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
Coney Island High Jinks: This Summer, Adorably Tame!Doing your business in a shiny “pod” in Chelsea’s new Jade, sailing the lifeguard chairs at Coney, independent media going corporate in Riverdale, and more, in our daily boroughs dispatch!
neighborhood watch
This Weekend on Governors Island, Avoid the Steaming DivotThere’s a lot of weird news in our boroughs report today: Tony Soprano’s maid is evicted from Williamsburg, Alex Hamilton’s house is afloat in Harlem, and possible sex hotels are cropping up in Gowanus! Click through for all the oddacity!
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
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.
neighborhood watch
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
Your Pencil May Be Your Key to the High Line This SummerA shadow between porn hub Show World and its fate in Times Square, a chain barrier between “the ‘SATC’ house” and Carrie fans in the Village, bad blood between a rock bar and its neighbors in Park Slope … and just a click between you and our 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.
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.
in other news
Day Four of Eliot Spitzer WhoreGate: Where’s ‘Kristen’?Okay, so we’ve known the identity of the hooker who hung Eliot Spitzer for nearly two days now, and in that time we’ve heard from her sketchy friends, her family, and a dude who claims to have been her pimp but probably really wasn’t. But where’s Ashley Dupré, a.k.a. Kristen, herself? As AM New York brilliantly points out, “for a call girl, Ashley Dupré sure has proven hard to get ahold of.” The press is camped outside of her tony Chelsea building, but she’s not inside. She doesn’t need to work, because yesterday she made a ton of money off her selling her single on the Internet. But she’s nowhere to be found! Not even at Barbara Walters’s place! While we endure this interminable wait for her spectacular public debut, here’s what we’ve learned about her since yesterday:
• Some people (okay, us) wondered whether she was actually 32, not 22 as has been reported. But it turns out that’s probably wrong. [NYM]
• Spitzer had met with her several times before, but it was only after her last visit that she called her Emperor’s Club bosses and said, “Oh, my God! Do you know who this guy is?” [NYP]
neighborhood watch
Chelsea Clearview West Finally Cedes Dominance to Chelsea ClearviewChelsea: The School of Visual Arts has acquired the Chelsea West Cinemas on 23rd Street for use as auditoriums … and the school’s acting chair, design legend Milton Glaser (who did both the “I Heart NY” logo and the original New York Magazine emblem), will redo the place inside and out. Cool! [Mediabistro via Blog Chelsea]
Cobble Hill: Did some of Spitzer’s ho brokers live here or in Brooklyn Heights? Either way, kinda classy hoods to be associated with this tawdriness, if you ask us. [Cobble Hill Blog]
Coney Island: The city will replace huge, ugly, hazardous gaps in the boardwalk with a concrete-plastic wood-look-alike material … but, fakaktaishly, not until after the summer season. [NYDN]
sex diaries
The Hot, Everything-But GuyOnce a week, Daily Intel takes a peek at what your friends and neighbors are doing behind doors left slightly ajar. Today, the Hot, Everything-But Guy: 26, male, Chelsea, gay, single.
DAY ONE
7:05 a.m.: Wake up an hour before alarm, ugh. I need to pee.
7:10 a.m.: Once the morning wood deflates, I climb down stairs from my loft bed, put on boxers, and scurry out of apartment into hallway to the shared bathroom.
7:45 a.m.: Making yummy omelette with hot peppers when I hear sounds of flip-flops flip-flopping from the hall. I look through the peephole with a clear view of hallway to the shared shower hoping for Hot Neighbor in apartment #4 or guy above me in #10. Nope, it’s just Cliff.
