StreetsBlog has an interesting thread dissecting a recent Daily News article, which had reported that bicycle accidents were way up in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. The News is playing fast and loose with the statistics on fault by not reporting all of the “at fault” numbers. “Fault” in this case is not a binary equation – the driver of the car, the pedestrian and the bicyclist can all be at fault. The number of people at fault can be (and probably is) much larger than the number of accidents, so simply reporting the number of bike riders at fault is misleading.

Still, some of the StreetsBlog comments are typical knee jerk reactions from two-wheelers who refuse to admit that a bicyclist might ever be responsible for what they hit (or what hits them). Its a busy world out there, that’s why there are rules of the road.

The Times has a review of Dana Thomas’ new book on the commoditization of luxury brands and the dilution of the meaning of the word itself. From Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster:

In order to make luxury “accessible,” tycoons have stripped away all that has made it special.

Sounds a lot like the condominium market, no?

City Limits’ recent article on the use of affordable housing as a wedge to gain acceptance for large development projects has one or two interesting tidbits on the Quadriad project. When last we heard from Quadriad, Community Board 1 had voted down a committee recommendation to support the Quadriad project and others like it throughout the neighborhood (but not before Quadriad withdrew its proposal to the Board). Quadriad is now saying that they withdrew the proposal to make changes (not really true), and that they will return to the Board with a new proposal next month (probably true – they return to the Board almost every other month with a new proposal).

We told you there’d be a sequel.

When the Daily News reported that Dumbo’s Pearl Street Plaza was being transformed from a parking lot to a public plaza, it was hardly an exclusive. But now, the News’ Rachel Monahan is reporting that DOT plans for three more hardscape plazas on parking lots – and that is news. One of those would be at the Williamsburg Bus Depot – a vast and impenetrable wasteland.

via The Brooklyn Paper, a rundown on lobster rolls in Brooklyn. The best bargain is in Red Hook, though our own Surf Bar comes in mighty affordable.

The Community Preservation Corporation (co-developer of Domino) is funding a moderate-income project on Lawton Street in Bushwick. A good thing, even if moderate-income housing is probably out of reach to more than half the local population.

Happy Birthday to Greenpoint’s own Mae West. (I didn’t know that she was a Doelger.)