NO WORDS_DAILY PIX BY HUGH CRAWFORD
ANDY, THE FRUIT TRUCK GUY, WHERE ARE YOU?
Does anyone know the whereabouts of Andy, whose fruit truck was on the corner of President Street? He and it are a veritable landmark. I am pretty sure I saw his truck a few weeks ago.
One reader thinks he’s retired from his corner this year because of a health concern. That’s what a school crossing guard told her.
"He’s been an important figure for my daughter, now seven, having provided some solace in the wake of her own grandfather’s death when she was four.
"Now she’s distraught at the thought of not seeing him again and wants to write him a letter. But we don’t even know his last name. Would a business like his require a license, and could he be traceable that way?"
This reader thought that the readres of Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn might be able to help.
ROOM 58: NEW SPACE FOR WRITERS
Looks like Scott Adkin’s, co-founder of Park Slope’s popular Brooklyn Writers Space, has something new up his sleeve. Room 58: A new space for writers at the Brooklyn Artists Gym. Check this out. I just got it in my email. Down the Slope on the third floor of 168 7th "For some of our writers, telephone work is In a corner of Brooklyn Artists Gym’s shared
Street, BAG is a hub of creative
enterprise. In addition to a large, well-lit
studio with room for visual artists
to work at any given time, BAG offers a
newly renovated gallery space,
open figure drawing sessions and a variety of
workshops on subjects from beginning
bookbinding to accordion folds. The creative
energy at BAG is palpable, with exciting
possibilities for cross-pollination between
artists and writers.
essential to what they do," says Scott
Adkins, co-founder of Park Slope’s popular
Brooklyn Writers Space (BWS) and partner in
the new Room 58/BAG venture. "BWS is a
great quiet environment for writers of all
genres. But for those writers who also need
traditional office capabilities, Room 58 is
ideal."
studio space for visual artists is Room 58, a
new workspace designed specifically for
journalists and other research-based writers.
Behind the door marked 58 are actually two
rooms, an outer office area with desks, fax,
printer, research materials and file storage,
and an inner quiet room with eight individual
cubicles and a couple of nice views of
Manhattan.
GRAND OPENING OF THE THIRD STREET CAFE
No, it’s not a new cafe on Third Street. It’s just the front yard, which in the warmer months becomes a defacto cafe, dining spot and playspace: it’s an epicenter for social activity.
Today neighbors and friends gathered down there for the first time in a long time. Mrs. Kravitz bought a bottle of white wine. Smartmom ordered Chinese food. A Pino’s pizza was ordered as well.
A green plastic Little Tykes car provided hours of fun for some of the kids who zoomed up and down the street. There was a 3-legged race but that ended when the ice cream truck parked down the street. The kids begged their parents for money and raced over for toasted almond, sandwiches, even milkshakes.
A game of Clue was played in the hour or so before dusk. "It’s Professor Plum. In the kitchen. With the…"
Conversation reached far and wide. Mrs. Kravitz bobbed her hair. A neighbor saw Jonathan Lethem on the subway. Word has it that a children’s store is going in where the Laundry Center is on Seventh Avenue and 7th Street.
A woman on the block has an essay in a new book called, The Elephant in the Playroom: Ordinary Parents Write Intimately and Honestly about the Extrordinary Highs and the Heartbreaking Lows of Raising Kids with Special Needs.
Nobody sees anybody in the winter. Bundled up, in a rush, in and out of buildings, no time for conversation. But come the warm weather it’s hi, how are you, hello, good to see you.
The Third Street Cafe is open for business again. Just need to get some new chairs…
NEIGHBORHOOD BLOGS IN THE TIMES: BROWNSTONER MENTIONED
So the New York Times just discovered neighborhood blogging. Obviously they got wind of Outside.in’s survey that Brooklyn is the Bloggiest. Now the Times’ pipes in with a sligthly snarky come on: "First come the renovated condominiums, the latte bars and the expensive baby strollers. Next, apparently, come the bloggers."
