The Chelsea Hotel Has Not Lost Its EdgeThe naked girl at the Chelsea Hotel, the lost ‘SNL’ sets of the Brooklyn Navy Yards, and a very awkward tale of gentrification from Harlem, in today’s boroughs bundler!
neighborhood watch
Astor Place to Get Slightly Less Life-ThreateningScruffles are playing in the streets in Jackson Heights. Gays are scared for their Vespas in Chelsea. Some other group of people is turning in its Uzis in Clinton Hill. And everybody is reading our daily boroughs report.
neighborhood watch
Battle Over the Brooklyn Flea Goes to the Religion PlaceThe real nannies of Park Slope, Roosevelt Island’s Animal House potential, the great Fort Greene flea smackdown, and a few bits more in our (whew!) week’s-end hood-scanner.
intel
Is the Brooklyn Flea in Danger?The yuppie flea market, which opened in April, has run into some problems with its Fort Greene neighbors.
neighborhood watch
Fort Greene Is Too Cool for Us :(Is Williamsburg “just like” a college campus? Is Fort Greene “too cool” for its own good? Will the sex-toy shop in Park Slope really be “tasteful” and “mom oriented”? And can we ever get enough of scare quotes? “Find out” 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
Gersh Kuntzman Takes Dump in the Name of JournalismG-train riders protesting in Fort Greene! Eighth-graders protesting in the South Bronx! Party poopers protesting on Park Avenue! What will you choose to protest? Read our daily boroughs report and decide.
Even Store That Sold CBGB Items Will Be ShutteredJust because it’s April 1 is no reason to doubt reports that a Trump luxury tower is coming to Bay Ridge, right? That and more, in our daily roundup of borough news.
neighborhood watch
Bushwick Life: Rat Poop on Your Pillow, Organic Milk in Your BodegaBushwick: The area is not so gentrified that you may not still experience the thrill of rats going through your trash or taking a dump on your bed. But at least you can get organic milk in the bodegas now. [BushwichBK]
Clinton Hill: It looks like the stakeout for Spitzer’s hooker bookers has moved here, with TV crews sniffing around for Tameka Lewis, a.k.a. “Rachelle.” [Nervous Acid]
Fort Greene: Perhaps remorseful that he demolished the area’s only supermarket to make room for a massive 600-unit condo project, John Catsimatidis promised it’d have a grocery. But nearby project dwellers worry they won’t be able to afford it if it’s one of his Gristedes. [NYDN]
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]
neighborhood watch
Skeletons Found in Washington Square ParkGreenwich Village: Renovations in Washington Square Park have uncovered human remains, and not for the first time in the park’s history: The site used to be a graveyard for the poor. [Gothamist]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: You all know cool little Brownstone Books in Stuy Heights, right? Well, it’s going to take over the bookstore at BAM, too. Wowza. [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Carroll Gardens: Some streets here will probably be reclassified as “narrow,” rather than “wide,” in order to impose new building-height limitations in these quaint parts. [Gowanus Lounge]
neighborhood watch
Art Deco Icon to Be DemolishedBrooklyn Heights: They’ll tear down the landmarked 1936 Purchase Building — a classic, WPA-style structure — as part of the construction of Brooklyn Bridge Park, which may begin next month. [NYDN via Gowanus Lounge]
Fort Greene: All the shabby-chic vendors of choice are lining up for the Brooklyn Flea Market, coming here Sundays starting in April. [Brownstoner]
Governors Island: Plans released today for the isle’s redo into a pomo eco-asis reveal that multiethnic children will frolic while seabirds fly overhead at dangerously low altitudes. [Queens Crap]
neighborhood watch
Newfangled Toilets Make Us Wonder What They’ll Look Like When They’re Oldfangled Bushwick: All the ‘swhik kids are chipping in to help Steve Trimboli, who runs local indie-rock mecca Goodbye Blue Monday, pay his mountain of post-cancer bills. That’s nice. [VV]
Carroll Gardens: Who is trying to destroy the hood’s “Democracy Wall,” where locals post anti-development propaganda? Could it be … Councilmember Bill DeBlasio? [Gowanus Lounge]Flatiron: The new Cemusa toilet’s going up in Madison Square Park! Weird to think that something so sleek will soon be crawling with germs. (Or are these things self-cleaning?) [Curbed, Promediacorp]
neighborhood watch
