What you’re looking at is the future home of the Chelsea Garden Center Brooklyn on Van Brunt Street in Red Hook. The new location is slated to open on April 23 according to the Garden Center website, as noted by our friends at the nouveau retail blog Racked. Interestingly, it’s the second garden center to […]

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Say goodbye to Fifth Avenue as it runs through the proposed Atlantic Yards footprint. The street is being “de-mapped” on May 27. This news was delivered at the Community Board 6 meeting in Park Slope on Wednesday night as part of an announcement that the B63 bus route is being changed. There was jeering at […]

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Here’s Episode Four of the vbs.tv series on “Toxic Brooklyn.” This segment is an excellent one on the uniquely toxic horror and environmental disaster known as Newtown Creek. You can click over here to get to all of the episodes.

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The Brooklyn Indie Market has a new home on Smith Street. The collective of emerging designers will set up shop starting on May 5 under tents and in kiosks at the corner of Smith and Union Streets, which is near the Carroll Street station on the F Train. The booths and tents were set up […]

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During a nearly 3 1/2 hour meeting last night in Park Slope, Community Board Six disposed of the one-way proposal for Sixth and Seventh Avenues that had sparked an outpouring of neighborhood opposition. It also decided not to act on a surprisingly controversial plan to install bike lanes and other “traffic calming” measures on Ninth […]

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Looks like Seventh Avenue in Park Slope is going to be getting more banking services. Gowanus Lounge has learned that D’Agostino’s, which is at the corner of Sixth Street and Seventh Avenue, will be closing on April 28. Gothic Cabinet Craft, which occupies the corner store in the same building will also close. They will […]

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GL took a photo walk around the part of Prospect Heights that would be mostly demolished to make room for the Atlantic Yards development. A sampling of the images are in the slideshow above. You can click over to our flickr set here if you’d rather view them that way.

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Reader Steve Skollar, who has previously sent us photos of those Union Street trolley tracks being unearthed and of the remnants of the stone bridge on Third Avenue revealed by construction, sends us this photo of a bottle of cream that was found during a building renovation. You’ll note that it’s from the Brooklyn Milk […]

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Brooklinks is a selection of Brooklyn-related information and images. On Thursdays, we like to focus on food. Food: Impressed with the Frittata at the Roebling Tea Room [Eating for Brooklyn] Matamoros Puebla Taqueria: Way More Than a Cheap Ass Taco [Clean Plate Club] Soap Opera Like Drama at Porchetta on Smith (above) [Eater] Five Guys […]

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Council Member Letitia James‘ Chief of Staff posted a comment on our item about the Daily Gotham’s suggestion that City Council Members were trying to quash public debate about the future of the Underground Railroad Houses on Duffield Street in Downtown Brooklyn. It’s an important issue, and we think what Kate Suisman has to say […]

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VBS correspondent Derrick Beckles continues with the tale of toxics in Williamsburg and Brooklyn. Watch Episode Three, especially the material that deals with activist Laura Hofmann’s backyard garden and with the low-level radioactive threat known as Radiac, which is on Kent Avenue. Fun stuff.

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We’re not sure what has motivated Whole Foods to blatantly give a cold shoulder to Park Slope residents requesting that it consider a transportation plan and a green roof for its planned Gowanus store. Yet, the food retailer–which prides itself on being environmentally friendly–continues rejecting requests for improvements at the store, which would be built […]

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A couple of weeks ago, we wondered what had happened to Ikea’s sign promoting the retailer’s role in preserving Red Hook history by documenting remnants of a Graving Dock filled in the 1970s, while a few yards away, it fills in the waterfront’s last surviving Graving Dock for parking. The sign disappeared, leading to some […]

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A former North Brooklyn resident sent us the shot above, which pictures the old gas holders in Williamsburg near McCarren Park. The tanks are particularly interesting because the old Manufactured Gas Plant left behind a toxic underground soup (as they do everywhere) in Williamsburg that was never cleaned up. (The “tar plume” from such plants, […]

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Check out Neal deMause’s great rundown of the state of things in Coney Island in the new Village Voice (and we’re not just saying this because one of our Coney pics, above, is used with the story). Mr. deMause manages an excellent sketch of a complicated issue. Here’s a sample, which get to the core […]

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Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images. The Plan: Making 9th Street Safer for Everyone [Streets Blog] Coney Island’s Last Ride? The Bulldozer! [Voice] Huge, Definitive Recent Coney Island Hoopla Rundown [Kinetic Carnival] Say It Ain’t So: Park Slope D’Agostino’s to Close? [OTBKB] More Dr. Eugene City Council Candidacy Drama [Across the […]

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If there’s one way to cut through the clutter of information with which we deal, headlining a story “Collecting Cans in Gowanus” is one of them. Call it instant click bait. In any case, the story is about the people you see collecting deposit bottles and cans every day, in this case, collecting them in […]

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You know that spring and summer are only a matter of time when the Celebrate Brooklyn summer schedule starts to leak out. We found early and very partial listing on Kensington Brooklyn, which got it from Brooklyn Vegan, and someone who’s even slower than us, will get it from here, making the circle complete. Thu […]

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Here’s an interesting video (it’s a rough cut) that someone posted of his grandfather talking about Coney Island and edited with archival footage. He was 95 years old when the video was shot and had worked at Luna Luna Park, spent time at Steeplechase and dinned at Feltmans. Click on the embed or click here. […]

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Renowned muralist and sculptor Sol LeWitt died on Sunday at the age of 78. Among other things, Mr. LeWitt was famous for his wall paintings. Develop Don’t Destroy notes that there are at least two wall paintings by Mr. LeWitt at 644 Pacific Street, which is slated to be demolished by Forest City Ratner in […]

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With a Community Board 6 meeting coming up on Wednesday, Park Slope Neighbors has come out in favor of the plan to add bike lanes and turning lanes to Ninth Street. Last week, with vocal opposition from Ninth Street residents, the Park Slope Civic Council voted to oppose the plan. Yesterday, PSN sent a letter […]

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What’s up with the Underground Railroad Houses on Duffield Street in downtown Brooklyn? The snarky answer and the short one are the same: Who knows? The public hearing on the top has been rescheduled many times and the date is still unclear. It could be May 1. Or it could be April 17. But we’re […]

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If you’ve been down Third Avenue between Third and Fourth Streets recently, you’ve noticed that the bridge over what was once a branch of the Gowanus Canal is being rebuilt. Resident Steven Skollar, who has a very sharp eye–he also brought those unearthed trolley tracks at Union and Smith Streets to our attention–captured these images. […]

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A few weeks ago, we had a great time wandering around Williamsburg on a Sunday afternoon with Derrick Beckles and Trace Crutchfield two very, very smart, funny and cool people from vbs.tv, which is part of the Vice family of products. Vice is headquartered in Williamsburg, which is one of the things that got the […]

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The toxic cleanup strategy of choice for polluted sites in New York and elsewhere is “capping,” a method whereby some toxic soil is removed and the remainder of the problem is sealed beneath a membrane. It is the way the Public Place site in Gowanus (which is profoundly contaminated) would be cleaned and the way […]

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