BROOKLYN WEATHER: What’s it gonna do today? Check here for Brooklyn weather.
SPRING FORWARD NEXT WEEK: Though Europe switched over early this morning, daylight savings time
for New York (EST, GMT -7:00) takes place NEXT weekend. Set your clocks
ahead (spring forward) one hour at 2:00 a.m. on Sunday, April 3, 2005.
CITY NEWS: NYPD arrested 37 protesters, members of Critical Mass, a group that celebrates cycling and other non-polluting forms of transportation. Those arrested were charged with parading without a permit. The city is going to court to demand that these cyclists get a permit for their month protest. Earlier this year a Federal judge said permits weren’t necessary.
_Friday March 25th marked the
anniversary of two tragic fires: the Happy Land Social Club fire in the
Bronx and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
_Thieves make off with $5 million in diamond heist at a diamond exchanges on West 47th Street.
_The City’s Department of Education sent out
test prep guides to NYC teachers filled with wrong answers, typos and
grammatical mistakes. The first big typo was right on the cover:
Mathematics Planning for the Forth Grade. "Tweed has no problem with
excessively criticizing teachers for failing to meet its picayune
mandates, but then it produces a test prep manual riddled with errors
and misspellings," said Weingarten, president of the United Federation
of Teachers. " The hypocrisy is stunning."
BROOKLYN BEAT: Workers at the Vox Pop Coffee Shop ("Books, Coffee, Demoracy") on Cortylou Avenue in Ditmas Park unanimously joined the
Industrial Workers of the World last week. The employees join a growing
movement of NYC retail workers, including Starbucks baristas, who are
striving to increase union membership in the industry. Check out the Vox Pop web site.
Early Saturday morning, an 85 year old retired Russian physicist was run down by a car at Bay Avenue and Cropsey Avenue, an intersection that is said to be one of the city’s worst. The elderly man had just finished his daily four mile morning walk. He died Saturday morning at Coney Island Hospital.
_Brooklyn woman was mauled by her son’s pit bull. The dogs were tranquilized and taken to An Animal Care Center. Her arm was seriously wounded.
_Brooklyn Rebbe Naftali
Halberstam, who continued his father’s efforts to rebuild the Bobov
sect of Hasidism that was nearly eradicated by the Holocaust, died on
Thursday. The Bobov practice an ecstatic form of Judaism that centers
on a religious leader and an individual’s direct relationship with G-d.
The sect originated in Galicia, now southeastern Poland.
_ A teenager was stabbed in the stomach by an older man on the
Northbound R platform at the Ninth Street subway station in Park Slope.
Apparently the two were having an agrument. The teenager was taken to
Lutheran Hospital. Read all about it at New York 1.
_Brooklyn receives $1 million to spruce up Fulton Street.
Congresswoman Nydia Valazquez was able to secure the money from the
Transportation Appropriations Bill and a local developer. Improvements
include better lighting, signage, sidewalks, and landscaping. Read all about it at New York 1.
IT’S EASTER/PURIM SUNDAY: Purim Festival at the Brookyn Lyceum. Sunday March 27th. Music by Golem and Jonathan Bayer. 3 p.m.
_"Play Without Words," a dance theater piece by Matthew Bourne at BAM. Tonight through Saturday. 2 p.m.
_Catpathia Jenkins and Park Slope resident Louis Rosen perform their
song-cycle based on the work of Maya Angelou at Joe’s Pub. Sunday 7 pm.
WORTH TAKING A LOOK: The SECOND GRADE
ART SHOW at Starbucks. Seventh Avenue between 1st and Garfield Place.
The children’s Romare Bearden-esque cityscape collages will be up all
month.
THIS SOUNDS COOL: Mike Nichols answers
questions following a screening of "The Graduate" as part of BAM’s
"Who’s Afraid of Mike Nichols?" film series. Thursday March 31 at 7 p.m.
HERE/SAY: He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers gave birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves." -Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
Love in the Time of Cholera.