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
neighborhood watch
Does Dumbo’s Squarehead Have a Secret Admirer?A copycat has taken over for a famed Dumbo robber. Plus, déjà vu at Astroland, tenant grievances in the East Village, and more in our post–Labor Day boroughs briefing.
ByTim Murphy
neighborhood watch
The Montauk Monster Has Competition. Sort Of.There is a colorful beast of some sort climbing out of the East River. Plus, Harlem’s eye-straining new condo, Chinatown’s intra-hood Olympics smackdown, and the big-cabbage guy of Staten Island. In our Freedom Friday edition of the daily boroughs report!
neighborhood watch
Greenpoint Subdivided: Do You Live in Garbagetown or Sewagetown?Quick, someone bandage that bleeding Lady of Mercy in the Bronx, mourn the Purchase Building in Dumbo, and scold that greedy Long Island City sweatshop! So much to do in today’s boroughs report!
neighborhood watch
Can Regina Spektor Make Murray Hill Cool?Regina Spektor moves into Murray Hill, Carroll Gardens’ Ivy League hipster types strike back against last week’s maudlin anti-yuppie video, and a celeb hip-hop stylist’s body turns up in the Bronx. Plus, news from Red Hook, Long Island City, Dumbo, and Coney in today’s boroughs roundup.
neighborhood watch
Someone Is Spending a Lot of Time Thinking About Stuyvesant TownIt’s Freaky Friday! What better day for a crazy Caribbean lady in Forest Hills, a goat-slaughtering market in St. Albans, and a $200,000 game-show win for a guy from Westerleigh? (That’s on Staten Island, people.)
neighborhood watch
The Golden Rule, Graffiti-StyleEast Harlem’s incoming big-box mall, Rockaway’s unexpected turn, Gramercy’s strange tenements within a condo, and even more, in today’s boroughs report.
neighborhood watch
Andrea Peyser — Wait for It — Thinks Someone Is a BoneheadThat delightful harpy harshes on Dumbo, Robin Quivers leaves Staten Island for the Upper West Side, and a white Seattle woman gets stuck in Harlem and lives to tell. That and more tales of the miraculous in our daily boroughs report.
neighborhood watch
Scaffolding Already Up for Giant Waterfall SculpturesPesky squirrels in Astoria, a not-dead-yet beaver in the Bronx, and a baby born in the Port Authority. Furry little creatures abound in our daily boroughs report!
neighborhood watch
Park Slope Moms Terrorize the ChildlessNow that’s a plot for Darren Star’s new show. Also Schnabel spotted near his pink palace! And a pink turtle in Billyburg, in our daily borough report.
You Can Still Get That Good Unsafe Feeling in DumboDumbo fights gentrification, a guy in Queens fights the parking authority, and pretty much everyone fights change in our daily roundup of neighborhood news.
