Brooklyn 11211

She was really good today. And gave a very strong – and heartfelt – endorsement of Obama.

Amazing crowd, too. Compare the crowd – numbers and enthusiasm – to that of McCain’s “kickoff” speech in Louisiana earlier this week. A good sign for November.

A few of my favorite things.

Photo: Owen Franken for the NYT

Dick Zigun’s letter of resignation as a director of the Coney Island Development Corporation, fake mayor to real Mayor. Zigun has a point, the city’s first order of business should be to keep Coney Island fun.

Worth some extensive excerpting, but check out the full text yourself:

As everyone knows, I am a phony politician, no more than a spokesman and advocate for the amusement industry is this “Mayor” of Coney Island. My fantasy municipality is 61 acres zoned for amusements. Nobody lives there or votes there and most Coney Island fans are tourists who live in the 5 boroughs or other states or countries far away from the real elected officials in Brooklyn…

The CIDC Plan promised a world class tourist attraction with an entertainment core: lots of rides complimented by year round nightclubs and enclosed waterparks. Instead the core will now be rezoned for a shopping mall full of NikeTowns, Toys R US and 4 thirty story hotels. One of these massive hotels is even proposed directly in front of The Wonder Wheel, a NYC Landmark. Only 9 acres out of 61 will be reserved for amusement park rides. The original CIDC Plan promised that any condos built within the empty lots of the 61 acres would have Entertainment Retail on the ground floor such as bowling alleys and theaters. Instead the 61 acres now crams in 26 new high rise towers up to 30 stories each with dry cleaners and hardware stories no tourist will ever visit. We worked four hard years for consensus and I for one feel betrayed…

If snooty Paris, of all places, can live with Euro Disney why can’t New York City reinvent a 21st century Coney Island the right way? I beg you to return to the balance and consensus that is the CIDC Plan… or else I will have to speak out against the new plan at the hearing June 24th.

My old stretch of Bedford Avenue continues to get some high quality eateries – the latest (via Gothamist) is the Rabbithole. Added bonus is that this is the reincarnation of the “beloved” Read Cafe.

Further proof, I hope, that the best food continue to be on the Southside.

The rise, fall and subsequent rise of Bushwick, via City Journal. A decent history, though I wonder about the final gentrification-is-nothing-but-good conclusion:

Still, there’s little evidence that the trans­formation will do anything but benefit most Bushwick residents. “Gentrification drives few low-income residents from their homes,” writes Columbia University urban-planning professor Lance Freeman, who has studied the effects of neighborhood change in New York. Instead, demographic changes take place gradually, prompted not by precipitous hikes in rent but by normal turnover in the housing market. Far from pushing people out, Freeman has found, neighborhood upgrades like Bushwick’s encourage many residents to stay and enjoy the fruits of revival.

Seems McCain is also ready, willing and able to extend Bush’s war powers claims.

Cloying, annoying and just downright obnoxious Williamsburg piece from the Observer (hey! there are a lot of young people here doing crazy young people things!).

They do manage to get a couple of things right without being obnoxious about it, like Aurora and activism. On the latter: “after you’ve been here a while, you may find that some things need improvement”. Complete with solutions from City Council candidate Evan Thies and a plug for NAG.

From the inbox:

Please join the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee & DEP for the Digester Egg lighting ceremony.
Tonight. June 3, 2008, 8 p.m.
Newtown Creek Wastewater Pollution Control Plant Nature Walk
(entrance gate located at Provost St & Paidge Ave. )
Greenpoint, Brooklyn 11222

Which gives me a good excuse to post this picture again:

Photo: Fred Conrad (via NYT)

It seems those grand plans for new parkland in Greenpoint and Williamsburg are a little bit behind schedule. Not surprising, really. Much of Bushwick Inlet is contingent upon acquisition (in a rising real estate market) or eminent domain. The MTA lot on Commercial (which is part of a land swap for both open space and affordable housing) is contingent upon locating comparable space elsewhere for the MTA (when all of the city-owned land in North Brooklyn has already been promised to others). The sludge tank site at Barge Park is contingent upon the relocation of the sludge tank (which is on hold until the city can get new barges to ply Newtown Creek).

Seems like the only thing that is not contingent based is the construction of luxury towers in Williamsburg (which will mean the completion of an esplanade sooner rather than later).

By winning the Giro d’Italia yesterday, Alberto Contador became the first rider to win the Tour de France and the Giro back to back since his fellow Spaniard Miguel Indurain did it 1993 (Indurain did it in the same year; Contador across years).

But the best Grand Tour rider won’t be defending his Tour de France title this year. In whst dhould go down as one of the more boneheaded responses to its ongoing doping scandal, the organizers of the Tour – have dropped Contador’s (new) team from this year’s invitation list.