• Glassy Fourth Avenue Condo Site on Market for $10M [Brownstoner]
• Another Duffield St. Eminent Domain Hearing on Oct. 29 [Duffield St. Underground]
• Two Bicyclists Killed in Different Brooklyn Accidents [amNY]
• Dismissed Arabic School Principal Loses Appeal [NYP]
• Civic Activism After Jane Jacobs [AYR]
• Say Bye Bye to the Carlton Avenue Bridge at Atlantic Yards [No Land Grab]
• It’s Brooklyn Fashion Weekend [About Brooklyn]
• Am I a Douchebag? [Brooklynometry]
• Haunted House of the Day [Clinton Hill Blog]
• Try to Make Livingston and Flatbush Green. We Dare You. [McBrooklyn]
• While You’re At It, Put Some Green in Greenpoint [New York Shitty]
• Australian Documentary on Coney Island [Kinetic Carnival]

You can drop off your unwanted computers, monitors, printers, cell phones and other electronic equipment for recycling in Bay Ridge next weekend at an event being sponsored by Council Members Vincent Gentile and Bill de Blasio. It takes place at Poly Prep Country Day School, which is located on 7th Avenue at the baseball field a quarter mile south of 92nd Street. The dates and times are Saturday, October 27th & Sunday, October 28th 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and Monday, October 29th 4 p.m.-7 p.m. Electronic devices are an increasing part of the waste stream and responsible for a lot of pollution if not disposed of properly. There are moves afoot legislatively to require manufacturers to participate in recycling programs and to safely dispose of the products. New York City residents buy 92,000 tons of electronic devices every year. Mr. de Blasio has introduced a bill in the City Council that would require electronics manufacturers to accept used and unwanted electronics from New York City consumers and either recycle or reuse those products.

That petition about the quality of life and development issues surround the Park Slope VUE at 162 16th Street was taken to Community Board 7 this week and the board is reported to hve voted unanimously to endorse the petition. Activist Aaron Brashear has sent out this email:

Bo Samajopoulos, representing the Concerned Citizens of the South Slope community group, gave testimony in regs to the on-going quality of life issues surrounding the development of 162 16th Street (aka the VUE) and the long-standing illegal work on the site that has continued for 3 + years…[The community] is asserting the DOB has willingly worked with the developer (Issac Katan)/architect (Bricolage Design) to “fix in the mix” any outstanding issues with the project. It is possible some of these issues (many dealing with open space=less FAR=less stories on the building) were never correct prior to the rezoning in November 2005, thus the building is illegal and should have 5 floors take off. Bo’s testimony, as well the the petition, is asking for help and oversight from CB7 and all local and State elected officials.

On behalf of CB7, Randy Peers, CB7 chair, accepted the 200+ written and on-line signatures. While there was some discussion about the petition, the Board unanimously voted to endorse the petition.

More to follow.

The Gowanus Harvest Festival on Sunday drew 1,000 people to the Yard on the Gowanus Canal. There were “pumpkin carvers, pony-riders, banjo pickers, organic juice drinkers, kiddies con strollers, etc.”–Green Brooklyn

Here are some excerpts from an email from our Greenpoint correspondent:

Do you wanna know what time it is at 143 Huron? Wander around and BEAT A HAMMER ON SHEET METAL TIME!!! Right now they are standing in a circle watching the leader/alpha male beat the metal with a stick. And I am watching them and seething in impotent rage.

Words cannot describe how much I hate these people. Yesterday the contractors for the MTA fired everything up at 7 a.m., which is their right under the law. Next 157 Green decided to do a little work. Permit-less, until 7:00 p.m. That is against the law. 143 Huron worked until 9:30 p.m. This too, is against the law. That makes 14 1/2 hours of of non-stop noise.

She continues:

You can see (and hear) these assholes breaking the law plain as day and know full well nothing is going to be done about it…I am totally convinced [they have] enough connections to motivate the DOB to turn a blind eye to what they’re doing. How else can you explain their outrageous conduct?

GL Analysis:
We do have a possible alternate explanation: the dangerous intersection of incompetence, a predisposition at the uppermost levels of city government to allow development to move forward regardless of collateral damage and a misallocation of resources that leaves the department dangerously short-handed. Whether it’s influence peddling, incompetence or worse, however, this sort of callous failure to protect a community under seige by a number of developments is nothing short of a fundamental failure of both bureaucrats and elected officials. Even worse, 143 Huron is not an isolated case of how the system is failing. It is a very common scenario that can be found across Brooklyn from Greenpoint to Gravesend and Bay Ridge to Brighton Beach.

Anything that goes on at the “Minerva Building Site,” aka 614 7th Avenue, is of interest because of the development’s role in galvanizing citizen opposition to out-of-context development in Greenwood Heights and the South Slope. Not to mention the fact that the building was actually stopped because it would have blocked the historic view from the Minerva statue at the top of Battle Hill in Green-Wood Cemetery to the Statue of Liberty. Plans for the site were resubmitted earlier this summer and were rejected by the Department of Buildings. (Such rejections, however, are often formalities during the early part of the approval process.)

