And, now, some musical selections through the weekend:

Thursday 12/11/08
Music Hall of Williamsburg: Will Sheff (of Okkervil River) $17, 9:00pm

Friday 12/12/08
BAM Café: Brandon Ross (Virtuoso Guitarist) Free!!, 9:00pm

Saturday 12/13/08
BAM Café: TrioNada (Jazz) Free!!, 10:00pm

Music Hall of Williamsburg: Meat Puppets (Country/Punk/Psychedelic) $18 Advance/$20 Day of Show, 9:00pm

Sunday 12/14/08
Barbes: Stephane Wrembel presents The Django Experiment (Gypsy Jazz) $10, 9:00pm
—Dan Bennis

We’ve shopped at the Key Food in Windsor Terrace, and while it’s not our fave place to go, we’ve never noticed that it was especially revolting. Well, maybe we haven’t paid attention or it’s gotten worse, since we haven’t set foot in there in a long time. Here’s an email from a GL Reader just into the inbox last night:

I am completely disgusted with this store, and want to start a petition. Wondering if you can help. Their produce is rotting, and their tofu/vegetarian meat products are stored with the fruit – barely above room temp. The packages are often bulging – spoiled. And the people there have not responded to complaints. In fact the rotten food often stays on the shelf. Can you help publicize this situation? I’m about to start going door to door with a petition! Thanks.Consider the situation publicized.

If anyone that shops at the store has an opinion please do leave in the comments section so everyone can get a sense of the situation there. Nothing like some, uh, publicity to spur change.

Look, it’s a promotional video for a development in Boerum Hill and it’s trying to sell you condo. That having been said it’s worth watch to either (a). check out the condos or (b). laugh at the marketing attempt.

Bark, The Herald Angels Sing… FIDO (Fellowship in the Interest of Dogs and their Owners) is sponsoring a Holiday celebration for Brooklyn dog owners and their furry pooches.

Brooklyn dog owners: bring your canine companions and come celebrate the holidays at a morning gathering In Prospect Park. Saturday, December 13, 8 – 10 a.m. Join us for song, coffee, hot chocolate, and mulled cider; as well as chew bones and treats. Deck your dogs in festive attire and gather around for a sing-a-long of holiday favorites. Songbooks with dog-centric lyrics will be provided. Santa will be there to hand out to treats! Near the Picnic House.

Here’s hoping for nips, bites, growls or dogs taking off after bicycles or skateboards.
—E.C. Stephens

Observing a recent and fascinating blog debate (originated on Brooklynian.com) about the oldest business in Park Slope (it is most probably Neergaard’s)—set my mind reeling with another business, a most unusual structure with green domes on the corner of 25th Street and Fifth Avenue across from Green-Wood Cemetery. The Weir Greenhouse (now McGovern-Weir, pictured here) was built in 1895. The structure is not, of course, in Park Slope but has the distinction of being the only Victorian commercial greenhouse still in existence in New York City and has been in continuous use for over a century. Weir Florist was one of several greenhouses built in the 19th century near the entrance to Green-Wood (founded in 1838) and is the only one remaining today.

Though among the most fragile of building types, it has been lovingly cared for and continues to catch the eye to this day. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places since May 1984, its architect was G. Curtis Gillespie (George Curtis Gillespie), who is buried in Green-Wood. Built by James Weir, Jr., the greenhouse is not the first structure on the site. The family business was established in Bay Ridge in 1850 by James Weir, a Scottish immigrant. By 1886 the company, which was now James Weir & Sons, maintained 25 greenhouses at Bay Ridge and several nurseries in New Utrecht. In 1880 Weir commissioned a wood and glass greenhouse for the site where the business is still located. The building was designed by a local architect, Mercein Thomas, who was responsible for a large number of Romanesque Revival residences in some of Brooklyn’s finest neighborhoods. This original structure (see illustration) was a simple rectangle with the entrance contained within a corner tower with a pyramidal tower topped by a weathervane. All three Weirs lived on 25th Street in houses located near the greenhouse. This small greenhouse remained in use until 1895, when Weir applied for a permit to alter the building. The alteration was so extensive that little, if any, of the original structure survives. As he did in 1880, Weir did not turn to a greenhouse architect, but hired George C. Gillespie, who lived nearby. Gillespie is also known to have designed the Tobacco Warehouse at 84-85 South Street at the Seaport, which still exists.

Do read the rest of this fascinating story, ahead.

