Leave it to the Park Slope Food Coop to periodically attract attention for interesting reasons like banning bottled water and plastic bags. This time, the Coop is considering banning all products imported from Israel because of that nation’s actions in the Gaza. In Red Hook, people might shrug. In Park Slope, which has a large and diverse Jewish community, it could start a neighborhood war. The report comes, oddly enough, from the Jewish Daily Forward, rather than any Slope-based blog or discussion board. Here’s a snippet:

Located in the heart of Brooklyn, near Prospect Park, the Park Slope Food Coop is at the nexus of the borough’s many diverse Jewish populations. From the liberal Jews of Park Slope to the Hasidic Jews of Crown Heights, the coop is one of the few places in Brooklyn where Jews of all denominations converge in a shared mission: to buy natural foods at reasonable prices. But the co-op’s unusual Jewish character is being tested by a proposal to ban products bought from Israel, such as the persimmons and red peppers that are currently in the produce aisle. Since Israel’s Gaza operation, there has been a rash of campaigns around the world to divest from Israel and to boycott the Jewish state. At Hampshire College this month, a spat ensued when a pro-Palestinian student group erroneously announced that the school was the first American college to divest from Israel. Israeli tennis star Shahar Pe’er was denied a visa to play at a major tournament in Dubai, and Britain has experienced ongoing efforts to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

The proposal at the co-op is not likely to be economically meaningful; perhaps a few shipments of vegetables are at stake. But the debate is taking place in a rare hotbed of diverse Jewish life. “There are so many Jews who shop there, there are so many Israelis who shop there, there’s a huge number of frum people from all over Brooklyn who shop there,” said Rabbi Andy Bachman of Brooklyn’s largest and most active reform congregation, Beth Elohim, “so my guess is that if it passes, and I want to emphasize that I don’t think it will, they will lose a lot of members.”

As far as we know they’ve been losing members since Fairway opened a couple of years ago.

UPDATE: Several commenters have noted the Jewish Daily Forward story is inncorrect about the Coop (please take that up with that reporter and that publication, this is simply what we call a “re-blog” in the trade, something which we do very little of for these very reasons) and the Coop claims its members has actually increased from 12,000 to 15,000 since Fairway opened.

Here’s some jen-you-whine old school punk. The Buzzcocks with Howard Devoto before he split to form Magazine performing Breakdown in 19fucking76. All of which only serves to remind us to price space at Green-Wood Cemetery.

Just like the sign says.

Mark today on your calendar as an important day in Brooklyn real estate history: The day on which the North Brookyn real estate bloodbath began. (Somebody cue up REM doing “It’s The End of the World” but do not add the words, “and I feel fine.”) Crain’s reports that Magic Johnson’s Viridian condo at 110 Green Street has filed for bankruptcy. It is the first of what will be dozens of developer bankruptcies and we don’t feel particularly smart for having said two years ago this bloodbath would happen. A perceptive chimp could have predicted the horror that is about to begin to unfold in North Brooklyn. Per Crain’s:

According to the filing, the developer is now following an increasingly popular path by converting the Viridian’s units from condos to rental apartments. The company also revealed that it has had talks with Citi-Spaces Real Estate Services about marketing the apartments and with Fannie Mae and other lenders about possible financing. The developer expects to generate rental revenue shortly. “The demand for apartment rentals appears relatively stronger than the demand for condominiums,” the filing said. 110 Green Street filed for bankruptcy in the Eastern District of New York on Feb 5. The developer has two loans on the property, one senior loan for $36 million from Bank of New York and a second for $12 million in mezzanine financing from The Canyon-Johnson Urban Fund. CJUF is a joint venture real estate fund between Canyon Capital Realty Advisors and Mr. Johnson’s Johnson Development Corp. The Viridian is CJUF’s fifth project in New York City where the fund has invested a total of $105 million. Bank of New York has refused to make the final advance on its existing mortgage loan and this has placed a strain on the developer’s cash flow and has contributed to its Chapter 11 filing. Currently, the Viridian is appraised at $39 million.

Word is the building can be had for $65M. You do HATE to see that happen.