ByArianne Cohen
neighborhood watch
Brooklyn Bridge Park May Be Bad for the FishesBrooklyn Heights: In addition to being way over budget, long-planned Brooklyn Bridge Park may damage marine life with its expected rowing and kayaking facilities, says state enviro-honchos. [Brownstoner]
Chelsea: Work has been stopped on “car-chitect” (he-he) Annabelle Selldorf’s much-hyped condo tower that allows folks to take their car right up to their own sky-high garages. “The pillars forming the exterior walls are misaligned,” says a city buildings-department flack. “This could be characterized as a structural deficiency.” Gee, you really think so? [Curbed]
Coney Island: In the era of whole hoods going bank branch and condo, don’t you just want to smack someone for grumping that the historic Child’s Restaurant building will become a roller rink this summer? Come on, Grumpums, that’s cool! [NYDN]
neighborhood watch
Cobble Hill Is All Afflutter Over Alex McCordChelsea: Jack White stopped by the Chelsea Hotel the other day*, in full fur-coat regalia, to soak up some of Bob Dylan’s residual energy from the place in order to prepare for his upcoming album with the rock hero. [Living With Legends]
Cobble Hill: This neighborhood blog is all excited that Alex McCord is one of the crackpot stars of The Real Housewives of New York City. They’ve started an open-comments thread. But no one has an opinion yet. Chime in! [Cobble Hill Blog]
Gowanus: A new south Brooklyn neighborhood coalition, which includes residents of Red Hook, Gowanus, and Carroll Gardens, is preparing to fight for your right to gentrify! Or, you know, stop gentrification. As the case may be. [Gowanus Lounge]
neighborhood watch
The ‘Crazy Super’ Has a Dog Named Pretty GirlBay Ridge: Richard Martin, the “crazy super” who posts homicidally threatening signs about trash disposal, says of his tenants “They’re Arab; they don’t give a f*ck”; has a cute Pekinese named Pretty Girl; and worships Jeanine Pirro. Feast on his cranky, strangely lovable weirdness. [NYP]
Chelsea: Facing lawsuits from folks who say it’s too loud and polluting to be there, the 30th St. pier heliport floats a plan to move itself onto two barges offshore. And Curbed is right… this homespun sketch of the plan indeed features the quaintest, gentlest West Side Highway we’ve ever seen. [Villager via Curbed]
Ditmas Park: Folks in these gentrifying, pretty parts know that the hatred currently directed at Park Slope will soon be visited upon them. And they’re probably right. [Ditmas Park Blog]
neighborhood watch
The High Line Blogs!Bay Ridge: Hey, who’s dumping the huge piles of plastic spoons in Owl’s Head Park? Will huge piles of Pinkberry follow? [Right in Bay Ridge]
Chelsea: The High Line is blogging and social networking! And it already has 47 fans! [Facebook and High Line Blog]
Gramercy: That big new condo on 23rd Street and Third Avenue won’t be sold chockablock to rich Irish folks after all … looks like it’s gonna be a big fat NYU dorm! [Villager]
neighborhood watch
Beware Midtown Fortune-Tellers! (As If You Weren’t Wary Before)Chelsea: All the fabulous old Chelsea freaks and bohos partied at Cindy Gallop’s wacky loft in the old YMCA building, but this time, sadly, the waiters kept their pants on. [Living with Legends]
Midtown: It’s funny/sad that a fortune-teller here duped an entrepreneur out of nearly half a million by telling him he was cursed, but it’s just plain funny that the Post said the guy was from “tony Wilson, Wyoming.” Bitchy! [NYP]
Red Hook Guess which “degentrifying” hood had the distinct honor of producing confetti for today’s Super Bowl–victory parade? Local hearts were “aflutter” with pride…get it? [The Real Deal]
intel
Pepsi’s Super Bowl Ad Drags Justin Through NYC
Click above to witness Pepsi’s latest Super Bowl effort. As usual, their big ad involves a celebrity doing something slightly embarrassing and vaguely funny — remember Jimmy Fallon and Parker Posey awkwardly dancing on cars? Or Diddy driving a Pepsi delivery truck? Or Britney Spears and Beyoncé as Gladiators? (Okay, that last one was awesome). But this one features an extended cameo by our favorite lady of all, New York City. Justin Timberlake starts out the commercial with some friends at his NYC restaurant, Southern Hospitality. He’s mysteriously yanked out the door and dragged up the side of a building (where SNL star Andy Samberg makes a predictably uncomfortable cameo). Then he’s thrown into the Hudson River near Chelsea and pulled into the suburbs (where he runs into Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo and gets hit in the head with a flat-screen TV). We’re not really sure about the message of this ad, but anything that involves a celebrity getting dunked in the Hudson makes us happy. If not particularly thirsty.