neighborhood watch
Is There a Park Slope in Baghdad?Dumbo: Last night was the first night that passersby could see Adriana Varella’s giant Applied Kinetics projection installation at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. There are no pictures yet, so go tonight and see it yourself. [DumboNYC]
East Village: A funny guerilla-marketing tactic for a Black Lips show has finally made our favorite advertising blogger smile! With black lips! [Copyranter]
Park Slope: After a kind of annoying string of posts on a couple of real-estate blogs about what neighborhoods are the “Park Slope”s of other cities, this blog just gets right down to business: What is the Park Slope of Iraq? [Gowanus Lounge]
neighborhood watch
Phat Tats No Longer Available in Quaint Cobble HillCobble Hill: The very popular Brooklyn Tattoo Shop is leaving the hood. [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Dumbo: Two generally accepted truths debunked in one article: New York has outpriced artists, and the members of the Walentas family are a bunch of scrooges. [NYT]
Fort Greene: Attention, 124 Dekalb Avenue: Spike Lee has left the building. [Brownstoner]
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The G Train to Get 50 Percent Less Hateable in 2008Bedford-Stuyvesant: Wait a minute. Is this entire building just a carefully executed, giant beer bong? [Newyorkshitty]
Dumbo: This hood’s waterfront is getting rezoned. What does it mean for you and your view? [DumboNYC]
Long Island City: The G train might be 50 percent more useful? Stop the world, we wanna get off! [Clinton Hill Blog]
neighborhood watch
Clive Campbell Wants Slavery Reparations From Jay-Z, Of All PeopleAtlantic Yards: Activist Clive Campbell has filed a $5 billion suit against Bruce Ratner, Jay-Z, and Barclay’s bank. He’s suing for slavery reparations, because of alleged slave trade ties in the history of the bank. [NYO]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: Cleaning your dog’s poop is all about respect. Respecting yourself, that is. [Newyorkshitty]
Dumbo: If you want your short film to play on the big screen at Brooklyn Bridge Park, now’s the time to submit it to Movies With a View. No subtitles, please. [Dumbo NYC]
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‘Queen of Delancey Street’ Killed in AccidentDumbo: From the offices of “legendary” Brooklyn Paper editor (and self-encourager) Gersh Kuntzman comes news that he’s auctioning off his ankle cast, signed by (self-encouraging) beep Marty Markowitz, with proceeds going to Markowitz’s Camp Brooklyn. The bid’s up to $41! [eBay]
Jamaica: Sure, Jamaica Center may look a bit rough, but you can still haggle over prices here, and find great real-estate deals posted to trees! [Queens Crap]
Lower East Side: RIP to Josephine LaPlaca, the 83-year-old “Queen of Delancey Street,” who was struck dead by a car Wednesday night at the dangerous intersection of Delancey and Allen. [Gothamist]
neighborhood watch
10 Jay to Get Five More StoriesAstoria: If a park designated as a “sitting area” has nowhere to sit, is that kind of like if a tree fell in the forest in that park — if there were a forest there — and no one heard it? Is it really a sitting area at all? Or even a forest or a park? Think about it. [Queens Crap]
Bushwick: Get your knives out, the Argentines are coming! Uh, your steak knives, that is, because they make great steaks. Get it? [BushwickBK]
Dumbo: That landmark building at 10 Jay Street where the raves used to be held in the early aughts? Those aren’t cabanas going on the roof — it’s added five stories! Is it going residential? [DumboNYC]
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Historic Brooklyn Navy Yard Houses Get a Stay of ExecutionBrooklyn Navy Yard: The Feds have indefinitely delayed plans to tear down ten nineteenth-century houses here in order to build a supermarket. Patina before potatoes! [Brownstoner]
Dumbo: The waterfront Empire Stores warehouse is so decrepit that the park surrounding it has been closed for safety, and everyone’s pointing fingers over who let the Civil War–era pile languish for so long. [Brooklyn Paper via Curbed]
Elmhurst: This no-frills Queens hood isn’t slated to do so well in the real-estate boom, but maybe it’ll fare better than expected with loving testimonials like this: “At sunset, the dirty black bricks of the six-story apartment buildings turn deep red and almost dark pink. At night, it’s peaceful.” Ahhh… [NYDN via Queens Crap]
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After Taco Bell, Rodents Take On Cobble HillClinton Hill: What? You say you weren’t at the Pratt annual antique steam-whistle concert on New Year’s Eve at midnight? Like, where else could you have been? At least it was captured on this YouTube video. But, dude, it’s not the same thing as being there. [Clinton Hill Blog]
Cobble Hill: Is that a squirrel or a rat sunning himself in the window of that shamefully derelict Kane Street walk-up? Locals are bitterly divided over the answer. People, can we all agree that it’s a rodent? [Lost New York City]
Dumbo: Will the new owners of an old Water Street warehouse really build a theater and host a Korean film festival in there? We’ll see, kimchee. [Brooklyn Eagle via DumboNYC]
neighborhood watch
People in Dumbo Still Read BooksDumbo: Local, too-cool-for-school publisher powerHouse Books better watch out! Another indie publisher, Melville House, plans to open offices plus a bookstore and event space, just like pH did! [DumboNYC]East Harlem: Council member Melissa Mark-Viverito, who fights for affordable housing here, is “vivacious enough to play herself in any television biopic.” Shouldn’t that be a requirement for the whole City Council? [NYDN]East Village: Hygienic bohos, rejoice! Soap dispensers are returning to the women’s restroom at Tompkins Square Park! [Suzannah B. Troy Artist]
it happened this week
Cloudy Future
As thousands of European budget travelers swarmed the rainy city and prepared to gaze at the big crystal ball in Times Square, many New Yorkers had already moved on to 2008. Bill Clinton worried about Mayor Bloomberg’s buying his way into the presidential race: “He could spend $1 billion and hardly miss it,” said the former president.