One
Web site’s survey of the prevalence of blogs in urban neighborhoods
found a link between gentrification and the number of people who feel
compelled to think out loud about the changes in their backyards. The
site, Outside.in, crowned Clinton Hill in Brooklyn as the most
blogged-about neighborhood in America.Also on the top 10 list
were Harlem; Shaw in Washington; downtown Los Angeles; Newton, Mass.;
and Rogers Park/North Howard in Chicago.Before the survey, the
staff of Outside.in was “not conscious that local blogging would be so
closely allied with gentrification,” said Steven Berlin Johnson, a
founder of the site. Change, he said, “makes people particularly
interested in every little development in their neighborhoods.”Outside.in
was introduced in February as a collector of local news and blog posts,
covering about 3,000 neighborhoods in more than 60 cities. It described
Clinton Hill as a place with “rapidly gentrifying tree-lined blocks of
19th-century townhouses” and said that the neighborhood’s leading blog
was Brownstoner.com.In
determining the top 10 list, “We approached it statistically from a
couple of angles, and then took a little bit of editorial license,”
said Mr. Johnson. The latter, he said, included a decree that the list
could contain only one neighborhood in Brooklyn, a borough that seems
to have a rather high blogger density. The whole staff of Outside.in
lives and works in Brooklyn, said Mr. Johnson, a resident of Park Slope.In
Clinton Hill, Jonathan Butler, the publisher of Brownstoner, did not
take his blogging title too seriously. “This either means we’ve got a
lot of creative, community-minded people in the neighborhood or a lot
of recluses with too much time on their hands,” he wrote in an e-mail
message. MARIA ASPAN
EMAIL OTBKB IF YOU ARE COMING TO THE BLOGFEST
That’s right. I want to know who’s coming. Bloggers and Non-bloggers alike.
Let me know if you’re coming so you’ll be included on the participating bloggers list. Also, you’ll have a cool nametag ready for you. Include your URL and the name of your blog in the email.
Please email: louise_crawford@yahoo.com
Thanks.
COUNCILMAN WANTS BAN ON MENUS AND FLYERS
NEW YORK — If you’re
outraged by the menus and supermarket, drugstore and other circulars
left on your doorstep, then you should love a new proposal from New
York City Councilman Simcha Felder.
The Democratic councilman, whose district includes parts of
Brooklyn, intends to introduce legislation that would make it illegal
to distribute menus, circulars and fliers to homes and apartment
buildings that display a sign indicating promotional materials are
unwanted.
Felder’s bill calls for a fine of at least $50 for distributors that leave them anyway.
“This drives people out of their minds,” said Felder, referring to
complaints from his constituents, mostly homeowners, in the Midwood,
Borough Park and Bensonhurst neighborhoods. “You have no control over
it. People are livid. If I’m responsible for the cleanliness of my
property I should also have the authority to decide whether I receive
the junk or not. You shouldn’t have to be responsible for cleaning up
someone else’s garbage.”
Felder said the accumulation forces property owners to clean it up
or risk getting a summons from the Department of Sanitation, like the
$100 summons his mother, a Midwood resident, received this year. It
also poses a security risk as mounds of circulars tell would-be
burglars that residents might be out of town, he said.
WANTED: PEOPLE WILLING TO PUT UP POSTERS
Would you be willing to pick up some Blogfest posters and tape them on a wall or a bulletin board in your fave local spots in your nabe? Or you can tape them on a lamp post, a brick wall. Anything.
Your picture on OTBKB if you do it. Please let me know. Email: louise_crawford@yahoo.com
CLARK STREET ELEVATOR FAILED 400 TIMES IN LAST 2 YEARS
Anne Karni in the New York Sun reports that the Clark Street elevator failed 400 times in the last two years. Yeesh. That’s an elevator I know and love to hate. I used to live on Montague and I have relatives and friends who live close by. Here’s an excerpt from her story in the Sun.
A shoeshine booth, a barbershop, and a café where chess players gather give the subway stop at Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights the atmosphere of a small town. But the station’s welcoming façade belies some of the biggest service problems in New York City’s system.
Over the past two years, the three elevators at Clark Street have broken down almost 400 times, averaging a pace of almost one breakdown every other day. Riders have been trapped inside the elevators more than 20 times. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s maintenance crews have been sent out multiple times in single days to repair the same elevator, and temperatures inside the elevators have risen to 100 degrees.
The elevators, the main conveyance for customers to reach the trains in one of the deepest stations in the system, have long been sore spots in the community.
