Whole Foods to Alter Brooklyn PlansPoor undertrafficked, overcharitable Ikea! Poor Slopies thinking only poor people have public sex! (Not!) So many people to feel sorry for in today’s rainy, weepy boroughs report.
neighborhood watch
Yuppies Discouraged From Partying in Tompkins Square ParkPlus plaster nearly falling on East Harlem babies before their souls are insured and a cure for killer staph in the Gowanus Canal. Why wait? Click through today’s boroughs report!
neighborhood watch
There’s a Sloop on the GowanusPlus the Upper West Side gets “rods of falling water,” and Flushing’s Sky View Parc–condo dwellers get sludge-front property, in our daily neighborhood wrap-up.
neighborhood watch
On the Bowery, New Hotel Tower Physically Squeezes Landmarked HomePlus, boos drowning out a Harlem rezone vote and Grand Theft Auto’s uncanny recreation of a certain famous, fun-oriented island (“Johnson’s Famous Hot Dogs”?). All that with mustard and sauerkraut in today’s boroughs report.
neighborhood watch
Some Old CBGB Punks Think the John Varvatos Store Isn’t That BadFancy cornices aim to redeem Fedders homes in Carroll Gardens, aging rockers defend CBGB’s new retail use on the Bowery, and a Billyburg record store faces shutdown. Oh yeah, the boroughs are alive and well in our handy-dandy Neighborhood Watch!
Alexander Hamilton Just Wouldn’t Have Approved of a Northeasterly ViewBroadway-Flushing: As landmarking honchos drag their feet on protecting this enclave of pretty early-1900s homes, locals wonder if it’s more evidence that city pooh-bahs care more about Manhattan and Brooklyn brownstones than they do historic Queens cribs. [NYDN]
Brooklyn Heights: How will the city get Brooklynites to the hard-to-get-to Brooklyn Bridge Park? It will bus them! [Brooklyn Paper]
Harlem: Some folks are protesting the move of Alexander Hamilton’s Colonial house from a cramped street to St. Nicholas Park because — get this — it won’t be facing the same way. [Curbed]
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Ghost Towns and Old BonesFlushing: Time to buy a new bathing suit! Or, um, ice skates? The plush, $66.3 million Flushing Meadows-Corona Park Natatorium and Ice Rink is opening today. [Curbed]
Lower East Side: Loud messy construction from Jason Pomeranc’s hotel at 200 Allen Street and Morris Platt’s 26-story condo on Orchard Street has turned the surrounding blocks into “a ghost town.” [NYO]
Lower Manhattan: Signs that speak of the World Trade Center in the present tense will be removed. [NYT]
neighborhood watch
You Aren’t the Only Person Who Comes Home to Find Random People Smoking in Your StairwellClinton Hill: Beware of undesirables who sneak into your apartment building to smoke butts, do drugs, copulate, urinate, and drink coffee. Because it’s happening. [Clinton Hill Blog]
East Village: The latest bank branch hopes that if it puts up a big photo of the hood in Ye Olden Days, no one will notice that it’s filled mostly with bank branches now. [Vanishing New York]
Flushing: Local Quaker farmers demand freedom of worship! Well, they did in 1657. But the tatty document in which they listed their demands, called “The religious Magna Carta of the New World,” is on display up in here. [NYT]
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Cobble Hill Shall Only Remain Yea HighCobble Hill: In a last-minute about-face, Councilman Bill De Blasio said he’ll vote to deny developer Two Trees the right to build ten feet over the height limit in the quaint hood. [Brooklyn Eagle]
Coney Island: The deal has been inked, folks. Starting in March, Astroland will be open for one more season before the bulldozers roll in. [NYDN]
Flushing: Yeah, we know this blog features hideous new architecture around Queens every day, but these specimens are particularly heinous. What’s that thing atop the building in the first picture, a big brick handle? [Queens Crap]
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The Coen Brothers Pony Up for the HeightsBrooklyn Heights: The figures are in: To say thanks for letting them shake up the hood while shooting a new Clooney flick here, the Coen brothers gave the Brooklyn Heights Association $10,000, and a few other groups one or two thou each. [Brooklyn Paper]
Ditmas Park: In this fast-gentrifying hood, “Go back to Park Slope” is a four-letter word. [Ditmas Park Blog]
Downtown Brooklyn: A Renzo Piano–designed complex of housing and office space is planned to take the place of City Tech’s Klitgord Auditorium. With a name like that, maybe best that it come down after all. [McBrooklyn]
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Children Banned From Hotel Chelsea LobbyChelsea: Children have been banned from the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, reportedly because a rude kiddie called a maid a bitch. [Living with Legends]
Flushing: Angry residents have stopped the LIRR from cutting down trees along the rail line, which they did to keep wet, slip-slidey leaves off the tracks. [Queens Chronicle via Queens Crap]
Greenpoint: It’s getting ugly between outspoken hood blogger Miss Heather and commenters who appear to be linked to 110 Green Street, the noisy condo-in-progress that Miss H. and other locals hate. [Newyorkshitty]
Gowanus: Brooklyn parrots have landed in Thomas Greene Park — and they’re so cute! (Though the linked photo, while of a Brooklyn parrot, wasn’t taken in Gowanus. Aw.) [Gowanus Lounge]
Prospect Heights: Locals cleaned up the hood this weekend while socking it to Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner. [Atlantic Yards Report]
Times Square: Thankfully, there’s plenty of places on Seventh Avenue where you can buy computers, cameras, luggage and … galerie? What’s galerie? [East Village Idiot]
Upper West Side: The line outside the Delacorte for tickets to tonight’s free 40th-anniversary staging of Hair is out of control! [Newyorkology]
photo op
Tennis Shoes
The U.S. Open started today. Roger Federer, the No. 1 seed, played Scoville Jenkins, an American. Federer won in straight sets. These are his shoes. We can only imagine what parts of Federer the AFP will be offering by the time this thing ends, in two weeks.
