Icky in Brooklyn

I always enjoy Atlantic Yards Report. It's a great blog, always smart and timely stuff.

I think of the Atlantic Yards Project as the last-dangerous-link-in-the-deadly-chain of an uber-gentrified super-neighborhood stretching from Brooklyn Heights, down Fulton and Atlantic through Prospect Heights, to Park Slope and Windsor Terrace, downhill through Gowanus, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, and back to the Heights. Featuring a Whole Foods, a Trader Joe's, two Targets, NYU Dorms, and the country's biggest Ikea. Brooklyn is the new Union Square.

Today AYP points out a great article by Sam Anderson in New York Magazine about the death of the Dodgers, and the loss of authentic Brooklyn. From Mr. Anderson's article ...

"At some point in the last decade, the borough scored its most lucrative contract since the Navy Yard closed: It became the main off-site production facility for Manhattan's hipness. But as any reflexively anti-Establishment blogger will tell you, what looks on paper like the dawn of a new Golden Era might actually be the death rattle of Brooklyn's authenticity.

Historically, Brooklyn has been the antithesis of everything Manhattanites value most: a handy bulwark against the voracious real-estate-industrial complex across the river. Now it's beginning to feel like an extension of Manhattan, the city's shabby-chic east wing. The colonizers' crimes against the spirit of Brooklyn are legion and heavily blogged.

Williamsburg is a hipster theme park soon to be augmented by luxury waterfront high-rises. Park Slope is a parody. There are $2.2 million brownstones in Fort Greene. The old Navy Yard now houses a film studio. Red Hook is now a dock for the world's largest cruise ship and will soon be home to the nation's largest Ikea ... we seem to have been left with the giant churning liver of gentrification, filtering out the toxins of poverty. We are witnessing the birth of post-mythic Brooklyn, an 81-square-mile metaphor for nothing."




Photo Courtesy of the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Collection

The Brooklyn Paper recently published a story about the new park built by the DEP in Greenpoint, alongside the Sewage Treatment Plant on Newtown Creek. In the BP's story, comments about the project were quoted from Curbed. It seems that in the reporter's apparent desire to point out the irony of a park-by-a-sewage-treatment-plant, he forgot to include the positive comments also found on Curbed. And, really (there's no way around it), wrote an article making fun of the park.

This park is an attempt to do something nice, ironic or not. Why discourage an agency's efforts? Was everyone supposed to wait to make an effort until the water was crystal clear? And the biggest why? Why not go over to Greenpoint and ask them yourself? One local Greenpointer wonders this and more. Please check out Miss Heather's story-on-the-story at NYShitty.



photo courtesy of http://www.newyorkshitty.com

My pal Miss Heather over at www.newyorkshitty.com has been dealing with journalists lately. In case you don't know Miss H, she is a lady who speaks her mind, especially and rightfully so, on her own blog. Here is the crazy story of Miss Heather's Headache ...

Miss Heather was recently interviewed by a Columbia University journalism student about the Greenpoint art community. She later learned that the same writer had published a story via the Brooklyn Paper about an artist ... a week after she had posted on the same. (As Miss H acknowledged, at least a nice chunk of publicity was had by the artist.) However, she did wonder, as I do, whether the Columbia student was "trolling blogs and tendering his findings to The Brooklyn Paper."

Understandably irritated, Miss Heather posted that she had been getting unsolicited mass emails from the Brooklyn Paper. At that point, a staffer from the Brooklyn Paper Advertising Department responded - on a Saturday evening - "Not anymore you won't. You're now unsubscribed. Have a nice day."

Not weird enough for you? Then the clergy came in. Miss Heather received "a very nice (and very funny) email" from the Co-Pastor of the Greenpoint Reformed Church," who had also been under siege by the "Columbian Cartel." It seems Columbia j-students descend on Greenpoint pretty frequently, asking the same ol' questions. Following this odd turn, a (different?) Columbia student piped up, pseudo-apologizing, "To all the people who have deigned to waste their time on me, console yourselves thus: maybe you’re contributing to the development of a good journalist ... Or maybe you’re just feeding the tumor that is Columbia. As they teach us there, every story has many sides."

In the end, they each found a j-school student who was pleasurable to speak with. Both had done their homework ahead of time and, in Miss Heather's case, "her line of questioning reflected this." The Pastor emphasized that she is "more than happy to help out Columbia j-school students," but that it would be a great idea to, as Miss H said, "do the homework." In the final post, the Pastor mentioned that, "There are real stories that are waiting to be told both at the Greenpoint Reformed Church and in (the) neighborhood as a whole."

And as a good Protestant myself, I say, "Amen, Pastor, Amen." Please check out Miss Heather and the other fine Greenpoint blogs that are doing just that: telling the real stories that are waiting to be told. You'll find a list of Greenpointers at Miss Heather's www.newyorkshitty.com.

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I knew it was only a matter of time ... the first anonymous comment that really pissed me off arrived last night. (I deleted it in a fairly unreasonable huff.) In one sentence or less - An annon commenter thought it would be prudent of me to conform to a more popular agenda.

The thing is, this blog is not the Park Slope Paper. (Hell, it's not even the Courier.)  It is mine. It is a place where I get to say what I want to say, just for the hell of saying it. I like words. Sometimes I like to take pictures, so that works out too. I have made blog friends. They are nice. We share.

I am not going to list kidsy-poo events because I am not interested in kidsy-poo events. (If a band of kids is farting Beethoven's 9th as they march past Terrace Bagels, or a gang of errant catholic toddlers have taken forcible control of Holy Name, that's another thing entirely.)  I am not going to pen a critical essay concerning which Windsor Terrace coffee shops have the best stroller parking. (I'm more of a deli coffee guy.) So really, gimme a break, Annon, and don't fuck with me, okay?

And besides, we have much bigger problems in the neighborhood, like this Aggressive Goose Issue at Prospect Park.

I recently came across some wonderful Windsor Terrace sign photos by Brit in Brooklyn (a really cool blog, and a fan of logos and the generally atmospheric). Seems Brit wandered over our way recently.



(photo courtesy of britinbrooklyn)

Brit's got tons of really cool photos, and very smart observations. Did I mention the gorgeous photos? Please head on over there and check it out - http://britinbrooklyn.blogspot.com/.