neighborhood news

Important Local Religious Observance Endangered

Photo: jasonlam’s flickr/www.flickr.com/photos/mesohungry/

For certain segments of New Yorkers, the most important, religiously-observed part of their Sunday morning routine involves one coffee, two bloody marys, and a lot of gossip. But in North Brooklyn, the right to brunch as one wants to brunch is under fire. As the Brooklyn Paper and the Post report, Community Board 1 plans to enforce a statute that prevents restaurants from serving outdoors on the sidewalk before noon, so as not to interfere with people headed to church, according to a board spokesman.

Of course, if you’ve been to Williamsburg on a Sunday lately, you may have noticed that there isn’t exactly a stampede of churchgoers crowding the sidewalks. Community Board No. 1 has also recently tried to crack down on the expansion of the area’s bar scene by floating the idea of a ban on liquor licenses. The brunch crackdown looks an awful lot like another sally from longtime residents in the larger battle over the neighborhood’s changing character. But brunchers (or gentrifiers, if you’d rather call them that) have one ace in the hole, at least on this issue: They’re not up and about and ordering an egg-white omelette by noon. Please.

Important Local Religious Observance Endangered