neighborhood watch
Dumbo Makes Its MarkCarroll Gardens: Some people feel that the paltry number of holiday lights strung up on Court Street is really shameful. And they ain’t too proud to blog about it. [Lost City]
Dumbo: It just became the city’s 90th landmark district! Those hulking industrial piles turned boutique lofts will be preserved into perpetuity! Huzzah! [NYS]
East Harlem: Don Imus is kicking in a quarter-mil for an ecofriendly health center up here, saying it’s shameful that such a small hood has such high asthma rates. [Newsday via Uptown Flavor]
neighborhood watch
Renzo Piano Forgot the Bike RacksTimes Square: If the New York Times building is so green, how come there’s nowhere to park a bike? [Streetsblog]
Atlantic Yards: Will the Yards eventually feel more like Madison Square Garden, or Newark? This blog captures the debate from the Brian Lehrer Show. [Atlantic Yards Report]
Brooklyn Heights: The Wandering Stranger of Schermerhorn Street has disappeared! And has earned himself a poetic blog elegy. [Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn via Brooklyn Heights Blog]
neighborhood watch
Love and Herpes, in GreenpointBowery: The first visitors to the New Museum this weekend were given candy, then yelled at for eating it. [Curbed]
Dumbo: A black disabled woman is suing local megadeveloper Dave Walentas for shutting her out of a luxury rental, saying he excluded her based on quibbles like an outstanding cable bill of $1.61. [NYDN]
Greenpoint: He wants her to know that his bedbug scare and her possible case of genital herpes are no reason they shouldn’t have a torrid affair. Especially now that he’s exterminated his bedroom. [Newyorkshitty]
neighborhood watch
‘Heeb’ Parts River, Crosses to DumboBedford-Stuyvesant: On her recent Bed-Stuy cable show, the hood’s buppie doyenne (and former Essence editrix) Monique Greenwood kept calling the Brownstoner blog “Brownstone.” Like that nineties En Vogue ripoff group! [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Dumbo: Heeb magazine moves here from Soho, perhaps launching an influx of snarky hipster Jews into the hood. If they’re not already here. [DumboNYC]
Forest Hills: According to this blogger, the rudest people around here are the white, non-immigrant ones. [Forest Hills 72]
neighborhood watch
Beware of British Men Bearing ‘StachesDitmas Park: That bright-red trail of blood at the Newkirk subway station? No worries, just a guy who slashed his hand while playing with a pen knife! [Ditmas Park Blog]
Dumbo: Wow, look at the big fat space on Main Street where performance den Galapagos will go in the wake of its move from Williamsburg. [DumboNYC]
East Village: Who’s the dude with the mustache, British accent, and “big soulful brown eyes” who’s ripping off small, women-owned boutiques? [Vanishing New York]
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Astroland: Now in the City’s Own Flipper HandsAstoria: Miss Heather from Newyorkshitty gets back to what she does best: poop art. [Newyorkshitty]
The BQE: Tracks from Sufjan Stevens’s homage to the venerable expressway are online! [Vulture via Hypeful]
Coney Island The city will save Astroland’s land (as a park) by taking it away from Thor, thus saving the amusement park! Yay! Except, oh wait, what does the city know about running a freak show? Don’t answer that question. [Curbed]
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Trader Joe’s Saves Forest Hills From Checkout RageCarroll Gardens: Opponents of overdevelopment here now have their own funky mural, which directs people to this online petition. [Queens Crap]
Dumbo: These Czech marionettes performing Hamlet at Jane’s Carousel through November are seriously creepy. [DumboNYC]