Can’t Beat Building SexCarroll Gardens: Nobody wants to buy into this notorious new building, pictured here mounting an older, prettier structure from behind. [Brownstoner]
Corona: The sad thing about this (apparently) new building is that, if you squint, it might even pass for Deco period if it weren’t for the hideous balconies and front door. [Queens Crap]
Flatiron: Edwidge Danticat “reads from his memoir” tonight at B&N. Dude looks like a lady to us. [East Village Idiot]
neighborhood watch
Curbed Takes on Red Hook, ‘New York’Red Hook: OMG, you guys, like, every post on Curbed today is about le Hook Rouge! And half of them provide photo evidence aiming to disprove New York’s latest story saying that gentrification there bombed. We might just have to get our writer to react to this! More soon. [Curbed]
Chelsea: We don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors, but, well, yes, that was Depeche Mode shooting a (gypsy-filled?) video at the Chelsea Hotel last night. Reportedly. [Living with Legends]
Fort Greene: If you go to the greenmarket here on Saturdays, you’ll not only get an ecosensitive reusable shopping bag, you’ll meet many “engaging and beautiful” neighbors. Is this a front for an escort service? [Clinton Hill Blog]
neighborhood watch
New Bronx Best Western: More of the Usual?East Central Bronx: Locals worry that a Best Western being built in a remote area off an expressway will be used either to house homeless people and/or prostitutes and johns. [NYDN via Queens Crap]
Fort Greene: Nostalgic for Chelsea’s old 26th St. flea market, this high-profile blogger is starting a massive one of his in front of Bishop Loughlin High School…but not till April. [Brownstoner]
Greenpoint: Locals often fear new construction sites…but now, it seems, such sites come with really creepy poems posted to them. [Newyorkshitty]
neighborhood watch
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]
neighborhood watch
Brooklyn Raccoons Fighting Back at LastBedford-Stuyvesant: Property prices are coming down here. Is the checkered hood the first to feel the mighty real-estate market tremble? [Brownstoner]
Chelsea: As the Chelsea Hotel faces possible big changes, denizens last week went through the trash in front of the hotel to salvage art books featuring, uh, the hotel. How poignantly meta-something is that? [Living with Legends]
Dumbo: What’s more exciting around here this week: Film-shoot sightings of that adorable Cameron and Ashton or news that Vinegar Hill will get its very own mom-and-pop pharmacy? You decide. [DumboNYC]
Fort Greene: The city wants to use eminent domain to claim a liquor store turned just-finished arts venue as space for a dance company and new housing units. [Gothamist via Brooklyn Paper]
Greenpoint: Edits on subway ads here for Tim Gunn’s new fashion makeover show indicate that locals would like it to feature more fried-chicken-eating chicks with dicks. [Newyorkshitty]
Harlem: Columbia upperclasspeople want the newbies to know that Harlem is not that dangerous and worth checking out — even if, yes, 125th Street is kinda trashy. [Columbia Spectator]
Park Slope: The park’s geese, ducks, and raccoons are getting aggressive and biting residents. Maybe they’re just stressed from trying to get their broods into the hood’s top-ranked animal schools. [Gowanus Lounge]
neighborhood watch
From PJs to Condos in Fort Greene?Brooklyn Heights: No parking at Love Lane Garage anymore. [Brooklyn Daily Eagle via Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Bushwick: Can the neighborhood regain its status as the city’s brewing capital? [BushwickBK]
Chelsea: Chelsea Hotel residents are looking for any souvenirs or ephemera from the sixties, seventies, or eighties. [Hotel Chelsea Blog]
Fort Greene: Will the Ingersoll Houses go co-op? [Brownstoner]
Long Island City: If the post office is confused, you might get mail addressed to “ASSLIC.” [Manhattan Offender]
Red Hook: Turns out the 9th Street feral dogs begat the Revere Sugar feral dogs. And now there’s only one left. [Gowanus Lounge]
Union Square: Smokers are reduced to sitting on garbage bags. The indignity! [Clean NYC Now]
neighborhood watch
Bloomberg Summers in BrooklynBushwick: The group of students who were mass-arrested en route to a friend’s wake will gather outside the police precinct here this afternoon to protest their treatment. [OnNYTurf]
Downtown Brooklyn: The mayor’s office moves in temporarily, and so do the police and barricades in Cadman Plaza. [McBrooklyn]
Fort Greene: If you don’t clean up your doggy doo around here, someone will kick you and your dog’s ass. [Newyorkshitty]
