Michael Phelps Is Gold for NBCPlus, lawyers make criminals sing (to ‘Don Giovanni’), another spectacular apartment you can’t afford hits the market, and more, in our daily industry roundup.
neighborhood watch
In the Rockaways, Safe Swimming Is a Luxury, Not a RightNasty razor teeth in Chelsea, bank-on-biker discrimination in Windsor Terrace, lifeguard inequality in the Rockaways … and other bad tidings to make you angry and anxious in today’s bitter boroughs report.
neighborhood watch
Edgar Allen Poe’s House to Get More RavenlikeIt’s July, which comes in like a candy-bearing Park Slope kiddie Evangelist! Or a rappeling, stalking obsessive UWS construction worker! Or a long-dead writer whose Bronx getaway’s getting a face-lift! Or … well … just read today’s boroughs roundup!
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
Red Hook Residents Squawk About ParrotsPlus! Hazmat suits invade the Slope, an unwelcome curvy hotel is headed for West Village, Johan Santana’s new digs, and more in our far-roving 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
She Was a Day-tripper, Ferry Driver, Yeah!Coney Island: “Imagine getting on a ferry at Hunt’s Point for a day trip” here! That’s what Christine Quinn floated yesterday in her big speech. Could it really happen? [Kinetic Carnival]
East Village: McMansion mogul Robert Toll’s 27-year-old NYU social-work-student son Jacob lives with two of his buds in a $2.2 million condo in his dad’s glossy new One Ten 3rd building. How will he pay that mortgage on a social worker’s salary? (Cue cynical chortles.) [NYO]
Midtown: Wouldn’t it be cool if the retired math professor who nearly died of a bondage incident in a sex club here could get his wife in on his S&M thing instead of having to shamefully confess it to her in the Post? Now he’s vowing to break his addiction. Why not just go safe, sane, and consensual? [Gothamist]
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
Buttoned-Up Gowanus? Now That’s a Theoretical Rendering.Bushwick: Hoo-boy. We’re worried that this very outspoken gentrifying gay blogger — “The Ghetto Gauntlet”? “Shitbag bodegas”? — is cruising for a serious, Bushwick-style bruising. [Bushwick]
Gowanus: Only more shocking than this rendering of a massive glass tower planned for Third Avenue and 6th Street is its imagining that, in the near future, people in this skanky/hip hood will be wearing suits and ties. [Gowanus Lounge]
Harlem: A very angry-sounding Katrina two-year-anniversary rally is planned for 125th Street this afternoon. [Uptown Flavor]
Meatpacking District: How could we have missed that the spike-heeled Carrie Bradtrons who’ve overrun the meatpacking district have their very own blogger? (And we love that she thinks area designer Thom Browne might be straight. Come on, girl. The guy wears short shorts.) [Stilettos on Cobblestones]
Prospect Heights: In a nice match, newcomers here sound about as unpretentiously boring and nondescript as the neighborhood itself. [Daily Heights]
Tribeca: Area landlords are saving on exterminator dollars by recommending that their tenants let loose “Gecos” [sic] on insect invaders. As in the salamander-type creature that’s the car-insurance mascot. Yes, it’s come to that. [Curbed]
Willets Point: Did the city encourage blight in the decrepit Iron Triangle area of the Bronx in order to evoke eminent domain and gentrify it? One columnist thinks so. [NYO via OuterB]
neighborhood watch
East Village Park Will Outdo WilliamsburgChelsea: Will the venerable weekend flea market on 25th Street shut down now that the garage it’s in has been bought by Extell for $42.7 mil? [TheRealDeal]
East Village: Think you’re so cool with your new waterfront park, Williamsburg? Wait till you see the E.V.’s in-progress East River Promenade. [Curbed]
Greenpoint: If you’re looking for a blue audio tour of the area, there’s a podcast out there for you. [MikeyPod via Newyorkshitty]
Harlem: All hail (or fear?) the rise of area megadeveloper Henry Vargas, whose dad presciently bought up half of Harlem in the seventies. [TheRealDeal via Uptown Flavor]
Snug Harbor: Brooklynite goes to Staten Island for July 4 BBQ, fears world outside of Park Slope. [Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
Willets Point: The move to redevelop this 60-acre parcel near Shea Stadium gets ugly as the city lawyers up against business owners there. [Times Ledger via OuterB]
neighborhood watch
Pools, Parks, Protests!Astoria: The pool isn’t open yet, but at least there’s water in it now. [Joey in Astoria]
Carroll Gardens: Since that F-train petition is so popular, why not one against too tall buildings? [Carroll Gardens Petition via 423 Smith]
Dumbo: Work begins on the Pearl Street Triangle, but will the planned street furniture encourage the homeless to linger? [Dumbo NYC]
Morris Heights: Roberto Clemente State Park’s pools open today! [West Bronx News]
Willets Point: A contingent from this Queens industrial neighborhood protested eminent-domain abuse at City Hall yesterday. [Atlantic Yards Report]
Williamsburg: East River State Park will be open seven days a week beginning July 3. [I’m Not Sayin, I’m Just Sayin]
neighborhood watch
Brits Complain About How Expensive New York IsBattery Park City: Move over, David Rockwell and your high-tech playground, there’s another kid in the sandbox. Frank Gehry’s now designing a $4 million kiddiespace for the Battery. [Gothamist]
Chelsea: The London Times complains about how much it costs to call London from New York ($35 for five minutes from the Chelsea Hotel). But doesn’t everyone just use cell phones? [London Times via Living with Legends]
Hell’s Kitchen: Locals meet tonight to formulate their official suggestions for desnarling congestion on Ninth Avenue near the Lincoln Tunnel. Good luck to them. [Streetsblog]
Park Slope: Enrique Norten will follow Richard Meier as the next starchitect in the area, designing a swank condo on Garfield Place, complete with English garden. [Brooklyn Eagle via Brownstoner]
Willets Point: Wi-Fi at Shea Stadium? Not so much. [East Village Idiot]
Williamsburg: Sweet! Get inside the Domino Sugar factory. [BlueJake]
the morning line
Fairest of the Fair, She Is
• In a turnaround from yesterday, Miss America will testify as a witness in the eleven court cases she helped build by playing a 14-year-old in a televised Long Island sex-sting op. [WNBC]
• The Mets fan who used a powerful flashlight to blind a Braves pitcher has been sentenced to fifteen days behind bars — and a lifetime ban from Shea Stadium — after pleading guilty to “interfering with a sporting event.” [NYP]
• Speaking of the Mets, Citi Field now has its own Daniel Goldstein: One (and perhaps the only) inhabitant of Willets Point’s “Iron Triangle,” 74-year-old Joe Ardizzone, is refusing to relocate and make way for the stadium. [amNY]
• After losing half his blood and breaking a bunch of bones in an SUV crash, New Jersey governor Jon Corzine requested yesterday to be fined for not wearing a seat belt. Today, he is exactly $46 dollars poorer and, presumably, happier. [NYT]
• Here’s someone who won’t be requesting a ticket: A Queens burglary suspect, fleeing from cops in a stolen SUV, rammed into a bus carrying disabled students. Oh, yes, the apartment he burglarized? A police officer’s. [NYDN]
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]