Forest Hills: Customers at the cheery new Trader Joe’s here are grateful not to have to deal with “a rude gum-smacking Key Food cashier eating a bag of barbecue potato chips as she’s taking cell phone calls.” [Forest Hills 72]
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It’s the Circle, the Circle of Homeless Life…Coney Island: Is it really any surprise that arguably the creepiest Halloween freak show in the city is here? [Kinetic Carnival]
Corona: The city has evicted rent-stabilized tenants to make room for homeless families, leaving the original families … uh, homeless. [NYDN via Queens Crap]
Dumbo: The Village Voice thinks this is the Best Manhattan Neighborhood in Brooklyn, and it even comes with that all-important “nostalgic desolation” that Manhattan now lacks. [VV]
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Target! Must You Brand Everything?Bedford-Stuyvesant: It’s nice that Target funded the beautiful redesign of this community garden … but obnoxious that they put all those big red dots up in there. [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Dumbo: Sorry we didn’t notice this the other day, but are they building a little penthouse atop the iconic clock tower of One Main Street? [Brownstoner]
Forest Hills: Did you guys know that the hood apparently has a really cool, retro Adidas sneaker named after it? These are probably sooo what the homies were wearing in the Summer of Sam. [Overstock via Forest Hills 72]
neighborhood watch
Queer Femmes on Coney Island Get Their Own CalendarConey Island: Just when you realize the world really needs a female-controlled “queer femme swimsuit calendar” of the hot gals of Coney … boom, you get one. [Kinetic Carnival]
Dumbo: Even boring old drugstores around here are cashing in on that whole down-under-the-bridge glamour vibe. [Dumbo]
East Village: Some gays divided their time between watching Caligula and sneaking into sex booths at a new XXX-salon-type thing. [Gawker via Manhattan Offender]
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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]
neighborhood watch
The Flowerbox Is RevealedAlphabet City: The new Flowerbox building near Avenue D is real, and it’s spectacular. [Curbed]
Brooklyn Heights: Tomorrow’s Cranberry Street Festival will not only feature the usual pet parade, but also a belly dancer! [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Dumbo: After filling up with yuppies fleeing Manhattan, Dumbo takes the final step into suburbia: It’s starting a Neighborhood Watch. [DumboNYC]
Greenpoint: Miss Heather finally captures on film the neighborhood’s elusive Dog Who Wears Sunglasses And A Seatbelt [Newyorkshitty]
Harlem: The Randolph Houses are getting completely renovated by the city. Who says Bloomberg is a bad landlord? [Uptown Flavor]
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Social Unrest on G PlatformGreenpoint: Long waits for the G train are breeding angry calls for socialized medicine. Plus, who impaled these poor tomatoes? [Newyorkshitty]
Downtown Brooklyn: A bunch of Morgan Stanley employees were caught on camera cornholing in Cadman Plaza Park yesterday. [McBrooklyn]
Dumbo: Yep, Dave Walentas — and a few other big local developers — went down in the dunk tank last night at a fund-raiser to preserve the hood’s brick streets. [Brownstoner]
Harlem: Columbia has bought a site to build new homes for people its expansion will displace, but the folks in question weren’t consulted beforehand. [Columbia Spectator]
Prospect Heights: The hood may get landmark status, which some locals hope will protect against the ripple effects of the massive ongoing Atlantic Yards development. [Atlantic Yards Report]
Washington Heights: Police broke up a coke ring run out of a deli. God, imagine snorting blow with a slice of rolled-up salami… [NYS]