Harlem: What happens to a dream deferred? Just ask new residents in the much-hyped Langston complex, where half-mil units are reportedly less than, uh, perfect. [Uptown Flavor]
Maspeth: Rogue developer Tommy Huang of Queens, you were caught doing an illegal demolition again? Will you ever learn? [QueensCrap]
Park Slope: The blogs are finally finding the courage to say they’re sick of stories about Slope parenting culture. Ring dem bells! [Brownstoner and Gothamist]
Upper East Side: The Second Avenue T line doesn’t exist yet, but that won’t stop Absolut from advertising like it does. [Yorkville Blog via Curbed]
neighborhood watch
Red Hook Too Gentrified for Wild DogsBoerum Hill: The unidentified crapper has been caught in the act! [Curbed]
Dumbo: The acronym may actually mean “Down Under the Manhattan and Brooklyn Overpasses.” [Dumbo NYC]
Fort Greene: Architectural salvage up for grabs: mantels, mirrors, bathtubs, and more! [Brownstoner]
Greenpoint: If you need a Panama hat or a fine Mexican wedding shirt, go to Huitzilli. [newyorkshitty]
Long Island City: Pay $5,000 a month for 4,700 square feet. [OuterB]
Red Hook: A couple of the wild dogs from the Revere Sugar Factory have found a new home in Pennsylvania. [Gowanus Lounge]
neighborhood watch
Murray Hill Is Tragically MisunderstoodBrooklyn Heights: A couple moved into a new building in 1901 and later passed the apartment on to their son. When he died in March, he was paying $451 a month for a two-bedroom. [Brooklyn Eagle via Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Clinton Hill: Depending on which typo you follow, dumping at this building on Emerson will cost you either $3,000 or $3 million in fines. [Clinton Hill Blog]
Fort Greene: Does a plywood fence at Carlton Mews mean work will finally begin there? [Brownstoner]
Greenpoint: Oversize ads drilled into vinyl siding wouldn’t last a second in Williamsburg or Park Slope. So why here? [newyorkshitty]
Murray Hill: Unless the frat boys have all moved away, this is no “lagoon of calm.” [Curbed]
Prospect Lefferts Gardens: Miss the PLG house tours over the weekend? There’s a slideshow to keep you sated. [Planet PLG]
Upper West Side: Tonight, take a rare chance to complain about how cruddy the subway station is at 96th and Broadway. [Second Avenue Sagas]
neighborhood watch
Queens Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry for Being a YuppieAstoria: Locals find it odd (and oddly brave) that Queens wannabes aren’t afraid to call themselves yuppies. [Astorians]
Brooklyn Heights: Look for a new floating swimming pool to show up between Piers 4 and 5 near Joralemon and Furman Streets over July 4 weekend. [NewYorkology]
Bushwick: The Bodega Wars: coming to a Brooklyn neighborhood near you. [BushwickBK]
Downtown Brooklyn: Plans to reopen, supersize, and add retail space to a shuttered detention house are getting slammed. [Brooklyn Eagle via McBrooklyn]
Forest Hills: Who’d have thought that this un-hip hood’s simply getting a Trader Joe’s would be enough to elicit sour grapes from Brooklynites? [Forest Hills 72]
Fort Greene: Thanks to pressure from a neighborhood Website, Zipcar is finally here! [Clinton Hill Blog ]
Harlem: Up here, you can buy the bootleg version of everything premium … including Magnum condoms. [Uptown Flavor]
Upper East Side: An elegant dinner party right in the cracker aisle in the city’s classiest Korean market. [Upper East Side Informer]
neighborhood watch
Park Slope: The MovieBrooklyn Heights: The city recently took Red Hook Lane, one of the borough’s oldest pathways, off its official map in order to make way for development. [110 Livingston via McBrooklyn]
Fort Greene: Residents will rally this Wednesday against development of an eighteen-story condo that would tower over its three- and four-story neighbors. [Brownstoner]
Gowanus: Seems like work is moving forward on Whole Foods on the Canal … but why are the workers dressed in what look like Hazmat outfits? [Curbed]
Jamaica: The city has yet to take action against a developer whose crane smashed the windows of an adjacent apartment, according to its tenants. [Queens Crap]
Park Slope: Behold the inevitable … the hood will be the set for a forthcoming flick (with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler) about, big surprise, yuppie parenting. [Gowanus Lounge]
Washington Heights: An uptown resident’s association is saying “no” to those who can’t say “no.” They want to block a proposed drug-treatment facility for 200 clients on 159th Street. [Uptown Flavor]
the morning line
