A week or so ago I was at one of our favorite local kids boutiques…picking up a birthday gift, and the woman behind the counter was talking loudly on the phone, and walking through the tiny store with the phone, about how she doesn’t hire mothers with children because “they are unreliable and they don’t show up.” She was going on about how she made an exception this one time, knowing she shouldn’t have done it, and now the woman’s babysitter didn’t show up and she had to work and this is why she’s going back to not hiring women with kids.

When she got off of the phone, I put the things I was going to buy back and asked if she was the owner. When she said yes I told her that after hearing that she doesn’t hire women with children I wouldn’t be shopping there anymore. Her response was that she did hire someone with kids this time, and look what happens when she does – they don’t show up!…The irony is, this woman makes her living off of CHILDREN’S boutiques!

We are not naive and we know that employment discrimination of this kind–and other kinds–goes on every day. All we can say in this case is: Won’t someone please, please let us know which kiddie shop doesn’t like moms with children as employees.

What’s with the stories of late about people getting stoned? No, not the smoking weed kind of stoned (although, we had that too), but the people throwing rocks and things at other people kind of stoned. We came across this last night on the Prospect Heights Forum at Brooklynian:

On Saturday night my friend–a gentle man– on Underhill between Prospect and St. Mark’s was walking on St. Mark’s at 10:30 p.m. to pick up a takeout order at GEN on Washington when a group of teens startled him (to put it mildly) by suddenly hurling rocks directly at him. He ran to Gen and called 911. A sad tale.

Hopefully, that’s it on such tales for the week.

• The Debut of the “Greenpoint 10” [New York Shitty]
• Sunset Park Condo Snapshot [Brownstoner]
• Dean Street Condo Construction Thrills Neighbors [McBrooklyn]
• Considering Robert Scarano [NY Magazine]
• Coney Island is Part of New NYC Foreign Marketing Campaign [Kinetic Carnival]
• B Train Eating [Brit in Brooklyn]
• It Came from the Blogosphere [No Land Grab]
• Steel-and-Glass Newsstand Arriving on Court: Action Shots [BK 11201]
• Inside the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building [Velvet Sea]
• Nasty Newspaper Racks [Pardon Me for Asking]
• First Time with Debit Card at Park Slope Food Coop “Felt Miraculous” [OTBKB]
• Condos on Quincy? [Clinton Hill Blog]
• New Condos on Coney Island Avenue? [Kensington Brooklyn]
• Ditmas Ghost [Brooklynometry]
• UrbanDigs on Dumbo 2005 [Dumbo NYC]
• Inky, the Roebling Oil Field Cat, Has Interesting Habits [Bad Advice]

Oh, yes. The 21st annual BARC Shelter Parade and Show in Williamsburg is coming up on Sunday (10/14). The big dog parade kicks off at Noon at Wythe and N. 1st Street in Williamsburg. The show in McCarren Park starts runs from 1PM-5PM. Here’s a bit from BARC:

We’ll march proudly down Bedford Avenue with music and floats to McCarren Park in support of BARC and shelter animals. Costumes encouraged for both dogs and people! As an extra incentive, this year we will be offering cash prizes for the best superhero costumes.

After the parade winds down in McCarren Park, come enjoy a day of food, music, and friendship at our annual Dog Show. You can enter your pup in a variety of catagories to win dog-friendly treats and prizes, or you can just hang out in the company of other BARC supporters and animal lovers.

And if you’re interested in adopting a shelter animal, BARC shelter dogs will march in th parade and be around the park to meet.

You can check out our flickr set from last year’s parade here as well as our YouTube vid here.

After our post last week about kids tossing things at people and about “detritus” being flung in Boerum Hill, we got a compelling email from a resident about a different problem. This one is on Sackett Street between Clinton and Henry. They’ve even got a blog about it, which offers a fascinating chronicle of watching the block from the window. Here’s the email:

Though we haven’t been stoned, the block we live on, namely Sackett Street between Clinton and Henry, is the site of a continual problem we residents deal with on an almost daily basis: namely, local hoods who sit on other people’s stoops and smoke blunts and drink and, sometimes, antagonize/menace the neighbors. This summer alone, a friend had food thrown at her – granted, not a class-A felony, but nothing you want to happen to you in front of your home – after asking some thuggish type girls, who do live on the block, to sit on their own stoop. Every now and then there, when shipments are in (this weekend, probably, since it’s early month), there are numerous cars always pulling up, being met, and driving off. There have been other incidents, as well – including these stoopers going off on mothers, yelling and screaming and menacing – and since we moved in almost eight years ago, it has definitely gotten better.

