Please Have Sex With My Dog in WilliamsburgAstoria: Voters here should be proud of Councilman Peter Vallone for protecting them against the hordes of parachute jumpers in the city. [NYS]
Carroll Gardens: The MTA was removing asbestos from the Carroll Street subway station all weekend but didn’t bother to notify the neighbors or even close the hazmat-filled dumpster. [Gowanus Lounge]
Clinton Hill: The health store at 478 Myrtle is perhaps overly ambitious: The grand opening sign is up, but the shelves are bare. [Clinton Hill Blog]
East Village: Does the MTA’s fare hike improve service? Let’s ask the eight buses lined up on First Avenue this morning, all trying to stop at 14th Street. [East Village Idiot]
Morningside Heights: The buds are just beginning on the cherry trees up here. We’re almost out of this wretched season. [Weblicist of Manhattan]
West Midwood: A new rendering for a Brooklyn College dorm is out, and it doesn’t look at all like the previous one.[Brooklyn Junction]
Williamsburg: Beneficent owner is posting flyers to get his Highland Western terrier laid. [New York Shitty]
intel
Are the Other Ivy League Colleges Cooler Than Columbia?Today a Dartmouth student blog took a peek at the numbers of alcohol-related infractions per thousand students in each of the Ivy League schools. Unsurprisingly, Dartmouth itself came out on top. There’s not a lot going on off-campus in terms of nightlife, and since the popular fraternities are in and around school grounds, it makes sense that the university would be busting people with high regularity. But what we find more telling is that Columbia University is the Ivy League school with the second-lowest percentage of drinking infractions. Below Brown. Is that possible? There are plenty of reasons kids at Columbia wouldn’t get busted as much (they can drink anywhere in the city, they are too cool to get drunk), but the laws of physics imply that there would be a high level of obvious partying up there in Morningside Heights. We’re talking:
Hundreds of Freshman + Dozens of Places to get IDs x Thousands of Delis Where Owners Don’t Care If You Are Underage / Limited Entrances And Exits To Dorms That Are Monitored For Safety = Easily Detectable Drunkenness
This makes us worry. Surely our proud Manhattan Ivy Leaguers should be getting busted more frequently. Clearly the school is not working hard enough. Or is it possible that our best and brightest are the second-lamest in all the Ivy League*? That would be pretty devastating.
How Do the Ivies Stack Up on Alcohol Enforcement? [Joe’s DartBlog via IvyGate]
*Daily Intel does not advocate underage drinking. As to whether or not we think it is “cool,” we plead the Fifth.
neighborhood watch
Jackson Heights: The Musical! Wait, That Sounds Familiar…Cobble Hill: Some performance-art weirdos queued up, droidlike, outside of the future Trader Joe’s here. Was this some sort of Marxist semiotic commentary on the store’s long lines to come? [A Brooklyn Life]
Elmhurst: The locals are getting into t’ai chi, which is cool, but they look like they’re doing the Thriller zombie dance in this pic. [Junction Blvd]
Hell’s Kitchen: The flea markets haven’t been doing as well since they moved here from their longtime home in Chelsea, where condo-velopment pushed them out. [Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York via Chelsea Now]
Jackson Heights: Stay tuned for Jackson Heights: The Musical! Hey, wait a minute, that Washington Heights show hasn’t even opened on Broadway yet! [Queens Crap via NYDN]
Morningside Heights: Creatures including a camel, two llamas, some goats, a Chinese goose, a fourteen-pound rabbit, a porcupine, and a hermit crab paraded down the aisle at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine yesterday for a blessing. These pics are so cute! [Gothamist]
Upper East Side: This sticky Indian summer is hardest of all on uptown gals planning the final stages of their wedding, don’t you agree? [Sex and the UES]
Williamsburg: Yuppies moving here and to Greenpoint don’t want to send their kids to the local public schools, leaving some of them half-empty. [Brownstoner]
intel
Morningside Heights to Lose Its Magazine Shop
Two inexorable facts of New York life these days — the slow death of print media and the fast rise of rents — are claiming another victim. Global Ink — the ne plus ultra of Upper West Side magazine shops and one of the most well stocked in Manhattan — will shut its doors next month after eight years at Broadway and 112th Street. The store, admittedly, had all the charm of a Kmart, with faux-wood floors and blinding halogen lights, but it was one of the few still around that carried something for everyone with an interest in the printed word, from Bonsai Today to Military Machines International to WAD. The owner, Essam Moussa, blames rapacious magazine distributors for his store’s demise, but he also noted in a farewell letter posted Thursday that technology has “reduced the need for hand held publications.” Great. So this is now partially our fault, too? Sigh. —Tayt Harlin
