Generally, when the “rat poison” signs go up on a building in Williamsburg, you don’t even need to check city records to verify that demolition is coming. So it is with 5 Roebling Street, the building that was dubbed the Giant Fart Cloud Building by dating advice/real estate development blogger Bad Advice. The building was a cabbage plant, hence that nasty Dutch Oven scent that wafted through the hood and the Big Ass Brooklyn Rats which are presumably being poisoned left and right (or just getting high on the stuff) as we speak. Demolition permits are out on the Fart Cloud Building, which is supposed to become a six-story building with ten condos. There are two interesting questions related to all this:

1). Will neighboring buildings, which are wood frame and old, survive the excavation and pile driving?

2). Will the developer strike oil?

As for Number One, who knows. As for Number Two, we will simply note that 5 Roebling is diagonally across the street from the Roebling Oil Field, and there is every indication that there is a significant amount of “free product,” as they call spilled oil without any sense of the deep and rich irony it deserves, gurgling underground in the general area of N. 11th Street and Roebling. You can guess what we would wager if we were to bet.