Joshua Kushner: Jared 2.0?Jared Kushner’s developer bro rocks the East Village shul crowd, the waterfalls installation is killing the trees at River Café, barges are rotting in Jamaica Bay, and scruffle venue Studio B in Greenpoint is shuttered. In today’s hood roundup!
neighborhood watch
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
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.
neighborhood watch
Dwarf Pimp Busted in Bed-StuyThe rides at Coney are reportedly dangerous, Malcolm Gladwell buys up more of the West Village, and a little person gets caught big pimpin’ in Bed-Stuy. Ho-hum, just the start of another week in our daily boroughs report.
neighborhood watch
The High Line: Now With Seating!The old Domino Sugar plant keeps its cool sign, the Village likely loses a theater save its façade, and the High Line gains its first bench! More wins and losses in today’s boroughs report.
Queens Children Face Giant ‘Dagger’Bronx-ites don’t like their hoods, a councilman doesn’t like plans for a power plant in Astoria, and everyone, it seems, doesn’t like the Chelsea Hotel’s manager, so they’re glad he’s leaving. Even more acrimony in our full daily boroughs report!
neighborhood watch
Loch Ness Monster on 21st?A Macy’s in Harlem? A sea serpent in Chelsea? A chatty Kathy in the East Village? Yes, children, all that and more in today’s boroughs report.
A Biggie Biopic Grows in BrooklynA movie in Clinton Hill, a murder in Carroll Gardens, Obama faces popping up all over Brooklyn, and more in our daily roundup of neighborhood news.
neighborhood watch
Toxic Wind Blows From GowanusConstruction in Gowanus blows a fetid wind across the land, babies terrorize Upper East Siders, and Chelsea residents tear apart Barnes & Noble with their bare hands in our daily roundup of neighborhood news.
neighborhood watch
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
The Chelsea Hotel Undergoes a Voice ChangeBedford-Stuyvesant: Someone who lives on this cute block has a thing against homeless people. Or hipsters. We can’t tell which. [newyorkshitty]
Chelsea: After 30 years as the voice of the Chelsea Hotel, telephone operator Amy Miller is retiring. Bet she’s heard some bad verbiage in her days. [Living with Legends]
Cobble Hill: Are those yellow boxes on top of this Walentas building going to be bulkheads or illegal beachy cabana things? Only time and angry neighbors will tell. [Brooklyn Paper]
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]
neighborhood watch
Feral Cats Displaced in Favor of Waterfront FunBay Ridge: Gotta love this “crazy super,” whose psychotic signs routinely threaten to kill tenants who don’t take out their trash properly. [Right in Bay Ridge]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: Elation erupts upon news of an imminent Duane Reade: “No longer will we have to drink Tropical Fantasy ginger ale. We’ll be able to step it up a notch with the effervescence of Schweppes.” [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Greenpoint: A colony of feral cats will have to be displaced as part of plans for a concrete waterfront park here, which will include a twelve-foot view-blocking fence. [Newyorkshitty]
neighborhood watch
Flatbush to Rise?Bedford-Stuyvesant: Guess which dark lord lives in this sleekly hideous black fortress? It’s your dad, Luke Skywalker! [Newyorkshitty]
East Village: Big-time developer Ben Shaoul thinks the East Village will always be “gritty and inexpensive and arty,” even though he’s renting $7,500 marble-bedecked apartments here. [NYO]
Flatbush: Look for some major redevelopment on shabby Flatbush Avenue, where the Pintchik family, long the owners of the local hardware store, own about $100 million in property and are readying to class it up to the level of Park Slope or Cobble Hill. [NYS]
neighborhood watch
Bedford-Stuyvesant Not So Sold on the ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ Parts of This ElectionBedford-Stuyvesant: Some folks are skeptical that anything will change here, no matter who’s elected in November. And they’re employing their mailboxes to say so. [Newyorkshitty]
Greenwich Village: After renovations of Washington Square Park found human remains there, folks will protest there tonight, saying the city should merely “repair” the park and not upset buried bones with a full-scale redo. [Metro]
Jackson Heights: This is the home of the largest of 47 rent-stabilized apartment buildings throughout Queens just purchased for $300 million by Vantage Properties. Housing advocates fear the new owner will systematically push out low-rent-paying tenants in the nearly 2,000 units. [The Real Deal]
neighborhood watch
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]
neighborhood watch
