered by the clever placement of a sticker…This one says we should keep our eyes peeled for pedestrians with TV’s for heads. “

A vid of the Astroland gates closed for the last time on Sunday night.

The Gowanus Dredgers are going to be having their annual party in Gowanus in a couple of weeks. Here’s word from them:

Celebrate the rebirth of Gowanus with a block party at the shoreline. Live music, All-u-can-eat BBQ from PJ Hanleys, Canoe tours, Kids’ entertainment, raffles with prizes from local shops & restaurants. Suggested donation / tickets are $25 in advance; $40 at the door. Tickets are Available! Our annual party – bacChANAL 2008 is 9/25/08 from 5-9pm with Pirate Mary, who will arrive at our dock to entertain the kids at 5:30pm, followed by music, dancing, sunset canoeing, and food catered by PJ Hanley’s! Reserve tickets online: www.gowanuscanal.org

More info about the Dredgers here.

We had so many Brooklyn Missed Connection choices this week that we left some very worthy ones on the cutting room floor. Here is one of them:

“Mr. Tooth Decay’s Real Name Is Communism” Shirt (re-post) – m4w (F Train)

“Mr. Tooth Decay’s Real Name Is Communism.” You were wearing that shirt Thursday, August 28, on the F train at about 12:30 pm and you looked great in it. Great! You’re so sexy that I literally had butterflies. I was wearing sunglasses but still embarrassed that I couldn’t stop looking at you. You’ve got it going on; great body language, you’re cute, awesome body, nice eyes, hair and you’re beautiful and sexy. You got on the train in lower Manhattan wearing sunglasses and drinking orange juice. When you got off at Jay Street/Boro Hall I was sad. My heart’s still fluttering.

Just keep posting. There can’t be that many women in the city wearing Mr. Tooth Decay shirts.

Harlem Shakes guitarist Todd Goldstein (also of The Sea & The Gulls) holds his own with Arms, a charmingly kooky solo project. Arms showcased the recently-released album Kids Aflame last night at Union Hall (702 Union St & Fifth Ave), backed by Speck Mountain. It’s self-described “sadass” folksy pop, a low-key but entirely whimsical batch of songs. When the song “Eyeball” asked of its listener, “Oh, isn’t it strange, that people have eyes?,” it occurred to us: why, yes, it IS strange, very strange, indeed. And we proceeded to sing this chorus for the rest of the night. Read Todd’s interview from What To Wear During An Orange Alert blog here, in which he says of songwriting,

“I’m only comfortable writing terrifying fictional scenarios about fucked up shit encased in pop songs…I’m an [sic] incredibly nice and well adjusted in person, I promise.”

And he is. Arms, we salute you.

Download free music via RCRD LBL from Arms and Speck Mountain here.
—Katie Lee Rush

Brooklyn’s first minor league hockey team, the Brooklyn Aces, had tryouts this weekend and 44 people turned out. Callbacks are in October and the first game is against Connecticut’s Danbury Mad Hatters on Nov. 6. The Aces will become a part of the Eastern Professional Hockey League (EPHL) and will play out of the Aviator Sports Complex at Floyd Bennett Field. The first home game at the Aviator will be Nov. 8 against the New Hampshire Freezes.–NYDN

Among the many events that will take place on September 11 is a performance by the Silver-Brown Dance Company at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Per an email:

The Silver-Brown Dance Company (SBD) returns to Brooklyn Bridge Park this Fall with OASIS 5, their annual dance performance memorializing the anniversary of 9/11. The performance takes place on September 11, 2008 at 7pm in Brooklyn Bridge Park, at Main and Plymouth Streets in DUMBO. Now in its fifth year, the OASIS series is a free outdoor community event that uses the NYC skyline as both inspiration and backdrop. Performed by six dancers on the edge of the water, the piece will include all new original choreography created by SBD’s Artistic Director Eva Bordeaux Silverstein.

More info about the dance company here.

Do watch this little scene we came across at the new building rising at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Carroll Street whose progress we noted less than two weeks ago. We were nearby and saw the smoke rising and thought that something was one fire. As it turned out, it was a big generator spewing foul clouds of black smoke into the Park Slope air. As for the building itself, it’s now reached its maximum height of 12-stories, across the street from another structure from Bricoloage Designs that we like to call the Shaft of the Slope. There are no plans we know of to market this building, which is designed by Armand Quadrini, as a green building.

It’s been a while since we had some Construction Sites Du Jour, but we have a number of them to get through this week. We begin with 67-69 N. 6 Street a site across the street from Music Hall of Williamsburg. It’s had a rocky history, including a Stop Work Order that’s been in effect since March. Now, the fence is falling apart, leading the way to half-dug foundations and pits. On the other hand, it could be an excellent pre- or post-show place to play. The site is on the corner of Wythe Ave. An earlier view of the mess inside is here.

Here’s an interesting question that came to our attention via the Park Slope Parents list that might be of some interest to those lucky enough to have gardens in which they can grow things. Can one reassure oneself that any fruits or vegetables that one grows are safe to eat? Here’s the question:

We live in South Slope and have 4 huge fig trees in the backyard that have been here for more than 60 years. The figs are delicious but we wonder if they are safe to eat after washing b/c of the possibility of lead and other contaminants in the soil. Does anyone have recs for testing the soil or the figs themselves?

We have heard of people who’ve had backyard soil tested in Carroll Gardens that have found traces of contaminants.