The Historic Chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery Book Talk and Trolley Tour is back with the acclaimed novelist and essayist Peter Quinn. Mr. Quinn will be reading at 1pm on Sunday, 3/8, from his much celebrated, award-winning historical novel “Banish Children of Eve,” a story of Irish immigrants during the 1863 Civil War draft riots in New York City. Following, there will be a book signing and the ever-popular Trolley Tour through Green-Wood , conducted by cemetery historian, Jeff Richman. The reading is free, tho with a $5 suggested donation, and $20 ($10 for Historic Fund members) for the trolley tour. For more information, directions or to reserve your seat, check out the Green-Wood Cemetery website, email info@greenwoodcemetery.org or call 718.768.7300.
—Vaduvuvunt

[Photo courtesy of Be in Brookyn]

Ha. Now that we’ve got your attention, this is an item about what happens when people live in glass houses. We don’t often re-blog the material of other bloggers, but any items that mention Number One or Number Two are certain to get us to bend the rules. So, here’s an item we came across on a newish blog called Be in Brooklyn that seems to show promise if the bloggers don’t do the Three-Month Flame Out Thing that is oh so common in this business when people discover that it’s hard work and burn out. The title is Peeing on Eastern Parkway:

Perhaps On Prospect Park, the new glass apartment building at One Grand Army Plaza, doesn’t leave enough to the imagination. For lack of a curtain or screen, one resident seems to have blocked the view into a room (perhaps a bathroom?) with cardboard.

Actually, it seems more like a living room to us so they may not be taking a whiz, but doing something far more interesting and perhaps erotic. It never ceases to amaze us that people who pay nearly a milllion dollars or more to live in a glass condo resort to using cardboard boxes to cover their windows temporarily. We can’t wait to see either (a). how many people decide to live like exhibitionists and how many Brooklyn pervs train their cameras on them and create a new Flickr Group or (b). what this lovely building ends up looking like with all the freaky window coverings. Note to condo association: require uniformity. We are so looking forward to the Age of People Living in Glass Houses. On the bright side, the cardboard probably keeps the Meier Building from being a bird killer.

It took us a while to figure this one out after we came across the building above at Bedford and Gates Avenues, which is rising pretty quickly. The official address listed on the site is 315 Gates Ave, which turns up nothing with the Department of Buildings. But search 313 Gates, and bingo, you find the Great One, our very own Hot Karl Fischer. Now, to us, this is an exciting discovery. Not unlike finding out that you invested your life savings with The Ponz, Bernard Maddoff. And our Karl is giving Bed-Stuy a Big Hot One. It’ll be six stories tall and have 67 apartments. Condos or rentals? You decide. We know what our conclusion is, and it’s not the former. It breaks our hearts that there is no rendering, as His Hotness stopped updating his website a long time ago. If anyone feels like slapping the Hot Karl rendering on us, we’ll give you a one-year free subscription to GL. Operators are standing by, as always, at thegowanuslounge (at) gmail (dot) com.

Hunan Wok on Seventh Avenue went to the big wonton in the sky, as we reported in January. Today we can report that its replacement, Park Slope Farm, has just opened. It’s at 106 Seventh Ave., not far from Union Street. It’s a 24-hour spot, which will make it quite welcome to those for whom it convenient or for those, you know, just stumbling down Seventh Ave. at 3AM.

There are many things we could say here, but we’ll simply note that this rottweiler (mix) and this very cool pig met in McCarren Park last week. They get along quite well. Maybe next we could get a rottweiler playing with skateboarders vid. We understand that some of them are REALLY into them.

Just in case you can’t get enough GL here, we’ve started up our Twitter feed. Please follow us. Our posts are there and as time goes on there going to be more off-the-cuff and personal stuff. In other words, we’re going to be using it to communicate with you off the blog. We’re very, very excited. Tweet. Tweet.

If this car is so “smart” why is it going to Methodist Hospital in Park Slope? It wouldn’t be going to the Emergency Room from Hell, would it? God, that would be pretty stupid. Stupid Car. But smarter than going to LICH, we suppose. On another topic, we know Methodist met with Park Slope Parents about the shitty care people were alleging they were giving out in their Emergency Room, but did they ever set up a meeting with the community at large they serve? Uh, we don’t think so. We apologize if we missed something and will clear up the misunderstanding right away, but Methodist appears to have totally dismissed the concerns of average Park Slope residents while toadying to a local interest group. But, it’s possible we missed the general community meeting it would seem they would have been morally obligated to hold and surely they understand that there’s a bigger community out there they serve from which they make hundreds of millions of dollars every year, often via taxpayer subsidy. Darn. We can’t even do a stupid Smart Car post without bitterly bloviating into Cyberspace.

Missed Connections come in all forms and styles and often our cup runneth over. So, we’re going to continue taking a short break from development, zoning, blight and the like and deal with something to make (some people) laugh:

Your dog was trying to bone another dog in the park – m4w – 25 (Greenpoint)

So I was walking around town with a friend and we stopped and watched dogs play in a park in greenpoint. Two dogs, in particular, were trying to have sex with one another. One of them was yours and I thought I caught you taking a glimpse at me as I was laughing at the sight of two male dogs trying to bone. You wear thick, horn-rimmed glasses (like me) and a cool pair of shoes. Too shy to say hello but obviously interested in going out for coffee/whatever and getting to know one another.