Pepsi USA [Official site]
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
Bed-Stuy Invades BushwickBushwick: Have Bedford-Stuyvesant landlords pushed the media to join them in identifying Bed-Stuy locales as part of trendier Bushwick? This blogger says that this fire really took place in the Stuy, but that’s not how the news reported it. [BushwickBK]
Chelsea: The old-school drunks still gather at the old-school Peter McManus Cafe, but after 7 p.m., THE KIDS arrive. Beware! [Vanishing NY]
Clinton: Folks from the 34th St. Partnership are trying to build a bike parking lot (isn’t that crazy!) on 33rd Street between Eighth and Ninth. If you have the $200,000 they need to pay for it, let them know. [Gothamist]
neighborhood watch
Brooklyn Heights Is Fighting the War on RatsBrooklyn Heights: The rats here are getting bigger and bolder, and the normally peaceful residents have taken to fighting back with machetes and water hoses. [Brooklyn Paper]
Chelsea: From 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. through Sunday, you can shop for cool old magazines and comics at Time Machine and simultaneously get drunk at their holiday open bar. [Vanishing New York]
Red Hook: A sliver-thin waterfront greenway is going up that will run all the way to Greenpoint. Rad! [OnNYTurf]
neighborhood watch
Flatbush Enters the Food Co-op FrayChelsea: The proliferation of noncontextual glass condos is driving area high schoolers to stab one another in front of the construction sites. [Vanishing New York]
Flatbush: Watch your back, Park Slope Food Co-op. The one here is moving into an old Associated market, and they’ve poached a Trader Joe’s staffer to be their produce czar. [Ditmas Park Blog]
Jackson Heights: Wow, the scrappy hood beat out Manhattan’s newly hot financial district in Curbed’s Best Nabe of ‘07 competition. Now, can it trounce — gulp — Tribeca? [Curbed]
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
Should Stuyvesant Heights Secede?Bushwick: This blogger hates on gritty Bed-Stuy, claiming that it’s nothing compared to its slicker, ‘shwick-er neighbor. That’s harsh, but maybe he’s right to suggest that pretty Stuy Heights secede from the rest of the hood. [BushwickBK]
Chelsea: Even before 100 Eleventh Avenue developers could obscure Knox Martin’s landmark mural next door, they’ve covered his signature with their ad. It’s a proto-dis! [Chelsea Blog]
Coney Island: An ice-skating rink at the base of the Wonder Wheel? That’s bigger than Wollman? That’s a summertime sailing pond? Yes, yes and yes! [NY1 via Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
neighborhood watch
Chelsea, Now With Lap Pools!Chelsea: New promo pics for the too-fabulous Yves (so French!) condo tell a smoldering story of love, lust, and on-site lap pools. [Curbed]
Clinton Hill: Don’t click here unless you’re ready to see the dead, mutilated squirrel left in front of the home of this blogger. Revenge from a developer who got a snarky write-up? [Brownstoner]
Downtown Brooklyn: The massive new real estate planned for the area may not be so massive overall…think 1.6 mil square feet of office space versus the 4.5 mil projected a few years ago. [NYO]
neighborhood watch
Bella the Cat Has a New LifeBrooklyn Heights: Bella the Cat, who charmed passersby on the Brooklyn Bridge footpath in Cadman Plaza Park, is alive and well and living in bourgeois comfort in a home on Pineapple Street. [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Chelsea: Residents of the Chelsea Hotel swear they saw blood-sucking ghouls in the lobby last night: the hotel’s new corporate management. [Living with Legends]
Clinton Hill: Pratt has taken over the Kentucky Fried Chicken spot! Less wings, more wingnuts. [Clinton Hill Blog]
neighborhood watch
Wait, We Kind of Want One of Those Full-Body UmbrellasBrooklyn Heights: The Fairway Shuttle made its first stop in the Heights today! What, you white people don’t want to walk through Red Hook? [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Chelsea: Straight and gay couples have been walking around the city handing out condoms — underneath condomlike umbrellas. Extra points for this blogger who titles his post “It’s Raining (Se)Men!” [Copyranter]