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

· Firehouses Haunted by Ravages of 9/11 Seven Years Later [NYDN]
· City Reopens Dumbo Manhattan Bridge Arch [Metro]
· A Lot of Veggies & Flowers Being Grown at Floyd Bennett Field [NYDN]
· Here’s the Slowest Moving Karl Fischer in Williamsburg [Curbed]
· Five Borough Presidents Get Together at Junior’s [Urbanite]
· Reminder: Cobble Hill Bike Ride on 9/14 [Brownstoner]
· A Lot of Muppets in Brooklyn Heights [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
· Real World Red Hook Buzzed by Chopper [Newyorkology]
· Return of Brooklyn Babywearing Meeting to Sunset Park [BVIB]
· Peddling Home [A Year in the Park]
· Anybody Get Hired by Brooklyn Trader Joe’s? [McBrooklyn]
· Love is the Secret Ingredient [Bed-Stuy Banana]
· Greenpoint Fashion Watch [New York Shitty]

Readers might recall what we called “The Great Wall of Fifth Avenue,” the odd facade that had appeared at 533 Fifth Avenue over the summer. The wall has been finished and, over the weekend, we heard from the building’s owner, who had this to say:

I am the owner of this building. My husband and I are longtime Slope residents. We’ve lived in Park Slope for over 25 years. We have kids who go to local Park Slope public schools. I’m a public school teacher. We bought the building 7 years ago and legally converted it to a one family house. When we moved in (in 2001) the storefront was vacant, and had been for many years. We replaced the glass storefront at that time with a brownstone wall.

This past Spring, we had our facade worked on and the person we hired ruined the facade, building this wall (which we didn’t want.) We were just trying to figure out how to deal with that situation when someone complained to the buildings department and caused us no end of trouble. If they had stayed out of it, that wall would have been torn down and replaced with the same original brownstone front the following week.

Instead, we got a stop work order, and it took us months and months and thousands of dollars to rectify. So instead of it ending for the neighborhood and for us, it went on and on. Thank you very much, whoever called! The work is finally done now. I invite you to look at it. It’s not a big ugly wall sticking out anymore, but a regular Park Slope facade. Which is what would have happened months ago, if people would just have spoken to us instead of the buildings department.

In a subsequent email she wrote that “I’m not a public person, and this is not a commercial building. I had no reason to expect my home, where my children live, to be put on the internet in the interest of idle curiosity, complete with misinformed comments.”

Less than 24 hours after the gate slammed down at Astroland with a chorus of “get back” at 11:29PM on Sunday, there is word that an unnamed city official (perhaps someone with the Coney Island Development Corporation?) is floating a plan to keep Astroland alive next year and to find space for it once redevelopment starts. The interesting–if not unsurprising–news is related by Jotham Sederstrom in the Daily News:

One day after Coney Island’s famous Astroland closed for good, city officials Monday floated a plan to resuscitate the historic amusement park. Despite little interest from Astroland owners and landlord Thor Equities, city officials are pushing the two sides to agree on an interim deal to keep the park open. Sources said the city then hopes to find a different spot for the beloved park as part of an ambitious plan to redevelop Coney Island. “If Astroland’s current landlord was willing to extend its lease just until our plan passes, the city will then be in a position to keep Astroland – and all the other amusements – alive, using what would then be city-owned property,” said an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The last-minute proposal would allow the 3.1-acre park to lease land from the city once the larger plan for the area is approved.

Thor Equities wouldn’t comment on the plan or say whether it’s willing to negotiate with Astroland owner Carol Albert. Stay tuned.

This is a rendering from the massive Draft Environmental Impact Statement that has been done for the proposed Toll Brothers development in Gowanus, which has generated its share of community opposition. The massive document clocks in with 26 sections and runs hundreds of pages, covering some of the possible impacts the big project would have on the community. It includes some fascinating before and after shots of Gowanus, superimposing renderings of the development on the existing streetscape. The full set of them is over at Curbed, but we’re particularly taken with this view of the Carroll Street Bridge with which we are so familiar and how it would change. The new view is above and the current view is below. The full report can be found here. It has been posted, chapter by chapter, in PDF form.

Today is Primary Day, with a number of important races likely to be decided today, rather than in November when some candidates will be running with only token opposition from the other party. There are crucial contests for State Senate and Assembly, among other things, in many districts in both North and South Brooklyn. Polls are open from 6AM-9PM. There is general info here and click here for the city’s polling place locator if you don’t know where yours is.

The arch under the Manhattan Bridge was reopened to the public yesterday with some minor fanfare and Dumbo NYC had full coverage of the event. The new design from Rogers Marvel appears above. The goal is to have the renovation complete by 2009 when the bridge hits the century mark, but fundraising for improvements and programming would continue beyond that. The vast spaces under the bridge are a little off putting, but we assume that with proper design they can be humanized and made into useful public spaces. What do people think about the Rogers Marvel approach?

[Photo courtesy of Rubys Host/GL Flickr Pool]

Yes, those who look at our In the Pool Photo Series know that we’ve had a lot of Coney sunsets recently, but they’re so gorgeous that we can never have too many. This one comes from the eye and camera of Rubys Host, who has provided us with many, many excellent shots.

Outside the Brooklyn Weather Observatory it is cloudy and breezy. Today’s forecast calls for “a couple of strong afternoon thunderstorms; otherwise, mostly cloudy, breezy and more humid.” The high will be 84. Tonight will be cloudy with some showers or storms around and a low of 59.–Accuweather