Check out Ditmas Park Blog.

Gary Jonas emails that he and his wife, Allison, “are opening up a
French bistro on Newkirk. We are partnering up with neighbor Jim
Mamary, who is responsible for much of Smith Street. We are hoping for
a Christmas opening, but it could be pushed back to Jan/Feb.”

Streetsblog has more info about the death of two Brooklyn bikers.

The deaths of two Brooklyn cyclists just hours apart yesterday have resulted in a homicide charge and an outpouring of grief for a man friends describe as “a truly thoughtful and selfless individual.” Friends of one of the victims are also questioning the official account of his death.

City dailies report that Williamsburg resident Alfred Taylor, 41, has been charged with criminally negligent homicide for killing an as-yet-unidentified cyclist on Fulton Street in Bed Stuy around 6 a.m. Thursday. Police say Taylor was driving a speeding van when he struck the 25-year-old cyclist, whose name is being withheld pending notification of relatives.

READ MORE AT STREETSBLOG

Brooklyn Beat sent me this update. Check out his blog: Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn.

"We had a very large turnout from the 2 neighborhoods and almost everyone who spoke was positive. We left feeling that we made a favorable impression on the committee," reports Paula Paterniti, Fiske Terrace Association Co-President. Although as yet there is no official word as to when the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s final ruling will be made regarding granting of the historic status to the Fiske Terrace and Midwood Park neighborhoods, the community hopes that the LPC will release a decision "before the summer," said Ms. Paterniti.

But it would appear that major steps in the landmark designation application and review process have now been completed through the dedicated efforts of the Fiske Terrace Association and Midwood Park Homeowners Association and other public officials and members of the community, and it is now up to the LPC to deliberate and render a decision.

Tuesday’s hearing was covered on Cablevision’s News 12 Wednesday night.

In a related item, Borough President Marty Markowitz will present a proclamation celebrating the 100th anniversary of Fiske Terrace Association to community members at a special Brooklyn Borough Hall celebration next week.

–Brooklyn Beat

There’s a new blog on the block. It’s called Brooklyn Junction and it focuses on the area right near Brooklyn College.

Dear Brooklyn Bloggers,

I am taking a stab at joining you in the blogosphere. I’m way down
here in the belly of Brooklyn, blogging about the area in Flatbush
known as the Junction–right near Brooklyn College.

Please visit me at brooklynjunction.blogspot.com. I think I’ve got a
good first story–a residential dorm in the works at Brooklyn College.

I am a faithful reader of your respective blogs. I have read numerous
times over the course of the last year about bloggers lamenting that
certain parts of Brooklyn are underrepresented in the blogging
community.

My blog is partly inspired by that indirect call to action.

I’m a total rookie at this, with a day job to boot. Any ideas, advice
or support you can offer me would be received very well.

Sincerely,

Brooklyn Junction
brooklynjunction.blogspot.com

Self-absorbed Boomer isn’t that self-absorbed. This week he has an interview with Brooklyn artist Mark Crawford. Here’s an excerpt. And go to SAB for more.

“I’m not an angry person,” Mark Crawford said, his pleasantly modulated
voice revealing his Midwestern origin. He was responding to my
observation, perhaps prompted by its New York Post headline-like title, that his painting, Wolfowitz Doomed,
seemed to me a visual expression of ire. Looking at that painting, seen
above, again, I saw that my eye had first been caught by the slashes of
red and their contrast with the dark ground on which they are arranged,
but had not focused on the broad swaths of white that overlay them,
some with descending rivulets that “droppeth as the gentle rain from
heaven.”

Another great post from Rabbi Andy Bachman’s blog, Notes. Here’s an excerpt:

My last Spring in Madison before heading off to rabbinical school,
we threw a party at our house for all the guys who were moving on to
their next stage in life.

One roommate was off to New York City
to pursue music; two others were off to law school; another was going
for a business degree; and I was off to rabbi school.

At the party the music was loud, the beer was cold, and the atmosphere was generally festive.  There was even dancing.

Feeling lucky, I ventured to the middle of the dance floor and started trying to talk to a girl. 

“What do you do?” she shouted over the music.

“I’m going to rabbinical school!”  I offered.

“Medical school–cool!” she said.

“No, rabbinical school,” I said.

“Huh?”  she asked.

The music died.  The bodies stopped moving.

“Rabbinical school,” I explained, one last time.  “I’m going to be a rabbi.”

Well that killed that conversation.

