The mystery of the latest sinkhole on Bergen Street may be close to a solution, per an email making the rounds via the Boerum Hill Group. “DEP came to my house to day and ran a camera through my sewer line. It turns out there are some cracks in my sewer line that could be causing the problem. My luck, I replaced the water line a few years ago and now I have to do the sewer line! Anyway, it will be done in the next couple of weeks after I get some estimates.”–GL Inbox

The schedule for the Brooklyn Book Festival, which is coming up on Sunday, September 14 fromm 10AM-6PM at Borough Hall has been released. Some of those who will be participating include Joan Didion, Richard Price, Jonathan Lethem, Dorothy Allison, Russell Banks, A.M. Homes, George Pelecanos, Terry McMillan, Jonathan Franzen, Susan Choi, Esmeralda Santiago, Thurston Moore, Paul Beatty, Jacqueline Woodson, Chuck Klosterman, Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill, Nikki Turner, Elizabeth Nunez, Ed Park, Pico Iyer, Gail Carson Levine, Cecily von Ziegesar, Chris Myers, Jane O’Connor, Jon Scieszka and Mo Willems. If you’re interested, we’ve copied and pasted the full schedule after the jump. Visit the Book Fest’s website for more info.

Click here to see the full Book Festival Schedule

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

· Departed Stuckey Spins Atlantic Yards in New Book [AYR]
· Follow-Up Detail on Widely Noted A&S Pork Store Move [NYDN]
· Vinegar Hill Butcher Shop Was Never a Butcher Shop [Brownstoner]
· Live Blogging the Squadron-Connor Debate [BHB]
· Film Shoot on Franklin [New York Shitty]
· Big, Weird Machine at Work in Water [A Year in the Park]
· Mr. & Miss Williamsburg Pageant [Stuff Hipsters Don’t Like]
· Sixth Annual Miss Coney Island Pageant [Kinetic Carnival]
· Crown Heights Walking Tour [McBrooklyn]
· Afrikaner Poet’s Book Launch at Madiba in Fort Greene Tonight [66 Square Feet]
· Sale at Sprout Home [Williamsburg is Dead]

This is 155 N. 4 Street in Williamsburg, a Karl Fischer building that we’ve called the meat in the sandwich because of its position between two other new buildings. This new Hot Karl is going up between Gene Kaufman’s Rialto (on the left) and Mr. Fischer’s own Nforth condo. Sadly, there are no renderings available of this new Karl, which will be a five-story building. We are confident that it will blend with the rest of the sandwich, however.

So, here’s one about a guy wandering around the fringe of Park Slope that appeared in a post on Brooklynian:

Has anyone else noticed a guy hanging out on Dean and Bergen between 4th and 5th? I’ve been seeing him several times a day for the past couple months. He is always carrying a black plastic bag. Sometimes he stands outside Marines after it closes and stares into Black Sheep and Cafe Tapeo for hours. The reason I’m posting this is that he’s gone from standing and staring to doing some weird stuff that makes me nervous. One day I walked by and he swore at me for no reason. This morning, he followed my husband around the block as he walked our dog. He was snarling at the dog. Last week, he had his pants down between two cars on Dean at 4 in the afternoon. Last Sunday, he was trying to open the gated door to a basement apartment of a Bergen brownstone. Last night, he came running up Bergen like a bat out of hell, laughing wildly all the way to Flatbush. We’ve called the cops to report this behavior several times but each time they say – well, he hasn’t done anything, so we can’t do anything. The thing is, I think he’s been around long enough to learn residents’ patterns and I think he’s gotten bolder and could be getting ready to do something. I talked to a few local business owners who said they’re getting wary of him as well.

Someone who writes later in the thread says he may live on Bergen Street.

A Brooklyn school-bus driver “got lost” for hours on the way home from school and disappeared with several first-graders and kindergarten kids while frantic parents tried to find out what happened. Joseph Gray, 53, was arrested and suspended after he returned to the Achievement First charter school in Brownsville at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, authorities said. The missing children were unharmed. Gray, a driver for seven years, picked up 23 kids at various stops Tuesday morning without incident, police said. But at the end of the school day, he and the bus disappeared after dropping off most, but not all, of the kids. “I got lost,” he told cops.–NYP

[Photo courtesy of stoneyjimrocks/GL Flickr Pool]

The photographer calls this one Beach Patrol. We call it horses on the beach at Coney Island. We also think it could mean there is horse shit on the beach?

