By Matt Chaban 5/29 3:55pm

Affordable Housing or Lack Thereof

Home sweet home. (Property Shark)

Who Wants to Turn This Old Architecture Graveyard in Williamsburg into Affordable Housing?

It used to house cast offs from some of the city’s oldest buildings, but soon it could house low-income New Yorkers.

The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development is seeking a developer to turn a  Williamsburg warehouse that served as storage for the Landmarks Preservation Commission into an affordable housing development with 50 apartments. The development, at 337 Berry Street, sits on a 15,000-square-foot lot and calls for commercial or community space on the ground floor, as well as about 1,200 square feet of open space for residents.

The views are not too bad, looking out on the Williamsburg Bridge and Manhattan, though the rumble of the J-Train just might intrude on the apartments, as well, barring some good windows. Read More

By Drew Grant 5/28 12:41pm

Food Fights

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D’Amico Coffee Loses Battle over Carroll Gardens’ (Coffee) Grounds

D’Amico Coffee, the 64-year-old Brooklyn family-owned grocery that has been grinding its own beans since it was founded in 1948, has been forced to change its operations because some new neighborhood residents who hate the way coffee smells keep calling the fire department on the store.

That’s right….Carroll Gardens is officially the worst. See below for the new sign on the Court St. location: Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/23 5:54pm

Street Fighters Too

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Accused Shopping Bag Bomber Takeshi Miyakawa Still Loves New York, Just Wants a Bath and a Beer

Takeshi Miyakawa was released from custody a little after 4:30 this afternoon. The Greenpoint-based designer spent the past four nights behind bars for hanging I [heart] New York shopping bags, illuminated from within by an LED matrix of his own design, on trees and lamp posts around North Brooklyn.

So, does Mr. Miyakawa still love New York? “Yes, I do,” he said as a pack of reporters gathered around him outside Brooklyn Supreme Court on Jay Street, a few long blocks from the Manhattan Bridge. It was an odder than usual scene, just so, for the media scrum outside the halls of justice, with the impromptu press conference being conducted in equal parts English and Japanese, Mr. Miyakawa speaking softly either way.

He wore the same mint-green button-up shirt and baggy nylon cargo pants he had been arrested in at 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, after cops spotted him hanging one of his pieces at the corner of Bedford and Lorimer Avenues. A similar piece he placed early Friday morning on Bedford and North Sixth Street got three surrounding blocks shut down when a curious 311 call turned into a zealous 911 response.

“I was in shock,” Mr. Miyakawa said of his arrest, “but I was more in shock that people in Williamsburg were locked down for two hours, and I really want to apologize to them.” Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/23 5:53pm

Street Fighters Too

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Accused Shopping Bag Bomber Takeshi Miyakawa Still Loves New York, Just Wants a Bath and a Beer

Takeshi Miyakawa was released from custody a little after 4:30 this afternoon. The Greenpoint-based designer spent the past four nights behind bars for hanging I [heart] New York shopping bags, illuminated from within by an LED matrix of his own design, on trees and lamp posts around North Brooklyn.

So, does Mr. Miyakawa still love New York? “Yes, I do,” he said as a pack of reporters gathered around him outside Brooklyn Supreme Court on Jay Street, a few long blocks from the Manhattan Bridge. It was an odder than usual scene, just so, for the media scrum outside the halls of justice, with the impromptu press conference being conducted in equal parts English and Japanese, Mr. Miyakawa speaking softly either way.

He wore the same mint-green button-up shit and baggy nylon cargo pants he had been arrested in at 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, after cops spotted him hanging one of his pieces at the corner of Bedford and Lorimer Avenues. A similar piece he placed early Friday morning on Bedford and North Sixth Street got three surrounding blocks shut down when a curious 311 call turned into a zealous 911 response.

“I was in shock,” Mr. Miyakawa said of his arrest, “but I was more in shock that people in Williamsburg were locked down for two hours, and I really want to apologize to them.” Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/23 11:46am

Street Fighters Too

The cops bagged him. (Courtesy Louis Lim)

Takeshi Miyakawa Will Have His Day in Court! Friends of Plastic Bag Bomber Hope He Will Be Freed Today

It was the glowing plastic bag seen round the world.

Over the weekend, Takeshi Miyakawa was arrest for his clever I [heart] NY shopping bag installation, which was mistaken for a bomb by the police on two occasions, the first of which shut down Bedford Avenue.

Rather than releasing Mr. Miyakawa on $250,000 bail Sunday morning, as the Kings County District Attorney recommended, the presiding judge at his arraignment ordered him remanded into custody for mental evaluation, which could keep him behind bars for up to a month.

Today, another Brooklyn judge will decide whether or not Mr. Miyakawa, who has been in prison for almost five days now despite reports of his cooperation, can go free. Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/22 8:30am

Checking in

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No Vacancies Til Brooklyn: How Three Kings of Kings County Conquered Williamsburg, and Gentrification Itself

At the end of April, Vice magazine, the Williamsburg house organ, threw a party in the neighborhood. The party was inside 80 Wythe Street, a giant old factory building, a redbrick behemoth that was built in 1901 as a cooperage. Those bricks used to be covered in graffiti and wheat paste and other street art ephemera from some of the genre’s best practioners. On this occasion, they were gathered inside, to celebrate an installation around the corner by Faile, the local artistic duo known for their psychotropic collages, a mix of comic books, B-movie posters and indigenous art from Asia to Iroquois.

