The transit museum, back in service. (ERA USA)

Cooped up in Brooklyn? Tired of waiting for one of the bus islands outside the Barclays Center? Seen both movies at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema and looking for something to do? Why not head over to the New York City Transit Museum in Boerum Hill?

Just like the buses and subways, the subterranean museum is back open—we guess the out-0f-service subway station it's located inside did not flood—and also like the buses and subways, admission is free of charge. The museum says in an email, "What better way to pay tribute to the incredible recovery effort of NYC Transit than to open the doors to the one institution that focuses on the history and impact of the region’s public transportation?" Their full announcement is below.

What better way to pay tribute to the incredible recovery effort of NYC Transit than to open the doors to the one institution that focuses on the history and impact of the region’s public transportation? This morning the New York Transit Museum sent this e-mail to its followers. The Museum is open today, Thursday November 1st, from 10 – 4pm, free to the public. Starting Friday the Museum will charge regular admission ($5/child, $7 adult), and be open for regular hours (Tue -Fri: 10 – 4; Sat and Sun: 11 – 5; closed on Mondays).

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Shake off that cabin-fever: the New York Transit Museum
re-opens TODAY (Thurs, 11/1) at 10am!

AND...FREE ADMISSION ALL DAY TODAY!

We're happy to report that the Museum, archives, staff, and our cat Sadie are safe and dry. Power was restored to the platform last night, and the Museum RE-OPENS to the public TODAY (Thursday, 11/1) at 10am. As a special bonus, admission is free all day today!

The subway is NYC's lifeblood. Come on down to the NYTM and learn all about how it was constructed, how it's lasted 108 years, and how it will continue to function in the future. (Or just enjoy finally getting out of the house.)

Don't be fooled by the exterior, this place needs work

Known for her prominent public sculptures and unconventional materials, conceptual artist Teresita Fernández is a master of transformation. And a good thing, too, given that 165 Bond Street, the townhouse she just purchased, could use a major one.

Ms. Fernández bought the gut-renovation-ready home for the list price of $1.2 million from Frances Ortiz, according to city records. Coldwell Banker Reliable broker Mary Kay Higgins didn't pull any punches in the listing, which skips euphemistic chatter about charm and TLC and goes straight to the square footage and zoning details. A YouTube video of the listing (see below) shows dingy, junk-filled rooms, fake wood paneling and a blue-tiled bath right out of a 1970s horror movie. A close-up of the trash-strewn yard completes the depressing montage, though the piano chords do seem to perk things up.

No word on whether Ms. Fernández, who lives nearby on Douglass Street, plans to use the building as a home or a studio.

Maybe the artist, a winner of the 2005 MacArthur Fellowship and a member of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts who shows at the Lehmann Maupin gallery in Chelsea, was just looking for a different kind of project.

Ms. Fernández, who is originally from Miami, has professed her love for the borough before, Boerum Hill in particular. After winning her MacArthur genius award, Ms. Fernández told the New York Daily News that she had initially tried living in Manhattan, but found Brooklyn more inspiring. "It really felt like home immediately," Ms. Fernández said.

The same might be hard to say for 165 Bond Street, but it's hard to imagine the property falling into more capable hands.

kvelsey@observer.om

It's still tree-lined. (Bing Maps)

Who's afraid of public housing? Not Brooklyn! The borough, newly named the coolest city on the planet, has not let the proximity of public housing complexes affect ever-increasing real estate prices, The New York Times reports. More specifically, a steady flow of professionals and young families have moved into the Boerum Hill neighborhood despite the looming public housing towers on either side.

On Warren Street between Bond and Nevins, home values are on the rise. Despite being flanked on either end by massive developments, affluent buyers have been snatching up property on the block. Although prices have fluctuated in recent years with the wavering markets, it seems clear that buyers aren't getting the "your new home is next to the ghetto" discount anymore.

At the condo development, for instance, sales fell from a high of $588 per square foot in 2008 to a low of $305 per square foot in 2009, but rose to $639 per square foot last year for a four-bedroom apartment that went into contract at $1.15 million, according to Streeteasy.com. On a stretch of Bergen Street two blocks away, farther from the projects, sales prices for single- and multifamily homes generally ranged from a low of $374 per square foot in 2007 to $694 this year, having reached a high of $1,079 at the end of last year, for a fully renovated single-family town house that retained many of its original details, according to available data from Streeteasy.

Still, there is some cause for concern. Neighbors worry about the crime rate and the ability of police to patrol the area effectively.

Residents say that they do not worry so much about the presence of public housing as about what they see as a lack of police enforcement in driving away drug traffic. Dealers hang out at the corner of Bond, where a 16-year-old girl was shot to death last year, said Steven Turner Hart, a writer who has lived on the block since 1998. At Nevins, an abandoned building plays frequent host to crack addicts, he said.

Crack addicts, shmack addicts! The friendly neighborhood junkie isn't bringing down real estate prices like he used to.

eknutsen@observer.com

With The Grocery’s debut in 1999, Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens—once the land of lawn chairs and “social clubs”—had its culinary coming out party. Chef-owners Sharon Pachter and Charles Kiely, late of Savoy, brought a Manhattan finesse to then-barren Smith Street, and enterprising foodies braved the F train for slow-rendered duck breast. Despite the neighborhood’s sea change during the intervening years, this shoebox-size 30-seater has managed to stay true to its vision of dressed-to-impress farm fare. The menu may be as trim as the moss-colored space—only 12 items are offered—but the ambition is evident in dishes that refuse to settle for bare-bones simplicity. A pork ragu with homemade gnocchi comes accompanied by a formidable cornucopia of charred peppers, roasted tomatoes and cranberry beans. A toothsome Slavic subtext runs through roasted carrot buckwheat blintzes and duck plated with kasha and cabbage. Odd-couple pairings like chili-dusted scallops with sticky rice and leeks actually pull off their complex flavorings. In contrast, the décor is streamlined, each white linen table adorned with only a single orange. Though the storefront intimacy can tend toward an awkward dinner party vibe, the back garden provides much-needed congestion relief during the bare-as-you-dare months.