neighborhood watch
It’s All Downhill From Morningside HeightsBoerum Hill: It’s not enough that the Brooklyn House of Detention could reopen. Besides room for 720 inmates, look for two towers with residential or commercial space. [Brooklyn Daily Eagle via mcbrooklyn]
Clinton Hill: Residents of the area’s southern flank, rejoice … a bank (a North Fork) is finally coming to Fulton and Clinton! [Brooklyn Record]
Greenpoint: Residents come together to complain to a building inspector about excessive noise and damage caused by construction at 110 Green Street. [Newyorkshitty]
Harlem: The Beaumont, a 63-unit Art Deco apartment building on Riverside Drive, has been sold for just over $20 million. [Uptown Flavor]
Morningside Heights: This area has the greatest number of bike commuters — after Park Slope, of course. [Streetsblog]
Park Slope: A local brothel is undergoing a renovation. But what will the building be now? [Curbed]
neighborhood watch
Chickens Further Brooklyn Gentrification
Battery Park: This funky glass carousel thingy could serve as a spot that links park visitors to the Coney Island aquarium via a ferry. [Kinetic Carnival]
Clinton Hill: Why go to a food co-op or the farmers’ market when you can raise chickens right behind your own brownstone? [Brownstoner]
East Village: A first peek inside (and through the windows of) the Bowery Hotel, where rooms start (for now) at $245. [Hotel Chatter via Curbed]
Gowanus: Oh, boy! It’s the four-part lecture on the history of the canal we’ve all been waiting for. [Brooklyn Record]
Morningside Heights: Columbia students use clever street art to strike back at their school’s real-estate takeover of the area. [Gothamist]
Prospect Heights: Have you met Sydney, Hudson, Jenny BiBabe, and Dakota on MySpace? They’re the new condos that want to be friends with you. [Gowanus Lounge]
buy low
Everything’s Bigger Up North (of Columbia)
Ignore the broker-speak listings agents are calling the neighborhood that straddles West Harlem and Morningside Heights “NoCo,” as in north of Columbia University and you’ll see that this co-op at 501 W. 122nd St. may be the antidote to an Upper West Side family’s space-starved distress. With four bedrooms and two baths sprawled over 1,700 square feet, it’s worth a look, especially considering what the owners are asking. At $1.069 million, it’s the price of a two-bedroom ten blocks south or a smaller three-bedroom just one block over. Plus, the down payment’s a surprisingly buyer-friendly (for a co-op, anyway) 10 percent, and the apartment’s flooded with light. The downsides? It’s a walk-up, so hauling a stroller up and down the stairs could be tiresome. And it could use a makeover, especially the eighties-style kitchen. Plus, it combines two apartments so the layout’s a little funky. Still, at this price, buyers could conceivably have the cash left over to give it some TLC.
— S. Jhoanna Robledo
neighborhood watch
Columbia B-School Explores Northern FrontierDumbo: In our version of The Straight Story, the old man on the tractor is a Jehovah’s Witness. [Brooklyn Papers]
Lower East Side: Queens of the Stone Age will break in a new, giant restaurant-theater, the Box, tonight. [Brooklyn Vegan]
Morningside Heights: Columbia Business School will move to Manhattanville campus and take 25 to 30 years to complete. [Curbed]
Park Slope: New FAO Schwartz may be within Bugaboo-pushing distance. [Crain’s New York via NY1]
Times Square: Photographic proof why New York is a city of singles. [Bagel in Harlem]
vu.
Not Every Morningside Heights Residence Comes With an RAMorningside Heights — West 100th to West 122nd Streets, west of Morningside Avenue — might as well be Columbia-land (Barnardsville?), considering the university’s massive presence here. But tucked among the neighborhood’s Columbia-affiliated buildings — many of them used to house students — are co-ops and condos for the rest of us. The stock is mostly prewar, with the graciously proportioned rooms and flowing layouts that have attracted apartment-hunters to the area for years, but one glitzy new development, 110+Broadway, just joined the scene. It’s not as cheap to buy here as it was back in the nabe’s sleepy, under-the-radar days, but compared to the rest of the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights will seem quite reasonable. You may even find some bargains in the rough.
