Armed with cameras, envelopes and postage, cops from Brooklyn’s 76th precinct are launching a new initiative called “Spot It To Secure It.” Starting next week, officers will patrol areas of Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, and Cobble Hill searching for valuables left visibly unattended in parked cars, snap a photo and send you a letter about it.

The point? If cops can see that iPad mini on your front seat, so can a passing thief.

Basically, little brother is going to tell on you.

Last year, 541 unattended property thefts took place in Carroll Gardens, according to the Daily News. That's up from 510 in 2011.

“The whole idea is to prevent the crime from happening in the first place,” said Captain Jeffrey Schiff at the 76th Precinct Community Council Meeting last night.

Either that, or the cops were itching to practice their Instagramming skills.

Anyways, car photography isn't all the 76th precinct is doing to prevent larceny. Officers will also be toting their cameras as they search for unattended homes with lowered fire escapes, and open windows or unbarred windows.

“To zoom in on grand larcenies, the precinct will deploy a team made up of community affairs cops in blue jackets, as well as a uniformed anti-crime officer and cops on the conditions unit,” reported the New York Post. “They will visit apartment buildings and brownstones, and check the vestibules for broken, open, or unlocked doors.”

“I think it’s innovative and exciting,” said district manager of Community Board Six, Craig Hammerman, to The Observer.

There we have it. The NYPD's own minority report.

Iris Cafe. It reeks of cappuccino.

Here we go again. For the second time in the span of a year, the caffeinated beverage is at the center of a local brew-haha (sorry, we couldn't resist). And it's not a neighborhood campaign to eradicate drip coffee.

Once more, Brooklynites are percolating with anger over the smell of coffee. Last winter, Carroll Gardens residents were all up in arms over the odor of roasting coffee. This time it's Brooklyn Heights residents who can't bear the stench of brewing coffee.

That's right. Brewing coffee. And muffins.

Residents who live above a gourmet bakery woke up one morning and, smelling both coffee and delicious baked goods, realized what terrible fate had befallen them. Now, they're making a stink about the odor of the fancy food and drink, according to the New York Post.

The contretemps centers on Iris Cafe, which is churning out high-end hipster fare like smoked bluefish salad and cranberry pecan bread. People are cooking. People are eating. It stinks of food, you know?

”It’s been horrible,” Ida Cigara, who lives in the building above the cafe, told the Post. ”When I was pregnant last year, I was puking every day from the smell, and now we’re concerned the odors are going to cause our son respiratory problems."

Remember when people used to argue about things that mattered? About where the coffee beans were grown, and how much shade they got and the merits of french press vs. pour over vs. high-end espresso machines?

And it's only going to get worse, now that Brooklyn is the over-hyped heart of the New York food scene.

kvelsey@observer.com

Gowanus Canal floodwaters at the dead end on Second Street earlier this evening. (Photo: Hunter Walker)

Many of the blocks along the shores of the toxic Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn are designated as part of the mandatory Hurricane Sandy evacuation Zone A. Though the city gave orders for residents of this area to leave their homes starting at 7 p.m., we spotted quite a few people out on the streets when we walked into the zone earlier this evening, including curious gawkers, emergency workers and neighbors who are becoming increasingly fearful that the notoriously polluted canal could overflow. 

The Observer entered Zone A at Carroll and Bond Streets shortly after 8 p.m. Though the businesses and homes occupying the old brick industrial buildings on that block were all shuttered, we spotted several people walking onto the Carroll Street Bridge to take a look at the state of the canal.

"It is so crazy high!" one little boy looking at the water said to his mother.

Indeed, it was high tide, and with the early force of the storm surge, the waters of the legendarily contaminated canal were just about a foot or two below the walls of its west bank and flowing unusually quickly.

Behezad Amiri, who said his home is about a half block east of the bridge past Nevins Street, the border between Zone A and Zone B, was watching the waters too. He said he had also come out to see the canal during the height of Hurricane Irene last year and pointed to where the water stopped during that storm.