This
is often the way I feel at weddings or bar mitzvahs. Mind you, this is
not a plea for sympathy: more an anecdotal snapshot of reality. Because
these days, the affairs are a complex combination of celebrations: both
religious ritual and material indulgence. And honestly, no begrudging
here whatsoever: my God–Celebrate! L’Chaim!

But I’ve noticed over the
years that my presence is kind of, well, a bummer to a lot of people
(guilty glance if I see someone piling on the shrimp at the banquet
table); hostile or passive aggressive comments (usually about organized
religion ‘causing all the trouble in the world’); or, simply
indifference (’nice ceremony, rabbi, but pardon me while I party hard!’)

Check out this new blog, Power Day Off. It’s about ways that you can do less. For the planet. One day at a time.

My friend came up with the concept as a way to give her house and herself and her family a real rest. On this day, they keep the lights off, go outside,
spend a quiet day with loved ones, and don’t use any fuel.

She writes, "Religious
people call it the Sabbath, and while we are not ourselves religious,
we think that the best way to do something free and immediate for this
planet is to do Nothing. Once a week. This blog is about doing: Nothing."

Welcome
and tell us about how you are helping the planet by doing LESS, not
making some new thing or some old thing some new way. One day a week
let’s not make stuffJanuary 2007, I and my family decided to try to power down for one
day a week. We would give our appliances and lights a rest, and spend a
relatively quiet day as a family. We were motivated by a desire to do
something about climate change that would be simple, free, and readily
available to anyone.

It would be an ecological practice and a spiritual practice.

Since
ancient times, those who observe the Sabbath or other holy days have
refrained from working, using electricity, using money, and/or driving.
We think there’s something to be learned from that practice.

If the entire U.S. gave power a day off once a week, how much would we save?

See what these inveterate bloggers look like.  I found this on  Atlantic Yard Report:

"Along with the Gowanus Lounge‘s Bob Guskind, I’ll be part of a segment on CUNY-TV’s Brian Lehrer Live show tonight at 7:30 pm. We’ll be talking, inevitably, about real estate and Atlantic Yards.

I was on the show in May of last year."

The Written Nerd is the nom de net of a blogger who works in an independent bookstore in New York City’s SoHo
neighborhood. She writes:  "Someday I will have a bookstore of my own in Brooklyn. I
love reading books, talking about books, and being where literature
hits the streets. I think independent bookstores can be a source for
culture, community, and social justice. I live in Brooklyn’s Park Slope
neighborhood with the ALP (Adorably Literate Partner), who reads
everything that I don’t. You can reach me here: booknerdnyc at
earthlink dot net."

Check out her Brooklyn Lit Life interview with Sarah Weinman…

I’m a freelance writer and wear a number of hats. I co-edit GalleyCat, mediabistro.com’s publishing industry news blog; I write monthly crime fiction columns for the LA Times Book Review and the Baltimore Sun;
I contribute to a number of other publications including the
Philadelphia Inquirer, Poets & Writers and Time Out New York; and I
blog about crime and mystery fiction at my own site, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind.

That’s right near the other Target. Racked reports that a new Target is coming to the Albee Square Mall just off Fulton Street (around the corner from Junior’s, where there used to be a Toys R Us). The Atlantic Mall’s Target is said to be one of the biggest grossers in North America (does anyone know if this is true?).

Are ready for this? We have it on good word that a Target is slated for Albee Square. If you’re unfamiliar with the location, some backstory via our compadres over at Curbed: The Albee Square Mall, located between Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues, was recently sold to a developer who plans to redo the area completely by building a new, bigger mall and a huge mixed-use tower. Renderings of the new mall came out a few months ago, with the promise that the place will be home to a few national retail chains. There were rumors that Wal-Mart was eyeing the area, which were quickly squashed. Instead, one of the tenants will be Target. Yes, it will be strangely close to the Target at Atlantic Center. Will that make the bullseye any less of a hit here? Probably not

Read Pastor Meeter’s recent sermon:

I get my haircut at the Park Slope Barbers on Seventh Avenue. The barbers are three Italian brothers who are very entertaining plus one quiet Russian guy. They know who I am and what I do. The tall brother is Vito, and I was in Vito’s chair and Vito was telling me that on Sundays he and his wife don’t go to mass but they watch the TV preacher Joel Osteen, and isn’t he tremendous, and do I ever watch him? Vito, how am I going to watch him on a Sunday morning? And his brother Angelo says, Yeah, Vito, how’s he going to do that on a Sunday morning?

Actually I got off easy. Even if I were free on Sunday mornings I wouldn’t watch him. TV preachers don’t do anything for me. I have nothing against them, I’m sure they help some people, but I did tell Vito not to send Joel Osteen any money.