Battle Over Randalls Island Playing Fields Wages OnBedford-Stuyvesant: Here’s an arty do-it-yourself interpretation of the glassy standard bus shelter that’s taking over the city. No surprise this is for the bus that goes to Williamsburg, where all those arty DIY kids live! [Bed-Stuy Banana]
East Harlem: Locals are still waging a legal battle against the city’s plan to take $52 million over twenty years from top private schools like Dalton and Spence in exchange for the schools’ use of most of the Randalls Island athletic fields during peak after-school hours. [Newsday]
Forest Hills: Sure, that mini-mall on Austin Street is pretty hideous-looking, but it still has a Thai restaurant, a Greek restaurant, a creperie, a skater shop, and a comic-book emporium, so let’s stop complaining about its ugliness and count our blessings! [Queens Central]
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
The Left Bank Moves to the Right VillageBedford-Stuyvesant: Can’t tell a hanging corner turret from a hanging corner bay from a tripartite bay? Read this post and you’ll never walk illiterately through brownstone Bed-Stuy again. [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Cobble Hill: Council member David Yassky didn’t want a middle school going in a Dumbo apartment tower (’cause it could block views of the Brooklyn Bridge), but he might support selfsame school sharing space with the jail here on Atlantic Avenue. Way to put the kids first, Yaz. [Brooklyn Paper]
East Village: The alley behind the new Avalon condo on 1st Street is supposed to become a boutique-filled “slice of the Left Bank,” but right now it’s just a dump. [Vanishing New York]
neighborhood watch
Multicultural Caroling in Ditmas Park: It’s the New Trick-or-TreatingBay Ridge: With its unsolved crimes and rampant development, is the Ridge what L.A. was like back in the noir-y, true-crime forties and fifties? Seems a little grandiose for us. [Bay Ridge Rover]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: Okay, okay, it’s not the richest hood, but couldn’t they put up some holiday decorations? [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Ditmas Park: If you want to carol at the tree-lighting next weekend, you’d better know your Christmas and Hanukkah songs, but you’ll get extra credit if you can bring the Kwanzaa and solstice beats, too. [Ditmas Park Blog]
neighborhood watch
Where Is Sherri’s Sketchy High-rise?Next to the Methadone Clinic: Not only is The View’s Sherri Shepherd insisting that Jesus predated the great classical civilizations, she’s also looking at buying a condo in a high-rise “next to a methadone clinic.” But where? Only that pre-Greco-Roman J.C. guy knows. [Curbed]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: Lots of cute kitties here need a home. If you’ve already got enough cats, don’t look at the cute pictures, or you may end up with more, you big softie. (Or is it that you just can’t get along with people?) [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Corona: First there was white flight. Now there’s black flight. And when Martians land here, everybody-else flight will ensue. [Junction Boulevard]
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
Battery Park, Do We Need More of It?Battery Park City: Should the hood, itself built on landfill, be extended out into the Hudson with more landfill? The local community board says, “No, no, no!” [CityRealty]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: Herewith, twenty reasons to love the hood’s hated-on, not-so-trendy north side. (“11. The selection of current bootleg DVDs at the laundromat.” Can’t argue with that.) [Bed-Stuy Banana]
Downtown Brooklyn: One of those sleek, new bus shelters has been smashed to pieces … again! [McBrooklyn]
neighborhood watch
Bed-Stuy Fires Back at the ‘Shwick!Bedford-Stuyvesant: Uh-oh. Bed-Stuy just upped the stakes in the blog battle between it and Bushwick. They even dis ‘shwick homegirl Rosie Perez. This is war, muthaf*ckas. [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Coney Island: So many people showed up last night at the first public meeting on the city’s plans for Coney that it had to be canceled for lack of space. Wow. This should be an epic novel. [Gowanus Lounge]
Jackson Heights: The hood’s got a new bulletin board! Where else will you learn where to get the area’s best pizza, Mexican cocoa power, and $5-or-under eyebrow threading? [Jackson Heights Life]
neighborhood watch
At Least Your Super Didn’t Scald You With AcidEast Village: The rise of the yunnie, or Young Urban Narcissist, wasn’t the launch of Sex and the City. It was the 1994 opening of Bowery Bar. [Vanishing New York]
Greenpoint: The best way to find an apartment in this hot hood? Get off your ass, come out here, walk around, and ask, moron! Oh, and be polite. [11222]