"Hurricane Irene, see where it is right now? It's blocking the sewer," Mr. Amiri said gesturing toward the canal's high water mark. "It was maybe about a foot up from there at the worst point of Irene, so this is already a little--this looks pretty high comparably."

Though Mr. Amiri said he was worried to see the canal at such a high point before the storm and any heavy rains had arrived, but he told us he planned to "hang out at home" because his house was a block uphill from the evacuation zone. Walking with Mr. Amiri up Carroll Street, we were surprised to see a large crowd eating and watching the World Series in Monte's, a local Italian restaurant that opened more than a century ago and supposedly served as a hangout for the Rat Pack. On Third Avenue, one block from the border of the evacuation zone, there were also good-sized crowds at a members-only social club where men played pool inside and at the clam shack-slash-bar Littleneck.

When we came back to Littleneck about an hour later, the were only a few people seated at the bar.

"It kind of cleared out now," said the owner of the clam shack, Aaron Lefkove. "We're still open technically for another 45 minutes, but I guess since there's no more customers, we're going to clean up and go home."

Despite his plans for an early close and the threat of the storm, Mr. Lefkove said the restaurant had its standard number of diners.

"This is like a typical Sunday night, actually," he told us, before adding, "It's odd that everybody went home at 9 o'clock. Like clockwork, everybody got out of here."

As we spoke, a couple who said they lived across the street came in and asked whether Mr. Lefkove still had any of the lobster cakes they'd apparently heard raves about. He told them they were in luck: he had one order left. We asked him whether he planned to open the restaurant tomorrow and he replied that it was "to be determined." Mr. Lefkove went on to explain he was hesitant to close his doors despite the dire warnings from city officials because he sees City Hall's strong response to the storm to an attempt avoid the heavy criticism Mayor Michael Bloomberg faced after the blizzard that blasted the five boroughs in 2010.

"After the blizzard, where it was a complete shitstorm and the Bloomberg administration came under so much fire, any time there's any sort of inclement weather, the threat of it, they just batten down the hatches pre-emptively," said Mr. Lefkove. "I could be eating my words this time Tuesday, but, you know, I'm hoping for the best."

About a quarter of a mile away, back in Zone A on Second Street, which dead ends right at the edge of the canal, the situation did not look good. A police car was parked at the end of the block keeping people away, because the waters were overflowing and creeping about 15 feet up the block. Though this was the only area where we saw flooding, it was also the only area in the evacuation zone where we found residents still in their homes in spite of the order to vacate.

A man named Fred wearing an Obama button and glasses answered the door of a sandbagged building at the end of the block. He said he was there helping his friend, Eddie, secure the house for the storm.

"I'm not evacuating, period," Eddie said explaining that he had a large number of cats. "I can't go anywhere. Where am I going to go?"

We asked whether he was aware the city is permitting pets to stay with their owners in storm shelters. Eddie responded that he simply had too many animals to take care of.

"Eight total," said Eddie. "I'm a foster rescuer, neighborhood cats, so I also have kittens and I'm just going to bring them into a hallway upstairs."

The two men said they could stay with friends further uphill from the canal if things got too bad. They also knew some people nearby who would be willing to take "a few" of the cats.

"We're concerned, of course, we're not being frivolous, but it's difficult when you have cats to worry about," Fred said. "We're just going to kind of play it by ear."

Eddie told us they expected to be up all night getting the house ready for flooding.

"I don't care about the furniture, I just want to protect the animals and my paintings. That's what really matters."

After "20 years" living on the block, Eddie said he had seen the water flood this much before, "but never like this without the rain."

"This is scary," said Eddie. "It's going to come up here, I already know it. I feel it."

Like the rest of the area's residents, Fred and Eddie will have to see whether the storm's coming range and the predicted combined attack of the full surge and high tide tomorrow yield even further flooding. When we parted ways with the pair, we said we would come by to check on them as the storm progressed and looked forward to seeing them again.