Bloomberg Goes for Mexican
• The mayor is visiting Tepoztlán, Mexico — the site of the slightly kooky, yet reportedly very effective, cash-for-good-behavior program that he’s hoping to implement here. Hey, if it’s good for Tepoztlán …NYT]
• NYU Student Council president Meredith Dolgin, 21, is in hot water for (a) tampering with elections, (b) using school funds for a personal trip, and (c) getting her own grandmother a paid speaking engagement at the university. [NYP]
• We may get to read more by former journalist Peter Braunstein. His journal has been deemed admissible at his trial, and it reportedly contains detailed plans for the costumed kidnapping and assault that made him infamous. [NYDN]
• It’s not all luxury condos for Brooklyn: A blockwide affordable-housing complex will be built in Fort Greene, the city says. More than 300 apartments of the 434 total units will be subsidized. [amNY]
• And, here’s an idea how to save Little Italy: high-end Italian boutiques! A neighborhood activist, working with the Medici Foundation, wants Armani, Fendi, et al, to give Mulberry a “Little Milan” tinge. Too bad they’re all five blocks away, on West Broadway. [MetroNY]
developing
To the Brig With You! Affordable-Housing Plans Progress Near Navy Yard
Don’t think that yesterday’s PlaNYC hoopla has sapped the city’s energy for more planning announcements: Today City Hall announced a development team to create an “unprecedented mixed-income community” on the Brig, a former prison site bordering Fort Greene and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. A partnership called Navy Green will convert the 103,000-square-foot site, which served first as a forties-era naval prison and later as an INS detention center and minimum-security city pen into what plans say is an energy-efficient complex of 434 townhouses and apartments, including dozens of co-ops priced for families earning under $92,000 per year. As these early drawings show (one above, one after the jump), the sparkly towers and new retail are planned for the site — the city mentions an ecofriendly dry cleaner as a potential tenant — under a design that grew out of community workshops in 2003. The conversion, due to start by this summer, illustrates the aggressive hunt for city-owned land that Mayor Bloomberg promised in his speech yesterday. And it’ll give New Yorkers the rare chance to come and go from a military prison at their leisure. —Alec Appelbaum
neighborhood watch
Parched Residents Demand Clinton Hill Beer GardenClinton Hill: Thanks to the advocacy of Clinton Hill Blog–master Robin Lester, you might not have to go to Astoria’s beer garden anymore. [Gothamist via Clinton Hill Blog]
Fort Greene: Will the guy who eats local fauna get a visit from the authorities soon? [Brooklyn Record]
Greenpoint: Do we detect just a touch of resentment from blogger Miss Heather now that someone else is stealing some of her anti-poop thunder? [Newyorkshitty]
Harlem: When the BBC shot in Sylvia’s last week, tempers flared over crime and gentrification. [Uptown Flavor]
Midwood: Poaching of Brooklyn parrots is on the decline, but it will take several years to repopulate the bird colonies. [Gowanus Lounge]
Rosedale-Laurelton: Denizens of this quaint stretch of Queens are fed up with zoning that allows for McMansions on small plots — and they yelled at a councilman to prove it. [NYDN]
Washington Heights: Someday, the gentrification chroniclers will look back and say it all started with the loss of the cheap roast-chicken place. [NYPress]
neighborhood watch
Prospect Heights Does More Than Just Hate Bruce RatnerEast Village: Beloved St. Brigid’s Church has been spared the Catholic archdiocese’s wrecking ball yet again — at least for a few more months. [The Villager]
Fort Greene: The landlord at 20 Grand Avenue is trying to evict its creative-type tenants from the 60,000-square-foot, commercially zoned warehouse. [Brownstoner]
Harlem: What’s that weird plant hanging from the wall at the cute new florist shop on 123rd and Freddie Douglass? It’s a staghorn fern, duh. [Harlem Fur]
Prospect Heights: Opponents of the Atlantic Yards project flew into action last week … to help find an activist’s black Lab, Lady Day, after she was dognapped. Is Ratner involved? [Brooklyn Paper]
Upper West Side: If this condo tower gets built above West-Park Presbyterian Church, the poor folk inhabiting subsidized units will have to use a different entryway — and stay out of the gym. [NYS]