Clinton Hill: Because of inclement weather, tomorrow’s Great PUPkin Dog Costume Contest in Clinton Hill will be delayed until Sunday, which gives you just that much more time on the “Dead Flower From Meerkat Manor” costume for your Chihuahua. [Clinton Hill Blog]
neighborhood watch
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]
neighborhood watch
Is The Hotel Pennsylvania Outta Here?Chelsea: Few care that the 1919 McKim, Mead and White–designed Hotel Pennsylvania will likely come down to make room for a way-high office tower. [NYO]
Greenpoint: Sassy blogger Miss Heather and a local named Bert are in a nasty e-fight over the whether Miss H’s blog helps or hurts the hood. [Newyorkshitty]
Greenwich Village: It’s official … Gray’s Papaya on 8th Street has endorsed Bloomberg for president, “because he walks the walk and talks the talk.” Sure, but does he bite the dog? [Blog Chelsea]
neighborhood watch
Car Canoeing in Queens!Brooklyn Heights: So the Coen brothers think they can disrupt the whole neighborhood for a month with their George Clooney film shoot and then make it up by donating to some community groups? We all know what the locals really wanted were backrubs from George. [Brooklyn Eagle]
Chelsea: Twenty-nine years ago today, Nancy Spungeon was bludgeoned (by Sid Vicious?) in the Chelsea Hotel’s Room 100 … an anniversary the inn’s new corporate management likely won’t be fêting. [Living With Legends]
Cobble Hill: We hope the new owner of that building who tried to evict those two elderly sisters is happy now. Tragically, one’s dead, and, more tragically, the other moved to Jersey. [Curbed]
Corona: There’s a lot of Dominican families here named Corona, but that’s just a coincidence … as is anyone here getting wasted on Corona beer. [Junction Blvd]
Greenpoint: Locals learn the hard way that if they want to instantly stop noisy after-hours construction, it’s better to call the cops than the DEP. Uh … duh? [Newyorkshitty]
Maspeth: Manhattanites won’t complain about a few curbside puddles when they see these videos of cars swimming through the streets of Queens yesterday. Eau-trageous! [Queens Crap]
Upper East Side: Unless those raccoons blocking your path as you run around the Central Park reservoir are foaming at the mouth, the Parks Department doesn’t want to hear about it. [UES Informer]
neighborhood watch
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
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
RIP Burgers and CupcakesChelsea: The Iron Cupcake of 23rd Street has fallen! And there was much rejoicing. [BlogChelsea]
South Williamsburg: Are policemen beating up people in Billyburg? That’s what one anonymous poster paster thinks. [Gowanus Lounge]
Washington Heights: Apparently, on 181st Street, “abomination” and “promiscuous” are the new gay slurs. And they can kill! [Coypranter]
West Bronx: Foreclosure numbers in the third quarter of this year (unsurprisingly) were the highest they’ve ever been in the borough. But the neighborhood may have a remedy. [West Bronx Blog]
Williamsburg: Aggressive (and sometimes threatening) graffiti taggers still make us laugh. Ha ha — kill all the rich people making our neighborhood nicer — ha! [Curbed]
neighborhood watch
Architecture Has Gotten Too ‘Fun’ in ChelseaChelsea: When they put that “decorative” rail around that “edgy” new glass box on 18th and Eighth (RIP the restaurant), they probably didn’t expect dozens of hip-hoppy schoolkids to hang on it all afternoon. Hee-hee. [Vanishing New York]
Forest Hills: The hood might be losing newcomers to hipper zones like Fort Greene. And all because the cribs here look like grandma-type places. And not even cool Golden Girls–type grandmas. [Forest Hills 72]
