[Photo courtesy of Miss Heather]

This comes from S. 5 Street on the Southside of Williamsburg and whether the sign has the proper DOT permit or not, we think we’d skip parking here.

Whether the original date in the email that was circulated was screwed up or whether the date was changed is irrelevant, but the session with the Parks Department and Rogers Marvel to review the status of the renovation of the landmarked McCarren Pool and its conversion back to a swimming pool was a mistake. The original email that was circulated said the presentation to the Community Board was tonight at 6:30PM at Our Lady of Snow chuch. The actual presentation is Wednesday, February 10 at the Community Board meeting on February 10th at 6:30 pm at the Swinging 60’s Senior Citizens Center (211 Ainslie St., corner of Manhattan Ave. We apologize for our role in further distributing erroneous information that was widely circulated via email in the community on both the CB1 list and via Poolaid that may have ended up wasting a lot of people’s time.

It’s one of Brooklyn’s finest doing Satan Said Dance. Dedicated to someone in Gowanus on intimate terms with the Big Dude.

Check out Gary Atlas, who runs from Brighton Beach to Sea Gate, every day, in just his shorts. Even in the snow. “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, it seems, can stop him from running the boardwalk shirtless and taking a dip in the waters. It’s his daily routine, but this day stood out because it marks 500 days in a row. “Every day I look forward to it. It’s the highlight of my day,” said Atlas. Atlas, 57, begins his workout by his home in Brighton Beach on one end of the boardwalk and runs the length of it passing though Coney Island, until he gets to Seagate. Then he turns around and jogs back — an approximately five mile run. Along the way, he gets cheers from the construction crews, looks of disbelief from passersby and chuckles from tourists who want to capture the sight on camera.” There’s a full video report on the dude–NY1

Most of us know of the Grand Prospect Hall through the ubiquitous television commercials starring its current owners, Michael and Alice Halkias (“The Grand Prospect Hall – we make your dreams come true!”). Prospect Hall, as it was known until its newest incarnation, has a very special place in the history of Brooklyn and in my own life. Located on Prospect Avenue between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999 and originally built and owned by the German-born developer John Kolle in 1892 as a “temple of music and amusement.” Within a few years of its opening, it was destroyed in a fire in December 1900 after a Knights of Columbus event which 3,000 had attended in the ballroom. Mr. Kolle, determined to bring back an even grander hall, hired a young architect, Ulrich J. Huberty to design the new building. Huberty, along with his partner Frank J. Hemle designed the magnificent Tennis House and Boathouse in Prospect Park, among many other beautiful Brooklyn buildings.

The new Prospect Hall opened in 1902, a 140,000 square foot French Renaissance building with an exterior of light brick with limestone trim. The interior included bowling alleys (still in existence in the basement), a billiard room, a German-style oak-paneled beer hall, a shooting gallery, meeting areas, an open-air roof garden, dining rooms and a 40-foot-high ballroom. It boasted the first “French bird-cage” Otis elevator in the city – it is still there and still functions and was also the first electrified public building in Brooklyn. Many of the famous of the early part of the 20th century passed through it’s halls; William Randolph Hearst in 1906, William Jennings Bryant in 1908, Gov. Al Smith and Jimmy Walker in 1929. In the 1930s, there were Works Progress Administration theater presentations. “Scarface” Al Capone was known to frequent its Speakeasy – and also to attend opera performanc

es. Lena Horne would get her teenaged start at the Opera House in the Grand Ballroom. Other visiting luminaries are said to include Enrico Caruso, Sophie Tucker, Mae West, Sonja Henie, Bob Hope, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

Read more of this great history ahead.

From the fine pages of Brooklynian comes this complaint from someone that the cops weren’t writing tickects for double-parked cars:

So I’m at the Crunch Gym on Flatbush and I’m doing my cardio workout upstairs looking down on Flatbush Ave and I notice there are about four double-parked cars. So I’m wondering if the police will come by and give a ticket while I’m exercising and sure enough, emerging from Hawaii Chinese are two Police officers carrying their lunch. They look both ways and cross the street to their cruiser which is parked in the bus stop near American Apparel doing absolutely nothing about the double-parked cars and I think, “Give them a break, it’s their lunch hour and they have hot food.” So I finish up my cardio and move on. At times I glance out the window and notice the continued flow of double-parked cars on Flatbush Ave without a Police officer to be seen. After a while I’m done at the gym and walk out onto the street and make a phone call. At this time the traffic is bad and there are about ten double-parked cars. I walk up to the corner of Sterling Place and there I see two Police officers on foot. They are pointing in the direction of all the double-parked cars and they cross the street but instead of ticketing any cars they walk into Parkside Diner. So now I’m like WTF?

So, I call 311 and make an illegal parking complaint.

[Photo courtesy of the New York Public Library]

Building the Williamsburg Bridge around 1903, give or take.

[RIP Lux Interior and thanks for not vomiting on us at a show once. Lux is dead? FUCK.]