"Maybe with a bathing suit!" Eddie quipped.

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

(Click to enlarge)

Much like the first note D'Amico put up when the anonymous 311 calls brought a health inspector to their door, the sign conveys the frustration of the owners--Frank D'Amico Jr. and his wife Joan D'Amico-- in dealing with recent urban(er) transplants who claim they want a more relaxed neighborhood than NYC, and then keep acting like uptight Manhattanites.

An embedded reporter? Dolnick's Brookklyn townhouse.

It's no wonder that Sam Dolnick, metro reporter for The New York Times and grandnephew to former Times publisher Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, has purchased a townhouse in Carroll Gardens. After all, The Times is obsessed with the borough and all of its charming, artisanal ways.

Mr. Dolnick and his wife Heidi are leaving their townhouse in the still-up-and-coming Prospect Lefferts Gardens for a strikingly-similar one in the well-established, Barneys-bearing neighborhood of Carroll Gardens.

The Dolnicks purchased 473 Sackett Street from Karnig Kaprelian and Miriam Trautman for $1.8 million, a good bit more than the $1.69 million ask, according to city records. It was on the market for a mere 22 days. But the couple has a lot of cash coming in from the sale of their old home, whose $1.15 million sale was first reported by Curbed. That house is currently in contract.

The Carroll Gardens townhouse, listed with Corcoran broker Deborah Rieders, looks like a comfortable spot to file a news story from. The place has skylights, two  restored Carrara marble wood-burning fireplaces, "pumpkin pine wide plank floors," and "mullioned French doors opening to a sleek steel terrace and landscaped garden."

"This is the exact home that you would create if you could renovate your own home from scratch, but without the hassle of doing the work yourself!" the listing exclaims. Much like the Dolnicks' previous house.

Mr. Dolnick is the son of Lynn Dolnick, a former director of the Smithsonian Zoo. Mr. Dolnick and A.G. Sulzberger are the only Sulzberger-Ochs family members who work in the newsroom.

kvelsey@observer.com

The couple has purchased a condo at 240 Carroll Street for $2.27 million, a little over the $2.25 million ask, according to city records. The four-bedroom spread was listed with Corcoran broker Lindsay Barton Barrett and spent less than a month on the market.

The couple's previous townhouse in Clinton Hill was featured on the blog Design Sponge in all its patterned glory (Ms. Goldberg, who designs rugs for Jonathan Adler, West Elm, Design Within Reach and Anthropologie, described how she had "retrofitted" rug designs to the walls). The photos attracted much pinterest and the home sold for $2.16 million last November, reported by The Real Deal as one of the highest sales on record for the neighborhood. (And the couple had purchased the home for only $1.4 million in 2005!)

Maybe Ms. Goldberg just needed a new muse? And the two-story brownstone apartment bears a strong similarity to the Clinton Hill townhouse. While the sellers Lynne Millar and Alexander Horton didn't quite share the same zeal for decoration as Ms. Goldberg, the Carroll Gardens condo offers an appealing palette. There's a huge skylight over the entrance, a roof deck and a living room overlooking Carroll Park. "This is much more than an apartment, but a true home," the listing boasts.

We'd certainly hope so for $2.27 million!

kvelsey@observer.com

D'Amico Food: Home of the Bean (Pardon Me For Asking)

Saturday night we were hosting a small dinner party, and in a rush to find fresh mozzarella, we stopped into Carroll Gardens D'Amico Foods, the site on which a battle of the beans is currently being fought.

As we reported last week, the Carrol Garden institution, which opened in 1948, grinds and brews its coffee on-site in the front of the store, as it's been doing for over 60 years. But after some local resident called 311 and complained about the smell, the DEP made a surprise visit and told the shop that it may have to close down its operation, due to a lack of an afterburner.