Williamsburg: The city wants to kick out La Marqueta’s food vendors to make room for affordable housing, but locals doubt they’ll benefit from the new units. [amNY]
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Will Dave Walentas Dunk?Dumbo: Will local megadeveloper hero-villain Dave Walentas really subject himself to a carnival-type dunk tank at an arts festival Thursday night? [DumboNYC]
East Harlem: Mt. Sinai will offer free prostate-cancer screenings on Thursday. Says an official there: “Smart men get checked annually.” But what do you call men who get checked more? [Uptown Flavor]
Lower East Side: The city’s looking to remove those Essex Street stalls selling things like religious figures and Uzbek haircuts. [Vanishing New York]
Nolita: Dandies, fops, feys, and flaneurs are the hot new archetype here. Wilde! [Gridskipper]
Prospect Lefferts: Why can’t that annoying marching band practice on the other side of Prospect Park … you know, where Jennifer Connelly lives? [Across the Park]
Roosevelt Island: If you take a daytrip to this loo-deprived isle, you better hold off on the bottled water or cross your legs real tight. [Roosevelt Islander]
Sunset Park: Oh my God, you guys, could we really get a park alongside some of that desolate postindustrial waterfront here? That would be awesome. [Brownstoner]
neighborhood watch
Trader Joe’s Wants You … to Vaseline Your TeethBay Ridge: They’re saying that Representative. Fossella hasn’t come through on promises to help save a beautiful Methodist church from being razed for condo development. [Queens Crap]
Coney Island: We are increasingly intrigued by Rose, the compellingly coiffed lady who delivers terse morning weather reports on this blog from a tower high atop Coney. Let’s hear more about Rose! [OTBKB]
Dumbo: Looks like yuppies and Farragut Houses residents alike will be rubbing shoulders over toothpaste and T.P. at the “New Pharmacy Coming Soon!” to Gold Street. [Brownstoner]
Forest Hills: If you’re an ambitious, adventurous, values- and people-oriented foodie who smiles easily, then the new Trader Joe’s here wants you! [Forest Hills 72]
Harlem: With HIV infections in the city’s young gay men up a third since 2001, the biggest jump in that group is here and East Harlem. Come on, brothas and papis — and Chelsea boys too, for that matter — rock the cock sock! [NYS]
Long Island City: Sounds like there’s an itty-bitty park planned for that waterfront lot at the end of Vernon Boulevard. Nice. [LICNYC]
Melrose: Who’s going to plunk down $25 mil to buy the fabulously rococo, former Bronx County Courthouse? And what’ll they use it for? [Curbed]
neighborhood watch
Roosevelt Islanders Resent Their Frothy MoatBoCoCa: The skateboarders terrorizing this Boerum Hill/Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens “compound” neighborhood are “light-skinned and Asian.” Sound the alarm gong! [Brooklynian]
Chelsea: The fact that Ethan Hawke has stepped up against the de-corporatization of the Chelsea Hotel does not keep denizens there from mocking his “experimental” film Chelsea Walls. [Living with Legends]
Dumbo: Sounds like a few hard-core panhandlers continue to thwart the hood’s evolution toward loftopia. Aw. [DumboNYC]
Gowanus: The sleek new Hotel Le Bleu’s opening is delayed again, now till October 1. Could they be cowed by their own nightly rates of up to $400 (for Gowanus)? [Brownstoner]
Harlem: Keith Haring’s 1986 “Crack Is Wack” mural in Harlem River Park is getting a makeover. You know what? We miss Keith Haring. [About.com]
Roosevelt Island: The locals are griping that they have no way of gaining access to the water, even though they’re surrounded by it — being on an island and all. [Roosevelt Islander]
Williamsburg: Hipsters are getting mugged around here — and we don’t mean in East Williamsburg (né Bushwick), we mean in the expensive, trendy part! [Brooklyn Paper]