· Ratner Really Didn’t Tell Govt. He Was Stopping Atlantic Yards Work [AYR]
· Checking in on the Absolute Condos [Brownstoner]
· CB2 Has a Change of Heart About a Liquor License [Dumbo NYC]
· Fresh Air Fund Looking for ’09 Counselors [BVIB]
· Greenpoint Stray Cat Strut [New York Shitty]
· School “Not Allowed” in Brooklyn Bridge Park [McBrooklyn]
· Signs of Incompetence at the Red Hook Post Office [Lost City]
· Pizza News: Lucali Charging $24 for a Pie!!! [ABL]

We came across this odd listing in the Missed Connections sections of Craigslist. Have you been busted for weed? This person wants to talk to you for a pubic art piece in which you will no doubt be on video talking about how you were locked up at Central Booking or the Tombs forever before mom and/or dad bailed you out:

Marijuana Stories – 24 (Brooklyn)

I am doing research for a public art piece that will reflect some of the issues with current marijuana laws. I’m looking for people who would be willing to contribute their stories about marijuana-related arrests.

Hurry, busted weed smokers. This one expires soon.

[Photo courtesy of Shannon Wagner/Picassa]

This abandoned hulk is 23 Caton Place in Kensington. It represents another Blight Me category: the semi-finished abandoned buiding that has gone into foreclosure or on which has simply stopped. There’s a community meeting about this monstrosity tonight from 7PM-9PM at the International Baptist Church at 312 Coney Island Avenue. Kensington Brooklyn prints something from a reader:

I just want to extend the invitation to attend this meeting to all of our neighbors to the south. The hulking skeleton of a building near the horse stables is being foreclosed upon and the community is being pro-active about trying to make sure something (good) is done with it….The meeting is sponsored by: Assemblymember Jim Brennan, Councilmember Bill de Blasio, Community Board 7 and the Pratt Center for Community Development. We will discuss 23 Caton Place, the 7-story, 107-unit condo building that is currently an unfinished skeleton. We will discuss neighbors’ concerns about the site as well as the possibility of finding a responsible developer who could complete the project. We will be joined by representatives from the NYC Departments of Housing, Preservation and Development, Transportation, Sanitation, and the Housing Development Corporation…If you live in the shadow of this half-finished monstrosity, this may be of interest to you.

Get used to it, friends, because we have seen the immediate future and it looks a lot like this. Developer blight doing violence to the quality of life of the commmunities. It is going to be one of the top public policy issues in Brooklyn in the next several years.

It’s always interesting to have confirmation that a huge planned project is indeed alive. So it is with big building designed by Ismael Leyva at 150 Fourth Avenue on the Gowanus side of dividing line. For a time the building next store had been vacated because construction work had undermined it, but that too, is now recoccupied. So all is well, at least, until people have to look at this thing. One might say that “it’s Fourth Avenue,” but the building replaces some old brick buildings that could have been beautifully rehabbed. New vision below.

You didn’t think the problem of “dog feces” in the toddler area at Carroll Park we posted about yesterday was going to just go away? Nah. This is the kind of, uh, shit, that draws attention. And that it did. This email from Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association:

The response to the dog v toddler issue has been terrific- thanks for all the suggestions! In case you didn’t get to read all of them, I have made a short list of the recommendations and actions taken:….
1. Paul Nelson (Joan Millman’s COS) has alerted the Parks Dept. There will be new signs posted all thru the park.
2. Kathleen Henderson (CP Park Activity Director) recommends alerting the on site Park staff, telling the police and calling 311 each time there is a problem.
As this is a particularly irritating quality of life issue, I am happy for the support of Joan’s office, Parks and the 76th. (Yes, the Park is locked every night, although I don’t know how early it is opened in the mornings.)

An individual response, ahead.

[Photo courtesy of Steve Soblick/GL Flickr Pool]

Yet another gorgeous snow shot.

Ah, the old New york. In the New Sanitized One, we can still think of one or two creeps, though.

[Image courtesy of Bruce Bowman]

Tired of snow pics or just snow in general? Eh, don’t worry, soon enough you’ll be tired of flower pics.

[Photo of Bartholomeus Breenbergh Preaching of St John the Baptist; dmadeo/flickr

Calling all photographers! There’s a new photo scavenger hunt in town. Wikipedia, the Brooklyn Museum (and 14 other art institutions) have gotten together to have a month-long contest for Wikipedia Loves Art. It’s a free content photography contest to win various prizes from each participating museum, for individuals or groups, to illustrate Wikipedia articles. Each museum has a Goal List, which you can find at their prospective Wikipedia page by going thru the Wikipedia Loves Art article. Six of the fifteen institutions are located in New York, alone, so there’s plenty to shoot but plenty of competition, too. Both the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art have scheduled meet-ups in early February. All details, including meet-up schedules and scavenger hunt lists; can be found at the Wikipedia Loves Art Flickr group. The Brooklyn Museum is coordinating the project and there’s a flickr pool here.

