Category: Linked

A little local flavor to the City Council’s blossoming slush fund controversy. (More here.)

WMFU is 50 years old today. Celebrate by downloading a podcast or listening to an archive show. And give them some money.

You’re seeing this headline a lot today: Bush’s Disapproval Rating Worst of Any President in 70 Years. Don’t believe it. Bush has the worst disapproval rating ever (in the latest Gallup poll, 69% disapprove of the job he is doing). They’ve only been doing the poll for 70 years, and in that time, no one has a higher disapproval rating than fearless leader.

Worse still is this nugget from within the article: “the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt“. You’d be forgiven if, in reading this, you thought that Roosevelt was unpopular. In fact, prior to Bush, Truman had the highest disapproval rating (67%). The poll began in 1938, at the beginning of Roosevelt’s third term. Actually, Bush holds three of the top of five places in the history of the poll (in addition to Truman (at the height of the Korean War), Nixon had a disapproval rating of 66% in August of 1974 – within a month, he had resigned).

As reported everywhere, Department of Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster resigned today. I’ve harped repeatedly on the failings of DOB, but don’t see this as much more than blaming the messenger. As many of the commenters at City Room noted, Lancaster inherited an incredibly dysfunctional agency, and did much to turn it around. Interestingly, DOB seems to finally be catching up with volume of construction – as Gowanus Lounge noted just this morning, there seems to be a marked increase in the number of Stop Work Orders appearing throughout Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

As I’ve said before, the real issue with DOB is that it is both an expeditor of construction and development and a public safety agency, and those two goals are often not compatible. Construction is an inherently dangerous industry, and DOB needs to do a better job of regulating construction professionals (contractors, expeditors, architects and engineers). But in order to do that effectively, DOB would probably need to make the development process less efficient – and that goes against its grain.

Lancaster’s resignation does nothing to address this inherent imbalance. Hopefully her successor will be able to.

The irony here is quite rich – ExxonMobil, the company that is (mostly) responsible for the oil plume that sits beneath Greenpoint is sonsoring today’s Go Green Earth Day celebrations at McCarren Park. The notice is very last minute, but when some local activists found out about this, they decided a protest of some sorts was in order.

The Go Green Earth Day celebrations at McCarren are a locally-organized event, put together as the result of a lot of hard work by the folks at Town Square; ExxonMobil is only paying to sponsor the event. The planned protests are intended to be fun, and hopefully won’t be disruptive – so either way, go out there and have fun.

Friends,

Apologies for the short notice but we just found out that ExxonMobil is sponsoring tomorrow’s Go Green Earth Day Festival in McCarren Park. ExxonMobil is also responsible for the largest oil spill in America’s history, larger than the Exxon Valdez, just meters away from where the festival will be taking place!

Other festival sponsors include BP America, Waste Management, and Forest City Ratner Company (responsible for the Atlantic Yards project). These companies are no friend to our community, and no friend to the environment.

Please join the Greenpoint SuperFUNd SuperFriendz in taking immediate action.

NOW: Send an automatic email letter expressing your outrage to the powers that be.

SATURDAY (tomorrow): Join us at McCarren Park for a protest rally. We’re calling on YOU to help reclaim Earth Day from the greenwashers and reclaim the oil from McCarren Park!

Reclaim the Oil!
Saturday, April 19, 11am
Meet at Driggs and N. 12th
By the dog run

There’s oil a plenty underfoot and we oil men will be on hand with rig, drills, and buckets to reclaim our oil and our earth (day).

Dear Exxon, We Drink Your Milkshake!!!!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

About Greenwashing:

The term is generally used when significantly more money or time has been spent advertising being green (that is, operating with consideration for the environment), rather than spending resources on environmentally sound practices. This is often portrayed by changing the name or label of a product, to give the feeling of nature, for example putting an image of a forest on a bottle of harmful chemicals. Environmentalists often use greenwashing to describe the actions of energy companies, which are traditionally the largest polluters.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

About the Greenpoint ExxonMobil Oil Spill:

Between 17 and 30 million gallons of oil lie beneath North Brooklyn. See here for oodles of press coverage: http://www.greenpointvexxon.com/index.htm#press

Via Brooklyn Vegan, Southpaw owner Matthew Roff is to take over the (now) former Galapagos space on North 6th Street. Good news, I hope.

Toll Brothers and L&M Equity Partners have secured $157 million in financing in order to construct a second tower on the Northside Piers site. “Two Northside Piers”, as it is called, will have 270 condo units (its not clear if that includes or is in addition to affordable units) in its 30-story tower. The Real Deal also reports that residents will begin moving in to One Northside Piers in the next three weeks.

Both of these reports are good news for the development of the waterfront, and the eventual creation of new public space along the East River.

The Dermot Company, which most famously is the developer of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank condo conversion, has been buying up rental properties throughout Brooklyn. Most of their purchases have been in the downtown and Fort Greene areas, but they have ventured up north on occasion. Today, the Eagle is reporting that Dermot has bought the building at 326 South 1st Street from TreeTop Development. The Triangulum, as it is (most unfortunately) called, was mostly renovated into high end rentals by TreeTop. The building, which sits across the street from the Getty Station on Borinquen Place/Keap Street, has 30 units plus a vacant ground-floor retail. According to the Eagle, Dermot paid just shy of $8 million for the property.

I had an email from Flatbush Gardener chiding me for my earlier post on the geography of South Brooklyn. Mr. Gardener says I was a bit harsh in my assessment of his original objection to Ms. Heather’s description of the boundaries of South Brooklyn. Point taken. He also explains his South Brooklyn position in a comment to the NYShitty post that I linked to originally. And a valid position it is – as Mr. Gardener notes, Flatbush was for many years a separate town from the City of Brooklyn (it was, with Brooklyn and Bushwick, one of the six original towns dating to the Dutch era of Brooklyn).

[Ed note: As Xris found out, I keep comments off on these quick link posts. But you can always email comments to 11211[at]brooklyn11211.com.]

Flatbush Gardener has taken NYShitty to task for her geography. But Heather has it right (even if she doesn’t know it).

Historically, the area from roughly Atlantic Avenue south to Red Hook (including current Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill and Cobble Hill) were called “South Brooklyn”. This was back when Brooklyn Heights and downtown were just plain “Brooklyn”, and North Brooklyn (Williamsburg, Bushwick and Greenpoint) were the “Eastern District.” I’m not sure where Park Slope, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy fit into all of this. But from 1855 to 1898, these areas were “Brooklyn”, and everything else was a separate township. And South Brooklyn continued to be called South Brooklyn through most of the 20th Century.