Turns out that a lot of the stalled construction sites in Williamsburg (corner of South 4th and Bedford, 212-218 North 9th, 237-243 North 9th, 261-263 North 9th) are owned by the same pair of developers. Who also own the converted loft building at 100 South 4th Street and the vacated loft building at 239 Banker Street.
Kevin Drum on the pitiful jobs report out this morning:
We are ruled by charlatans and cowards. Our economy is in the tank, we know what to do about it, and we’re just not going to do it. The charlatans prefer instead to stand by and let people suffer because that’s politically useful, while the cowards let them get away with it because it’s politically risky to fight back. Ugh indeed.
Ben Sargent, founder of Hurricane Hopeful and the underground lobster-roll man, makes the big time.
Interesting item on CB1’s crowded liquor license agenda this month – an application for a bar at 60 South 2nd Street, to be called Crown Victoria. A bar, on a list of 34 bars and restaurants (it was a quiet month), is not that interesting.
But the location is – this is a site that was just rezoned for residential use. The garage at 60 South 2nd, soon to be converted to an eating and drinking establishment, sits on the portion of the property that is slated for affordable housing as part of a larger development. According to the owners of Crown Vic, they have a 10-year lease.
This evening, teachers were spared layoffs, firehouses were saved from closure, and gays and lesbians were given the right to marry.
Not bad for a day’s work, New York.
Filmmaker Brian Walsh has made a movie about Bushwick Creek and what lies beneath. The movie was based in part (or maybe inspired by is a better phrase) a blog post I wrote over four years ago, and which was, in turn, inspired by Bob Guskind’s reporting on the “Roebling Oil Field”.
Brian’s film is posted in five parts – part 1 is shown here, but go watch the rest. It is well done, and an interesting – and eye-opening – look at the environmental legacy of North Brooklyn.
UPDATE: Original video link was missing sound for the first few seconds. Fixed.
Free ferries are a popular commodity. So popular, in fact, that the East River Ferry has huge lines at just about every stop, and the boats are running on what can only loosely be described as a “schedule” (in fact, during off-peak hours, they’ve abandoned any pretense of a schedule, and are just running the boats on a continuous loop). Clearly, things will get better after next week, once the free ferry ceases to be free. But until then, they’ve issued this service advisory.
(Even with the crowds and the long lines, it’s nice to have ferry service back on the East River, and even nicer to be able to go directly to the Northside.)
CityMaps is a new interactive map site that seeks to be “a one-stop shop for hyper-local and real-time information about neighborhood places”.
Based on the attached, I assume they are still in beta.
The L train will terminate at Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues midday next week, Monday through Friday. Which shouldn’t impact service elsewhere along the line.
More info (sort of) here.