“My family is planning to move out of Park Slope, and like so many others, we are looking in Montclair and Maplewood. We have seen a few houses in Maplewood that are in our price range, but we are really not familiar with the neighborhoods there. Some of the places we’ve seen are near Maplecrest Park (the smaller park right off Springfield Ave), which is getting pretty close to the border of Irvington. We are concerned about getting too close to Irvington or Newark, but we are not sure how much these bad areas filter into Maplewood…”–Curbed

[Photo courtesy of Josh Derr/GL Flickr Pool]

Here’s a gorgeous shot of Brooklyn Heights via the HDR technique in Photoshop that is designed to combine exposures and create some really dramatic looking pictures.

It will be both hot and sunny today, with the temperature approaching the record of 95 set in 1973. Tonight will be clear with a low of 70. As for the weekend, there are three words: Tropical Storm Hanna. It will be coming close, although the exact track isn’t yet clear.–Accuweather

Here’s some Feral Child that had already seen its best days by the time we got to it on N. 8 Street between Bedford and Driggs in Williamsburg. There’s a Dain to its left and an Obey behind it.

[Photo courtesy of Miss Heather]

This is a section from Green Street in Greenpoint, where many fine, fine street couches have been found. This one comes, of course, from Miss Heather.

Every now and then, we feature a question from a GL reader that might be of interest to others. Here’s one that just arrived Monday evening” “Around 10:30, as I was walking my dog in Prospect Park (near the Third St. entrance) I saw and heard a quartet of musicians jamming and playing old-timey music, including a great version of ‘Been All Around This World.’ Does anyone know who they are and whether they perform anywhere in Bklyn?”

[Photo courtesy of Sabeth718/GL Flickr Pool]

Brooklyn Bridge Park may have been dogged by controversy from Day One (and may still be embroiled in a great deal of it), but land clearance has been going on for a while and it has opened up many new vistas. This is one such look at Manhattan through the new Brooklyn waterfront landscape.

Attention fans of First Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum: there will be none this month. Well, there will be a First Saturday, but there just won’t be anything going on at the Museum. The Urbanite blog reports “It’s not happening!” and a check of the museum’s website shows that the next listing for First Saturday is October 4 when there will be a Special Salsa Dance Party from 9-11 PM. Festivities will start with the Rude Mechanical Orchestra on Eastern Parkway. It will be the Tenth Anniversary Party for the popular series.

We’ve already run items about a spike in car break ins in the Slope, now we apparently have windshield wiper thieves, indicating that times may be getting very tough indeed. From the Park Slope Parents emailbag: “Twice in the past week we have had our wiper blades stolen off of our car overnight. Has this been happening to anyone else? At first I thought random vandalism, but now I’m starting to get paranoid!” It has to be kids taking stuff, right?

We almost hesitate to post this because it’s like embedding a commercial, but there’s something so compellingly odd about this vid for the upoming Gowanus venue Littlefield that we’re allowing ourselves to be suckered. What’s the name of the venue again?

A GL reader sent us these photos of the aftermath of a house fire that took place yesterday in Windsor Terrace. Our photographer writes: “FIre today close to noon on the otherwise-quiet Reeve Place in Windsor Terrace. The fire seems to have started quickly on the second floor and everyone got out safely but it doesn’t look good for the tenants’ belongings.”

Another fire photo after the jump.

A Special GL Correspondent emailed us with this photo to note that an old Park Slope friend, Law and Order, is shooting on Fifth Avenue today. The location is around First and Second Streets.

Chalk it up to the pop-up park on Pier One and the Olafur Eliasson waterfall under the Brooklyn Bridge, but Fulton Ferry landing has been even more hopping with our tourist friends than usual this summer. “Indeed, visitors, whether they come here by walking over the bridge, by taking the Water Taxi or by one of the many tour buses that stop here, now have a choice of half a dozen places to eat. New this year are an unusual hot dog stand inside ‘The Landing’ parking lot; and a snack bar at the temporary park selling, among other things, tilapia tacos. They join such mainstays as the Brooklyn Ice Cream Parlor, Grimaldi’s Pizza and Pete’s Downtown. At times, it seems as if tourists outnumber New Yorkers here. It’s not only visitors from other countries, however.”–Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Ninth Street is not only going atomic, but the space into which a new Atomic Wings will be moving has an interesting back story. A tipster emails with word of the new Atomic Wings outpost, noting that “they are putting an Atomic Wings on 9th Street, b/n 5th and 6th ave in park slope- next to the HSBC, in the space that was formerly a really crappy faux-french pastry shop that consolidated with its sister store, up next to Smiling Pizza.” The pastry shop in question was Delices de Paris (321 Ninth St. at Fifth Ave.) which was closed by a divorce battle and then reopened and also had some nasty problems last year with the Department of Health. Given that the wings are from a chain, we assume there will be less domestic drama with the new business.