Willets Point: The “Iron Triangle” of car-related businesses near Shea Stadium is up for redevelopment — but with no sewers in the area, what toxic goop lies beneath? [Curbed]
neighborhood watch
Coney Island Demolition Destroys Family Fun
Astoria: Use Astoria Park? Help take care of it. Start by attending a community meeting tomorrow night. [Joey in Astoria]
Chelsea: The Bourne Ultimatum was shooting on Seventh Avenue yesterday morning. Expect lots of dead CIA agents strewn around 25th to 27th Streets. [Blog Chelsea]
Cobble Hill: The Lamm Institute on Amity and Henry is for sale. What will the 13,750-square-foot building go for? [Brownstoner]
Coney Island: Good-bye, go karts. So long, mini-golf. Demolition (right) takes out some old favorites. [Gowanus Lounge]
Fort Greene: Outside, a shady-looking storage area. Inside, it looks like an antique post office. [Clinton Hill Blog]
Harlem: If you’ve been meaning to take yoga classes with your dog, then it’s time to move uptown. [Harlem Fur]
Red Hook: Gowanus Nursery will open in its new Summit Street location on March 31. [Brooklyn Record]
Williamsburg: While not yet open to humans, East River State Park is a prime resting area for migrating (and crapping) Canada Geese. [i’m not sayin, i’m just sayin]
neighborhood watch
Truman Capote Slept Here, But Not for $40,000 a MonthBoerum Hill: Believe it or not, the new Boerum Heights Condos are 100 percent sold out even though they’re smack up against the Atlantic Yards project. [One Hanson Place]
Brooklyn Heights: Rent 70 Willow Street (where Truman Capote used to live) for only $40,000 a month. Call Sotheby’s for details. [Brownstoner]
Chelsea: Body-conscious Chelsea boys will no longer be tempted by the huge, pink rotating cupcake atop 23rd Street’s Burgers and Cupcakes. The store has 30 days to take it down. [Blog Chelsea via JamesWagner]
Dumbo: With all these CGIs of planned improvements for the area (including a new Brooklyn Bridge walkway), it’s almost like they’ve already happened! [Dumbo NYC]
Fort Greene: One resident is launching a campaign to get Zipcar to place some cars here and in Clinton Hill. [Brooklyn Record]
Howard Beach: Was Liberace’s last bungalow mistakenly constructed in Queens? [Queens Crap]
neighborhood watch
New Zoning Laws Make Queens Boulevard Even UglierBrooklyn Heights: Looks like the popular eatery Le Petit Marche (there’s no “e” on Petit, people, it’s masculin!) is getting a fancy face-lift. [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Fort Greene: The landmarks commish last month gave the nod to the Carlton Mews Project — which, remarkably, everyone seems to love. [Brownstoner]
Harlem: Now that H&H bagels are at Saurin Parke Café it requires 24-hour police surveillance. [Harlem Fur]
Hell’s Kitchen: After two pedestrians were killed and one injured by vehicles on Ninth Avenue, it’s Manhattan’s latest “Boulevard of Death.” [Streetsblog]
Park Slope: You think all those Saabs and Volvos cruising Seventh Avenue are just out wildin’? Nah, they’re looking for parking … because, a new study finds, there isn’t any. [Gowanus Lounge]
West Village: Longstanding and beloved bistro Florent, the last bohemian holdout of the newly flashy meatpacking district, is now taking credit cards. Sacre bleu! [Blog Chelsea]
Woodside: The upzoning of Queens Boulevard has led to ugly, cheap buildings too tall for the area. [Queens Crap]
neighborhood watch
Times Square Streets Don’t Like to ShareDumbo: Vinegar Hill’s new Vista condo seems nearly ready for prime time … and it looks a helluva lot like fellow VH condo newbie the Nexus. [Dumbo NYC]
Fort Greene: Uh, is that soon-to-open business in the old Blimpie’s spot on Lafayette and South Elliott a chain bakery or a … what? [Clinton Hill Blog]
Harlem: The Upper West Side’s Animal General hospital wants to bring its pet-care services into Harlem … but it needs to find 1,700 square feet there to do it. Plus, a new BBQ place comes to 145th Street! [Harlem Fur and Uptown Flavor]
Maspeth: Did the city and state deny St. Saviour’s Church landmark status even when they knew there might be human remains on the site? So claims the hoppin’-mad Juniper Park Civic Association. [Queens Crap]
Times Square: Less than three months after they first appeared, the shared-bike-lane markers (or “sharrows,” as they’re called) on Seventh Avenue are fading away. Bikers, beware! [Streetsblog]
Tribeca: Bikini basketball and naked dudes with puppies are just some of the lifestyle perks you can expect if you move (for $800,000 a studio) into André Balazs’ forthcoming Kubla-condo Beaver House. [Curbed]