After seeing the infamous sign in the window, we went in and talked to owner Frank D'Amico Jr.'s wife, Joan D'Amico about the current situation.


"It's been insane," said Mrs. D'Amico. "ABC News was just here this morning."

"It was CBS News," an eavesdropping stock boy remarked.

"Oh yeah, CBS. The response has been overwhelming ever since Katia Kelly (the woman who runs Pardon Me for Asking, the blog that originally ran the item) put the story up online. She's a friend of mine. We've had a lot of people come in and show their support."

"We were surprised by how many new faces have come in," the roaster remarked. "The guy from Gothamist, he came down here too...he lives right near by...he couldn't believe it."

"No publicity is bad publicity?" We shrugged. Was D'Amico still brewing its coffee in the front?

"Yes, we have to," she replied. "What can we do? We have to keep the business going." They still haven't installed an after-burner, which would remove much of the bothersome smell, but have plans to.

Did they know who had ratted them out?

"No, but we have a general sense that it was someone across the street," Mrs. D'Amico told us, pointing across Court St., where there currently resides a nail salon, a bodega, and residential brownstones. "I understand that some people might have a problem with the smell, but I never thought they'd go directly to the city. Why wouldn't they just come in here? We could have talked it over...maybe discussed different times to brew so not to bother the neighbors."

When we mentioned how much we loved the sign posted, Mrs. D'Amico laughed. "Oh yeah, I wrote that. I had a girlfriend help me with some of the wording...she had me take some stuff out."

"Like where you tell the neighbors to shove it?" We joked.

"No, nothing like that. It was just a little more...strongly-worded before."

We walked out with our fresh ball of mozzarella pound of prosciutto...all for the low price of $11. They were both delicious.

These kids are the worst! (David Berkowitz)

If Carroll Gardens was a fictional character, it would be Wendy from Peter Pan at the end of the book, when Peter flies through the window and finds that somewhere between the little girl he loved and the old crone whose daughter he wants to bang, there's this sad young woman, reading a book and complaining about the smell of roasting coffee.

Wendy was sort of a horrible person (aristocratic snob that she was), and so too are the people of Carroll Gardens, as we've discovered.

The latest grievance of these young adults who have moved to the Bergen/Carroll stop is that D'Amico Coffee-- a general store that's been around since 1948 and has been brewing its coffee on premises since its inception--smells bad. Bad like coffee. Instead of settling this issue Do the Right Thing-style (i.e. throwing a trash can through the window of the shop and burning it to the ground), several citizens have written a strongly-worded letter to the city. Now Mr. D'Amico might not be able to burn his beans anymore, after the DEP stopped by and realized that the owner wasn't using an afterburner. Currently there's this sign up on the window, according to Gothamist, alerting people to the fact that D'Amico does indeed smell like coffee.

It's very polite and civil. If we were D'Amico Coffee, we would use some choicer words to explain that after being around 70 years, they shouldn't have to put up with whiny 311-dialers who just moved into the area four months ago. And for some reason hate coffee. (No babyccinos for these people, we assume.)

If this was an isolated incident, we'd be able to leave it alone. But as we've spent a lot more time over in Carroll Gardens recently, we've noticed that this issue is the symptom of an epidemic: people who move to Carroll Gardens are terrible. We've been keeping track in the form of overheard conversations. Here's just a few samplings of a Friday night.

Be thankful, Chevy Avalanche. (PMfA)

A pack of new bike racks was just installed on uber-chic Smith Street in Carroll Gardens. And that can only mean one thing: Terror on the streets! More bike maniacs running amock. Cars fleeing in fear. Death and destruction on the streets of Brooklandia.

Actually, these bike racks could make life easier for drivers, too. The corner of Smith and Sackett streets is a notorious blind spot, according to a Brownstoner correspondent:

Problem is, drivers coming from Sackett Street can’t see around parked cars on the Southeast corner of the intersection, making it a blind corner. Cars tend to roll through the stop sign on Sackett Street, and at least 1 or 2 a year get t-boned by vehicles coming down Smith Street. This year they finally put up a ‘no standing’ sign for the two spots before the corner, but cars and trucks STILL park there!

