You didn’t think that New Year’s Day 2009 would pass uneventfully in Coney Island? Of course, there’s the Polar Bear Club swim at 1PM. But word came down late yesterday afternoon that Ruby’s Bar & Grill (though covered with a FOR LEASE sign by Thor Equities) will be open for its Polar Bear Party from 10AM-5PM. (It’ll help award off the cold.) Also, Save Coney Island is having a protest in front of the boardwalk gate to Astroland at Noon. They’re urging people to bring signs, photos, drawings, letters, poems and flowers to add to the “shrine” at Astroland. They also want people to create signs and post them here or download images from here and print them to bring along. In a press release, Coney historian Charles Denson says:

“It is tragic that the City’s flawed redevelopment plan allowed predatory developer Thor Equities to take over and darken Coney Island. The only way Coney Island will be saved for future generations is if the Bloomberg administration modifies its unrealistic rezoning plan and preserves the existing amusement zoning in its entirety. It is hard to believe that a shopping mall developer from Bensonhurst has brought the Bloomberg administration to its knees.”

All in all, it is NOT going to be a dull day. We have also learned through one of our many Coney sources that Thor is beginning to negotiate leases with boardwalk businesses. We are told the the “Grill House is set” and the Rubys will negotiate next week. Alarmingly, one of the businesses that is allegedly not being offered a lease is Lola Staar (does this ring any bells circa 2006?). As our source put it, “I think personally going to the press so often has backfired on her.” We’re not entirely certain we’d count out the intrepid Ms. Carlin just yet, however.

[Photo courtesy of nifty pete/GL Photo Pool]

It’s an unidentified bodega somewhere in Brooklyn looking pretty cool at night.

Are you a member of our GL Flickr Pool? Please add your new photos. We love them and we love to post them for our readers to see. And, if you haven’t joined, what are you waiting for?

[Photo courtesy of jackszwergold/GL Flickr Pool]

This is an old car that has appeared on Henderson Walk in Coney Island. The photographer writes: “When the heck did this arrive? And why is it parked next to the Mexican food stand? Gotta love Coney Island!”

Here’s a free event, after you probably spent all your money on too much booze and/or other stuff this New Year’s Eve. This Thursday (New Years Day, 1/1/09!), as part of the 15th Annual Alternative day of Spoken Word Extravaganza, Mermaid Hawley and Bluesman have 6 minutes to “save Coney Island” sometime between 6-8pm (said to be closer to 8pm) at the Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery & East 1st St, over there in that Manhattan borough) with their world famous Coney Island Break Up Letters, per the email: “for the people in honor of the vision that THOR Equities will be visited
by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future…wake up and realize his dark folly!”

Get thee to Fifth Avenue near Prospect Place. Bed bugs may or may not be included, but everybody could use a little blood sucking in their lives, right?

Are you a member of our GL Flickr Pool? Please add your new photos. We love them and we love to post them for our readers to see. And, if you haven’t joined, what are you waiting for?

[Photo courtesy of Pablo 57/GL Flickr Pool]

There’s nothing we can say about this, except to note that it’s from the Dante’s Inferno ride and was eventually loaded into a storage bin.

There’s now a modest reward being offered for the Astroland Memorial collage that was stolen the other night, most likely by a collector. Tricia Vita of the Coney Island History Project informs us this sign will be going up on the gate this evening. If you have it, email merci2009@ymail.com. No questions will be asked. This means a lot to a lot of people as there are a lot of Brooklynites with broken hearts over the fate of this beloved little amusement park.

We haven’t been paying much mind to the gems that come across the transom from our dear and thoughtful friends at Park Slope Parents, but a reader brought a discussion about how to avoid “cussing” in front of the little ones to our attention. How the fuck, exactly, does one avoid dropping the F Bomb in front of Junior? Here’s one email we sample copy & paste for the benefit of readers who, in front of their three-year-old, don’t want to call someone a flaming asshole who should go eat shit and die painfully:

…Our gal is 7.6 yo and today said “What the hell?” to her father, which is unexplored language territory in our home so far. She is the second youngest of 8 cousins and she has seen them a lot over the the Holiday’s, so I think it’s copy catting. However, we her parents are not innocent either. Him more than me, and I am only guilty under extreme duress. So, the F word is aka freaking. I grew up substituting that one, though not a problem here yet. The S word is shut up according to my gal. So no dealing with S*** word yet. Just find something and retrain your thinking that starts with F, S, B, or OMG, that suits you. Or else, just work with their exposure to cusses, as in walking along 7Th Ave any day, not switching the TV channel quick enough when surfing, being around kids who have already mastered the cursing art, etc. 8mo is still young yet, and believe me, the occasional curse overheard at that age will not surpass ma da baba wawa, or stupid f’in b**** (only kidding), etc. My motto is raise them the best you can, while you can, and then just keep your fingers crossed.

