In honor of the Brooklyn Bridge's 125th birthday, the City Reliquary hosted a ride Saturday to the Brooklyn Bridge with birthday cake and song atop the bridge. Here, City Reliquary president Dave Herman gives a thumbs-up before cutting the birthday cake.
 The group prepares to depart the City Reliquary. | |
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1) City Planning Scoping Hearing for Proposed Toll Brothers Gowanus Project, ThursdayJust wanted to remind everyone that the Department of City Planning will be holding a public scoping hearing tomorrow pertaining to the large housing project being proposed by Toll Brothers for a site along the western bank of the Gowanus Canal. A scoping hearing is the first step in the City's land-use review process. The final scoping document sets the "scope," or the parameters for what will be studied in the Environmental Impact Statement.Toll Brothers Gowanus Scoping HearingThursday, March 13th2:00 to 5:45 p.m. and 6:00 to 8:45 p.m.Department of City PlanningSpector Hall22 Reade StreetManhattanToll Brothers only recently revealed details about its plans to build a 577-unit mixed-income project (130 of the units would be below market rate) on a three-acre site along the Gowanus, bordered by Bond, 2nd and Carroll Streets. The development would include buildings ranging from four to 12 stories in height, with the tallest building, at about 125 feet, adjacent to the canal. The project would include a small amount of retail and "community" space, and 260 off-street parking spots.The developer is seeking a special "spot rezoning" of the parcel in advance of a likely overall rezoning of the Gowanus by City Planning. The Gowanus Lounge has renderings and a map of the project.More information, including downloads of the Draft Scoping document and scoping meeting protocol, and contact information, is available at the Department of City Planning website. Written comments regarding the draft scope can be submitted through March 24th.If you're interested in the future of the Gowanus Canal, you might want to attend the hearing or submit comments. The City's willingness to consider a special rezoning for one site seems backward; some critics believe that a multi-agency Master Plan for the entire Gowanus should be put into place before any rezoning is undertaken. Count us among them.
I had the pleasure last night of attending the opening screening of A Hole in a Fence, a documentary by Brooklyn-based filmmaker D.W. Young. A Hole in a Fence visits a hidden corner of Red Hook where a massive boat repair yard used to be. By interviewing neighbors, homeless residents, graffiti artists, photographers (full disclosure - me), businesses and non-profits, Young captures varying visions of and perspectives on a quickly changing site. It was exciting to see the final cut, and a lot of fun to meet some of the other interviewees.
In the early days, I'm sure each family was responsible for their own decorating, and a few clearly still do the work themselves. But many call in the professionals. B&R Floral Decorators, for example, take some time out from their usual work providing floral arrangements for funerals to decorate some of the most elaborate houses.
Seen on the streets of Red Hook - someone lost their cat.
This year at the Mermaid Parade, some political commentary against the anticipated destruction I mean development of Coney Island, and a green creature from the Gowanus Canal crawled all the way down to Coney to join the party.
When I bike out to Coney Island along Ocean Parkway, judging how close I'm getting by where I am in the alphabet of street names that starts at Avenue D and ends at Avenue X, I often wonder what happened to the missing letters. There's no A, B, or C, or for that matter, no E, F or G. (I must note, though, that except for E, each of these streets starts with the appropriate letter (Ablemarle, Beverly, Clarendon, Farragut, Glenwood)). And, in fact, both Farragut and Glenwood used to be the more simple Avenues F and G.
Freund's F&F Family Shop | Domonick's Shoe Repair |
Yeedl's Juvenile Shop sells furniture for children's rooms. | Brach's outfits the well-groomed gentleman. |
Shem Tov restaurant and catering | | |
The New Thirteen Avenue Bagel Corp | another 13th Ave bagel shop | |
Tuv Taam Fish Market & Appetizing | Ossie's Fish Market | |
Appetizing Plus | Meal Mart | |
Deli D'Lite | Herbst Mehadrin Meats |
Many Hasidic women wear wigs (sheitels) as part of tzeniut (modesty) standards.
Halacha (Jewish law) requires married women to cover their hair.
Flohr's Judaica | Tiv Tov Book Bindery |
Yeshiva Beth Hillel school bus | Zion Car Service |
Rounding out our survey of outer Brooklyn retro-gasm is the Avenue U Seafood Market, at DEcatur 2-6363. Built around 1930, maybe those were the days that you could actually eat the fish you caught off the Brooklyn piers?
The New York Times calls it "one of the city's longest and messiest food fights." Salvatore Manganaro, 74, and his youngest brother, James, 66, own Italian sandwich stores next to each other on Hell's Kitchen's Ninth Avenue. The family has been running these businesses for 100 years, and the two brothers have been giving each other the silent treatment for the past 25 years over who has the right to use their family's name and who can claim to have invented the 6-foot hero sandwich. As one young reviewer said, "this feud has been going on for far longer than I’ve been alive, and I’d bet for long after I’m dead."
If you were to draw a family tree of New York pizza, Lombardi's, started in 1905, would be the grandpapi of the clan. Pizzamakers trained at Lombardi's went on to open Totonno's in Coney Island (Anthony Totonno Pero in 1917), John's Pizza in the Village (John Sasso in 1929), and Patsy's in East Harlem (Patsy Lancieri in 1933). In the third generation of pizzarias spawned from Lombardi's, Patsy Lancieri's nephew Patsy Grimaldi, who had worked at Patsy's since he was 10 years old, opened Grimaldi's in Brooklyn Heights in 1990.
kitchen. In June 2004, he bought a restaurant, Padang Raya, and they became business partners. They made it to February of 2005. He fired Tanzil, and six months later she opened Minangasli four doors away on Whitney Avenue. The New York Times explains that "the name of her restaurant, which means 'authentically Minang' and is a reference to a Padang ethnic group, is a not-so-subtle dig at her former partner," who is from Kalimantan Island, a culinarily different area of Indonesia. In April of 2006, Padang Raya became Jakarta Mie, a Javanese noodle warung.
didn't invent cupcakes (see, she's humble!), but lays claim to the specific type of cupcake cafe which she sees replicated around the city, most bitterly at Buttercup, which she started with 
Italian Market back in 1930, claims to have invented the Philly Cheesesteak. Geno's opened in 1967, and they've stared each other down across a barren patch of South Philly pavement like Apollo Creed and Rocky Balboa ever since. Geno's owner Joe Vento claims that they made the cheesesteak what it is today by being the first to add cheese, although they concede that Pat's is responsible for the later introduction of Cheese Whiz (thus adding the phrase 'whiz wit' to American English). And, of course, they hate each other. Vento explains that the reason people eat at Pat's is that "you can acquire a taste for bad food."
In an article looking at Ratner's Atlantic Yards project through the prism of race, the New York Times produced the above map of racial distributions in central Brooklyn.