The world’s most important newspaper has paid virtually no attention to the Coney Island story, but today it runs an editorial that misses a lot of points–like why the city doesn’t have an interim plan for keeping Coney going–but makes one very good one: “The city’s version displays Mayor Bloomberg’s commendable effort to keep Coney Island from being overwhelmed by oceanfront condominiums. On the 60-acre spread proposed by the city, there are thousands of possible housing units, but most are at a distance from the entertainment areas. The hotels are a different story. This zoning proposal would allow a row of four hotels [buit by developer Joe Sitt] between the Stillwell Avenue subway stop and the outdoor entertainment area. The hotels could too easily become a wall, blocking public access to the sideshows and the rides, the boardwalk and the ocean. The hotels also squeeze the outdoor rides into a narrow strip of about 12 acres — an area that is simply too small to attract enough rides and attractions to bring back the big crowds.” Bravo.–NYT

For all the talk of a hotel bust and how people like Sam Chang are no longer building hotels in Brooklyn, the ones that are already financed are coming along just fine. They may end up charging $58 a night or renting by the hour, but the cranes are on site and the steel is going up. This is the Fairfield Inn, which was first reported by Brownstoner, in what everyone has come to call the Gowanus Hotel District.

In case you haven’t seen what this baby will look like, check it out.

[Photo courtesy of Best View in Brooklyn]

We’d expect nothing less than this pristine white sectional from an undisclosed location in Sunset Park. We love Sunset Park sofas.

Compared to the glacial pace of some private developments, the Fifth Avenue Committee’s supportive housing development on Fifth Ave. and 16th Street (which had moments of controversy as it was being planned), is moving like a rocket. (Our friends at Brownstoner checked it out in October when work was just getting underway.) In any case, the 35,000 square foot development will be five stories and have 49 units of affordable, supportive housing, much like another Fifth Avenue Committee development on Fourth Avenue in Boerum Hill. The rendering is below.

Perhaps you recall the accusation that Coldplay copied one of their songs? No? Check it out here.

We’ve spent years ranting about what we called Coney Island’s Trip and Fall Boardwalk. Well, the one bit of good news out of Coney right now is that the Parks Department, as promised, is starting to repair the most deteriorate section, starting at Stillwell Avenue. The new decking will be “pre-cast concrete slabs and new sustainably harvested wood decking.” The completion date for the full project is 2010. The bad new–and this isn’t the Parks Department fault–is that since they started with the most dangerous part of the boardwalk, they’re working in front of the row of businesses that may or may not have their current tenants next year (and, if so, will have them at jacked-up rents in the middle of an awful recession). Well, at least no one will fall through the boardwalk looking at the empty storefronts.

More photos right this way.

[All photos courtesy of Gary Mirabelle]

A couple of more gorgeous shots of the park in the snow at night.

What is it about hipsters that set some people off or leave some tragically confused? There’s a thread on Brookynian that keeps getting longer and long on the hispster topic. It started with this:

What’s the deal? The dark frame glasses, tight jeans, scruffy faces, Brooklyn Industries bags, incredible skinniness, Chuck Taylor sneakers? Why are they all such carbon copies? I thought that whole style started as a way to be different, and now it’s like a population of people who are exactly like each other and who are, in fact, very difficult to tell apart. I’m not trying to be offensive here, I’m truly curious. Does anyone know?

Uh, yeah, some people know. For instance:

I believe, that in one fashion or another, the current hipster movement may have reared it’s horn rimmed black glasses and skinny bs head from the mid-90’s yuppie movement when the yuppies started to migrate from their posh lives uptown to the gritty and filthy scenes below 14th St. At that time, Hush Puppie shoes became the choice of footwear (for yuppies and those that wanted to be “cool”) and soon it became an epidemic which was then caught by the rest of the population.

Soon enough, more and more people were wearing them and a new fad of “hipster” was born…out of yuppies. The blow, the clubs and bars were a breeding ground for “new” fashions which evolved into the current “hipster movement”. When those particular neighborhoods started to become more like a mutated yuppie paradise(over priced and understocked), they started to move in and force the punks and residents out…as the “hipsters” number grew, they expanded and moved across the river to Williamsburg, now Hipster central.

Sure, maybe this seems far fetched, a crazy idea, but i have a feeling that it def. contributed to the current state of affairs.

The thread eventually degenerated into an attack on all people not born in Brooklyn. Fascinating.

· Do It, Baby: Last Week’s Biggest Sales [Brownstoner]
· More Store Closings [PMFA]
· SOL: Values are Down but Taxes are Up [Brownstoner]
· Staggeringly Beautiful Snowy Day in the Park [AYITP]
· More Snow! [New York Shitty]
· Brownstones & White Trees [Brit in Brooklyn]
· Peeler Man of Court Street Dies [BHB]
· Bushwick Bands Rock Vermont [BushwickBK]
· Community Meeting Regarding 23 Caton Place on Thursday [Kensington Brooklyn]