Brought to you by the Feldman Family from their local weather tower.

An OTBKB tipster just wrote to say that there’s a chance that the Kensington Stables may be closed down by the Department of Health due to new regulations.

It seems that the Department of Health has created new rental horse codes that will require 5 week furloughs; 8 x 8 box stalls for horses and ponies; and will require that a $35,000 sprinkler sysytem be installed by next year.

The owner cannot afford these changes and he thinks some of them are ” just plain wrong for the horses!” he wrote on the Kensington Stables’  Facebook page.

There was a hearing on February 3 at the DOH, which was attended by City Councilmember Brad Lander, representatives of the Prospect Park Alliance and approximately 50 staff and friends of the Kensington Stable.

According to the OTBKB tipster, the pending new health regulations are meant for the carriage horses, which is something fairly new offered by the stables. However, these regulations will be very bad for the stable as well.

Kensington Stables, located near the southwest corner of the park, offers a variety of equestrian activities and services, including lessons, guided trail rides, and pony rides.

The barn was built in 1930 at 57 Caton Place as the last extension of the riding academy at 11 Ocean Parkway,w hich was built in 1917. The first extension was torn down to make the foot bridge over Ocean Parkway. The original riding academy closed in 1937 and is now a warehouse.

The stable has exclusive use of The Shoe in Prospect Park for lessons. The Shoe is accessible from the Park’s bridle path, which runs from Park Circle to the southwest corner of the Long Meadow.

Follow me on Twitter and get the latest updates, breaking news, info on OTBKB, Brooklyn Reading Works, the Blogfest and a special treat, as requested, the daily location of the No Words Daily Pix.

Here’s my Twitter pad.

From the Real Deal:

Aiming to deter a type of crime he says is becoming “epidemic,” Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes today announced the indictment of 12 people in mortgage and real estate scams.

The cases are the result of investigations by the DA’s new Mortgage Fraud and Real Estate Crimes unit, created in February 2009 by an $875,000 grant by Sen. Charles Schumer. The unit is part of the DA’s Rackets Division.

At a press conference announcing the indictments this morning, Hynes said the arrests “should send a strong warning to all those who think they can come up with some new scam. It ain’t gonna happen anymore. We are fully staffed and ready to go.”

Hynes described real estate crime as “an epidemic” that “demanded an innovative response,” which prompted the funding of the new unit.

Continue reading 12 People Indicted in Brooklyn Mortgage Scam →

Fifth Avenue’s 3R Living is closing. How sad that a wonderful local shop with an imortant environmental mission is closing. In September 2004, Samantha Delman-Caserta and Mark Caserta opened 3R Living, a home decor and lifestyle store, dedicated to ““Future Friendly Products.” In October 2007, they opened their second store in Maplewood, New Jersey, with Samantha’s sister.

The products in the shops are selected with the principles of reducing waste, reusing unwanted or discarded materials, and recycling in mind. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. The store was also a recycling center and a great place to find eco friendly gifts and beautiful things.

Rebeccah Welch  transcribed the following note for the readers of OTBKB.

Dear Customers, Friends and Neighbors –

We are very sad to announce that at the end of February, 3r Living will be closing our Park Slope store.

When we opened this store in April of 2004, it was a dream come true. Over the past five years we have been honored to provide the community with greener, healthier and safer options, as well as a much-needed community recycling center. We would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of the customer and friends we have made over the years

This is not an end, but rather a new beginning. Look for us online at www.3rliving.com and 3rliving.blogspot.com.

We hope that your shopping experience with 3rliving.com is a pleasurable one. Thanks for going green with 3rliving!

Also, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE help us to make sure that this does not happen to other businesses in the area. Eat, drink and shop local! Supporting restaurants, boutiques and bars on 5th Avenue , even just a little, can go a very long way.

Sincerely,

Samantha and Mark Caserta

One of the exciting things BP Marty Markowitz announced at his State of the Borough Address on Wednesday at the brand new Park Slope Armory Y: the Loew’s Kings Theater on Flatbush Avenue will be restored.

The announcement was leaked to the NY Times early on Wednesday.

