Is Schnabel’s Palazzo Chupi in Crisis? Schay It Isn’t Scho!Is Julian Schnabel’s big, pink Palazzo Chupi in the West Village so sleepy that the doormen are giving tours to any old passerby? That and more blasphemous rumors from Sunnyside Gardens, Dumbo, and Park Slope in today’s boroughs report.
ByTim Murphy
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In Greenpoint, the Rainbow Is Somewhere Under an Oil SlickIf you were Lady Liberty, they’d pay $150,000 to see if it was safe for people to walk on your head. That’s status! Plus news from Crown Heights, the LES, Clinton Hill, and Wash Heights, in the week’s final boroughs report.
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Chelsea to Get the ‘Ritz-Carlton of Gentleman’s Clubs’Will A-Rod really move to 15 CPW? Will we be able to watch strippers and eat steak and feel classy all at once in Chelsea? Tough questions abound in today’s boroughs report!
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The Maple-Syrup Smell Returns!Crown Heights unites against a homeless center, Snug Harbor gets ready to rock, and more in our week’s-end boroughs report.
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‘Jeffersons’ Producer Moves On Up to Wrong SideWhat’s more dangerous, crossing the street to the park in Prospect Lefferts, having pot smoke blown in your face in Crown Heights, or living amid a bunch of rich bankers on Central Park West? You decide … in our daily boroughs report!
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Notorious B.I.G. Biopic Returns to Bed-StuyThe Long Island City sculptor behind last night’s ‘Gossip Girl’ art, a possible hotel for part of Williamsburg’s Domino plant, misplaced political graffiti in Bushwick, and more in our daily boroughs report.
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Cobble Hill May Remain Without a Trader Joe’s After AllBedford-Stuyvesant: SpongeBob SquarePants, a Care Bear, a tiny Santa, and various scary baby dollies gathered here recently for an alfresco forum on gentrification and its effect on the area’s creepy marginalized toy population. [Curbed]
Cobble Hill: A rumor’s out there that Trader Joe’s is not coming here after all. Cobblers may have to keep schlepping their little sustainable satchels to Union Square for that red eggplant stuff. [Cobble Hill Blog]
Crown Heights: The Lubavitchers are building more housing here to accommodate all their babies, but some sources say they’re having fewer kids all around, from eight to ten per family to a streamlined, downright Euro-chic six. [Brownstoner]
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A Chabad BlogsAstoria: Hm, if we get on the list now, can we make it into this de-gorgeous affordable housing complex for the elder set by the time we’re 65? If our income stays where it is now, we know we’ll qualify. [OuterB]
Crown Heights: The Chabad Orthodox sect here has a totally pimped-out ride memorializing the late, great Rebbe Schneerson. And did you know they also have their own blog? They’re so now! [Curbed]
Harlem: At P.S. 161 on Convent Ave., the teachers park on the sidewalks! Do they think they can get away with this just because they make subsistence wages? We think not. [Streetsblog]
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Missing the Old ‘Treats’ of the Meatpacking DistrictChelsea: It used to be the tranny hookers on 14th Street who advertised as “Not too fancy, always delicious!” Now it’s just the Treats Truck. [Vanishing New York]
Crown Heights: If the Slope’s old armory gets to become a swank new athletic center, why not the one here? That’s what council member Tish James wants to know… [Brownstoner]
Dumbo: Remember 2005, when it wasn’t completely certain the neighborhood was going the way of a bourgeois, sanitized, amenity-rich enclave? Seems so long ago… [DumboNYC]
Hell’s Kitchen: Time Out New York learns that the hood ain’t just for thugs and tramps anymore, scoring it higher than the East and West Village. [Hell’s Kitchen NYC]
Park Slope: OMG, the new debit-card machines at the food co-op actually work. That’s so awesome! [Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
South Slope: What would this fifties family think if they knew that the home they vacated to make room for the Prospect Expressway is now the site of a dumpy unused park? That’s a shondah. [Icky in Brooklyn]
Upper East Side: What we love most about this high-profile battle between a laundromat and a customer is that the launderer apparently changed his name from Todd Ofsink to Todd Layne. Isn’t having “sink” in your name a good thing for a launderer? [78thand2nd]
in the magazine
Summer of Sam Revisited: The 1977 Blackout Thirty years ago tonight, the lights went out in New York City. Unlike the placid blackout of 2003, the 1977 blackout plunged a weary, wary city into inky mayhem. Fires burned in Bushwick. Looters tore into Crown Heights. A significant chunk of Broadway was ablaze. Damages went into the hundreds of millions. And no one got shot. In a special issue on the blackout published on August 1, 1977, New York’s Thomas Plate wrote about what the cops did and didn’t do that dark night. “ [I]t is still somewhat reassuring to know that the NYPD’s behavior during the blackout was far more thought out than Con Ed’s.” Considering what happened in Queens last summer, that is reassuring indeed.