[Photo courtesy of David “Paco” Abraham]

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

· More Issues for Embattled Arabic School [NYP]
· Victim of Beating at Ebbets Field Houses Laid to Rest [NYDN]
· Checking in on a Slow Moving Bed-Stuy Highrise [Brownstoner]
· Sesame Street Special Shooting in Brooklyn Heights [BHB]
· More Urban Gravestones [Bed-Stuy Banana]
· It Was a Good Weekend for Booze Cruises [Sheepshead Bites]
· Contact Numbers & Emails of Local Officials [BVIB]
· Hipster Scouting at Beacon’s Closet [Stuff Hipsters Don’t Like]
· George Was There in 77, 78 & 79 [Brooklynometry]
· Casa Mon Amour in Greenpoint Has Gone Gallic [New York Shitty]
· Community Health Workshop Coming Up [Bed-Stuy Blog]
· Carpet & Canopy [A Year in the Park]
· New Russian Gift Shop on Surf Ave. in Coney [Kinetic Carnival]

Workers have started reducing a President Street warehouse to rubble, clearing the way for another entry in Gowanus’ burgeoning hot-sheet scene hotel boom. A developer named SAI Hospitality plans to build a 100-plus-room hotel in place of the warehouse ; SAI also has designs on another vacant warehouse on the street, between 3rd and 4th avenues, where it says it’s going to put up a second hotel. A few weeks ago, the DOB rejected SAI’s initial application for a new building permit in the spot where demo’s under way, but the application shows a five-story, 117-room property is on the drawing board. We call this stretch of President the Gowanus Hotel Row –not to be confused with the larger Gowanus Hotel District –because, all told, there are three hotels planned for it. In the background is the third hotel on the street, which is now almost complete. We can almost envision a time when tourists unfamiliar with Gowanus will not burst into tears upon alighting from a cab and taking in their surroundings.

That new venue on Degraw Street that was first reported in July by our friends at Brownstoner, has been fleshed out in detail by Gothamist and by Bumpershine after a press release started circulating. The venue, which will be located at 622 Degraw, will be called Littlefield. There’s a new website (which is just a flash placeholder for the time being) and there’s a Blair Witch/Cloverfield-type of promo vid which is one of the more bizarre videos for a venue we’ve seen (which could be the point). Per the press release:

littlefield is a new performance and art space opening this November in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood nestled between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. Housed in an old, 6200-square foot warehouse, littlefield will merge the Gowanus’ industrial past with an organic, eco-friendly future. Green elements include a landscaped interior courtyard, sound walls formed from recycled rubber tires, and a bar constructed of salvaged bowling alley lanes. Coupled with an industrial/green aesthetic will be a state-of-the-art sound system designed for live music, film screenings, and art installations. The main system will be based around the latest 3-way loudspeaker arrays by EAW, powered by QSC amplifiers, and digitally controlled via networked Rane processors. The talent buyers will use the sound system’s flexibility to book various events, with live music being lit tlefield’s most prominent feature.

To further maximize sound and still maintain an intimate setting, a moveable partition is designed to separate the main performance space from the bar/courtyard. When the partition is fully closed, the performance space can accommodate up to 200 people while the bar/courtyard can hold up to 100. For larger performances, the partition can be moved to one side and the warehouse can accommodate up to 300 people.

Now, about that video…

Another odd Littlefield promo vid ahead.

[Click to enlarge]

The last phase of the ongoing changeover of Alternate Side Parking regulations that started in May in Park Slope will happen in Red Hook starting on Monday, September 8, when they are suspended for several weeks. Alternate Side regs will be re-instituted in Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and other areas west of Court Street starting Monday, September 15. The entire process has moved far more quickly than originally anticipated, creating the most complaints in Park Slope, but proceeding in relative quiet in the rest of the South Brooklyn neighborhoods involved. There’s a press release at the DOT site here that includes a link to a full PDF and there was a post on CityRoom late yesterday afternoon.