Arf. Arf. Arf.

We’re thrilled to introduce you to our new GL Music Editor who’s going to be serving up a wide variety of musical content on GL, which is something we’ve been wanting to do for a loooooong time, because we know that Robert Scarano and Hot Karl Fischer don’t float everyone’s boat. His name is Eliot Wagner and his knowledge of Brooklyn music and the NYC music scene runs deep and wide. We have given him very specific instructions–to do as he wishes and bring music to GL readers. Please allow him to introduce himself:

You’ve heard this all before: the record industry is doomed if it isn’t quiet dead yet; radio in New York basically sucks. Yet, if you like music and it is part of your life these are good times (economics aside): music these days is alive, well and flourishing. Particularly in Brooklyn. Especially in Brooklyn.

What we will be doing here at GL Music is uncovering music and letting you know when we find something that we think is worthwhile. We’ll tell you about the musicians, we’ll go to their shows and we’ll tell you about interesting places to see music. We’ll find some nifty videos for your viewing and listening pleasure, and we’re working on getting a Brooklyn music calendar for you. We’ll have our own point of view. You might find a “buzz” band here; but you’ll also find musicians who are great at what they do and have labored in the clubs but don’t get the recognition that they probably should get. You’ll find that we run the gamut from loud young rock bands to quieter singer-songwriters. So welcome, and we can’t wait to get started.
—Eliot Wagner

Friends, when the rezoning stuff hits the fan in Canarsie, you know you are dealing with some serious stuff. Yesterday, City Planning announced plans to rezone that far off neighborhood and make some major changes to a 250 block area. The rezoning area is generally bounded Foster Avenue to the north, Fresh Creek Basin and E. 108th Street to the east, the Belt Parkway and Seaview Avenue to the south and Paerdegat Basin and Paerdegat Avenue North to the west. The existing built character is predominantly low-rise with residential blocks one- to three-stories in height and commercial or mixed use buildings along retail corridors (Rockaway Parkway, Flatlands Avenue and Avenue L) containing a mix of one- story commercial buildings and one- to four-story, mixed-use buildings with ground floor retail. A City Planning press release says the “sensitively–tailored, 250-block contextual rezoning would be the largest rezoning under the Bloomberg Administration in Brooklyn. The proposal underscores the Bloomberg Administration’s neighborhood preservation and sustainable planning strategy and would protect Canarsie’s neighborhood character and strengthen its retail corridors.”

More Canarsie rezoning ahead.

· Just Slap Us Hard: Last Week’s Biggest Brooklyn Sales [Brownstoner]
· Jewish Press Building for Sale! [Vos lz Neias]
· There’s a Brooklyn in New Zealand! Do They Have a Carroll St.? [FW]
· Oh, to be Young and Uninsured [NYT]
· What’s Happening on Van Brunt? [Gothamist]
· Watching 18-20 Gerritsen Place [Brownstoner]
· Gerritsen Beach Kids LOVE the New Bus Shelters [GerritsenBeach.Net]

[Click to enlarge to make it easier to read]

You read it here first, friends, although we are certain that you will read this “original discovery” elsewhere shortly–by noon at the latest. (Coincidence and all that. It blows one’s mind when it happens.) La Bagel Delight, that Park Slope institution on the corner of Fifth Street and Seventh Avenue, about which nearly everyone in the neighborhood has a strong opinion pro or con, is moving. The thing is, they’re not moving far. They are moving into the empty space left in the old D’Agostino’s Building next to the Five Guys burger place. The sign in the window is above. Hoooly Park Slope Diaper Poo. In retail terms, it’s a big fat zero. A vacant space is occupied and an occupied space is vacated. It may indicate that the bagel market is recession-proof, which could be the most important thing we learned yesterday.

We don’t know what’s up at City Point, the once grand development planned at a property originally owned by developer Joe Sitt–the Galleria Mall that he promised to turn into the “Belaggio” of shopping malls. (Guess “Bellagio” is Italian for sell it and tear it down?) In any case, what’s signficant about this, other the fact that the project is shrinking faster than one’s (deleted) in the waters off Coney Island this time of year, is that no work has been done on the project in months. Back in November, Brownstoner reported:

We had heard through the grapevine that the changing market conditions had led Acadia Realty Trust, the project’s developer, to go back to the drawing board to reconsider the mix of residential, office and retail. But fear not: On Friday, they filed a New Building application with DOB. It’s unclear to us whether they are filing the project in stages, but this building is a lot shorter than previously planned. The original plan called for 500,000 square feet of retail, 250,000 square feet of office and over a million square feet of hotel and residential space. The new app calls for a 16-story, 268-foot-tall building with almost 900,000 square feet of space; it appears from the application that this is all commercial space. A call to the developer for clarification was not returned.