288 Smith St. (near Sackett St.), Brooklyn, 718-596-3335, thegroceryrestaurant.com

Everything looks like it came straight from the Jazz Age section of a Restoration Hardware catalog: tin ceiling, dark wood paneling, etched-glass light fixtures, black-and-white photos of indeterminate provenance of mustachioed men at a bar, leather-upholstered benches, and an overly descriptive menu of cocktails like the "Hemingway Cobbler" and the "Highland Smash."

In other words, it's all just a wee bit too contrived. Other new bars on Smith Street have managed to tread the fine line between overly precious and just precious enough to satisfy the finicky tastes of the intellectual-hipster crowd (see: Brooklyn Social, the JakeWalk, Gowanus Yacht Club). Then there are the originals, like the Brooklyn Inn, that actually have the ring of authenticity that the Clover Club seems to be seeking. But walking into Clover Club is like walking onto a stage set.

The menu—bound in maroon card stock, with the bar's name in gold on the front, held together by a gold elastic binding—is 16 pages long and divided into different types of drinks, all of which are $10 or $11: Sours & Daisies, Collins & Fizzes, Buck & Mules, Cobblers & Highballs, Juleps & Smashes, Swizzles, Royales, Punches, and, simply, "Cocktails." (There is also beer, wine and Champagne.) Each section has a flowery, educational description: "Cobblers are said to have gotten their name, more than a century ago, from the little ‘cobbles,' or pebbles, of ice they were made with." And it goes on for an entire paragraph. Um, is this going to be on the test?

There is also a selection of "Savory Bites," or, gussied-up bar food: steak tartare with caper dressing, "pigs undercover" (that is, in a blanket), deviled eggs served four ways, and-perhaps most offensively-"American Caviar Service," which consists of 1 ounce of caviar served with toasted brioche, "eggs mimosa," chopped chives, onions and crème fraiche. ("Please allow 15 minutes for this preparation.")

The evening I went, with two friends, we were seated by the open window, where passersby peered in at us like we were characters on a Disney lot. "It's kind of like a bar at a bobo theme park-Retroland," one of my friends said. "What is the fantasy they are promoting? That sophistication is exposed brick and jazz wallpaper?"

That being said, the bar is somewhat of a piece with owner Julie Reiner's other establishment, the retro-ish Flatiron Lounge on West 19^th Street in Manhattan, which also has an extensive cocktail menu. But perhaps that's the problem; Ms. Reiner seemed keen on establishing a beachhead in Brooklyn that would complement Flatiron Lounge, but something got lost crossing the East River.

All would undoubtedly be forgiven if the drinks were superb and the food delicious. But the lamb burger was undercooked and the sliced tomatoes on it looked wan; the side of "Gaufrettes" (um, aren't those thin French waffle-cookie type things?) turned out to be really, really spicy potato chips. The "pigs undercover" were hot and the pastry crust was buttery and appropriately flaky, but as my friend put it: "Those pigs in blankets were very tasty but rather coy-wieners wrapped in flaky pastry and flakier half-irony." Indeed.

Clover Club, 210 Smith St., Brooklyn. 718-855-7939. www.cloverclubny.com

Almost half of the new renters in the first quarter of this year were between 21 to 25 years old, and 93 percent were under 35. The typical renter in neighborhoods like Clinton Hill, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace and Boerum Heights is usually attached, works freelance in entertainment or the arts, makes around $50,000 a year, and needs no guarantor to be approved for an apartment.

What's different now is that most of the new renters do not come from Manhattan. This year, more than 60 percent of them came from other neighborhoods in Brooklyn. In the first quarter of 2006, for instance, 53 percent of the renters came from Manhattan; that number had dropped to 20 percent in the first quarter of 2007.

Since real estate in some of these neighborhoods is no longer the bargain it once was--see the week's Observer--we guess there is not much of an incentive for Manhattanites or Brooklynites to make a trek, either way, over the bridge.

But what about the non-millionaire types who want that light and space and air and fire? On the northern border of Mr. Ledger’s old neighborhood, Boerum Hill, a sustainable 97,000-square-foot affordable-housing building for artists, called the Schermerhorn House, was just topped off.

Besides its “post consumer waste” glass façade, the building between Smith and Hoyt streets is getting a second-floor “green roof” terrace and a 199-seat performance space for dance and theater. That's because about half of the 217 residents will be “local artists, actors and entertainment professionals”--the others spaces are reserved for “people transitioning out of homelessness, and people living with AIDS,” a press release said today.

David Beer, the director of real estate development for the non-profit Common Ground (which is building Schermerhorn with The Actors Fund), said the project took about $40 million. He told The Observer that the money came from developers Time Equities and investors Hamlin Ventures, who were required to create some affordable housing when they bought a vast chunk of local land.

On the other hand, according to a previous release, the moneymen voluntarily doubled the amount of affordable units they'd be building. Capitalists can be kind too!

The building opens next spring, and Mr. Beer said New Yorkers can contact the Actors Fund to ask about applications. But be warned: “It was a bit of a technical feat to build this residence, because it’s over three subway lines; the tunnels are directly below our building,” Mr. Beer said. On the bright side, he promised there won’t be subterranean noisiness or rattling.