The rusting, dirt-caked marquee that hangs outside the Loew’s Kings Theater over a bustling commercial stretch of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn last promoted a film in 1977. Years of neglect have left the interior rotted by time, stripped by thieves and desecrated by vandals and pigeons.

New York City, which seized the building decades ago in lieu of back taxes, has long teased the neighborhood with proposals to restore the lost luster of a local movie palace. But this time, the city says, it is for real.

A developer has signed an agreement, made a down payment on a $70 million renovation and plans to turn the building back into a functioning entertainment site, this time presenting live performances, city officials said Tuesday.

“We’re on our way to making that dream come true,” said Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn borough president, who is to formally announce the restoration in his State of the Borough address Wednesday.

Our bedroom windows face the backyards of Second Street. It’s usually pretty quiet back there. The worst noise in our life right now is the clanging of the bedroom radiator that sounds like some kind of avant-garde piece of music.

But the noise on Tuesday night. Oy. And it was really late.

According to Hepcat, Verizon has been hard at work underground, which caused them to close Second Street between 6th and 7th Avenues on Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Brownstoner a tipster says it’s repairs of underground utlities that’s causing all the racket. To make matters worse, no one had any warning that this was coming.

I mean, like,we coulda gotten some ear plugs.

I’ve been noticing these hideous anti-smoking posters wherever cigarettes are sold. Apparently, if  you sell cigarettes and you don’t post one of these signs, you risk a $2,000 fine.

According to the Brooklyn Eagle via Brooklyn Heights Blog, a bagel shop on Montague apologized to its customers from having to post the poster.

“We are sorry, but by order of NYC DOH we are required to post the sign or face a fine a $2,000 fine,” the notice explains. That was confirmed by Joseph Aceto a partner at Montague Street Bagels, in an interview on NY 1 News.

Customers have complained that the ugly anti-smoking poster is out of place in a deli, he said. It’s in color and approximately 20 by 19 inches in size.

Scott Turner is set to move to Seattle. This is his last Greetings for a while. He can write whatever he wants.

Greetings Pub Quiz Friends…

Sure, it’s a mawkish way to begin this last Quizmail of the Scott M.X. Turner era.

It’s my last one.  I can write whatever I want.

Well, that’s misleading.  I always write whatever I want.

Sitting here now, on a scrappy and, by noon tomorrow, already-forgotten snowy night, I stare at the keyboard.  Then the screen.  Then my blackboard here at Pub Quiz Actual a half-block from Green-Wood Cemetery.  See, Homeland Security, you don’t need to triangulate nuthin’.  Just keep reading.

Here’s the first thing I can report: The E, A, S, K, O, L, C, N and M keys are really wearing down — N, especially.  Without the touch-typing Mrs. Nichols taught in my junior year at W.H. Page Senior High in Greensboro, NC, the ruler-whack-across-the-knuckles-every-time-I-looked-down-at-the-keys school of touchtyping instruction — I wouldn’t know what any of these keys are.

Thank you, Ms. Nichols, you brutal mean-spirited toad.

Here’s what else I can report.

I love Brooklyn.

I hate Brooklyn.

Is it any wonder these battling eternities go hand in hand?