Midtown: Wasn’t it just a matter of time before the public library at Fifth and 53rd was sold to a high-end hotelier? Especially given that midtown is the new red-light district. [Curbed]
Park Slope: Next week, local merchants will start offering free yellow umbrellas customers can borrow when it’s raining, then return on an honor system. Hey, wait … it rains in Park Slope? [Gowanus Lounge]
neighborhood watch
Bushwick: Now With Ice Caves!Bedford-Stuyvesant: Wanna know if your Bed-Stuy block is respectable? Check to see if FreshDirect delivers there. [Bed Stuy Blog]
Bushwick: If you rent a subterranean room in the Lair, you won’t get a window, but you will enjoy “the only indoor ice cave that Bushwick has ever seen.” Sounds like breaking even to us. [Curbed]
Ditmas Park: All those serious-looking South Asians outside P.S. 139 the other day? They were there for local elections for the Chittagong Association, which sends disaster relief to folks back home in Bangladesh. Duh! [Ditmas Park Blog]
neighborhood watch
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
Car Elevators? What Is This, Shanghai?Bay Ridge: If you don’t want a Fedders nightmare going up next to your expensively preserved Victorian around here, you better be careful where in the hood you buy. [Bay Ridge Rover]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: Former Essence honcho turned local Victorian innkeeper Monique Greenwood — a.k.a. the doyenne of the “new” Bed-Stuy — was on the Montel show yesterday. Reprazent! [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Chelsea: According to this promo video, couples who move into an upcoming Eleventh Avenue luxury condo will be able to drive their cars in an elevator up to their own garage. But they will not have to be affectionate with each other. [Vanishing New York]
Cobble Hill: Dumbo developer-king Dave Walentas is seeking to crack historic-district rules here with a super-tall building that he claims, uh, will enhance the hood’s historic quality. [Cobble Hill]
East Village: So cranky blogger Chris thinks nohib.com readers are skinflints because none have given to his E.V.-schools drive, eh? A whopping seven people from your own site have given, Chris. You ain’t exactly Sally Struthers on the fund-raising front yourself. [East Village Idiot]
Roosevelt Island: What does the local Toastmaster’s Club toast to? Life on an isle filled with charmless seventies architecture? [Roosevelt Island]
Upper East Side: At $30,000 a month, rentals in the refurbished Plaza may actually be more expensive than booking a room there for four weeks. What the helloise? [Curbed]
neighborhood watch
Don’t Worry, There Will Still Be Four Starbucks at Astor PlaceAstor Place: If ever a Starbucks were to be missed, it might be this big one, where the world meets up. But it’s not closing … they’re just fixing the sign. And yet, the longtime newsstand here will be replaced with a shiny glass box. [Vanishing New York]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: Cops are — wisely — advising parents not to let their kids play with a toy 9 mm that looks uncannily realistic. [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Ditmas Park: A bit less than $800,000 will get you this picture-postcard of domestic bliss: cute white house, front yard, white picket fence … and roaring street-level subway just ten feet away! [Ditmas Park Blog]
Harlem: Paging Tracy James, paging Tracy James. (That’s Diana Ross’s designer turned supermodel character in Mahogany, FYI.) Please report to the Apollo this Sunday for the 50th annual Ebony fashion fair… [Uptown Flavor]
Long Island City: The city thinks this burgeoning condo-tower haven is “poor” and “underdeveloped” enough to make it worth wooing colleges to move here. [NYS via Queens Crap]
Sheepshead Bay: Um, not to sound peevish, but would someone please dredge the entrance to the bay before it gets any narrower? Pretty soon a clam roll won’t be able to sail through here. [Gerritsen Beach]
Williamsburg: Advertising for the Edge condo takes a page from the Basic Instinct flash-that-muff playbook. And how bold to pair sex and Asian men. [Copyranter via Curbed]
neighborhood watch
Cheapest Plaza Room: $775 a NightBedford-Stuyvesant: Please don’t let something tacky occupy this empty storefront and set back this nicely gentrifying block! (cries a blogger). I mean, is that really wood-paneling? [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Glendale: Furious folks in this Queens burg, which provided the exterior of Archie Bunker’s TV house, say that too many buses passing through caused a water main to break, cutting off the agua supply. [NYDN]