Why The Cops Didn’t Shoot [NYM (pdf)]
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Highs and Lows in Crown HeightsCrown Heights: The area may be landmarked and all, but the state assemblyman was charged with DWI in Albany last night. [NY1]
Flushing: After a bus knocked over a monument in Flushing Meadows Park, the Parks Department opted to right it without repairing the giant missing chunk. [Queens Crap]
Gowanus: Happy first birthday to Gowanus Lounge. Here’s to a year of development and sludge coverage. [Gowanus Lounge]
Greenpoint: What the hell was that piece of cauliflower attached to a medieval torture machine spotted yesterday on Cayler Street? [Newyorkshitty]
Upper East Side: It’s not the Stanhope Hotel anymore. Rebranding renders the luxury condo “995 Fifth.” [Curbed]
Vinegar Hill: Not even John Starks could convince people to buy a condo at 99 Gold Street the building is turning rental. [DumboNYC]
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You’re Now Priced Out of Crown Heights, TooChelsea: If you want to keep your job at the (historically and refreshingly) unfabulous McBurney Y, you better be edgy. [Chelsea Blog]
Crown Heights: Behold yet another gentrification benchmark: the first $1 million-plus condo. [One Hanson Place]
Dumbo: Disagreement among residents (for) and developers (against) about landmarking the area is prompting sure-to-be a contentious public hearing. [DumboNYC]
East Village: Opponents of a new NYU dorm on 12th Street continue to fight construction, which has been going on for eight months. The new target? Air rights. [Runnin’ Scared/VV]
Flushing: Whatever that big box going up on 163rd Street is going to be, it’s going to clash with the traditional homes next door. Did somebody say “stop-work order?” [Queens Crap]
Upper West Side: Residents (including, probably, Bill Moyers) fear that the Landmarks Commission has given New-York Historical Society the green light for changes including a view-crushing 23-story condo on its property. [NYS]
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What Do the Fortune-Tellers Know About Bay Ridge?Astoria: Got some genius idea for something fun to do in the waterfront park? Don’t hold your breath for a MacArthur … but apply for one of these mini-grants to bring your brainstorm to life. [Joey in Astoria]
Bay Ridge: Looks like knowing the future really confers the business edge: These days, fortune-tellers are the only storefronts hanging in there. [Brooklyn Paper]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: An entrepreneur’s poll of what new businesses are needed has unleashed a flood of pleas for nice groceries and wi-fi–enabled cafés. What new digs would you like to see in Bed-Stuy? [Brownstoner via Brooklyn Record]
Crown Heights: Gentrification chatter! Everybody’s buzzing that Starbucks and Washington Mutual are poised to supplant fried-chicken joints on gritty Eastern Parkway. [Brooklynian]
Dumbo: Not in my light-industrial backyard! Locals pressure city to landmark the area before old brick is dwarfed by shiny new glass towers. [DumboNYC]
Harlem: Hancock Place Apartments are under construction, and 44 rental units will be for households making at or below 60 percent of the area’s median income. So that’s, at most, $37,680 for a family of four. [Uptown Flavor]
Upper East Side: Pauper literati, get your asses over to that used bookstore on Lex between East 89th and 90th Streets. They’re closing, and last night they had tables groaning with free books! [Upper East Side Informer]
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What’s the Shittiest Street in Greenpoint?
Bed-Stuy: Ungainly-Monster-Sandwich Alert: Five-story Karl Fischer rises like bully behemoth between two tiny lil houses on Monroe Street. [Brownstoner]
Crown Heights: CHers are already sotto voce–ing about the imminent opening of Secrets, a West Indian–cum–American eatery and bar on Nostrand Avenue. [Brooklynian via Brooklyn Record]
Greenpoint: You didn’t ask for it, but here it is … a geostatistical breakdown of dog droppings on and around DuPont Street. And it looks like the area behind the Dupont Street Senior Center is, uh, the Hot Zone. [Newyorkshitty]
Harlem: Luxury on high, God down below: A planned tower for Fifth Avenue at 120th Street will have a church on the first four floors and both affordable and market-rate residential units on the 26 stories above. [Uptown Flavor]
Red Hook: Ahoy, ye geeks! PortSide New York’s maritime mascot is in dry dock at the Brooklyn Navy Yards. Follow every moment on the boat’s new blog. [Portside Tanker Blog via Gowanus Lounge]
Williamsburg: Realtor’s second “Homebuying for Hipsters” seminar tomorrow night elicits equal parts grudging appreciation and repulsed cringes from “hipsters” in question. [Curbed]
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The Rushkoff Effect Hits HarlemChelsea: Time to rally against the demolition of the Hotel Pennsylvania. [Blog Chelsea]
Crown Heights: The Empire Rolling Rink will have to go if Costco takes over the block. [Across the Park]
East Village: Chase bank is taking over the 2nd Avenue Deli’s old spot. You knew it would be a bank. [Curbed]
Fort Greene: As an extra inconvenience for anyone with a job, the Pratt post office on Myrtle Avenue doesn’t open till 9:30. [Clinton Hill Blog]
Harlem: The Rushkoff Effect spreads north; blogger moves following unpleasant run-in with crazy guy. [Bagel in Harlem]
Park Slope: The Park Slope Armory should be a community center by September, with athletic and recreational facilities. [Gowanus Lounge]
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Hottest Art Museum at 11 Spring Street (Till Monday)
Brooklyn Heights: Join a pack of revelers on Saturday night and carol around the neighborhood. [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Clinton Hill: All this time we had our very own Boiler Room? [North Country Gazette via Sunset Parker]
Crown Heights: Seen all that New York has to offer? Then it’s time for a Hasidic walking tour. [Brooklyn Record]
Dumbo: Foragers Market is hosting a holiday party. With everything 10 percent off, maybe you can afford to shop there. Oh, and free champagne. [Dumbo NYC]
Nolita: Visit 11 Spring Street this weekend for a last look at the graffiti before it goes condo. [Gothamist]
Red Hook: Plans to redevelop the waterfront inspire an afternoon protest. [Gowanus Lounge]