I love Brooklyn for the following reasons: Freddy’s Bar, Rocky Sullivan’s, MissWit T-Shirts, the dead-and-gone Gage & Tollner, Ebbets Field, The Usual on Vanderbilt Avenue, Tom’s Restaurant on Washington Avenue, Coney Island without Thor or Bloomberg and definitely including Ruby’s, the craggy streets, the countless mom’n’pop stores, Neergaard’s on 5th Avenue, Has Beans on 5th, Red Hook, Floyd Bennett Field, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, FUREE, The Spunk Lads, John Pinamonti, Plastic Beef, Seanchai & the Unity Squad, Michael Patrick MacDonald, The Larch, Robin Aigner, the John Sharples Band, Wombat Studios, The Magpies, Alex Battles, Karen Sorenson’s LOVE Project, the Ditty Committee, artists Conor McGrady and Kevin Noble, Paul Lukas’ Uni Watch website, Green-Wood Cemetery and, most favorite of all, Henry Chadwick’s grave and helping Minerva wave at her French sister in the harbor, Sunset Park, the parts of Park Slope that — well, you know which parts those are, Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn, Manson Family Picnic, Norman Oder’s Atlantic Yards Report, No Land Grab, Puzzling New York, Diane and Sirius and Tikkanen and Connolly, Men & Cats, the Knit-A-Jig crowd, Melody Lanes, Tony Avella — yes, he’s from Queens, but over the last five years he’s come to Brooklyn’s defense more often than most Brooklyn pols, the Atlantic Yards Photo Pool photogs (Tracy Collins, Adrian Kinloch, Jonathan Barkey), the Brooklyn Paper before it its editorial independence got swallowed whole by new owner Rupert Murdoch, Chrysalis Archaeology, Michael Hill’s Blues Mob, The Kennel Studio in East Williamsburg, Michael O’Keeffe and the Daily News’ sports I-Team, The Battle of Brooklyn, Joe at John Hlad Plumbing, Chris Owens, Josh Skaller, Bill Batson, the neighborhood interface areas where Orthodox Jews meet Asians meet Caribbeans meet Africans meet Irish meet Latinos/as meet Italians meet WASPs meet African-Americans meet Laplanders meet Orthodox Jews meet…, amazing artist Alyson Shotz, amazing videographer and producer George Lerner, John Costelloe, Roger Paz even though he’s out in Detroit, BCAT, Teddy’s in Williamsburg and the Charleston’s pizza/beer combo, the Fifth Avenue Committee, Park Slope Neighbors, the Brooklyn Greens, John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, the Navy Yard, the Brooklyn parrots, the Red Hook vendors, the B77 bus, everyone who’s fought Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards, the F train’s view of the harbor on summer afternoons, Tuniserve Deli — my morning newspaper joint, Critical Mass, Brooklyn Vs. Bush, Mazzotti Music — the kindest and best musical instruments store and now the kindest and best out-of-business music store, Prospect Park and its timelessness any time of day time of year, my dear friends on the DDDB staff — Dan, Candace, Eric, Gloria and loud’n’proud Lucy, and most germane to this dispatch, the crowd for two-and-a-half years that has been coming to the Rocky Sullivan’s Pub Quiz.

My grandfather once warned me that hatred is a dangerous tool.  But, unlike most Lutheran men born in 1899 who worked their whole lives at the YMCA, he didn’t say “don’t hate.”  He said “don’t hate if you don’t know what you’re talking about.”  Thanks, Poppo.  Here’s that list: Bruce Ratner, Marty Markowitz, Roger Green, BUILD, the local chapter of ACORN, the Atlantic Yards monstrosity, the local construction unions whose myopic embrace of Ratner has condemned countless working-class people — many in sister unions throughout the city — to a worse and not better life, Joe Sitt, Coney Island as envisioned by Michael Bloomberg, the 4th Avenue rezoning plan, Joe DePlasco, Bruce Bender, Barclays Bank, Mikhail Prokhorov, the hypocritical Brooklyn Brewery, Williamsburg/Greenpoint/Bushwick hipsters — yes, an easy target but you don’t get to be an easy target unless you are, simply, a target, the Atlantic Terminal Mall, the Atlantic Center mall, MetroTech, the endangered species that is small-business in this borough, Greenpoint/Williamsburg rezoning, Marty Golden, Carl Krueger, Joe Chan, and most germane to every dispatch I’ve written since I’ve lived here, Brooklynites who’d rather sip expensive coffee and resort to today’s stick-their-heads-in-the-sand —  their laptops and iPhones while every class and community is run roughshod over by the worst mayor this city has ever seen, Michael Bloomberg.

Continue reading Greetings from Scott Turner: I’ll Never Love A Place As Much As Brooklyn →

You’ve probably noticed that every day there’s a different theme on BKLYN Bloggage. Here’s the schedule:

Monday is Neighborhood Day on BB

Tuesday is Politics Day on BB

Wednesday is Food & Drink Day on BB

Thursday is Home & Design day on BB

Friday is Arts & Culture Day on BB

There is no BB on Saturday & Sunday. If your blog reports on any of the above themse let me know about you.