Blame the bikes? (PMfA)

Now, we have bike racks putting an end to that. (Aside: See, cars don't follow the rules, either.) Local blogger Pardon Me for Asking has some pictures of the Smith Street street carnage, including this flipped SUV.

With the Prospect Park West bike lane lawsuit (maybe) behind us, perhaps New York drivers and bikers can start living in harmony. It's the pedestrians we really need to worry about.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Such praise would not go uncompensated. The owner, Mark Iacono, a neighborhood native who learned the secret method of dough kneading from Di Fara’s Dom DeMarco, has been known to ensconce the couple in a secret service–level nook in his already tiny spot, on Henry Street between Carroll and Summit. They receive special treatment. Those displaced from their hard-won seats have tweeted and blogged about their troubles, the accounts often seething with outrage.

One such anecdote landed in the lap of a writer for the Huffington Post. “Something came up!” Mr. Iacono told blogger Jane McGivney, upon realizing who was on the way. “I’ve got a situation! I need this table. I’ll pay for your dinner.”

It came as a shock, then, to hear that Mr. Iacono had been stabbed in broad daylight by the serial ex-convict Benny Geritano just a few blocks away, bleeding onto the sidewalk from his thigh and head. And the Lucali owner fought back—he had a knife on his person as well. And then the news that these co-assailants were old friends, going at each other in a neighborhood where these days skirmishes are usually reserved for loud-yipping Labradors that cross leashes or strollers caught headlong in collision paths.

For the time being there’s visible damage. By all accounts there has been no Jay-Z, no Beyoncé. Mr. Iacono can walk only a block or so at a time. For now, he’s passed on the job of flipping pies to an assistant those close to the restaurant would only name as “Travis.” The place will shift hours or close on a whim. And the reputed mob connection threatens the chic appeal that attracted everyone from Josh Hartnett to Joel Klein. The story of the duel has overwhelmed Lucali’s once impenetrable lack of pretense, its focus on farm-based ingredients and Mr. Iacono’s unmatchable taste. Now, it’s owned by a man charged with attempted murder. So, then—is it still Lucali?

BEFORE STARTING MONTHS of late-night low-paying shifts at Lucali, Dominick “Black Dom” Dionisio racked up charges relating to a murder in the Colombo Wars of the 1990s, racketeering and heavy involvement in the drug trade surrounding Manhattan hotspot Limelight. Facing house arrest, he was placed under the watchful eye of Mr. Iacono, who kept his shady pal no further away than the next bucket of flour. He’s currently awaiting trial for the alleged misconduct and in the intervening period eluded house arrest by hanging out at the eatery owned by Mr. Iacono. (Calls to the lawyer James Froccaro, who works for Dionisio and will also be representing Mr. Iacono during his June trial for attempted murder, were not returned.) Prosecuting attorneys attempted to discredit Dionisio’s role in the workplace, but a verdict in 2009 sided with the account of parole officers who approved the position, and the slice pusher kept his $300-a-week gig as he waited out the time before his trial.

The scene that unfurled Friday, April 15, brought Dionisio’s ties to the Brooklyn crime underbelly back to the forefront. When Mr. Iacono and Geritano reached for their knives the violence came back out, and the man harboring a Colombo wise guy faced the man doing business with the Genovese hustlers.

Around 2:30 the lithe master of mozzarella and red sauce emerged from Joe’s Superette, on Smith Street, in a fiery entanglement with a loutish and hulking man, who soon brandished a knife. Geritano, witnesses said, sliced deep into Mr. Iacono’s neck, slashing up his back and legs as well. As a crowd grew on the otherwise sleepy stretch of Smith, Mr. Iacono fished out his knife too and carved up Geritano’s hands before Annette Angeloni, a desk girl at a local greeting card store, swung her car around, grabbed Benny Geritano, and sped out of the neighborhood. Mr. Iacono was left to bleed on the street.