That’s freaking right, gosh blummit. It also gives us an idea to count the number of curses we hear next time we walk down the average Brooklyn commercial strip.

[Photo for GL by a Special Williamsburg Correspondent]

The Khim’s grocery empire in Williamsburg is very close to a major expansion at the corner of Driggs Avenue and N. 11 Street. A special GL correspondent reports: “This a new grocery store going in on Driggs and N 11th. It is the old warehouse space where that one guy would sell his junk on Sundays. They have already begun to stock the shelves. I talked to them over the weekend and they expect to open this week or next.” The rumor is that there will be apartments upstairs. There are already Khims on Graham Avenue and on Bedford Ave. near Grand, but this would be the the King of Khims to judge by the square footage. They have also applied for a license to sell liquor at the 460 Driggs location. Another reader writes, happily of the development: “Finally a welcome food shop where it’s badly needed (although it would have been nice to have a regular grocery store). Let’s hope the prices are reasonable.”

This one kind of fell through the cracks before the holidays, as a reader wrote us about going to Hotel Le Bleu on Fourth Avenue seeking to imbibe at the lounge on the top floor. As readers may know, we’ve been calling it Tres, Tres, Tres Bleu because the whole freaking hotel is lit up in blue. The restaurant and lounge, however, which were last said to be opening in November (we thought they meant 2008) are MIA. Our reader writes:

restaurant/bar atop le bleu STILL not open. went for drink last night and dude in lobby said “it’s built, it’s ready, but it’s not open. i don’t know why.” what’s the story? kind of a giant waste, no?

Well, we’d certainly been anticipating it in a big way, but some things take so long you have no reason to look forward to them anymore.

That sound you hear is the people who used to spend their days at the old Tea Lounge on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope gazing at what is being done to the old hangout of stroller moms, their spawn and those that managed to fit in between them. We managed to stick our camera through the door yesterday before it was closed to prying eyes and all we can say is that the new Vietnamese spot replacing the Tea Lounge–whose awning is now up too–looks a lot different. Bubble tea and sandwiches and, maybe if Park Slope Parents starts a petition drive valet stroller parking.

We got an email very early this morning that a number of business owners in Coney Island have been trying to call the “FOR LEASE” phone number at Thor Equities and that they either get no answer or simply a voice mail with the name of Sam Sabin, who handles leasing for Thor in Coney. Here’s part of the email: “A few owners – Stev’es Grill House & Tommy’s souvenir – have tried to call the number now displayed on their businesses. A few times the phone just rang and rang – other times it went straight to a recording – doesn’t say Thor Equities it just says Sam Sabin – the name on the signs – we are goign to try and call several times again today.”

We have got to say that in watching hundreds of poorly built condos go up over the last five or six years in Brooklyn, we’ve rarely seen a piece of crap as flimsy looking as the gem we call the Giant Fart Cloud Building, because it replaces a cabagge processing factory that used to give the corner that distinct and lucious “who farted?” aroma. It’s gotten bigger since we last looked, too. The reader who sent us these piece of the Rising Fart Cloud writes: “We watch this building going up and are scared that is going to blow over…It is currently 5 floors, with a 6th yet to come. It is so narrow and does not look like solid construction…A new building is going up next to it (on N 10th and Roebling), not sure if it is part of the same structure or not…” Yes, it is. These will be rental buildings and we’re really curious to see if they turn out as badly as things seem to be looking.

We found this tacked to a tree on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope yesterday. At first, we thought it was a real Missing Person flier, because, God knows, we’ve sadly seen our share of those around the Slope and the rest of Brooklyn this year. Then, we we looked more closely at the photo, the only contact info is the URL of the blog itself. Shitty way to promote yourself, dude, although if you have no respect for real fliers of people or pets that are missing, it does work. (Also the tree in question is a makeshift memorial to people that died on 9/11. Most Slope residents know it well.) In any case, we decided to post your dumb as flier, minus the URL, because it’s so (a). stupid, (b). offensive and (c). an affront to everyone that lost a loved on September 11. PS: On the other hand, if this dude is really missing a smidge of advice–you should include a phone number and/or email address. Would someone be lame enough to do this in Gowanus or Williamsburg or is this just a brainless Park Slope stunt? And, by the way, should someone leave a comment with this wanker’s name or URL, unless he really turns out to be missing, we will not publish it.