Jamaica: Should the Macy’s turned Colosseum Mall here, designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merril in 1947, be considered a mid-century-modern gem? [Brooklyn Rail]
Park Slope: Just when you thought the Slope’s collective ego couldn’t get any bigger, one of its own — painter Joan Snyder — has to go and win the half-mil MacArthur Genius Award. Great. [Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
Roosevelt Island: The marriage of real estate and money has become a permanent fixture here … the sculpture exhibit, that is! [Roosevelt Islander]
Upper East Side: New evidence finds that if you are a (presumably straight) guy walking around this hood with a popped pink Izod collar, you are very likely a douche bag. [78thand2nd]
Upper West Side: Does Queens council member (and dulcet-toned sometime vocalist) Melinda Katz care more about preserving the UWS’ character and scale than hoods in her own borough? [Queens Crap]
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
Coen Brothers Un-Brooklyn the HeightsBrooklyn Heights: For a new film, the Coen Brothers repainted and tweaked the façades of some brownstones here to make them look more like D.C.’s Georgetown hood. Now that ain’t right. [Brownstoner]
Chelsea: After disappearing from Seventh and 23rd for a while after the cops (reluctantly) busted him for playing an amped guitar, scruffy Vlad is back … with an even louder steel resonator guitar they can’t nab him for because it’s acoustic. [Blog Chelsea]
Greenpoint: Enviro-crusadress Julia Roberts — uh, Erin Brockovich — may be here again this month to blast Exxon for its subterranean oil spill just revealed to be nearly twice as big as thought. Meanwhile, Sotheby’s has arrived in this scrappy hood. [NYDN]
Long Island City: Did you know that the huge Citibank building here is actually the spire of a giant sundial? Neither did we. And even after reading this, we can’t figure out how this thing works. [OuterB]
Maspeth: Bloomberg’s people will meet with folks here protesting to save a church, even though one of the rabble-rouser’s posters claimed he wanted to hang the mayor. [Queens Crap]
Times Square: An old vaudeville theater turned porn emporium on Eighth and 44th will be torn down. [Postcards from Hell’s Kitchen]
Williamsburg: Uh, maybe somebody should shore up that scaffolding at 70 North 9th Street before it collapses and hurts someone. [Gowanus Lounge]
neighborhood watch
Rooms to Rent in the Chelsea Hotel! Sort Of.Bushwick: Oh, God: Now the Offensive Gay Gentrifier is writing offensive haiku. (“Oh, the bodega/So many on each corner/Like ghetto Starbucks…”) [BushwickBK]
Chelsea: Once again, new management is advertising rooms at the storied Chelsea Hotel for the low price of $119 a night. “Subject to availability,” that is. So are they really available? [Living with Legends]
Clinton Hill: They’re filming something in the hood today…and it’s probably a Heineken commercial. [Clinton Hill Blog]
Park Slope: That raccoon that attacked a woman in the park recently? It and its kind apparently like fresh, raw fish. Hm — sushi-eating attack raccoons. [Gowanus Lounge]
Sunnyside: It’s the new Astoria! Or so some are saying, based on slightly cheaper rents in this Queens nabe. [OuterB]
Williamsburg: At the community-board meeting last night, it was all about the fate of the half-built Finger Building (just how tall should it be?)… that, and the faltering sewage system, that is. [Brownstoner]
it happened this week
Hitting the RoadAs a halfhearted cabbie strike made it easier to flag down a school bus than a yellow taxi during rush hour last week, the Big Apple did its best to keep moving forward. Hillary out-earned rivals Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani in the city during the second quarter — and bested Rudy in a poll asking which candidate people would most like to have riding shotgun on a long road trip — but hit a speed bump trying to maintain her distance from former six-figure fund-raiser and felon Norman Hsu, who skipped out on bail.