Harlem: The W hotel-condo planned for Frederick Douglass Boulevard looks like a Lego’s miscarriage on acid. [Harlem Fur]
Midtown: The soon-to-be-100-years-old Plaza Hotel is booking rezzies after January 1 starting at $775 a night. Maybe if you hawk all your Heloise first-editions on eBay… [Newyorkology]
Park Slope: Who is torching all the cars around here? That’s wicked mean. [Brownstoner]
West Village: This outspoken young Jewish gay is disgusted that Marc Jacobs — another outspoken young Jewish gay — is taking over his hood. [West Village Kid]
neighborhood watch
iPods at Stoop Sale!Bedford-Stuyvesant: Get your cut-rate iPods at Saturday’s Quincy St. stoop sale! [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Chelsea: What was that suspicious parcel outside the Hotel Chelsea that prompted cops to cordon off the street yesterday? Sid Vicious’s care package from the beyond? [Blog Chelsea]
Little Italy: Judging from the look of this wiseguy as he’s caught cleaning up San Gennaro’s street filth with eco-hostile bleach, the photog may want to contact Witness Protection. [Curbed]
Maspeth: New housing here is taking a curious (and, well, tacky) turn for the maritime. [Queens Crap]
Midtown: In which two ever-metastasizing juggernauts converge: East 42nd St. will soon house the first bank-Starbucks combo. Talk about caffeine withdrawal. [NYP]
West Village: Though a gaggle of protesters are no match for Trump’s ever-rising SoHo spire, they’re pissing all over plans for One Jackson Square at the corner of Eighth and Greenwich. Literally. [Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York]
Williamsburg: Demolition has begun at a former cabbage processing plant on Roebling St. that smells notoriously farty. But with an oil field across the street, will workers strike the oozy stuff when they start to dig? [Gowanus Lounge]
neighborhood watch
Herman Behr Mansion on Sale for $12 MillionBedford-Stuyvesant: Councilman Al Vann, have you responded yet to those irate letters about that trash-strewn lot on Throop between Jefferson and Hancock? It sure looks pretty nasty. [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Brooklyn Heights: The Herman Behr Mansion on Pierrepont Street, which has housed a survivor of the Titanic, prostitutes, and Franciscans monks, is on sale for $12 million. [Brooklyn Eagle via McBrooklyn]
Greenpoint: Acid-tongued blogger Miss Heather can’t decide which she hates more: this Fedders-type eyesore on North Henry Street or the Brooklyn Paper. [Newyorkshitty]
Midtown East: Oh, no! This Sunday is the last day for Madison Avenue’s Dahesh Museum of Art, which features nineteenth- and twentieth-century European artists. Dahesh, we hardly knew ye. [NewYorkology]
Upper East Side: This area single gal is disgusted with new TV show Gossip Girl’s depiction of her hood … and wants today’s vapid girl teens to have more role models like Condi Rice. [Upper East Side Informer]
Williamsburg: It’s not fair that East River State Park closes so early that you have to watch the sunset through locked gates, is it? [I’m Not Sayin’, I’m Just Sayin’]
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
Botanical Fight: Who’s Got the Greenest Block in Brooklyn?Bedford-Stuyvesant: MacDonough between Stuyvesant and Lewis Avenues is the Greenest Block in Brooklyn, says the borough’s Botanic Garden. [Gothamist]
Bushwick: New condos on Wyckoff Avenue are cheaper than much of the market, but that’s because the closest subway stop is Dekalb Avenue on the L. [Brownstoner]
Dumbo: The grand opening of the Pearl Street Triangle is tomorrow at 12:30. Check out the benches, chairs, and potted trees. [Dumbo NYC]
Greenpoint: What was that mysterious, brightly lit new storefront on Franklin last night? Hipsters? Poles? Fresh retail? [Greenpointers]
Kensington: Folks in this up-and-coming enclave want you to know that recent crimes reported to have taken place here actually happened in Flatbush, okay? [Kensington (Brooklyn)]
Long Island City: The neighborhood has spawned a new MP3 download service. [LICNYC]
Williamsburg: Some locals dispute recent media assertions that the city has been cracking down on rogue construction around here. [Gowanus Lounge]
neighborhood watch
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]
sex diaries
The Horny MommyOnce a week, Daily Intel takes a peek at what your friends and neighbors are doing behind doors left slightly ajar. Today, the Horny Mommy: female, 37, database designer, Bedford Stuyvesant, parent, in a relationship.
DAY ONE
9:06 a.m.: See guy on subway platform with gorgeous curly hair. I wonder if our potential kids would come out with that lovely mane.
9:07 a.m.: He turns around. Never mind.
12:07 p.m.: Finally get last night’s Today sponge out. Gravity is good.
