photo: everyplace on flickr
Regarding the fire last night at Rosenwach, I have heard via a third party that a resident of the loft building across the street said that the fire was started by fireworks – white kids in their 20s shooting Roman candles off near Rosenwach, and that some of those fireworks landed in the yard. Since the yard was a big huge pile of wood, predictable things happened.
On flickr, everyplace has a photo set of fire pictures from last night (including video). As I said last night, the fire was intense – and I assume pretty damn scary for the residents nearby. You can see in everyplace’s photos that the flames rose up to at least the height of the loft building across North 9th Street. According to another eyewitness, fireman were still working to contain the fire at 11:40 (two and a half hours after the first trucks reposonded). (Thanks to mikkipedia for the flickr link.)
Around 9:00 tonight Rosenwach Tanks (makers of the ubiquitous rooftop water tanks) caught on fire. It was an intense fire, and an hour later flames could still be seen leaping up from the building at the corner of North 9th and Wythe. A lot of fire trucks were on scene, along with police for crowd control. There aren’t a lot of buildings on the property, but there is a lot of wood stored there.
The latest on the Broadway Triangle, the Lopez and Markey bills and the Catholic church. Aaron Short owns this story.
PS – Now that it finally has content online, yournabe.com has upgraded it web design. Its still a UI nightmare, but at least its one circle of hell removed from the old version. Keep trying, folks.
The Times takes a walk around South Williamsburg and finds an “anachronistic pleasure” (they also can’t tell Grand Avenue from Grand Street, but hey, they don’t get out to these parts much).
Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, Deerhunter and Mission of Burma, to name a few. And all free.
Prologue tomorrow morning, 9:30 local time. Great course this year – four countries plus the prologue in Monaco, stopover in Barcelona, and a finish at Mont Ventoux the night before the ride into Paris. And, it seems as though there is less of flat stages up front (only four days of flats before the Pyrenees).
I understand not running for reelection as a prelude to mounting a presidential campaign, but quitting midstream? Quitting midstream through your first executive position above the municipal level?
Strange.
As the Gazette reports, construction has finally begun on a portion of Bushwick Inlet Park. As I noted previously (and as originally reported by NAG), in May the City upped its commitment to building out some of the promised area parks. Here’s a rundown and status check of what the City said in May:
We are working to improve Newton Barge Terminal Park to provide waterfront views this summer. Unclear – anyone?
Dueling clipboards at 40 paces.
It was a pretty funny situation yesterday morning outside the Bedford Avenue L stop. Comptroller candidate John Liu (D-Queens) was there for some pre-announced canvassing. Comptroller candidate David Yassky (D-Brooklyn) made a surprise appearance. For the record, though, Gillespie and I were innocent bystanders – we were headed to a NAG meeting in the big city. I have no idea what Thayer’s excuse is.
The City Planning Commission held a public meeting on Wednesday and advanced two important Greenpoint-Williamsburg land use actions. The biggest was the approval [pdf] of the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Contextual Rezoning. The 175-block rezoning now moves on to the City Council, which will hopefully approve it by the end of July. Which means that we are about a month away from the end of finger buildings, community facility bonuses and other sources of zoning abuse in most of CB1.
The other important action by CPC was the approval of the Fillmore Place Historic District (the Planning Commission reviews all historic designations). Which puts that designation one step away from the force of law, and Williamsburg one step away from its first historic district.
