Tag Archives: Dansko

Civics and Urban Life

Update on Park Slope Fire

Sign in window of Good Footing Adventure Sunday morning (written on the front of a file folder): Closed Due to Water Damage.

Indeed, passerby’s are still browsing the window (gates and all) eyeing sport shoes by Merrell, Dansko, Mephisto and Blundstone shoes. But the store, as the sign says, remains closed.

The sign, of course, refers to water damage suffered Friday afternoon at 196 Seventh Avenue during a fierce roof fire that was put out in 16 minutes by local FDNY.

Water damage incurred by the FDNY’s efforts to put out the fierce blaze, however, resulted in damage to Good Footing and two apartments upstairs. One is a duplex apartment. The other is an apartment rented by a young woman. I spoke to her boyfriend outside the building where he was standing with a coeterie of packed black suitcases.

He said the apartment was uninhabitable. His girlfriend does not have renter’s insurance and she has to move out for the time being. She stayed in a hotel the night of the fire.

He didn’t know anything about the tenants who occupy two of the building’s floors. The landlord, he said, has been away. He wasn’t sure when he was coming back.

The cause of the fire has not been released by the FDNY.
 

Civics and Urban Life

Aftermath of Park Slope Fire

Yesterday’s fire at 196 Seventh Avenue, the building where Good Footing Adventure sells sensible Birkenstocks, Dansko and Merrell shoes to sensible Park Slope feet, was the talk of the micro-community of Seventh Avenue between 3rd and 2nd Streets.

On Friday, I walked by many times and saw the owner of the shop standing outside fielding questions from neighbors, police, firefighters and passersby.

He probably got tired of saying that he had no idea how the fire started on the roof of the building. Thankfully the fire didn’t get very far because the FDNY’s response time was rapid and they put out the fire in 16 minutes.

Fast.

But that didn’t stop them from drenching the entire building with water and causing substantial amount of water damage that way. At 5PM walking past the building, I smelled that depressing stench of charred property and heard that the tenants could not return to the building until the water damage was cleaned.

Clearly Good Footing had insurance. Fire Response, a firm that cleans up after disaster, had a bright red truck parked outside of the store and workers were hard at work cleaning the store.

I don’t think a clean up was underway for the rest of the building. Yet.  I don’t know if the landlord but I don’t think he was on the premises before, during, or after the fire.

I’m wondering how the tenants of that building are faring. Obviously they are displaced for the time being. It’s early yet, but I will walk by there in a few and find out how things are going.