Concerned Citizens of Greenwood Heights send word that:

after the ridiculous filling for 11 buildings on 100X100 lot over the summer, they are beginning to refile at 5 lots, 40′ tall, 3 floors plus basement (not sure if they are still attempting a curb cut in front of every building).

Still seems odd for the site, considering they have 4 buildings on 7th Ave and 1 on 23rd St. But, perhaps they are remodeling their plans along the lines of our Fedders-style neighbor at 716 6th Ave down the hill. Filed as 6 buildings, but just one big structure with accessory parking underneath.

The height still seems problematic at the corner, as I assume they will not want to set back. We checked the renderings we obtained from 2005 (from Green-Wood’s Battle Hill to the Statue of Liberty) and 40′ won’t cut it for the full view corridor from Minerva to Liberty…again. And some how I doubt they are going to use their allowable 20% open space coverage in the front of the property on 23rd St at the corner (which may not even be legal). Still no approved plans, but an underpinning plan from their PE filed. I guess to underpin the POS foundation that is currently there.

Given the history of the site, there will be coverage of this development every step of the way.

Both the 7 and L Trains are going to be getting improvements in service before the end of the year. The 7 will see an overall 9 percent increase in service with more trains. As for the intensely overcrowded L Train, the frequency of service will increase to a train every 3.5 minutes rather than every 4 minutes during morning rush hour. There will also be increases in midday and evening service that, according to Metro, should reduce waits “by a couple of minutes in both directions.” L Train ridership has skyrocketed 48 percent since 1998 and is expect to grow even more in the near term.

• Outdoor Rec Space at Bedford Ave and Campus Road [Brooklyn Junction]
• Number Eight on the Greenpont Ten is in the Construction Business [New York Shitty]
• Major Food & Drink Developments on N. 6th Street [INSIJS]
• A Tour of Park Slope [The Cooperator via No Land Grab]
• Assem. Jeffries Says Atlantic Yards Traffic Plan Needs Work [AYR]
• Art and Life on the Gowanus [Brklynstories]
• Secrets of Coney Island Creek Exhibit & Lecture Tonight [Kinetic Carnival]
• Shoot the Freak [Luna Park Gazette]
• Brooklyn Designers at the Green Room [Green Brooklyn]
• Is It Okay to Call a Pitt Bull “Bubbles”? [New York Shitty]
• 9th Annual Pupkin Dog Costume Contest! [Clinton Hill Blog]
• Public MCI Worldcom Phone Dies of Old Age [McBrooklyn]
• Need Steriods? Bay Ridge Would Have Been the Spot [Bay Ridge Rover]

Big Brownstoner Bonanza:

• Red Hook’s “Royal Retreat Hotel”
  
• The Bunker Gets More Paneling
• Boom and Doom for Brooklyn Hotels

Brooklyn Reading Works is holding one of its wonderful readings tonight at the Old Stone House. If you’ve never been, it’s totally worth checking out, as it’s one of the most fascinating literary series in Brooklyn. You can read more about it over at OTBKB. Here are a few details:

Brooklyn Reading Works presents poets Phillis Levin,Andrea Baker, Patricia Spears Jones, and Tom Sleigh,who are featured in the new book, Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn.

The Old Stone House at Fifth Avenue and 3rd Street. at 8 p.m. $5. donation. Includes light refreshments.

Do check it out.

We got an email yesterday from Frank Trezza, the author of Brooklyn Steel-Blood Tenacity, directing us to his website. He wrote that “I worked in the Yard from 1973 until 1980 for Seatrain Shipbuilding. We Built 4 Super Tankers, 1 Ice Breaker Barge, 8 Ocean Going Barges and started 2 Ro-Ro’s.” We’re fascinated by the all the years when the Navy Yard was a very active ship building facility and by all of the surviving structures there. (Apparently, many other people are as well, given the huge number of requests for the tour offered during Open House New York.) We were inside the Yard earlier this year when PortSide New York’s Mary Whalen was having work done there, but weren’t able to have a look around. We digress, however, Mr. Trezza’s website is full of fascinating photos. Meanwhile, he says of the book:

This book will take the reader into the world of shipbuilding where the working class of Brooklyn built VLCC’s Oil Tankers [Super Tankers], Ro-Ro’s barges and an Ice Breaker Barge inside the Old Brooklyn Navy Yard against all odds. This in itself might be interesting, but the real story is in: the daily struggle of the workers working in hellish conditions, just trying to make a living, with more than a few giving their lives in some horrible ways building these ships. As my Boss first told me when he hired me “if you can work here you can work any where!” He was not joking! The triangle of passionate dislike between the workers, management, the union [the government in the center of the triangle] are also detailed!

You can check out the site by clicking here.

