Last year, the inaugural Internet Cat Video Festival was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, wherever that is. While Minneapolis’s handful of residents primped their whiskers in satisfaction, the legions of devoted feline fanatics in ManCattan and Brooklyn were left feeling more dejected than Grumpy Cat.
Thank heavens this year’s festival will be taking place where it Read More
It is very dangerous to ride a bicycle around the city and Brooklyn. Cars are everywhere, and you really need to where a helmet, no matter how silly it looks, because people will purposely open car doors into the bike lane (how messed up is that)?
Finally, however, Bushwick has found a solution: a Velodrome, which is an indoor racing track that, according to Brokelyn writer David Colon, is pretty hardcore: Read More
Now you can really know before you go.
Introducing Toilets of New York, a Tumblr devoted the the peculiar artistry of the dive bar toilet. (Finally!) The site features dozens of photographs of the gross, the graffitied, the ugly—and in some rare occasions, the clean.
The blog is the brainchild of Ian MacAllen and largely features Read More
Thanks to Kim Velsey’s brilliant response to The New York Times’s highly blog-troversial Sunday Styles article “Creating Hipsturbia,” we know that just an anecdotal format does not a mass suburban exodus/trend story make.
Sadly, Alex Williams was this close to having a real story on his hands, but seems to have gotten his migration patterns wrong. Because *Double Drudge Sirens*, there’s a data-proven “trend” of young people moving to New York City and especially Brooklyn in the last several years. Now there‘s a story … young people move to Brooklyn from the suburbs! (Maybe they all swam here on the Hudson current after realizing that the dream of the ’90s isn’t alive in Dobbs Ferry.) Read More
To be young is to believe wholeheartedly in certain rosy, soothing illusions—that age, infirmity and death will never come to call, that divorce and the suburbs are fates that only befall other people. And yet, we will all know illness, we will all die and many, though not all of us, will move to the suburbs.
Young families have been moving to the suburbs for as long as there have been young families and suburbs. That many of the young families moving to New York suburbs should be Brooklynites, and that many of them should fancy themselves “creative types” and that they, like their parents and grandparents before them, should believe themselves capable of bringing their superior sensibilities to the land of compromises and comfort should come as no surprise. See: Revolutionary Road.
And yet, the New York Times has seen fit to print yet another style section feature on the suburban exodus of Brooklynites called, what else, “Creating Hipsturbia.” After all, “Williamsburg on the Hudson” ran way back in August 2011. Read More
Let’s face it: Roses are passe. Chocolate makes you fat, even if you eat it “ironically.” (Whatever the hell that means.) And a nice card isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on if you don’t have another special gift awaiting your lover this Valentine’s Day.
If your special sweety is a hipster residing in the Williamsburg/Greenpoint area, this holiday is especially hard. What can you get them, a pre-order of the Girls: Season 1 box set? Luckily, the Department of Environmental Protection has your back. Raw sewage, anyone? Read More
The Brooklyn Public Library is looking to sell off two of its branches near downtown Brooklyn to developers, the New York Daily News reports, and what do you know—both of them are right next to Forest City Ratner-owned properties.
The first library on the block is the Brooklyn Heights branch, a squat 1960 building. It sits on a triangular parcel directly north of Forest City Ratner’s One Pierrepont Plaza, a late ’80s skyscraper that pierces the Brooklyn skyline with its green faux-mansard roof, virtually indistinguishable from those of la Ville-Lumière. Read More
It is clear by now, if it has not always been, that the opponents of the Prospect Park West bike lane do not trust the city’s Department of Tranportation.
They have insisted the project was “trial” with virtually no proof that this was ever the city’s position. They have dismissed city-run studies of traffic data that show the lane has improved traffic flows and reduced injuries. And they have sneered at the considerable majority of their neighbors who have voted time and again in favor of the project. Still, the efforts of Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes persist, especially now that their lawsuit against the lane has been returned to court on a technicality. The group’s response has been to offer the city a settlement that essentially amounts to little more than a barroom dare. Read More
Another day, another story about how Brooklyn residents are flipping biscuits over the amount of filming on their streets. This time, it’s the good people of Brooklyn Heights complaining that 14 productions in one month have led to impossible parking conditions, the inability to leave one’s home during a shoot (lest Read More
Bruce Ratner did not win out with the tax man this week, but he has secured an even bigger deal with another New York City institution that will be a linchpin for his Atlantic Yards project. Today, Forest City Ratner announced it is going forward with its long-planned intentions to build a modular apartment tower as part of the 22-acre arena-anchored mega-development. The project is made possible in large part through an agreement with the city’s labor unions to allow the 32-story prefab apartment building to proceed.
Modular construction has long been a dream of architects, for its efficiency and control, and now it could be a boon for New York City developers as well, since prefab methods can save 20 to 30 percent from traditional design methods. The only issue is for construction workers. Because the projects are built in factories, even when using union labor, the jobs tend to be less skilled and thus lower paying. Many labor unions had bridled at this, especially since Mr. Ratner had made extensive promises about the well-paying jobs Atlantic Yards would provide. But today the Building and Construction Trades Council announced its support for the development, saying that the prefab builders will get their own division within the labor group. Read More
Affordable Housing or Lack Thereof