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]
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
Someone Is Already Stealing Christmas?Astoria: Someone has stepped up and claimed a family tie to that recently sold “mystery mansion” on 47th Street. Yeah, the one with all the sculptures. [OuterB]
Brooklyn Heights: Jeez, you’d think that after all it took to schlep that floating pool to Brooklyn Bridge Park they could leave it there at least a few weeks longer than this weekend. But no. And the pool goes to the Bronx next summer. [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Chelsea: Residents in and near the London Terrace apartment block are dwelling on the bright side of long-term scaffolding: They can walk their dogs in the rain without their umbrella … ella … ella. [You Want a Piece of Me?]
Greenpoint: In the city’s Great Bedbug Scare of 2007, it’s come to this: free sidewalk sofas claiming they’re critter-free. Wow, free and uninfested. [Newyorkshitty]
Maspeth: Who hired some guy this past weekend to cut down what serves as the area’s beloved Christmas tree? And, as the mystery cutter said, is a replacement tree really en route? [Queens Crap]
Park Slope: You can almost forgive Slopesters for being so smugly bougie-boho when you see how they rally behind someone like Andy, the local fruit-truck guy who’s temporarily away after having a stroke. Get better, Andy! [OTBKB]
Williamsburg: An e-mail leaked out of a city-council member’s office complains of oil unearthed at a development site across the street from — you guessed it — the famous contaminated Roebling Oil Field! [Gowanus Lounge]
neighborhood watch
Stay Off the Grass. No, Really.Astoria: How cool would it be to rent an apartment in a house with secret passageways? (Scooby snacks not included.) [OuterB]
Brooklyn Heights: You might want to stay off that swank new Astroturf in Cadman Plaza Park on hot sunny days, when the turf (allegedly) hits 125 degrees. Talk about smokin’ grass! [McBrooklyn]
Chelsea: Condo-in-progress the Caledonia will sport fancy glass sheathing to help distinguish it from the nearby projects. [Blog Chelsea]
Long Island City: The guy who’d hold parking-lot spaces for folks in exchange for a cup of coffee, profiled recently in the Times, is being wedged out of that ad hoc job by — you guessed it — a condo. [Long Island City]
Lower East Side: That mesh-y cladding for the new New Museum on the Bowery was supposed to be zinc-plated steel. But workmen are saying it’s aluminum. What kind of a, uh, shell game is this? [Curbed]
Rego Park: Devotees of the area’s last kosher deli don’t care that the Health Department just closed it. Seems that it beats a Russian pharmacy or a Bukharian plumbing-fixtures shop any day. [Queens Central]
Washington Heights: Tonight, Da Heights becomes the latest hood to be sprayed down to prevent West Nile virus. Locals are warned to stay indoors and to clean their swimming pools and hot tubs. Because you know how many of those there are in these parts. [Gothamist]
neighborhood watch
The Gays Have Found Forest Hills — or Maybe NotBoerum Hill: Prudential Douglas Elliman is pissed at bloggers who write about how their Brooklyn properties won’t sell. Good, because we’re pissed at all brokers for taking our money and only showing us “studios with a nook.” [Brownstoner]
Chelsea: All that construction at the General Theological Seminary on Tenth Avenue is for a “Geothermic Well Field.” Great Scott! [Blog Chelsea]
Forest Hills: Gays in the Hills! “Or maybe more straight guys are wearing Abcrombie [sic] andFitch t-shirts and walking tiny dogs with their male friends.” [Forest Hills 72]
Lower Manhattan: Curbed has hot pics (literally) of the destruction of a T.G.I. Friday’s downtown, to make way for the Fulton Street Transit Center. TGIF indeed! [Curbed]