So, does blunt smoking on the stoop increase or decrease property values?

Related Post:
Boerum Hill Stoners & People Heaving “Detritus”

There was a hearing yesterday before a panel of three judges of the Second Circuit Appellate Court about the Atlantic Yards eminent domain case. Atlantic Yards Report’s Norman Oder described the judges as “engaged but skeptical” and noted the argument ran beyond the allotted time. At issue is whether the eminent domain suit, which was dismissed earlier this year by a US District Court Judge, goes back to District Court for a trial. The suit challenging the use of eminent domain to take property to build the Atlantic Yards projects is the most prominent and critical of the cases brought against the development. Here are links to some of the coverage of yesterday’s court session:

• Eminent domain appeal faces engaged but skeptical panel [AYR]
• Atlantic Yards Opponents Appeal Dismissal of Eminent Domain Case [Sun]
• Arguments Are Heard in Atlantic Yards Case [CityRoom]
• Live from Court [DDDB]
• Atlantic Yards Goes to Court (Reprise) [The Real Estate]

• Fourth Avenue & Baltic Building Update [Brownstoner]
• “Activist Press” and the “Atlantic Yards Narrative” [AYR]
• Steel-and-Glass Newsstands Come to Brooklyn [McBrooklyn]
• Grisly, Graphic & Bloody Brooklyn Eagle Website Coverage [Gothamist]
• Five-Year-Old Finds Brother Shot in Bushwick [NYDN]
• Old Time Greenpoint Finger Biting [New York Shitty]
• Help Your Greenpoint Park [Greenpointers]
• The Rider Project [Bed-Stuy Blog]
• Third Annual Bed-Stuy Alive [Clinton Hill Blog]
• Furniture for Church Ave [Kensington Brooklyn]
• Who Murdered the Bay Ridge Victorians? [Bay Ridge Rover]
• Solomon’s Appliance Repair in Bensonhurst [Lost City]

There’s a bit more information to report on the closure of Beso–the Fifth Avenue spot that was loved by some and less loved by others. Yesterday, we reported that a source had said the restaurant was closing because of a rent increase. That tidbit was both right and wrong. The restaurant is toast, however, it has nothing to do with rent. A source deep inside the Beso executive suite has told us–and we are simply reporting what an insider says–that the owners are “tired” of running the eatery and are closing it. They own the building, we are told, and they are the ones that will be renting the space. As we noted yesterday, the adjacent Associated supermarket is likely to take over both the Beso space and the coffee shop next door, according to our source. Our source notes that the Beso owners are looking into opening another eatery, perhaps a Mexican restaurant in Prospect Heights.

[Photo courtesy of Silk Cut/flickr]

“Walk Don’t Destroy,” the Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn Walkathon Fundraiser is coming up this Sunday, October 14. It takes place from Noon-5PM, with registration at Noon and the walk from 1PM-2:30PM. This year, the walk will take place in Prospect Heights. Registration and Kick-Off is at Freddy’s Backroom, 485 Dean Street @ 6th Ave. The walk will go up Flatbush Avenue to Grand Army Plaza. It will circle the Plaza and go down Vanderbilt Avenue. The total distance is about 1.5 miles. Post-walk festivities are from 2:30PM-5:00PM at Soda Bar at 629 Vanderbilt. For more information and to register, click here. The proceeds support the ongoing DDDB legal fight against the Atlantic Yards development.

Anyone that walks down Prospect Park West on Thursday around Ninth Street and notices a little commotion around 11AM will be happening upon a visit to the park by France’s Consul General and Parks Commissioner Adrain Benepe. The event is a celebration of the restoration of the Lafayette Monument (now you know what the large monument at the Ninth Street entrance is, if you’ve never paid attention). The guest of honor will be François Delattre, who is consul General of France in New York. The background info says, in part:

To honor the 250th anniversary of the birth of the Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), a group of French-American citizens, with the support and encouragement of the Consulate General of France, raised funds for the restoration of the Lafayette Monument at Prospect Park, Brooklyn. The nearly ten-foot-high bronze relief by Daniel Chester French (set in a picturesque pink granite stele designed by architect Henry Bacon), was erected in 1917 at the 9th Street and Prospect Park West entrance to the Park…Restoration work on the Lafayette Monument in Prospect Park was undertaken by the staff of the Parks Department’s Citywide Monuments Conservation Program. The Monument was initially conserved in 1988 through Adopt-A-Monument, a joint venture of the Municipal Art Society, the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation, and the NYC Art Commission.