1 p.m.: See a twentysomething girl’s perky breasts bouncing as she walks. I need a boob job. Gravity is not so good.
3:25 p.m.: Co-worker hopes that she’ll get a man within the next five years(!). I thank my lucky stars I’ve found someone.
5:11 p.m.: See fab body-builder type. Desperately wish I had already gotten the boob job.
ByArianne Cohen
neighborhood watch
Curtis Sliwa Threatens Carroll Gardens TeensBaisley Pond: In the Queens hinterlands, it can get so rural that some folks don’t even have sidewalks. [Progressive South Side]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: Who is the artist behind this darkly compelling new mural on Throop between Quincy and Gates? [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Brooklyn Heights: Let views of the Brooklyn Bridge inspire crunches and high-kicks. That’s right, free fitness classes in BB Park have begun. [Brooklyn Enthusiast]
Carroll Gardens: Rock-throwing hooliganism is afoot in yuppie haven Carroll Park … and Curtis Sliwa’s intervening! [Gowanus Lounge]
East Village: Does Matt Damon actually live in this Lafayette Street building, or is this movie poster just an advertisement? [Curbed]
Greenpoint: The Runs Brooklyn guy is moving to Iowa, after having jogged and blogged about half the borough. [Runs Brooklyn via A Brooklyn Life]
Tottenville: Who needs Xanadu: The Musical when a new, high-tech roller rink is opening here on Staten Island? [NY1 and Prodigal Borough]
neighborhood watch
Will Little West 12th Go a Little British?Bedford-Stuyvesant: The local little league team will play on the White House lawn July 15 as part of a Jackie Robinson tribute. [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Bushwick: When you move into this hood, the so-called welcome wagon is a napkin full of trash dumped at your door. [BushwickBK]
Long Island City: Nespresso, a division of Nestle, will move its HQ into Court Square Place, the new blue glass building near the Citibank Tower. But … will they move in Quik? [OuterB]
Lower East Side: It’ll get very fancy on old Delancey indeed when H&M opens its latest branch there, which is today’s hot retail rumor. [Curbed]
South Slope: Snarks are saying that this new building on Fourth and Baltic is so ugly they yearn for the gas station that used to be here. Ouch, mama! [Gowanus Lounge]
West Village: At least one British expat thinks it’s disingenuous that a “grassroots” campaign to rename part of the hood “Little Britain” is being backed by corporate giant Virgin Atlantic. [Englishman in New York]
neighborhood watch
Mind Your Bike Manners in WilliamsburgAstoria: They’re taking bets on which store will close next on the area’s Broadway strip. Will it be Broadway Bakery or Radio Shack? [Forest Hills 72]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: Obamaphiles will be gathering at two funky spots to cheer on their man during Thursday night’s Dem-hopeful debates. [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Chelsea: Chelsea Hotel devotees are already devising ways they can drive the new corporate management crazy — and, they hope, away. Sidewalk “greed kills” notes, anyone? [Living with Legends]
Clinton Hill: This creepy thing spotted on Hall Street last week couldn’t be a pile of dirty snow. So what is it? Also: Ew. [Clinton Hill Blog]
East Harlem: There will be a community meeting tonight to discuss the brutal murder in Mount Morris Park last weekend. [Uptown Flavor]
Maspeth: Did you know that Native Americans founded this Queens neighborhood in 1621? Oh, wait, that’s not true, according to a critic of a new guide to the hood. [Queens Crap]
Williamsburg: The many cyclists of Bedford Avenue found a little scolding from the NYPD attached to their bikes recently. [Streetsblog]
vu.
No Trust Fund Required in Bed-StuyTownhouse types searching for the Holy Grail anything with period details intact for less than a million long ago crossed Harlem off their list. In many parts of Brooklyn, like Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights, they’re virtually extinct. Fortunately, there’s still Bed-Stuy, where row upon row of brownstone beauties still exist, many still decently priced (i.e., not requiring trust funds). Decades ago, this neighborhood, the former stomping grounds of Chris Rock, Jay-Z, and Richie Havens, was blighted by violent crime, poverty, and drugs. Like everywhere else in the borough, gentrification swept through, driving some old-timers away. But many locals remained, working to keep interloping developers and their condo fever at bay and pledging to retain Bed-Stuy’s architectural magnificence and cultural diversity. (Landmarking saved swaths of homes from the wrecking ball.) See for yourself at this weekend’s open houses, listed after the jump.
S. Jhoanna Robledo