Union Square: If you need $100 a month, why not let this Internet wunderkind hang out in your apartment sometimes? [Zach Klein]
West Village: Gothamist gathers all the info on one of our New York real-estate obsessions, the Northern Dispensary Building. [Gothamist]
in other news
Someone Wasting Crystal Meth on Dogs in ChelseaChannel 2 has picked up on an upsetting trend at the Chelsea Dog Run — hounds getting high on a mystery drug that some are saying is crystal meth. We’re actually, astoundingly, not joking here. Three dogs have died and many more have fallen ill after consuming mystery substances while playing at the park on 22nd Street. The organization NYCdog has issued a warning to pet owners across the city. “After the first incident, it was believed to be an isolated case where an illicit drug may have fallen out of someone’s pocket,” a press release said. “But now, with nine reported cases, it appears to be the act of deliberate poisoning.” The Channel 2 report said that some owners even saw a stranger feed their dogs before they fell ill. Many will probably think that the obvious culprits — those damn meth-loving Chelsea gays — are behind this, but if there’s anything that gang treasures more than sleeveless tees, it’s puppies. We smell a setup!
Danger in the Dog Park: Is Someone Giving Your Pooch Drugs? [Channel 2]
neighborhood watch
Retail Deaths ‘Happen’ Sporadically, and So Do Subway RenovationsBrooklyn: Brownstone enthusiasts have begun to weigh in on one of the most serious questions of renovation – round toilet bowls or oval? [Brownstoner]
Brooklyn Heights: Uncommon Grounds coffee shop has closed for renovations – and will soon feature a full kitchen and expanded menu. They’ll also host private coffee parties! That’s so Brooklyn we could die. [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Chelsea: The Noose, on 19th Street, is closing because its owner died. The gentleman behind the counter of the shop told a customer that she died in her sleep. “She wasn’t old,” he said. “These things just happen.” Whoa. [Blog Chelsea]
Columbus Circle: Progress is slow and unsure at the big station under the Time Warner Center. But the tiling, you know, looks nice. [Second Avenue Sagas]
Dumbo: The price of the penthouse of One Main has been slashed by nearly a million, bringing it down to $7.8 million. Call this service journalism. [Curbed]
Staten Island: Friends and neighbors remember fallen Bravest member who fought this weekend’s World Trade Center fire. [Staten Island Advance]
neighborhood watch
Underground Railroad Landmarks to Become Underground GarageChelsea: This lost cat should be easily identified based on this accurate and lifelike illustration. Or, wait, is that a kangaroo? [Blog Chelsea]
Coney Island: Was someone cyber-posing as a circus executive to undermine the Cole Brothers big top that came here recently? [Gowanus Lounge]
Downtown Brooklyn: It’s increasingly likely that those Duffield Street homes believed to have been stops on the Underground Railroad will soon be replaced by, among other things, an underground parking garage. Inspiring. [Brooklyn Eagle via Duffield St. Underground]
Greenpoint: Looks like an open-air weekend art-and-antiques fair is coming to, uh, Grinpoint. [Newyorkshitty]
Harlem: A packed room at a community-board meeting was so opposed to Columbia’s expansion in Harlem that even eminence noir David Dinkins, who supports the growth, was booed and heckled. [Harlem Fur]
Lower East Side: Residents of the Rutgers Houses and Knickerbocker Village don’t want all those Chinatown buses congregating on a two-block stretch in their midst. [Chelsea Now via Streetsblog]
Soho: “If you had to find one word to describe Soho, it would be ‘beauty,’” writes this flack-y blogger. Funny, that. We thought it would be “mall.” [Weblicist]
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]