The store we’re writing about, which is called Deluxa, has been around a couple of months, but its owner who is a regular GL reader just brought it to our attention and it sounds cool in a major way. Here’s her email to us:

I was wanting to share with you and the readers…that I’ve opened a new(ish) vintage store in Carroll Gardens, in the former Go Fish! Brooklyn location. The store is now called Deluxa, and while I originally had most of Go Fish’s inventory, much of that has been sold and purged, so I’d love to reinvite people to the spot to check out the new merch and new pricepoints. Its been Deluxa since October, but we are really just starting to get around now to spreading the word and reaching out to let people know we are out there, especially as a great alternative to big retailers (Ikea, cough, Urban Outfitters, cough) with better style and lower prices. I’ve opened up the back room too, so there are now 3 whole rooms to shop in. We’re a great place for a unique holiday present, and of course, as always, vintage is super duper friendly on the environment. We’ve got clothing for ladies, gents, and babies (hello Park Slope!), great mid century modern furniture, housewares, dishware, brickabrac, records, and a small but growing new local music section. The website is deluxanyc.com, and I’ve also got a blog and myspace that I use fairly heavily, albeit only since the last 2 months while also opening and running my first business.

Check them out. They’re located at Located at 187 Sackett St between Henry and Hicks off the F or the G train at Carroll Street.

[Photo courtesy of nifty pete/Gl Flickr Pool]

Here’s a little bit of Christmas decorative spirit Park Slope-style.

· Fort Greene vs. Clinton Hill Business Improvement District War [NYDN]
· Atlantic Yards Fatigue? Tiny Crowd, Two Reporters Show for Anniversary Event [AYR]
· Development Watch: 348 Sackett Street [Brownstoner]
· Work Starts Again at 132 Second Place [PMFA]
· Heights Tree Lit in the Rain. You Know Who Is There. [BHB]
· Thompkins Avenue Holiday Bazaar Saturday [Bed-Stuy Blog]
· More Love for Cafe Tibet [Ditmas Park Blog]
· Brooklyn Weekend Picks [About Brooklyn]

We got an email from the Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus group (FROGG) called “Defend the Gowanus.” It’s about a new online petition calling for a cleanup of the deeply polluted canal and protecting it from development that would worsen conditions. Here’s the email:

I wanted to share this petition I created online that essentially takes an adopted resolution by the Sierra Club of New York to protect the environs of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. Some of you may be very well acquainted with Gowanus and its long industrial history, but presently there is a debate ensuing on permitting an exemption to allow for spot rezoning. This rezoning will open the development of residential housing along the waterway. This development, while promising for the community, will disrupt the environmental balance of the canal. The canal currently has not received any public funding for remediation and likely will not receive the appropriate funds going forward. Private development has committed to invest BUT in very limited capacity.

There are over 50 LETHAL pathogens in the canal which are contained by a natural state of remediation. Any disturbance will elevate the levels of toxicity and risk of exposure to nearby residents (including my family, friends and neighbors). More disconcerting is the risk of potential tidal surges that will spill the waters of the Gowanus into our adjoining communities. Gowanus is currently designated by FEMA as a flood zone.

You voice will represent the defense of the health and safety of the Brooklyn communities and our Gowanus environs. You are not obliged to sign, but your support will not go unnoticed or underappreciated. If you can click this link and look for the button on the web page which states “view whole petition” you will be able to review yourselves. The more this petition can be distributed electronically, the greater its support.

See the text of the petition ahead.

As workers continue to dismantle Astroland and put rides into shipping containers (which could conceivably be brought back if there is some agreement to reopen the park next year), things are looking very grim. We got this email from the Save Coney Island group last night that the iconic Astroland Rocket might be destroyed and sold as scrap if a home can’t be found for it. Here’s what the email said:

Help us Save The Astroland Rocket!! We have to find a new location for the Astroland Rocket soon or it will be sold for scrap metal!! Astroland will pay to relocate the rocket if we find a space for it!! It has to be somewhere secure, where people can’t vandalize it. Any ideas??

We have one idea which involves shoving it someplace, but that’s not productive and sort of an ugly image. The threat to the rocket implies that the boardwalk stands could be demolished too. Hopefully, this will be sorted out quickly. The rocket was once a ride at the amusement park.

Click through to see a pic of the interior of the Astroland Rocket.

Yesterday, we posted two big photo galleries on Curbed of the work underway at McCarren Pool. One was of the new skatepark that is being built on the Bayard Street side of the property. The other was of the renovation work underway on the arch. The later is pictured above. The former is pictured below. Go over to Curbed for dozens of pics.

It’s been a while since we got around to a Transportation Tuesday or Transportation Thursday, but when we found this deconstructed bike attached to the Carroll Street Bridge at the Gowanus Canal we knew we had to act.

[Photo courtesy of Shield/GL Fickr Pool]

It is, in its way, classic Gowanus.