Talk about the Castration School of Development. What interests us is that Acadia hasn’t even bothered to complete demolition in any way, shape or form. The photo shows that foundations of the old mall are still in place. The steel columns of the old Toys R Us are still there, and frankly, a 12-year-old could gain access to the site because it’s so poorly maintained. So, no more talk of 60+ story sharp phalluses of offices and apartments pentetrating the Brooklyn sky. Okay. The freeze on work, however, tempts us to put this if not in our Dead Pool of Rotting Corpses of projects that will blight the landscape with emptiness, in the Pool of Troubled Ones. We would also toss this puppy into our Blight Me collection of foul developer blight, but what this wasteland and crumbling, cheap blue plywood fence replace was a blight on the landscape, anyway. The parking garage on Flatbush Avenue was one of the few Brooklyn demolitions we’ve cheered. In any case, it certainly does show that Mr. Sitt knew when it was time to take the money and run. Now, the question is, what’s Acadia going to do with this land in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Is it shovel ready, maybe?

Come on. Blight me. You know you want to.

So much for the big plans to sell Starrett City. They have been killed by a combination of recession, a dead credit market and the delusions of owners that they get a price that won’t fly in 2009. The deal is D.E.A.D. Per the Times:

The owners of Starrett City, the country’s largest federally subsidized housing complex, have abandoned their heady dream of selling the property for more than a billion dollars. Starrett City, with 5,881 apartments in 46 towers spread across 140 acres, nearly sold for $1.3 billion in 2007, but that deal was blocked. Now it is off the market. The possible sale of the housing complex, long a haven for working and middle-class families, had unsettled tenants. The owners, a group of investors led by Disque Deane, cited the faltering economy and a lack of financing as the reasons. But the sale may have foundered over price, said Donald Cogsville, who until Monday led a consortium of nonprofit organizations and developers that had been negotiating to buy Starrett City for the past two months. Neither side would discuss details of the proposed sale, although some real estate executives familiar with the talks said that the group had offered about $700 million.

The irony is that had the bloated $1.3 billion 2007 deal gone through, the Feds would probably be bailing out the buyers with taxpayer money at this very moment. No worries. We are certain that by 2015 all will be back on track.

On Wednesday (2/25), there’s a screening and discussion of the anti-gentrification documentary “Some Place Like Home” at 7pm at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church (85 S. Oxford St b/w Fulton/Lafayette). For more information check out their website. But, if that don’t interest you or your still in a tangle about our contemporary hell on earth, on B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) is having a discussion about human rights in Gaza at 7pm at the Brooklyn Friends Meeting House (110 Schemerhorn at Boerum). Ummm… yeah. Not really sure how the two are related, but they’re being promoted together and this is the word from the bird… that’s tweeting all over Blog Town.
—Vaduzuvunt

This is the late, great Ofra Haza, the Israeli singer who died of complications related to HIV/AIDS on February 23, 2000 at the age of 43. This song is dedicated in the same spirit of, well, you know…love…as the subway shot.

[Photo courtesy of mugsniffer/GL Flickr Pool]

Our prolific photographer writes: “Peace and love graffiti at the entrance to the Nassau Ave. G train station along Norman Ave. in Greenpoint.” We could do a snarky dedication, but it’s really not necessary. They get it. And we don’t mean the MTA.

[Jurassic Cigar Store (credit: Scott Specht)]

The Municipal Art Society is hosting another meeting tonight to present (or reallly re-present) the work of its design team and all the ideas for Coney sent in by average people. Here’s a bit from the email:

The Municipal Art Society will present submissions to the ImagineConey initiative by members of the public and design professionals. Presenters will include architects Frederick Schwartz, Philip Tusa, Henry Jones and others. MAS staff will also present the results of the design workshop (charrette) held last November in which an international team of designers, economists and creative producers participated. Presentation begins at 6:30 p.m., 457 Madison Ave., Free but reservations strongly recommended.

More info on the presentation, plus an RSVP number can be found here. That having been said we urge the MAS to lobby as hard as humanly possible with every editorial board in town and every player in this game for an emergency interim strategy to keep Coney alive over the next five years. Otherwise, this is all a very, very sad exercise because we’re painting pretty pictures of a corpse.

A couple more images ahead.

This is a from a postcard we found up for sale on eBay from a photo taken sometime in the 1950s. The large building on the left is the Half Moon Hotel. Demolished, of course.

[Photo courtesy of DumboNYC/GL Flickr Pool]

We’re excited. This is, we believe, our first ever Dumbo Street Couch. It’s in front of Powerhouse Arena and if we’re not mistaken, we’re seeing two couches and a matress.

Take an interesting little trip through many parts of Coney Island in 2000, including the non-tourist kind of ones.