neighborhood watch
Manhattan Mini-Storage Ads Go Over Line, West Side HighwayBushwick: It’s hard out there in the ‘shwick … for a gay, twentysomething yuppie when he’s waiting for the hood to gentrify so he can cash in on your property and leave. [BushwickBK]
Chelsea: Manhattan Mini-Storage’s ads can sometimes be annoying, but how excellent is it that this flagrantly pro-choice one, hangin’ large over the West Side Highway, has NYC’s six conservatives enraged? [Gothamist]
Flushing: Brace yourself for a big, shiny new development here with a Home Depot, Target, and million-dollar condos for folks who, according to the developer, are “upscale, middle-income and multiethnic” … all at once! [OuterB]
Gowanus: State enviro-honchos and Keyspan have reached an agreement on cleaning up the subterranean toxic goop at two sites in this area, plus at several others in the borough. [Gowanus Lounge]
Kensington: Faced with choosing between two blights on society to fill a long-empty building — methadone users or law students — it seems locals will gladly suffer the latter. [Kensington Blog]
Lower Manhattan: Is it an art installation … or the indoor bike-parking facility set up at 280 Broadway for city workers? Click and decide. [Streetsblog]
Williamsburg: All the hipsters had a good, self-referential laugh last night during the McCarren Pool’s screening of Bonnie and Clyde when the screen duo’s sidekick C.W. Moss is scolded by his dad not for being a criminal but for getting a tat. Ha ha ha, movie stars, they’re just like Us! [Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
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All the World’s a Duane ReadeBedford-Stuyvesant: With the real library closed (endlessly…) for renovations, a host for the “Free Children’s Library of Bed-Stuy” is sought. [BedStuyBlog]
Coney Island: While Coney’s amusement-park future remains up in the air, live animals are thrown through the air at the nearby, sketchy Sea Rise housing projects. [Brooklyn Eagle via McBrooklyn]
Dumbo: Four West Coast street artists are putting up a pretty cool graffiti on Water Street at Pearl. [DumboNYC]
Flushing: There are big puddles all over Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which are leading to swarms of mosquitoes, which are terrorizing people. [Queens Tribune via Queens Crap]
Greenpoint: There’s no better way to undermine your attempt to build a period-looking brownstone than by sticking balconies on it. Real classy, Bridge Realty. [Newyorkshitty]
Midtown West: God help us, it’s finally happened: two Duane Reades, right across the street from each other. [East Village Idiot]
Park Slope: Anyone know if Shaya Boymelgreen has cleaned up the scaffolding around his Novo condo on Fourth Avenue that collapsed into the street Saturday? [Brownstoner]
neighborhood watch
Homeless Kittens Beautify Bushwick
Bushwick: Totally cute kitties (pictured) looking for a good home. [Newyorkshitty]
East Village: If $1,250 sounds like a lot for this two-bedroom share, you’ll spend less on clothes, because they’re optional here. [Craigslist via Curbed]
Flushing: Pale Male has outer-borough cousins … red-tailed hawks have taken up residence inside the 1964 World’s Fair Unisphere. [Queens Chronicle]
Harlem: Starbucks … it’s not just on 125th Street anymore. Looks like that 145th St. branch will open Monday. [Uptown Flavor]
Park Slope: A group called the Transformers came all the way from Wisconsin to help fix the Old First Church. [Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
Williamsburg: The development going up on the site of the old Roebling Oil Field will have something special … a pump that separates water from the oil that’s trapped underground. [Gowanus Lounge]
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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]
neighborhood watch
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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UES Just Says No to Norman FosterBedford-Stuyvesant: Fledgling Bed-Stuy–Bushwick landlord launches (highly f**ckin’ profane) blog. [A Landlord’s Life via Curbed]
Dumbo: Just in time for coldest winter week thus far, the barge swimming pool due to open this summer is spotted on Pier 2. [Curbed]
Flushing: Butt-ugly new housing flushes Queens nabe’s charm right down the toilet. [Forgotten NY via Streetsblog]
Lower East Side: Whole Foods makes its workers gather petition signatures to get permission for a liquor store next door to its imminent new Bowery branch. [Polis]
Park Slope: There’s finally a name for the no-man’s-land at the juncture of Park Slope, Red Hook, and Carroll Gardens at the F train’s Smith-9th stop. It’s the Notary District! [423smith]
Upper East Side: Landmarks committee to Sir Norman and Aby Rosen: Take that 30-foot glass tower off that art gallery! [Curbed]
