The Brooklyn Eagle is shocked to discover that there is a lot of development planned for the Williamsburg waterfront:

The city has been warned, but maybe it hasn’t paid attention to the three developments — all announced at different times, all approved at different times. A model maker, just from the information recorded in this column, could build a physical rendering of this new South Beach for all to see. Is this what we want? Is this good public policy, or — in truth — no public policy at all?

Here’s some news for the Brooklyn Eagle:

1. The Toll Brothers and Levine site were REZONED by the city. For better or worse, the density is exactly what everyone thought they were getting.
2. The city also rezoned a whole bunch of other sites in Greenpoint – multiply Williamsburg by about 3.
3. The Domino site has not been rezoned (yet).
   3a – You obviously do not understand the scope of the New Domino project.
4. This is all called planning – you may not like it, but you are arriving at this party about three years too late.

Daily News:

Brooklyn hospitals led the city in malpractice payouts last year, with Kings County Hospital paying a whopping $33.6 million in claims, according to a report issued yesterday.

Two other municipal hospitals, Woodhull Hospital and Coney Island Hospital, shelled out millions in malpractice claims – even as the total cost of claims to the city plunged by 10%.

In my one Brooklyn ambulance experience, the paramedics asked me which hospital I wanted to go to. After determining that Manhattan was off limits, I asked them where they would go. That’s how I wound up at the emergency room at Long Island College Hospital (LICH, on Atlantic and Hicks). If you are a trauma case, you don’t get a choice, but if you do get a choice, don’t go to Woodhull.

Hamptons.com:

Owner of Triple Crown, a funky hip hop spot in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Popalardo feels that music can break down barriers and create an environment where people can not only have fun but celebrate music that empowers and inspires.

If, by breaking down barriers, you mean being one of the worst neighbors in Williamsburg, yes, that is Triple Crown.

Greenpoint Star:

Although none of the homes or shops interviewed by the Star lacked landline capabilities more than eight days

I don’t think “although” is the right way to start that sentence. And this was not the first (or, for some, the longest) Greenpoint phone outage this summer.

I was surprised to learn that Greendome is only 10 years old – its the kind of place that seems as though its been there forever, even though I passed by it for years when it wasn’t there.

Anyway, they are celebrating their 10th anniversary at Enid’s on Monday night – a very good cause. Heather has more details (last item).

Greenpoint is Brooklyn’s smokingest neighborhood. This won’t come as a surprise to too many people, though I suspect there is at least one person out there who will blame this news on Williamsburg developers, the Department of Health, the tobacco companies, or all three.

StreetsBlog has an interesting thread dissecting a recent Daily News article, which had reported that bicycle accidents were way up in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. The News is playing fast and loose with the statistics on fault by not reporting all of the “at fault” numbers. “Fault” in this case is not a binary equation – the driver of the car, the pedestrian and the bicyclist can all be at fault. The number of people at fault can be (and probably is) much larger than the number of accidents, so simply reporting the number of bike riders at fault is misleading.

Still, some of the StreetsBlog comments are typical knee jerk reactions from two-wheelers who refuse to admit that a bicyclist might ever be responsible for what they hit (or what hits them). Its a busy world out there, that’s why there are rules of the road.

The Times has a review of Dana Thomas’ new book on the commoditization of luxury brands and the dilution of the meaning of the word itself. From Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster:

In order to make luxury “accessible,” tycoons have stripped away all that has made it special.

Sounds a lot like the condominium market, no?