Here is a concise history of the Atlantic Yards and the development—or lack thereof!—of that side of downtown Brooklyn. Don't worry, you have plenty of time to read it, this garbage will be going on until 2037, at which time, one hopes, the seas will have risen enough that we'll have had to move on to making canals down on Wall Street.
"Brooklyn is now the second most expensive place to live in America, according to a study from the Council for Community and Economic Research that was cited in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Number one, of course, is Manhattan." [Via]
The first in a month-long series on the people and peculiarities of where we're from.
If you live in Brooklyn and have any kind of affinity for animals, the odds are fair that you’ve heard about Sean Casey. He operates his shelter—Sean Casey Animal Rescue (or SCAR)—out of a cramped storefront in Windsor Terrace. The no-kill shelter takes in around 150 animals per month, providing a service that too often can’t be served by official agencies. Stop by the shop and you'll see gerbils, hamsters and domesticated rats, lizards of all possible description, as well as chattering parakeets, lonely-looking cats and, lumbering freely along the floor at comically low [...]
On June 28th, public officials, neighborhood civic leaders, parents and their eager toddlers, poured under the iconic vaulted archway of the McCarren Park Pool.
For the actual poolgoers, it was their first visit inside the building since at least 2008, when the Parks Department permitted a series of ticketed and free live shows in the pool's empty basin. For some, it was step all the way back into their childhood, when summer meant splashing around Greenpoint with thousands of their friends.
On Thursday, everyone saw what the outdoor pool had become, for $50 million, here were one million gallons of cerulean blue water with tufts of surf, a mirror to [...]
"Brooklyn has long been a home to writers." —AND THAT'S WHEN I CLOSED ALL THE TABS ON ALL THE INTERNET BROWSERS.
For the few who care about hilarity in Brooklyn politics, watching old Edolphus Towns give the finger to everyone by endorsing wonderful New York City councilman Charles Barron for his seat in the House of Representatives is just terrific—particularly as Ed Koch comes rolling out of his apartment to trash him. He's what Wall Street doesn't want! We've tried before, but now it's time to do this thing! Charles Barron for Congress!
I ventured from lower Manhattan to Prospect Park this past Saturday with all intentions of enjoying myself at The Great GoogaMooga, an unfortunately titled food and music festival featuring some of New York’s biggest, baddest-ass culinary luminaries: Blue Ribbon, Spotted Pig, Char No. 4, Co., Colicchio & Sons, Luke’s Lobster, The Meat Hook, Roberta’s—over seventy A-list vendors ready to serve a discriminating crowd. This was the festival’s inaugural year, its first crack at becoming a welcome-to-summer institution, a chance to satiate palates both rugged and refined, and a venue for all to experience Brooklyn at its most food-obsessed. But like a maple-cotton-candy-on-a-pretzel ($5), it turned out to be initially enticing—but [...]
Thar she blows! How much would you pay for an apartment in Carroll Gardens that is basically two unattractive low-ceilinged rooms on a "ground floor" plus a walk-in closet (or cozy "home office"), with a (truly) big backyard and 16 by 11 feet of storage in the basement? If you said $1,095,000, then you are 1. correct and 2. INSANE.
If you put 30% down (and WHY WOULD YOU, THAT IS MORE THAN $300K), then your mortgage and maintenance and taxes are a grand total of $5000 a month, because, oh yes, the taxes are $700 a month.
This is it. This is Peak Apartment. It's all over. [...]
Seven years ago, Jonathan Van Meter, the writer and Vogue contributing editor, published an essay in New York magazine called "I Hate Brooklyn." Here is how it begins:
"Please tell me you're not moving to Brooklyn," she said. "No, no, no," I said. "Never." "Thank God." "Why would you think such a thought?" "Something about the way you said… Brooklyn… like you'd gotten comfortable with it." "No," I said, "it's just that I've had to say it a lot lately because that's all everyone ever talks about. Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Brooklyn. I hate Brooklyn."
From there, the piece proceeds to many places you'd expect (hipsters, gentrification) and, [...]
A woman draped in a sheet climbed into an NY1 news van and allegedly attacked Vivian Lee as the veteran reporter covered a story in Cobble Hill Friday morning. The woman, who wore the white sheet over a T-shirt, sweatpants and green flip-flops, went inside the truck about 7 a.m. and began using Lee's makeup and snacking on food, Lee and a witness said. When Lee told her to leave, the woman allegedly punched the reporter in the neck.
—This happens to Roger Clark like every day though. (Relatedly, the story she was covering, of the church lightning strike killing a fellow at Kane and Clinton, [...]