For all you last minute shoppers. Though they’ll be open every weekend between now and then, the weekend before Xmas (12/20 & 12/21) the collective of fashion and product designers at Brooklyn Indie Market Partners (at Smith & Union Streets) will be donating 15-20% of their proceeds to St. John’s Bread and Life, Brooklyn’s largest emergency food provider, as part of their “Give Where You Live” campaign.
—Vaduzuvunt

The full flier ahead, if you click here.

A Message from the Brooklyn Tourism Board from jeff on Vimeo.

Curbed had this earlier. It is quite something.

This is a gorgeous and touching vid shot on the fishing pier in Coney Island that touches us deeply and that we think might move another soul or two as well, including some of our very own correspondents. We found it through Kinetic Carnival. Please take three minutes from your day and watch it.

So, here’s a heartwarming little holiday scene from Dean Street in Boerum Hill on a block between Fourtrh and Third Avenue that is made of mostly of wood frame homes. Some are rundown, but some have been lovingly renovated, showing what an architectural gem the block could be. The houses on the left in red and in blue are examples of what could be. The blue one looks especially nice right now with its decorated tree. The building under construction on the right is an example of the new Dean Street. It’s 340 Dean and when we went looking it turned out the architect is none other than the King of Brooklyn Architects Robert Scarano. The building will be a four-story structure (according to DOB paperwork), but will be 59 feet tall (which is more like a six-story building) with 8 apartments. We’d have a rendering, but almost all have been removed from the Scarano website. It appears to be replacing an old wood frame house that, to judge by the number of complaints to DOB, had been in pretty bad shape. We had another example of a, uh, contextual new building on this block on Monday.

For the record, it is a Greenpoint santa.

“Williamsburg is slowly turning into Cobble Hill. Consider the evidence: Grown-up kitchen store Whisk appears on Bedford Avenue. BoCoCa mainstay Bird opens a pop-up shop around the corner on Grand Street. And on the same block, new design store Abode offers stair runners—essential for cozy brownstone living, not so useful for 22-year-olds in crumbling studio apartments. Unfortunately, of these three new developments, Abode, at 179 Grand, turns out to be the least thrilling.” Given that the word “BoCoCa” makes us want to grab for the barf bag we stole from United Airlines for an emergency at Union Pool, the “BoCoCafication of the Burg” leads us to want to projectile vomit all over one of those nice new windows. Ugh. Life sucks and then you get BoCoCafied.–Racked

This is a trailer for a documentary about the gentrification of Downtown Brooklyn produced by FUREE. AYR had a great deal of detail about it a few day ago.

· Vigil for Bushwick Hate Crime Victims [NYT]
· Guy Stabbed for Cutting Line at Fort Greene Senior Center Fundraiser [NYP]
#183; Will Investment Analyists Finally Ask Forest City Enterprises Tough Questions? [AYR]
· Why Marty Markowitz and the Kosher Nostra Kept a Reputed Mobster From Prison [BHB]
· New York’s Finest: “Sodomy Cops” Turn Themselves In [NYP]
· Last Week’s Biggest Sales [Brownstoner]
· Former Restaurant on Smith Now for Rent as Event Space [PMFA]
· Rainbow Cafe Now for Rent [BVIB]
· Kensington 1950 vs. 2008 [Kensington Brooklyn]
· Scary Incident on Q Train Caught on Vid–Nobody Intervenes [Ditmas Park Blog]
· Hawk finds fine dining on Eighth Avenue in Slope [Brownstoner]
· Secrets of the Boobification Project [New York Shitty]

GL Correspondent Max Casey got some bad news last night while munching some snacks and checking out vids at Video Free Brooklyn on Fifth Avenue: the store, which is the only video rental spot in that section of the Slope is going to be closing. Word came from the store’s owner, who said that the level of rentals, and therefore revenue, wasn’t high enough to cover the expensive Fifth Avenue rent. THis caused Max’s ears to perk up and to convey the news to us almost immediately. Video Free Brookyn has a more established original location at 244 Smith Street in Carroll Gardens that is doing fine however. This branch, which is near Douglass, only opened in February, so it’s especially sad to see it go so quickly. That leaves Get Reel at St. Mark’s as the only other video shop in this part of the Slope and is quite a hike for those who used Video Free Brooklyn. Sadly, it’s become a Netflix world. Well, actually, it’s going to become a download world. The whole video rental business is going to seem like a quaint anachronism in about five years.

