Month: December 2010

Inaction and Delays by New York as Storm Bore Down

The Times looks at what went wrong in the run up to Sunday’s blizzard. Plenty of blame to go around – both for the City and for the MTA.

One gap in the system was the lack of private contractors to help in the clean up effort. The city put its call out late in the game, but I wonder if part of the problem was Christmas weekend and many of the privates being unavailable as a result of the holiday.

Yet Another Khim’s Millennium Market Coming to Bedford Avenue

12/20/2010 | 1 Comment

Via the Brooklyn Paper, word that yet another Bedford Avenue storefront will become a Khim’s Millennium Market. With another outlet set to open on Bedford and South 2nd, that brings the number of Khim’s on Bedford to three, with the entire Khim’s empire at six (they also have outposts on Bushwick, Graham and Driggs Avenues).

I’m sure this chain of overpriced organic groceries is somehow “better” than Duane Reade, but I’m at a loss to see how. Someday a real grocery store is going to come and run these places out of business. But until then, I now have three places to go to buy $15 vials of organic maple syrup.

(And I thought for sure this one was going to be the Apple Store.)



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This Shrine to Steak Deserves a Little More Respect

Bless you, Sam Sifton:

I want to be perfectly clear about something before moving along to answer this question: Peter Luger is not a casual restaurant. It is true that you can go there for dinner and see people dining in Giants jerseys and mom jeans, as if the dining room were an airport gate filled with Americans waiting for a delayed flight to Las Vegas. But these people are to be derided and have done much to drag the restaurant down. Peter Luger at its best is a meat church, a restaurant to attend in suit and tie or cocktail wear, the sort of place where maybe you can’t get a reservation on the phone, but where you can always get a table with the help of a firm handshake and perhaps some understanding at the door. Children shouldn’t be in there until they’re 10, at least.

Brooklyn Flea Coming to Williamsburg Waterfront

Next summer, the Brooklyn Flea will be spending Sundays in Williamsburg. The flea market, which runs on Saturdays in Fort Greene, will be at the Edge on Sundays (occupying the portion of the property that will someday be a third tower). The operators of the Flea (who include the proprietor of Brownstoner.com) are also looking into how to program the space for Saturdays.

It would be nice to use this as an opportunity to enhance public accessibility to the waterfront. Maybe keep the food vendors on Saturday and leave the rest of the space unprogrammed? And I know it’s asking a lot, but the developer of the Edge could get the ball rolling by finishing his entire waterfront esplanade

Demographic Shift as Minorities Move to Suburbs

12/15/2010 | Comment

The Times has two interesting articles based on the latest data dump from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The first article looks at local trends, and finds that

Metropolitan New York is being rapidly reshaped as blacks, Latinos, Asians and immigrants surge into the suburbs, while gentrification by whites is widening the income gap in neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn

Neither trend is particularly surprising if you’ve been paying attention. Inner suburbs, like Nassau County on Long Island or Fairfax County, Virginia, have been seeing large influxes of minorities – Asian and Hispanic in particular. Outer exburbs – Orange County, NY, for instance – have also been seeing large increases in minority population. This trend – and some of its implications – is explained much better in the Times’ second article, which focuses on national trends.

Locally, the Times picks up on the countervailing trend of gentrification by whites – again, no surprise to anyone who has lived in Williamsburg, Greenpoint or Bushwick (to name but three of many impacted Brooklyn neighborhoods). The accompanying maps show that the Hispanic population in Williamsburg has gone from 40% to 30% over the past decade. What it doesn’t say is how much of that shift is displacement and how much is a general increase in the non-Hispanic population while the Hispanic population remains flat or rises at a slower rate. I suspect it is some of both, but need to spend some time with the numbers behind the survey (this will also be illuminated much more clearly when the Census Bureau releases its 2010 numbers – what we are looking at right now is an annual sample survey, not a straight count of all bodies).

New Movie House Slated for Film-Starved Williamsburg

Grand and Driggs seems rather a strange place for a movie theater, and 6 theaters and 850 seats seems like a lot to cram into a three-story (50′-high) building.

But the owner seems serious about it.

They’ve already filed an application at DOB (no permits have been pulled – the plans were disapproved at the most recent plan exam, which is nothing unusual). The architects are out of Philadelphia, and specialize in, among other things, movie theaters (including a quite stunning restoration of the Amber Theater in Pennsylvania).

