Category Archives: Civics and Urban Life

Civics and Urban Life

Changes in the Neighborhood

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Park Stationer’s on Flatbush near Seventh Avenue has gone out of business. A handwritten sign said that the rise in operational costs caused the closure after 25 years in the neighborhood.

The one-story buildings that housed Zuzu’s Petals, a Korean Market and Olive Vine on Seventh Avenue between Berkeley and Union before a fire that forced Zuzu’s and Olive Vine to move have all been demolished to make way for…what?

A Toys-R-Us has gone into the large space on Flatbush Avenue near 8th Avenue that was Blockbuster Video.

A new deli is going in on Seventh Avenue between Union and President Streets. It was a Korean Market briefly and before that…I forget.

The Rite Aid on Seventh Avenue and Fifth Street seems to be undergoing some sort of renovation…

Civics and Urban Life

Exhibit in Bed-Stuy: Eyewitness: Black Brooklyn

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Jacqui Wood, a longtime Bed-Stuy resident and the arts manager at the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation curated “Eyewitness: Black Brooklyn,” a photography exhibit at the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration complex’s Skylight Gallery featuring dozens of rare images from the 1960s to the 1980s…

Five award winning black Brooklyn photographers, capture the  people, spiritual life, community events and protests in Brooklyn from the 1960s through the 1980’s.

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Civics and Urban Life

Public Hearing On Proposed Expansion of Park Slope Landmark District

Thanks to the hard work of Park Slope residents,  the Park Slope Civic Council, and local elected officials, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission voted earlier today to put a public hearing on the calendar (date to be determined) to seriously consider the expansion of the Park Slope Historic District. The proposed expansion would add the blocks between Seventh and Eight Avenues, from Seventh Street through 14th Street , as well as areas adjacent to Bartel Pritchard Square (the full proposed boundaries are available on the LPC website.

Park Slope’s City Councilmember Brad Lander chairs the City Council’s Land Use Subcommittee on Landmarks. Both he and City Councilmember Steve Levin (33rd district, which also includes Park Slope) were thrilled about the decision and will notify the community as soon as they know the date of the hearing…

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Civics and Urban Life

Tell DOT How You Feel About Ghost Bikes And Their Possible Removal

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The Department of Sanitation is threatening to designate ghost bikes as “derelict bikes” that may be subject to removal.

How do you feel about these heartfelt and makeshift memorials to those who’ve died in bike accidents? Has someone you care about been remembered with a ghost bike?  Do you find this approach to increasing awareness and respect on the streets effective and sensitive?  Do you think it is important to remember those we have lost on unsafe streets?  Do you think this project has affected your experience as a cyclist or pedestrian in New York?

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Civics and Urban Life, Food and Drink

Michael Gross, Owner of New Prospect Cafe, Dies

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In 1984, Michael Gross opened the New Prospect Cafe, one of the first upscale (and organic) eateries back when Park Slope was a foodie desert. Later he opened New Prospect At Home, a gourmet take-out shop on Seventh Avenue. He died last week of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Longtime friends, Ann Smith and Richard Glassman, wrote to OTBKB with this heartfelt remembrance.

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Civics and Urban Life

20 Years Later Blacks & Jews Come Together in Crown Heights

The one-woman play Fires in the Mirror, used oral history to tell the story of the Crown Heights riots and the racial tensions it unveiled.

I can’t believe it’s been nearly 20 years since the Crown Heights Riots, a three-day riot in August 1991 in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. The community, which contains a mix of West Indians, African Americans and Jews had longtime simmering tensions. The riots began on August 19, 1991 after the child of Guyanese immigrants was accidentally killed by automobile that was part of a motorcade of a Hasidic rabbi.

During the riots an Orthodox Jew was killed. The riot unleashed tensions between the neighborhood’s black and Jewish communities. The riots influenced the 1993 mayoral race and led to the defeat of David Dinkins, who was viewed by many as having had a weak response to the riots…

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Civics and Urban Life

Verizon Cell Phone Tower Ontop of Park Slope Church

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it seems that the Greenwood Baptist Church, on Sixth Street and Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, has discovered an interesting, new source of revenue. They’re letting Verizon install a cell phone antennas on their roof.

Why not?

The money will pay for the upkeep of the church, Verizon cell phone users get better service. Sounds like a win win. Unless you believe that those towers are a health risk…

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Civics and Urban Life

Alan Harding’s Food Truck Hits the Road

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Red Hook chef Alan Harding, who writes Alan Harding Cooks, now has a food truck that will finally be open for business on Friday, July 23rd at 825 Atlantic Avenue. “So after three inspections and mucho dinero I, Alan Harding, am a fully licensed mobile food vendor. The hardest part of the whole process was the waiting, every time you fail an inspection you have a two week wait to get a new appointment. I passed on July 13 2010, let the games begin,” he wrote in an mass email announcing the opening of his truck. Click on read more to see the interesting menu that he will be serving from this truck…

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Civics and Urban Life

On Thursday in August the Carousel is Free

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Prospect Park’s 1912 Carousel just got better. That’s because it’s free for kids under the age of 12 every Thursday in August thanks to Astoria Federal Savings Bank. Restored in 1990 by the Prospect Park Alliance, the Carousel has 51 hand carved horses, as well as a giraffe, lion, deer and two dragon-pulled chariots.  The Carousel’s melodic Wurlitzer organ has 141 pipes and 16 bells…

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Civics and Urban Life

Does the City’s Land Use Process Need to Be Improved?

The City’s land use process is the subject of discussion at tomorrow’s one’-day conference at the Municipal Arts Society, a non-profit organization that fights for intelligent planning and preservation.

The conference, “Land Use and Local Voices: Is the City’s Land Use Process in Need of Reform,” is based on the idea that intelligent urban planning starts with intelligent conversation. The program will shed light on the city’s land use process and examine whether, and how, it should be improved. The conference is co-sponsored by Municipal Art Society and Manhattan Community Board 1.

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Civics and Urban Life

High School Journalists Learn About (and Assess) Blogs

Yesterday I met with a small group of incoming freshmen at the brand new Frank McCourt High School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, to talk about blogging. As you can imagine it was a lot of fun.

For the past four weeks, the kids have been studying different forms of media and meeting with various journalists and communications specialists. At the end of the course, the brainchild of veteran journalist Leslie Seifert, they will write a report recommending the kind of student-driven news network that they determine will best serve their school community. “That will become a roadmap for beginning to create this news network,” Seifert told me in an email.

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Civics and Urban Life

More Than 100 Gather to Honor Slaughtered Geese

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I wasn’t able to attend Saturday night’s vigil for the geese killed in Prospect Park. But according to various reports, there were more than 100 people there joined by some local politicians. Many urged a citizens’ campaign to get the city and the United States Department of Agriculture to rethink its policy about the killings of geese. State Senator Eric Adams spoke to the crowd…

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