• Absolut Ethics

    The Time’s Week in Review section had a piece on the fallout from the “viral” marketing campaign to pay local bloggers to promote Absolut’s new Brooklyn brand of vodka. In case you missed it (and you probably did), the whole thing spilled over after the latest Brooklyn Blogfest, when some people took exception to the lack of transparency on the part of the Blogfest’s organizers and local blogs that were shilling for Absolut. This isn’t about the Blogfest itself – clearly that was an above-board sponsorship arrangement, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

    There’s also nothing wrong with bloggers getting swag to promote a product. Just tell us. If you’re getting something for promoting a product, let your readers know. It’s that simple.

    And while I’m on the subject on blogger ethics (a favorite topic of professional journalists, it seems), if a blogger cuts and pastes an article without crediting the original publication, that’s plagiarism. If a reporter doesn’t give credit for a lead dug up by a blog, that’s poaching. If your publication has “a policy” of not crediting blogs or not crediting stories that have been “independently verified”, you work for a sleazy publication. It’s that simple.

  • Uncovered: 142 North 1st Street

    142 North 1st Street


    For the past year or two, the nondescript garage on North 1st between Berry and Bedford has been under renovation. A few months ago, the work revealed something a bit more descript – the ghosts of an old city health clinic. The clinic was constructed in 1938 on the site of what was the village of Williamsburgh’s first public school, and sold at auction in 1988 for $33,000.

  • Greenpoint Flea Market

    I missed this (luckily Heather is on it): the folks at Greenpoint Reformed Church have added a Friday afternoon flea market to their list of good works.

  • What New York Needs: More Water Taxis

    Good NYT Op Ed on the need for – and barriers to – an expanded ferry system for NYC. Someone is listening to me.

    Ferries are a growth opportunity. To add new routes, you don’t need to dig a tunnel or lay a track. You don’t need to reroute traffic, build bridges or add lanes. And in many parts of New York, unlike almost every other city, you wouldn’t need to build big parking lots where riders could leave their cars. What cars?
    What you need is a viable pier and a boat. You need a convenient way to get from water’s edge to people’s ultimate destinations. And you need someone to be in charge of it all…
    It’s hard to imagine ferry service expanding very far unless it becomes a public initiative, an integrated system with coordinated schedules and MetroCard access. But who would lead such an initiative? The Metropolitan Transportation Authority? The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey? The Department of Transportation? No one seems to know.

  • Brooklyn Concert Series Finds a Fan in Senate

    How Chuck Schumer saved the Pool Parties – or more specifically, how he saved Jelly’s role in the Pool Parties.

  • A Fallen Star

    Speaking of Isack Rosenberg, his third Williamsburg development project is also in the news. And also not in a good way.

    From troubled condos like One Madison Park, 20 Bayard… iStar has become synonymous with some of city’s biggest flops of the boom

  • Warehouse 11 Relaunches Sales as Buyers Granted Right of Rescission

    The soap opera at the former Roebling Oil Field Building continues. Closings were put on hold a week or so ago, pending a review of the offering plan by the State Attorney General. The AG was concerned that the offering plan for the recent fire sale didn’t divulge the developer’s numerous foreclosure suits and bankruptcy filings to potential buyers (though 30 seconds on Google would lead even the least curious buyer to scads of disclosure on Curbed and elsewhere). To compensate for the lack of disclosure, buyers will now be able to back out of their contracts without penalty.

    There’s also an interesting side note about a mezzanine lender at Warehouse 11 threatening to seize the Rose Plaza site, which is owned by the same developer.

  • New Report Shows That City is Sweet on Domino

    Aaron Short reports on DCP’s sign off of Domino’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). There’s some interesting stuff in the FEIS, which I’ll try to get to in a later post. But it should be noted that the FEIS was prepared by Domino, not the City. DCP needs to sign off that the report addresses all of the environmental impacts, but it is still a report prepared by the developer. (And, yes, I assume that the DCP will use this to recommend some minor changes, but that doesn’t change the authorship of the FEIS.)

    That said, after both Marty Markowitz and CB1 objected to the massive overbuilding on the upland parking lot site, why didn’t DCP require an alternative analysis there? Domino analyzed a lower-height option for the portion of the site next to Grand Ferry Park (which only served to prove that Pythagoras knew what he was talking about), but there was nothing on the most out-of-context aspects of the proposal. Kind of arbitrary, no?

  • ‘Burg Hotel Toshi Outpost Lacks C of O, About to Get Busted?

    I’ve learned through a source at the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement that a fairly big “bust” of sorts is about to break up the Hotel Toshi organization. They [HT] have cut deals with a number of shady developers in North Williamsburg who need to make money on buildings that are mostly complete but have no Certificate of Occupancy.

    Clearly I haven’t been paying enough attention to the Toshi hotel saga. I knew they were operating at 808 Driggs. And I knew someone was operating an illegal hotel at 135 Metropolitan (it’s now been slapped with a violation). But I had no idea that it was all part of the same empire. Or that the City might be on the verge of taking action.

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