[Photo courtesy of Deborah Matlack]

We’ve fallen a little behind in posting from our photo bank because of the holidays, but we love this shot that contributor Deborah Matalack sent of the McGovern Florist on Fifth Avenue across the street from Greenwood Cemetery. For some fascinating history on this building from Ruth Edebohls of CUE, click here.

A collection of reliquaries created by 5th-graders called Kids Collect! is on view at the City Reliquary from 12/17 to 1/13. The City Reliquary and PS 132 in Williamsburg, got together to teach and help the kids make their own reliquary:

Each child turned a cardboard box into a “reliquary” and gathered small personal objects in order to tell their own New York narrative, including but not limited to: Metrocards, souvenirs of NYC, precious stones, baseball cards, local restaurant take-out menus and drawings of famous NY landmarks. Throughout the process of collecting and displaying their objects, the students shared stories about living in New York, learned professional museum techniques and strategies, and built vocabulary and math skills.

Admission is on a donations basis, and visiting is by appointment only. For more information, contact The City Reliquary.
—Vaduzuvunt

[Photo courtesy of jackszwergold/GL Flirck Pool]

Just looking at this makes us miss the good old days of spring when one could nod off comfortably on the beach.

We got an email from a reader asking what to do about recycling Christmas trees, which reminded us that we refused to run information about Mulchfest before Christmas. (Trees left at the curb are also supposed to be recycled by the Dept. of Sanitation.) This year, Mulchfest will take place on Saturday, January 10 and Sunday, January 11, 2009 from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. The Parks Department’s site is here.

Click here to see all the Brooklyn chipping and drop-off locations

We call this one “Beauty is Our Business,” even on the sidewalk in Boerum Hill. We came upon this old school beauty shop hair drying chair in front of a brownstone on Dean Street. It was not in front of a beauty shop, but whoever owned had clearly no longer had a use for it. Poignant.

I have to admit, as a kid I took “Home Ed” class and learned some needlepoint. It worked out well in my Goth High-school years when I embroidered cobwebs into my jeans. Embarrassing as that is, you too can now teach your kids the art of needle-craft, why not, it’ll keep them off their damn Nintendo Wii games:

Got cabin fever? Learn how kids kept busy during the long winter months in 19th-century Brooklyn. December 26 – January 4, 1 – 3 p.m. Before video games, movies, and television, indoor games and projects helped pass the long winter days. At Lefferts Historic House, you can try your hand at needlepoint, write your New Year’s resolution with quill & ink, learn to play Nine-Man Morris, and help get the House ready for the new year.

—E.C. Stephens

[Photo courtesy of New York Public Library]

Here’s a shot of good old Prospect Park West after a bit of a snow in January 1978, about 31 years ago, give or take.

All righty. This one was brought to our attention by correspondent E.C. Stephens with the simple comment “snap!”. It was posted the Friday after Christmas, which makes it even more fun. It really is quite something for a Missed Connection although it doesn’t sound like anything was actually “missed” here:

We fucked and you know it! – m4w (Cobble Hill)
I see you everyday at Has Beans and you make me a delicious skinny double half caff latte with no foam. And then I saw you at Marquee last week and we fucked in the bathroom and you know it. Now my coffee is always wrong and you pretend like nothing ever happened. We fucked and you know it. Get over it. Ed from Sleepy’s

Different.

There is some drama and/or intrigue to report from Community Board 1, the always interesting body that covers Williamsburg and Greenpoint and deals with some very contentious issues. One of the most contentious recent ones is the status of bike lanes in the neighborhood and, in particular, those on Kent Avenue running through the Hasidic part of the community. Apparently, the chair of CB1 is removing the chair of the Transportation Committee. Here’s the email circulating from Teresa Toro, who is well known in North Brooklyn circles:

On Tuesday night, Vinnie Abate called to tell me that the executive committee had voted to request my resignation. I asked why and he didn’t tell me. I told him I wouldn’t resign. He then said that he’d “have to remove me” which is untrue, since the executive committee — according to CB1 bylaws — does not play a formal role in the appointment of committee chairs. I asked him why he was removing me and he said it’s his prerogative. He won’t tell me why.

Of course, there’s more.

[Photo courtesy of Meg Groome]

Pretty darned spectacular during yesterday’s spring-like weather.