This is not the first application to be filed for this property – prior to the Grand Street rezoning, a previous owner had plans for a mini-tower. That job was approved, but no permits were ever pulled and the project never got into the ground. More recently, Winick was shopping around this Karl Fischer design (conjectural only) for a two-story retail building.

76% of Brooklyn Residents Want Walmart

I find it hard to believe that 76% of Brooklynites could agree on anything, let alone wanting a Walmart. The poll was commissioned by Walmart, and only interviewed 250 Brooklyn residents. There are no internals, and no margins of polling error. And best as I can tell, the question was not whether Brooklynites want Walmart in Brooklyn, but rather whether they favor Walmort coming to the city. As Nate Silver has taught us, it’s all in how you ask the question.

So, you know, take it with a bag salt.

But the Eagle seems to have swallowed the hook whole – they breathlessly report:

Based on these facts [the poll and NYers spending habits in Walmarts outside the city], it appears Brooklyn could soon have a Walmart store. But Steve Restivo, director of community affairs for Walmart and a spokesperson, told the Eagle yesterday that, despite the rumor about a possible site in Bushwick, the company has not announced any specific plans.

Whoa – Bushwick? Everyone else is putting their money on East New York. Either the Eagle doesn’t know the difference, or they have a scoop on their hands.

Retail Rumor: Apple Still Not Coming to Williamsburg

Speaking of rumors that just won’t die, the Brooklyn Paper tells us that there is still no Apple store in Williamsburg (and Francisco Franco is still dead).

For the record, that means that there is no Apple store at the Edge (but the developer swears that Apple was “interested”), and there is no Apple store at the Salvation Army, just as there wasn’t two years ago. There also won’t be an Apple store at the Williamsburgh Savings Bank (either one, for that matter). For some reason, Apple seems uninterested in isolated neighborhoods that could cannibalize business from their existing 14th Street store.

The source of this month’s Williamsburg/Apple rumor? The Salvation Army has hired a good architect to redevelop their property at the corner of Bedford and North 7th. The Salvation Army didn’t hire Apple’s talented architect, just a talented architect (one that has worked with the Salvation Army before – there’s a breadcrumb no one bothered to follow).

Besides, I hear Apple is looking at the former Deli Mart space on the opposite corner. It’s true – I read it online.

Duane Reade – Oh Noes!

12/12/2010 | 4 Comments

Oh great, now the Guardian (UK) is on the Duane Reade story. Must be news.

Give me a break.

It’s not news.

It’s a drugstore.

A shiny new, clean and characterless drugstore (I never thought I would use the words “shiny”, “clean” or “characterless” in describing a Duane Reade, but there you go). The second such shiny new, clean and characterless Duane Reade to open on the Northside in the past year.

In an article practically oozing with ridiculous Williamsburg stereotypes – hipsters, beards, tattoos, piercings, lifestyles “funded by middle-class parents” (in Ohio, no doubt), and rumors (rumors) of a Starbucks (a boogey man we’ve been hearing about for 15 years) – the Guardian tries to find deeper meaning in the opening of a new Duane Reade in a ugly condo on Bedford Avenue.

There isn’t any deeper meaning. It’s a drugstore. A lot of the “poor… Jewish, eastern European and Hispanic working-class immigrants” who populated the neighborhood until a decade ago are probably just fine with a new drugstore. But who knows? – the Guardian (and every other newspaper that has decided that this is “news”) didn’t interview anyone who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 7 years. The basis of the entire article is that people who have lived here for less than a decade are being forced out by the taint of corporatism. Other than acknowledging that there were groups of people who lived here before 2000 (but no artists or non-ethnic white people, apparently), there is no attempt to find out what longtime residents think about this – or even if, and more importantly, to what extent, those residents are moving/have moved out of the neighborhood.

Maybe the longtime residents aren’t shopping at Duane Reade. Maybe they don’t need growlers and frozen frat food. Maybe they like their neighborhood pharmacies but don’t sign petitions. (BTW – has anyone actually comparison shopped between DR and King’s? My scientific sampling shows that they both charge exactly the same amount ($10.99) for a bottle of contact lens solution, but that King’s has way better music).

The only sane person in the entire article is Josh Freeman, history professor at CUNY, who notes “Cities and neighbourhoods change all the time. You can’t freeze them. You don’t want to create a sort of museum”.

Amen.

So shop where you want. Just shut up about it. And remember, it’s just a drugstore.