“I didn’t do anything,” Geritano, who has 10 arrests and three prison terms on his record, said upon his arrest. “I’m the victim here.”

For those still in doubt, he stood up in the middle of his arraignment, lifted his shirt and poked his finger into the wounds.

They wouldn’t be the first to question his sincerity. Geritano beat a murder rap in 1991, and has wandered in and out of prison through a series of arrests for unlicensed weapons, harassment and general bedlam. A source within the local law crew referred to Geritano as a mad dog with mental problems.

His family ushered Benny into the business, having maintained close ties—amicable and otherwise—with the John Gotti clan. His stepfather, Shorty Mascuzzio, was a member of the Teflon Don’s inner circle and got gunned down on family business at a nightclub in 1997. His uncle, Preston, was in 1991 accused of aiding in the murder of Gotti’s driver (a charge on which he was never convicted). He was fatally pummeled with slick blades outside a Bay Ridge restaurant in 2004. At the time of the most recent stabbing, Benny Geritano was said to have been working with his half-brother Anthony Mascuzzio—the Son of Shorty—in a loan-shark scheme backed by a series of massive bank robberies in Brooklyn.

James Geritano, Benny’s uncle, runs a slightly less gruesome racket. He owns the Gowanus Yacht Club, that misnomer of a patio-flanked bar known for its dirt-cheap buckets of beer, and the adjacent Bagels by the Park, where his nephew was said to work before his relocation to Riker’s Island.

“I don’t know why anyone ever said that,” James Geritano told The Observer. We had walked into his bagel shop to find the owner back at a table, folded hands on the polo shirt that stretched over his gut.

“I really don’t want to talk about it. Benny was a great guy, but I really don’t want to talk about it.”

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON in Carroll Gardens, the end of a workday. The Observer was on a self-guided tour of the landmarks of the case, and afterward headed to Marielena’s Card & Gift Shop on Court Street by 1st Place. This well-intentioned shop—“Gifts For All Occasions”—was the presumed employer of Annette Angeloni, the shared lover behind Geritano’s getaway Lexus and, according to some accounts, the woman who led the men to draw blood. They were shouting about her before the fight, witnesses claimed.

There was no Ms. Angeloni at the card shop. In fact there wasn’t a soul—the place has closed down, the windows boarded up, door welded shut. We asked a maître’d at Fagole, the joint next door, and when he looked at the shuttered shop literally abutting his own place he furled his brow, confused. He swore it was there a week or two ago, he said.

Then the scene of the crime. The Superette Deli that became a fighting ring had again gone silent. In fact it was closed, unexpectedly onlookers said, and the rust-iron shade locked down in front of the windows. The sign had lost the “U” in “SUPERETTE” and the “A” in “CATERING.”

The evidence of three-hour waits and citywide renown can still be seen at Lucali’s little hut of a location. It reopened, albeit without the Iacono personal touch, in late April. Hours are infrequent. The Observer approached to find an ambiguous notice: “For the next month or so Lucali will be closed Mondays & Tuesdays. Thank you.”

Stained cardboard pizza boxes were sprawled akimbo on the sidewalk. Smacked on the window were stickers—one for GQ’s best pizza places in America, another for the Italian American Civil Rights League. Right at the supposed 6:00 p.m. opening time a Brooklyn Heights-based family approached, one child in a stroller and the other slung between the father’s cradled arms. They were distraught to find it closed. He said he would come back if he could. He was not afraid of the violence.

“As long as there’s other people in the restaurant, I’m O.K.,” he said as his wife began to push away the stroller. As the family puttered down the block there came a faint noise from inside the empty Lucali, the restaurant Mr. Iacono named after his only daughter. It was the sound of the house telephone, ringing, and it rung on as we walked back down to the subway.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234