I just don’t need anyone telling me that if I have faith I can be healthier, wealthier, and happier. Of course I believe that believing is the best thing I can do for myself and that it promotes success, but the full story is that sometimes faith can actually increase our suffering. The epistle reminds us that it got St. Paul put in jail.

Did you know that Dope on the Slope is a father-to-be?

Posting here at Dope on the Slope has been light because both Pipistrelle and I have been cramming over the past few weeks to get the last vestiges of our open work projects completed so we could take several weeks off to welcome our bundle of joy. That, and the seemingly insurmountable list of tasks that have to be completed to be “ready” when the moment arrives.

Last night, I took a break from cooking and we ordered Chinese take-out. We noticed that three fortune cookies were packed with the meal. The obvious conclusion was that the third was meant for junior. We opened our fortunes first, and read the expected ambiguous aphorisms. However, junior’s fortune was curiously specific…

Read Junior’s fortune cookie here.

Read her post on the NY Metro Parents blog,

Two days ago, I opened my mailbox to a flurry of emails from Filipinos about last Sunday’s episode of Desperate Housewives. As I stopped watching the series after the first season, I wondered what the hoopla was all about. In one scene apparently, when the Teri Hatcher character is told by her doctor that she may be hitting menopause, she demanded to know where they got their diplomas just to be sure that they didn’t come from some medical school in the Philippines. Understandably, the natives are pissed.

My question is: as one who counts herself among them, should I really be pissed? Is my identity as a Filipino and that of the 80 million others back in the homeland now severely compromised because of a remark made by a fictional character on a tv show about shallow people? Does this mean less work for the thousands of Filipino doctors and nurses who are working in hospitals all over this country and taking care of you or your mother? That’s giving the show too much credibility, too much intelligence, and more importantly, too much say over me and my kind.

Seeing Green is glad to hear that you don’t have to assemble it yourself.

Reclaimed Home is the not-Brownstoner. She’s into affordable housing and ways that those without huge checking accounts can live beautifully.

This week she’s really cooking with news about Crown Heights, a website that helps her find local garage sales, and a FORUM on her website where people can  exchange salvage and building materials.

Go Reclaimed Home.

Mommy Poppins is an excellent NYC parenting blog with information about what to do, see, eat, cook, watch, read, make, play, buy, envy and think with kids in NYC.

The blog is full of helpful listings and information about all things NYC kid-related, including public pre-schools, snacks that help kids think and now this: A HALLOWEEN COSTUME SWAP!

We’re having a Halloween Costume Swap over at Mommy Poppins this month. 
We’re hoping this will be a creative way for parents to get rid of 
their old costumes and find something new for this year.

There’s no set rules, we’re just trying to do something nice for the community, save 
people a couple of clams and recycle.

Hope you’ll check it out. The 
link is: http://www.mommypoppins.com/?p=481

Self-Absorbed Boomer couldn’t believe his eyes. He links to a nice pix.

Thanks to Brklyn Stories I just got the news that Design Sponge has just redecorated.

A new URL, a new design, a new site. What fun. Check out her new design, which uses fabric and trim as a motif. Her site is really gorgeous.

Design Sponge is probably one of the biggest Brooklyn blog sauces stories. This blog has really become a major force in the design world. Grace, who runs Design Sponge, who was at the first Brooklyn Blogfest, really knows what she’s doing..

KUDOs to you, Grace.

And thanks to Brklyn Stories for telling this story. By the way, we missed you at the Blogade. So come "shout out" about yourself on  October 21 in Bay Ridge. Location and time TBD. It is being organized by Luna Park Gazette.

And here’s what BS had to say about the changes at Design Sponge. Now this is a big story in the Brooklyn blog world.

Yes, this wonderful site that sates any aspiring I.D.-er has moved to http://www.designspongeonline.com/ and has so much more to offer!

The
site converted on October 1st, 2007. Grace writes, "i’m so thrilled to
introduce you to the new design*sponge! i’ve been working all summer
with the team at also design
to update d*s in a way that makes the site easier to navigate as well as a
more accurate reflection of my current design aesthetic."

Finally a new post from the Shiksa in Manila.

A new posting on the blog…I know it’s been some
time…Just click on the link below….

Your Shiksa Truly,
Sophia
http://www.shiksafrommanila.blogspot.com/

At Bed-Stuy Blog, see the pix and the names of all the attendees. At least those who got photographed in a great group shot in front of La Toukouleur on Bedford Avenue. Other people showed up later. And while you’re at it, don’t miss what Saucy Tart had to say about the event. 