"In Brooklyn Heights, one working elevator out of three is about par," the executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, Judy Stanton, said. "People are just used to bad service, and I guess people feel that we’re lucky to have even one working at this point." The only alternative to waiting is an 80-foot climb up a steep staircase used only in emergencies — and perhaps by mountaineers and marathoners in training.
BLOGFEST POSTER COURTESY OF URBAN SEASHELL: THANKS!
Look. The Brooklyn Blogfest on May 10th at 8 p.m. at the Old Stone House, has a nifty poster.
Local blogger, Lisa Di Liberto, is a very creative woman. Her blog, Urban Seashell: a collection, features small businesses, artists,
independents and upcoming events from cityline to shoreline.
With
access to an amazing pool of talent, urbanseashell: a collection was
created by Lisa di Liberto, a Brooklyn based designer. Looking for
consultants, designers, eateries or the latest independent film
release? Then welcome to urbanseashell — a collection, your source.
A talented designer, Lisa created this beautiful poster for the Blogfest. Her husband, John Sabasteanski, made the drawing of the water tower and Lisa did the rest.
Thank you so much, Lisa and John. I look forward to seeing you both at the Blogfest.
TRANSIT WORKER KILLED BY A G TRAIN IN BROOKLYN
Transit worker, Marvin Franklin, 55, of St. Albans, Queens died yesterday after being hit by a G-train. A reader writes that "Marvin
was also a gifted artist. He has work up right now at the Art Students’
League. And he was an amazing, warm, laughing person." This from the New York Times:
One transit worker was killed and another injured yesterday
afternoon when they were hit by a G train at a Brooklyn station, city
officials said. It was the second fatal accident involving track
workers in less than a week.The northbound G train hit the
workers in the Hoyt Street-Schermerhorn Street station just after 4
p.m. One of them, Marvin Franklin, 55, of St. Albans, Queens, a transit
employee for more than 20 years, was apparently dragged half the length
of the station and was found dead under the train. The second worker,
Jeff Hill, 41, a track worker since 2005, was taken to Bellevue
Hospital Center, where he was in stable condition last night, the
police said.As a result of the recent back-to-back accidents,
maintenance and construction work on subway tracks was suspended and
workers were being called in for refresher safety training. An
investigation will be held by a transit board of inquiry.Yesterday’s
accident happened during a weekend-long shutdown of the A and C lines
in part of Brooklyn, to allow for a major renovation of the concrete
track bed. Mr. Franklin and Mr. Hill were not working on that project
but were part of a maintenance crew that was taking advantage of the
shutdown to do routine repairs that involved replacing metal plates
that sit between the rails and the track ties. While no trains were
running on the A and C lines at Hoyt-Schermerhorn, there was normal
service on the G, which runs on parallel tracks at that station.
NO WORDS_DAILY PIX BY HUGH CRAWFORD
BROOKLYN BLOGFEST IS GONNA BE AWESOME
Mark the date: May 10th, 2007 at 8 p.m. at the Old Stone House on Fifth Avenue and Third Street. Suggested donation: $5 dollars.
The Brooklyn Blogfest is going to be quite the whoopdeedoo.
–Speakers include: Brownstoner, Brooklyn Record, Gowanus Lounge, No Land Grab and more
–Open Mic Shout-Out for new bloggers (email louise_crawford@yahoo.com if you want to do the Open Mic).
–Meet and greet all your favorite bloggers (see blogfest blog for a list of participating bloggers).
–Free Partida Margarita with 100% organic agave nectar and Mexican snacks courtesy of Partida Tequla.
WANNA STOP SMOKING: LISTEN TO THE TRACHIOTOMY GUY
If you really want to convince someone to stop smoking, check out what the The NYC Health Department is doing. You can send your friends an audio/email of Ronaldo, the trachiotomy guy featured in NYC Dept. of Health anti-smoking ads on television.
"Smoking gave me throat cancer at 39. Now I breathe through a hole in my throat and need this machine to speak."
This may be the most effective anti-smoking campaign ever. Help your friends quit smoking. It’ll scare them. But for a good cause. email Ronaldo to your friends.
GOWANUS LOUNGE HAS THE PIX
Yesterday, Gowanus Lounge was at the Sakura Matsuri Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. "Not very many blossoms but good people watching," he wrote on his blog.
Check out the goods.