“So, in all of eight minutes, the IFC Media Project tonight tried to address how the three major New York newspapers have covered Atlantic Yards. The segment landed a body blow on the New York Daily News, treated the New York Post far more gently than it deserved, and took some swipes–only partly effective–at the New York Times…The big news comes when former Daily News reporter Deborah Kolben, who had previously worked at the Brooklyn Paper and later worked at the Village Voice, convincingly describes an episode in which “Ratner’s top people” told Daily News officials that they were unhappy with her reporting. The response: an immediate message to the Metro editor to pull Kolben off the story, without even looking at her clips. Kolben blames the request on unspecified Forest City Ratner executives. The IFC Media Project cites an unnamed source who blames it on Bruce Ratner himself.”–AYR

[Photo courtesy of Miss Heather]

Okay, it’s just some smart asses around Greenpoint that call the giant digester eggs at the Wastewater Treatment Plant the “shit tits.” Most other people, who are unfamiliar with the Great Greenpoint Megalopolis just say “What is that fucking thing?” and other simply don’t notice the plant but do notice the general Eau du Merde and says “This fucking neighborhood smells like shit.” Well, sewerage deserves good architectural treatment too and Polshek Partnership, which designed the new plant, have been recognized for their work. Yesterday, New York Magazine named the building to its best of 2008 list. It is different, even if we find it frightening in a shitty kind of way.

A quarter century from now, when the planners analyze what went wrong in Brooklyn in the early 2000s, they will have a lot to say (and none of it good) about the chain of events that started on December 10, 2003, when developer Bruce Ratner, flanked by a beaming Marty Markowitz and other public officials announced a magnficent plan called Atlantic Yards. There would be an arena for a basketball team call the Nets (stolen from New Jersey) designed by Frank Gehry. And, a sea of housing and office towers, also Gehry designed, that would become a new center for Brooklyn. By 2006, they said, the Nets would be playing ball at Flatbush and Atantic Avenues and all would be well. Taxpayers would pay little. An eyesore called the Vanderbilt Yard would be covered up and, well, we’d all live happily ever after.

Well, here we are five years later and Atlantic Yards has turned into a case study of how not to develop a major urban project. It has proceeded with a top-down arrogance that is almost unique in the annals of American planning history. The process has been one of the most anti-democratic we have witnessed anywhere in America in three decades of coverage of urban development. (Robert Moses and Richard Daley the First notwithstanding.) Neighborhoods have been excluded. City planners have had no say (not that the outcome would have been signficantly different). An epic eminent domain case and other legal battles have developed. And the process has been conducted in such a way that deep community divisions have been created that could easily have been avoided by creating an inclusive process rather than fostering a divisive and hateful one.

Deadline after deadline has been missed. Public costs have skyrocketed. Key details have been kept from the public. The mainstream media has totally abrogated its responsibility to investigate the somewhat sleazy goings on in Albany and Prospect Heights. And, in the meantime, the entire economy has changed and the financial systems has nearly collapsed. The developer has started trimming the project. First, saying that it could stall, and then noting that affordable housing would be cut and that its signature tower wouldn’t be built until a tenant was found. Even the architect involved in the project–Frank Gehry–has found his good name dragged through mud via his association with this out-of-context, community-destroying project.

There are no heroes here among the pubic officials charged with protecting the public trust. Governor George Pataki allowed the process to run amok. The Empire State Development Corp. led by the very questionable Charles Gargano practically wrote a manual on how to ram a project down the public’s throat in the most opaque manner possible. Disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer wouldn’t touch the project with a ten-foot-pole and even Gov. David Paterson has held Atlantic Yards at arm’s length. Mayor Bloomberg has embraced it. Planning Director Amanda Burden has displayed a frightening lack of familiarity with key details of one of the city most important projects. And Borough President Marty Markowitz’s conduct as booster would be deserving of a prison sentence if acting like a buffoonish booster and Nixonian hater of project opponents were a criminal offense. Sadly, they’re not. So, Marty just foams at the mouth when the opponents are mentioned and looks like a Kremlin Apparatchik on May Day 1989 when it was clear the whole shit house was about to go up in spectacular flames.

If one good thing has come of the Atlantic Yards debacle, it is that a determined opposition, led by a principled person like Daniel Goldstein who has simply refused to bend, can slow a project down for so long that the entire economy changes around it and it begins to choke on its own wretched excess like a $950 million arena built by a development firm that could be tanking. Online journalist Norman Oder has created an invaluable public record for the future of every twist and turn of this proect and we look forward to the book he should write. Lumi Rolley of No Land Grab has created an invaluable record of all Atlantic Yards Coverage. Every print reporter who has botched the job of covering Atlantic Yards–starting with the Post’s mediocre Richard Calder, should hang their heads in shame at the disservice they have done to Brooklyn and the shame they have brought on their profession. Had they been covering Watergate, Richard Nixon would probably have managed to run for a third and fourth term and G. Gordon Liddy would have become Attorney General. It would be fitting if the government launched an investigation into Atlantic Yards on this fifth anniversary–both into whether it will ever be possible to build it, what laws have been broken (and by whom) in the rush to get it done and into the entire sleazy process used to approve the project.

The rest of our analysis ahead.