I met Reclaimed Home at the Brooklyn Blogade in Bed Stuy. It seems like her blog is the  not-Brownstoner. This is no jab at Brownstoner, which she used to read obsessively.

It’s just that this blogger, who has plenty of experience renovating houses and apartments, wanted to create a real estate and renovation blog for those on a limited budget.

Way to go.

Reclaimed Home provides low impact housing and renovation options for thrifty New Yorkers. This week she has a great piece on repainting ordinary kitchen cabinets.

No, No, No, You don’t need to pay $20,000 for new cabinets! Not even
$2000. Do you have real wood cabinets? Or even cool metal one? If not,
you can probably pick up someone’s throwaways on Craigs.

This blog covers a wide range of topics including do-it-yourself tips for renovation, where to get great salvage, affordable real estate in the tri-state area, green living, historical renovation, recycled glass countertops, cats,

This is the renovation blog I will read.

Over at Gowanus Lounge, there are some great pictures of the DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival.

Seeing Green keeps us posted on all things green living, especially bike riding. I’m so glad he reads the Guardian. Here’s an excerpt from I’m Seeing Green.

Paris is becoming the gold standard for rent-able bikes with its
city-wide "Velorution" program. Its been an resounding success (Paris
goes "cycling mad" as this from the Guardian
states,) with the fat gray 3-speed bikes available everywhere for a
nominal price. Of course, as Bloomberg notes below, we might have a
problem with the ultimate nay-sayer in the US: who’s liable? my
prediction is that the lawyers will have a field day in New York if we
ever get such a program.

Michele Madigan Somerville’s poem "The Boob" is on her website, Poetry Fresh Daily, today. Check it out.

Last spring, she read this epic poetic marvel at Brooklyn Reading Work’s Edgy Mother’s Day event and it was a big hit.  Here’s a short excerpt:

After 6 weeks they latched on and became
tiny Falstaffs, quaffing, slugging
and slurping like happy baby hogs,
nursing incessantly and in tandem,
often holding hands as they drank and dozed,
capitalizing on the bottomless amplitude
of supply and demand, bellying up to the Milk Bar
whenever the desire struck.  We didn’t care
who saw or what anyone had to say.
When the kids reached for their sustenance in a cup
it was the rayon, nylon and spandex blend
of a black 36 D underwire demi trimmed
with scalloped lace called “Emma.”
Guys noticing either thought it was hot, or a threat, or both.

Check out the great pix from Brit in Brooklyn of the Coney Island Tattoo and Motorcycle Festival.

Brklyn Stories has the scoop on the DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival, which is September 28-30  in DUMBO.

Eleanor Traubman of Creative Times says that her passion lies in revealing the creative brilliance of people everywhere and in connecting those people to one another.

In August she posted a series interviews with interesting Brooklyn creatives like Barbara Ensor, children’s animation teacher and author of Cinderella (As if you didn’t already know the story), and Aaron Zimmerman, Director of the NY Writer’s Coaltition, which sponsors year-round workshops for members of unheard segments of the city’s population – at-risk young people, adult residents of supportive housing, the formerly incarcerated, seniors, and others.

About Barbara Ensor: "During our chat at Park Slope’s Union Hall, Barbara let me know that her family traveled a lot when she was little, so she and her siblings found ways to adapt to different surroundings. For example, they played with dolls way past when they were supposed to, age-wise. They also created a puppet theater. “It was all about setting up the story,” shared Barbara."

About Aaron Zimmerman: "Aaron, like his staff of workshop facilitators, is adept at getting others to tell their stories through writing. He himself has an interesting tale to tell about his own life path. In high school, Aron liked the writing he did in English classes. He also loved acting. In college, he studied film an ended up taking script-writing classes. For the final project, where most students made a film, Aron wrote a screenplay. It was a way of combining his interest in acting with his passion for constructing story through the use of language."

Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. That’s what McBrooklyn has this week for those of you looking for honest employment.

McBrooklyn puts on its "headhunting gear and scouts out a handful of Brooklyn employment opportunities."  Check out what he’s got this week.

Loads and loads of pictures of Green-Wood Cemetery on Big Sky Brooklyn. That man gets around. And he snaps and snaps. I like his pix.

Michele Madigan Somerville is serving up hearty helpings of fresh poetry daily at one of my favorite new blogs. Here’s just one of her haiku offerings.

Lately I Have Been Trying to Be More

like the Dalai Lama.
But how can I be,when I feel
so Jake LaMotta?