LIBOR what? Barclays who? Do you have no idea what's going on? This helps. Do you want someone to explain what he did in falsely representing the bank? Here you go. Do you wish that a subway stop and a stadium in Brooklyn weren't named for the bank? Do you find it hilarious that the fines the bank paid for LIBOR manipulation are greater than the amount they promised to the Barclays Center? Oh well, nothing you can do, just be grateful it's not called Enron Field.
Ryan Sutton's one-star review. ("Sound Level: Around 80 decibels, often piercing. Date Place: If strollers turn you on.")
The Fordham Institute analyzed the fastest-whitening neighborhoods in America between 2000 and 2010, according to census data. Brooklyn had four of the most-whitened zip codes of the top 25 most-whitened zip codes in all of America. We win!
And when you map it out, those four zip codes actually make up just two areas that are contiguous. I've combined them here on Google Maps.
• First: 11238 and 11205. That's Prospect Heights, essentially, to the south, and then where Fort Greene and Clinton Hill meet. Lemme tell you, I was right living right there in the middle, on the Clinton Hill/Fort Greene border, last week, and glorious Clinton Avenue [...]
Here are just 17 seconds of the worst non-dentistry-related three minutes of my life. Did you enjoy broing down with rockstar chefs and hacky sacks at the Great GoogaMooga Festival in Prospect Park yesterday? Did you enjoy standing in endless lines? Did you enjoy it all so much that you became… whatever these dudes are? I considered derailing the train with my mind to save Manhattan as we left York St. on the F but instead I just changed cars at East Broadway like an adult.
"A regional music scene—hereafter, 'RMS'—furthers art in the same way that, say, Wisconsin furthered progressive politics under Gov. and Sen. Robert La Follette in the early 20th century. RMSes generate ideas. They lend music character…. Brooklyn has a downside. Those who abandon their RMS to come to Brooklyn risk co-option by an aesthetic Borg. Things get mushy. There’s too much input, and there’s not a lot that’s not known. Somebody’s band sounds like Howlin’ Wolf and ESG and Gang of Four, but also sounds like REO Speedwagon and Glenn Branca and The Pointer Sisters. There aren’t many secrets. There are no mountains to go over…. Artists wanted to live [...]
"Were any players to live in Brooklyn, they could perhaps shop for groceries at the Park Slope Food Co-op. The team could enjoy the antiques on display at the Brooklyn Flea." —Brooklyn! There are photos!
Once a month I get together with half a dozen moms from Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. We call ourselves Hookers, Sluts and Drug Addicts. They dubbed me a Hooker because I wear tight clothes and smile a lot. Sally, a stay-at-home mom of boys, is a Slut, because she’s always touching her body. The Drug Addict is a therapist who can drink a bottle of Cabernet in one sitting. (All names and some details have been changed so I don’t lose more friends than I already have.) Some work and some don’t. The working ones complain about their jobs and the non-working ones complain about their husbands. We go [...]
"As I kept dunking, my perspective underwent a Copernican shift. The sausage had seemed to be the center of the universe, but it turned out that it, and everything else on the plate, revolved around that mesmerizing naam phrik nuum. Though this sausage, a favorite in the Thai city of Chiang Mai, needed nothing more than a cold beer, I began dunking it into that chile paste. And then I’d dunk the Frito-size curls of fried pork rinds, and wedges of steamed kabocha squash, and long beans tied into knots. The paste, called naam phrik nuum, was hot but not chokingly so, and had some of the grassy sweetness [...]
Sometimes, the curses of living in NYC turn out to be its blessings. When you can stretch your arms out and touch both walls of your bedroom—or, both roommates—the great outdoors becomes less an escape and more of a living room. Luckily, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux had your back even before you moved in with your "boyfriend." New Yorkers have long enjoyed recreational use of open public spaces. I like to uphold that tradition with the classic picnic in the park. And sure, grabbing a slice and flopping down on someone's sweatshirt in Washington Square can be perfectly nice—and easy. But with a little more effort, [...]
Hey, how bad do you want to feel right now? Do you want to feel bone-crushingly bad? Like all the way through? Well then you're in luck! Here are the stories of a bunch of adorable New York City kids and how they are treated by the NYPD. Anthony Henry, also an eighth grader from P.S./I.S. 323, was walking to school before 8 a.m. last month when a big jeep pulled up alongside him. Five cops jumped out, he said.
“And they were all like, ‘Put your hands up’ and stuff,” said Anthony. “They checked me, checked my book bag. They threw all my books on the [...]