Call it another sign of the changing times. Red Hook resident Chris Curen, who has contributed a variety of of excellent photos and stories to GL, emailed us the photo and the information that Ramberg Marine Inc., which is located at 37 Dwight Street, is toast. The company, which is more or less across the street from the future Red Hook Ikea is “moving to New Jersey after 82 years in Red Hook,” he writes. The company, which employs about 15 people, has sold to one of its best customers and no jobs will be lost when they move to Jersey. (Brooklyn and Red Hook pride are another matter.) Mr. Curen writes that “they they profess no connection with their moving and the IKEA/Graving Dock issue.” Readers might recall that Ikea filled in the Graving Dock at the old Todd Shipyard so that it could be used for parking; many advocates wanted it preserved to repair ships, as such facilities are in short supply in the New York area. Mr. Curen notes the key what-come-next question: “Next question: what happens to the building? KFC?” And so it goes.

We have some burned car action in Boerum-Cobble Hill-ish Brooklyn. The report circulated via the Boerum Hill Group mailing list comes from Boerum Place and Dean Street:

I was amazed yesterday morning to see a totally trashed and burned car parked on Boerum Place at the corner of Dean. Does anyone know the story on this? The super of the building across the street said the car was just fine and sitting parked on the corner at 5:00 AM. When my husband went to work at 6:30 or so, the car was on fire and surrounded by police and firemen.

And there is this detail too:

The firemen trying to hammer open the hydrant woke us up at about 5:30 and they successfully put it out, lights flashing and all. Our super told us the super on the side where the car burnt told him that a woman carrying something had asked him for directions from Boerum to Smith St early that morning and that he turned his back for a second. When he turned back, she was gone and the fire was burning.

This is not be confused with the neighborhood trash fires. (The burning car pictured here is not the Boerum Hill burning car.)

Related Post:
Trash Can Burning Season in Boerum Hill

We caught this in front of a church on Montrose Avenue near Manhattan. It’s definitely big smile material.

Carroll Gardens blogger Katia Kelly takes a ride in the time machine back to an art show that took place in 1982 at the site that it now called Public Place in Gowanus. It is the former site of a manufactured gas plant that left behind one of the most toxic parcels in Brooklyn. Bids are being submitted to redevelop it with housing. In any case, an art show called Monumental Redefined took place there in the early 1980s. Ms. Kelly writes:

Imagine an open air gallery, a sculpture garden where artists can show monumental works of art. Imagine such a thing on the polluted Smith Street and 5th Street Public Site. You are laughing, I know. But long ago, artist/sculptor Frank Shifreen did just that. For just a moment in the Gowanus’ history, he transformed the giant lot into the biggest open air art gallery in New York City…He asked 150 artists to contribute works, gave each a lot of 20 by 20 foot and turned the 5 acre abandoned lot into the coolest art space. His purpose was to encourage artists to push the limits of public art, to communicate socially and to engage the public…For many months, the works of art could be seen from the F train as it came out of the ground at the Carroll Street Station en route to Park Slope.

The artist emailed us to say:

Trucks would come at night almost every night and dump barrels of toxic waste with all kinds liquids, turned over and opened up. We had a deal wth Sanitation to pick up the trash on the sidewalk and they often would not take the stuff but call some kind of chemical specialists. I am not certain who was responsible but it was a wise-guy area and they are the carting industry. the toxic soup goes deep. I thought it was a superfund site. How can they certify it without independent testing.

There’s a lot of great detail in Ms. Kelly’s post, including some of the New York Times review of the show.

We got an email yesterday noting that the alleged Brooklyn bar bandit had been caught. (Our friends at Eater also had this report.) The detail provided is as follows:

In what can only be described as a scary display of stupidity, the guy that robbed the Bait and Tackle actually returned to the scene of the crime – where he was recognized (maybe the teardrop tattoo was a bit of a tipoff) and apprehended. Though not before he had a shot of tequila and left a two dollar tip. Moron.

Left a tip? Wow.

• More City Inaction in Action: No Help with 143 Huron [New York Shitty]
• As Expected, an Atlantic Yards Rental Tenant Suit Dismissed [AYR]
• Next Generation of Fourth Avenue Condos [Brownstoner]
• How About a Ferry to Manhattan from Greenpoint? [11222]
• Downtown Subway Station Connection Project Underway [McBrooklyn]
• Caton Place Condos Working Late [Kensington Brooklyn]
• Girl Missing in Sunset Park [WCBS]
• Former Brooklyn Arabic School Principal Suing [Sun]
• Principal Says Job Turned into “American Nightmare” [NYDN]
• Scooter Sweep in the Slope [Brownstoner]
• Bay Ridge “Drug House” Saga Continues [Bay Ridge Rover]
• Dan Rather Does Dumbo [Dumbo NYC]
• Nice Dumpster [Brooklynometry]
• Slope Colors [Velvet Sea]
• Maimonides Hospital Opens Green Wing [Sun]