“When we were young artists just getting by, scraping together enough money for that next project, this was the place to be,” said Patrick Miller, one half of Faile. “Williamsburg was it.”

Nearby, two blonde cherubs, the children of Patrick McNeil, Mr. Miller’s artistic partner, spun themselves silly around three stylized Tibetan prayer wheels in the middle of the room. The elder child, a boy of about five wearing the skinniest of black jeans, kiddie Converse and a jean jacket with a giant Tiger patch on the back bigger than the boy’s head head, came to an abrupt stop in his dance. His sister, maybe three, in engineers overalls, a step behind, jumped just then into his arms, and they embraced in a hug. The whole jaded room was watching.

It was the cutest, coolest thing in all of Brooklyn.

A decade, even five years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine this scene. “Look at the lineage here, it’s somebody who cares a lot about making Brooklyn cool,” Mr. Miller said, gesturing around the space.

This was not some swanky, skanky loft party on the edgy edge of New York’s social periphery. This was the unofficial opening party for the Wythe Hotel, the kind of establishment that thinks of itself as above opening parties, above press, above hype, even as a line forms out the door. This is, the work of three Brooklyn tastemakers in their prime.

This was, is and will be the greatest thing Williamsburg has ever seen. It is the pinnacle, the acme, the end. Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/22 8:30am

Checking in

Watch the throne. (Courtesy Wythe Hotel)

No Vacancies Til Brooklyn: How Three Kings of Kings County Conquered Williamsburg, and Gentrification Itself

At the end of April, Vice magazine, the Williamsburg house organ, threw a party in the neighborhood. The party was inside 80 Wythe Street, a giant old factory building, a redbrick behemoth that was built in 1901 as a cooperage. Those bricks used to be covered in graffiti and wheat paste and other street art ephemera from some of the genre’s best practioners. On this occasion, they were gathered inside, to celebrate an installation around the corner by Faile, the local artistic duo known for their psychotropic collages, a mix of comic books, B-movie posters and indigenous art from Asia to Iroquois.

“When we were young artists just getting by, scraping together enough money for that next project, this was the place to be,” said Patrick Miller, one half of Faile. “Williamsburg was it.”

Nearby, two blonde cherubs, the children of Patrick McNeil, Mr. Miller’s artistic partner, spun themselves silly around three stylized Tibetan prayer wheels in the middle of the room. The elder child, a boy of about five wearing the skinniest of black jeans, kiddie Converse and a jean jacket with a giant Tiger patch on the back bigger than the boy’s head head, came to an abrupt stop in his dance. His sister, maybe three, in engineers overalls, a step behind, jumped just then into his arms, and they embraced in a hug. The whole jaded room was watching.

It was the cutest, coolest thing in all of Brooklyn.

A decade, even five years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine this scene. “Look at the lineage here, it’s somebody who cares a lot about making Brooklyn cool,” Mr. Miller said, gesturing around the space.

This was not some swanky, skanky loft party on the edgy edge of New York’s social periphery. This was the unofficial opening party for the Wythe Hotel, the kind of establishment that thinks of itself as above opening parties, above press, above hype, even as a line forms out the door. This is, the work of three Brooklyn tastemakers in their prime.

This was, is and will be the greatest thing Williamsburg has ever seen. It is the pinnacle, the acme, the end. Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/21 3:27pm

Street Fighters Too

Red alert. (Courtesy Louis Lim)

You Might Spend 30 Days in Jail If Your Plastic Bag Art Installation Turns Into a Bomb Scare That Shuts Down Bedford Avenue

Plastic shopping bags, the city’s dandruff, get stuck in trees and wrapped around light poles all the time.

Rarely do they cause a bomb scare.

But that is what happened on Friday morning, shortly after 10:30 a.m. According to Gothamist, someone had simply called 311 to complain about a bag a gentleman had recently deposited into a tree on Beford Avenue and inquire about its removal.The 311 dispatcher, apparently spooked by the description of an installation by Brooklyn designer Takeshi Miyakawa—an I [heart] NY plastic shopping bag with a wire hanging out—directed the annoyed neighbor to call 911.

The cops showed up, then the fire department, the the bomb squad, which shut down Bedford from North Fourth Street to North Seventh Street for two hours.

Each May for New York Design Week, Mr. Miyakawa has made various installations throughout  Manhattan and Brooklyn to coincide with the annual festivities, including a floating chair that, like the bags, glowed. It was a spirited—if unsanctioned, but also generally harmless—effort. The installations had gained a modicum of notoriety within the art and design communities, but little notice elsewhere. This year, the work got him thrown in jail, for up to a month, if not longer. Read More

By Foster Kamer 5/08 5:55pm

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Celebrity Sightings In London - January 11, 2012

Why Pippa Middleton, Considering a Move to New York, Should Move to Brooklyn

Pippa Middleton—the sister-in-law of Prince William of England, and the sister of Kate Middleton, who is a goddamn princess, literally—is supposedly considering a move, possibly to New York City. She’s been missing from the London social circuit, her royal handlers are referring to her as the “Pippa Problem” for her hard-partying ways, and a move to Paris is likely nixed following an incident involving a French aristocrat she was with pointing a gun at a paparazzo.

She should move to Brooklyn. This is why: Read More