So, next time you sit on the monument, you will know upon whom you are resting.

There are few topics that provoke more reaction than the quality, or lack thereof, of internet service (except the Postal Service). So, we were amused to come across some emails getting at the topic of crappy internet service in Carroll Gardens & Boerum Hill and whether Road Runner is better or worse than Verizon DSL or vice versa. (What about FiOS? Well, that would seem to be an alternative that will take some time.) Regardless, here is some of the first email:

I have been having a serious problem with my internet connection for the last 2 weeks. Internet is part of my Time Warner Cable service. For the last 2-3 weeks it comes and goes. I have had 2 repairmen out who have said there’s nothing wrong. I’ve replaced the modem. And still this morning it was out for 2 hours. When I was on the phone with them just now the agent said that as far as he could see 10% of the modems in my immediate area were out at that time! That’s a ridiculously high percentage that regulators would like to know about!

And a response:

I was having connectivity problems for many months. On and off from minutes to hours to days…I got tired of calling, tired of waiting for repair to arrive, and it was preventing me from doing some of my job. I can’t imagine how people who always telecommute cope with the service disruptions.

Which leads us to an opinion about DSL:

Verizon can be a total nightmare. Ask anyone on Warren St. between Bond and Nevins. I also have a friend who has DSL who says it was great at first, but as they add more customers it has slowed considerably and goes out often. After all they don’t add cable. They just add demand. That is why most of us gave up on Verizon for phone service (or the lack of it).

It would seem to be a case of picking one’s poison and living with it. Our own experience with Road Runner is that it has been fairly reliable in the last eight or nine months after being nightmarish for five or six months before that. A technician was able to make some wiring-related tweaks that greatly improved reliability.

[Photo courtesy of Silk Cut/flickr]

Today we have one death to report and one rumored death that turned out to be just that–a rumor.

1) Beso, the Fifth Avenue Latino spot, has gone to the big Tortilla De Huevos in the sky. It closed yesterday, reported because the landlord jacked up the rent significantly. (We hear it was by many, many thousands of dollars a month.) Speculation has already begun on which bank will open a branch in the space. (Just kidding. Or not.) The early rumor is that the Associated market next door will take over the space as well as the coffee shop next door and open an organic food department. The owner of the coffee shop–which we think has the best old school sign on Fifth Avenue–is said to be retiring.

2) Red Hot on Seventh Avenue is alive and well. A rumor had been making the rounds that it was closed as it had been closed for a couple of nights. Turns out the restaurant was only redoing its floors as part of a slight upscaling of the space. Red Hot is very much open, with the usual big sign with the usual specials taped to the front door.

• New York Proposing Hurricane Insurance Fund [NYT]
• Calling the Department of Buildings. Anyone Home? [newyorkshitty]
• Looking at 210 South First Street [Brownstoner]
• Atlantic Yards Construction Update [No Land Grab]
• Inside the Williamburgh Savings Bank Building [Lost City]
• Inside Litchfield Villa [Velvet Sea]
• Columbus Day in Bensonhurst [Right in Bay Ridge]
• Saving Jamaica Bay’s Marshlands [NYDN]
• Interview with a Coney Island Veteran [Kinetic Carnival]
• Halloween in Prospect Park [About Brooklyn]
• Performance Art Line at Future Trader Joe’s [A Brooklyn Life]
• Walgreens is Here to Stay [Kensington Brooklyn]

Most bars and clubs have their fans, and their detractors. While some of the latter are jaded drinkers looking for a better spot, a large number are neighbors dealing with noise outside and club goers projectile vomiting on their front steps. We take the case of this person who dislikes Lost & Found in Greenpoint. The email comes via the Community Board 1 email list:

I’m posting because I just called 311 to complain about excessively loud music coming from Lost & Found (113 Franklin Street at Greenpoint Avenue). The place usually always keeps its doors and windows open, and when they have live bands the noise is unbelievable — I live up Milton Street around the corner and I can hear it from here.

If you’re pissed about the loud music coming from the place, you should know that CB1 is considering its license renewal application at this Wednesday’s board meeting. (October 10 at 211 Ainslie Street/Manhattan Avenue, sign up to speak by 6:15.) Also, PLEASE call 311 to complain, AND please give your complaint number to the CB1 staff (718 389 0009). It really does help when CB1 can follow up on complaints, and we can all work with the local precinct to make sure the club’s behavior improves.

We wonder how many small dramas like this play out every day around Brooklyn.