Category: Linked

This one in Harlem – in case there was any doubt that the City is getting serious about illegal and unsafe transient housing.

Neil Chamberlain, 28, was hit by a car crossing McGuinness on Calyer as he was walking in the crosswalk. The driver didn’t stop.

Local activists say that the McGuinness corridor is one of the most dangerous in Brooklyn. “We’ve been close to begging people to do some sort of traffic calming,” said Ryan Kuonen, an organizer with Neighbors Allied for Good Growth, a North Brooklyn community organization. “It’s a racetrack.”

(BTW – NAG has taken matters into its own hands, working with Transportation Alternatives to document traffic conditions on McGuinness.)

Photo: WG News + Arts

I want one.

Brooklyn Ink has a post detailing the travails of one tenant forced out of 112 North 6th Street.

According to the article, the building has no sprinkler system (which I believe is required for a transient hotel use) and, with the exception of the ZIP112 hostel space, no second means of egress. But even with their second means of egress, ZIP112 is probably not legal:

“The building is commercially zoned,” [DOB spokesperson] Fitzgibbons said in a recent phone interview. “If the hostel is still in operation, then it’s illegal.”

OK, maybe not probably.

The redecorating of Domino continues.

But the vote could come tomorrow.

As of last week’s Council hearing, the owner was offering 28% affordable housing (up from the 20% originally proposed and 25% proposed in his first counteroffer). I hear that the number has now gone up further.

Via Brooklyn Public’s Brooklynology blog, the story of Grandma Logan, who moved to Greenpoint in 1859 at age 21. She died in Greenpoint in 1936, 100 years old, and in all her time in the neighborhood, she left the Garden Spot only three times.

In 1927, she recollected:

We had to go to India St. for a pail of water…there was a beautiful orchard between Norman and Nassau Sts. on Newell St., and many beautiful gardens.

Waiting for Godot at Greenpoint Hospital. It’s been three years since the RFP was issued, and – good news! – HPD is “still on pace to choose a developer for the site in the near future”. That’s reassuring.

Seventeen paragraphs into a story on why consumers might not buy the iPad, we learn this:

It may be too early to gauge consumer interest in the iPad. Developers have not yet had time to prepare a variety of applications for the device, and Apple has not yet done much of what it perhaps does best: advertise.

Yes, that and the fact that there is no consumer on the face of the planet who has touched an iPad.

Stunningly stupid reportage.

Earlier this week, OSA Presents announced its second benefit concert for the summer season – Nas and Damian Marley on July 31st. Tickets are $40 (with proceeds benefitting the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn). There was an internet “presale” yesterday, and tickets go on sale to the general public at noon today (click on title link, above, to go to Ticketmaster site).