Awesome job by NYC #DOE snow removal blowing snow back into the street #Brooklyn 6th Ave
28.12.10
New Years Day Snow Removal??
So this is happening…8AM New Years Day & NYC Sanitation Dept is removing mounds of snow on 6th Ave in North Park Slope.
I appreciate it, I really do, but this is messed up on a lot of levels given the snow removal debacle associated with last Sunday’s blizzard.
First, there are still a lot of worse off streets than this block. It’s pretty clear now so I would think there are higher priorities than removing mounds of plowed snow…like clearing streets better in Crown Heights, Bay Ridge, Canarsie, Williamsburg, outer Queens, etc.
Second, snow MELTS. it’s been five days since it stopped snowing and the temperature outside right now is 41F and it’s going up to 45F today. A big chunk of the snow is gonna melt this weekend. What’s the point?
Third, labor costs. The six workers on this crew are probably getting time and a half or double or triple time working on New Years Day as it’s a holiday. I’m cool with holiday pay but do we really need these guys working today given the Sanitation Department budget cuts & city-wide budget cuts in general??
Fourth, no trash collection. As you can see in the foreground of this photo, our trash and recycling is piling up as it hasn’t been collected this week.
Seems like priorities are out of wack at City Hall and the Sanitation Department.
Heckuva job Bloomie!
01.01.11
Help Find the Photographers Behind These Brooklyn Blizzard Found Photos - Urlesque
Do you know these men? They left a roll of film in Prospect Park after the New York blizzard. We’re hunting them down. More photos in the post.
Park Slope, Brooklyn - who are these guys?
(via tanya77)
19.01.11
Don’t get me wrong, I love breast milk as much as the next person…
Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha! Perfect satire of the supreme douchebaggery associated with Park Slope, Brooklyn (where I live) & the infamous Park Slope Food Coop (I’m a member…by force…a long story). Yours in Cooperation!
(Source: neighborhoodr-parkslope)
22.04.11
In Williamsburg, everyone’s kind of illiterate. Relatively,” said Christian, a 29-year-old Williamsburg transplant who moved there from Park Slope and regrets it. “One time I was on the L train, and the girl sitting next to me was reading Women in Love, and I said, ‘That’s good—have you read The Rainbow?’ And she said, ‘No, this is my first Lawrence—is it all so deep and philosophical?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah … it’s literature.’
Brooklyn Civil War: It’s North vs. South, Ratner Against Ledger (via NY Observer)
(Source: asie, via capitalnewyork)
16.08.11
Hurricane Irene Could Be a Toxic Shitstorm In the Gowanus Canal
Awesome.
If Irene hits with sufficient force, a flood of the human waste quaintly known as combined sewer overflow (CSO) is almost a certainty. What is less certain is how much of the heavier, more dangerous contaminants will be churned up by the storm surge and heavy winds and deposited by the flood waters.
The 50-odd blocks that surround the canal — known lately for open-air dance parties and hipster houseboats — are in Zone A and are subject to mandatory evacuation. The two neighborhoods that border the Gowanus, Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, are both uphill from the canal. But whether those hills are steep enough to turn back a toxic shitstorm won’t be known until Irene passes through.
Toxic Gowanus Canal & Hurricane #Irene - #Brooklyn #Awesome #NYC
27.08.11
“But let’s be clear: What he did has nothing whatsoever to do with basketball. Ratner didn’t buy the Nets as a stand-alone commercial enterprise in the hopes that ticket sales and television revenue would exceed players’ salaries and administration costs. Ratner was buying eminent domain insurance. Basketball also had very little to do with Ratner’s sale of the Nets. Ratner got hit by the recession. Fighting the court challenges to his project took longer than he thought. He became dangerously overextended. His shareholders got restless. He realized had to dump the fancy Frank Gehry design for something more along the lines of a Kleenex box. Prokhorov helped Ratner out by buying a controlling interest in the Nets. But he also paid off some of Ratner’s debts, lent him $75 million, picked up some of his debt service, acquired a small stake in the arena, and bought an option on 20 percent of the entire Atlantic Yards project. This wasn’t a fire sale of a distressed basketball franchise. It was a general-purpose real estate bailout.”
“Today the wealthy have no such qualms. We have moved from a country of relative economic equality to a place where the gap between rich and poor is exceeded by only Singapore and Hong Kong. The rich have gone from being grateful for what they have to pushing for everything they can get. They have mastered the arts of whining and predation, without regard to logic or shame. In the end, this is the lesson of the NBA lockout. A man buys a basketball team as insurance on a real estate project, flips the franchise to a Russian billionaire when he wins the deal, and then — as both parties happily count their winnings — what lesson are we asked to draw? The players are greedy.”
The Nets and NBA Economics - By Malcolm Gladwell in Grantland
26.09.11
Brooklyn In Austin: I Miss the Park Slope Food Coop!
Da Missus misses da PSFC…
Me, not so much…
via brooklyninaustin:
I have been a proud member of the Park Slope Food Coop for 17 years. You can’t get any more Park Slope than that. Never visited Costco or Fairway, only a few trips to Whole Foods—if it wasn’t sold at the coop, I didn’t need it. So you can imagine that the crowded but unique coop is one of the…
25.11.11
Da Missus is homesick for #BKLYN on this rainy Austin Monday…This video on the Mitzvah Tank made her tear up for NYC. If you don’t know what a Mitzvah Tank is, watch this nice video by NYT.
We used to always get asked, “Are You Jewish?” While I’d always respond, “No.” in reality, given my Spanish (from Spain) and Peruvian heritage, I know that if I go back several hundreds of years at most, I have a Jewish Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandmother or Grandfather. If you’ve ever been to Madrid, Toledo, Cordoba, or Seville, you can’t escape the mixture of the Catholic, Jewish, and Islamic cultures. But I digress…
It’s funny what sets you off.
Over the weekend, a conversation about how bad Dominio’s Pizza is made me crave a decent slice of Brooklyn pizza (It’s been about two months). This morning, I saw an @instagram photo of Pino’s on 7th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and I about died.
via brooklyninaustin:
Came across this video today and it really made me homesick for Brooklyn. I used to see these guys all the time at Grand Army Plaza and always said “No.” Now I finally get what’s going on.
09.01.12
Wherein A Native Park Sloper Takes Down A Park Slope Interloper
I kinda liked Amy Sohn only because she kinda irritated my Park Slope wife and her friends with her “books.” Of course I ignored the fact that she writes navel gazing, oh woe is me rich chick, entitled “literature.” #meh
Now with some distance, she and the entitled class, money, and attitude she portrays in her books are part of what helped drive us away from Brooklyn in real life.
All that said, leave it to a native Park Sloper Jake Dobkin to take her down by calling her bluff…and Amy slinking away with “no comment”…
#ParodyOfWhitePeopleProblems Heh. #classic
Be sure to read the backstory at the bottom of the interview.
via native Park Sloper and my wonderful bro-in-law John D’Aponte
Jake Dobkin: I read your Awl piece. My first reaction was that some of the stuff you described, like doing “body shots”, partying with your mommy friends till 3 a.m., and blowing guys you aren’t married to, didn’t really happen, or only happened once- like you’re making it up just to troll internet commenters, or you imagined it, like in Fight Club, where the other mommys in your “Hookers, Sluts, and Drug Addicts” club are really just in your head and you’re actually sitting at home alone with one glass of wine most nights. That’s true, right?
Amy Sohn: [No Response]
Dobkin: My second reaction was that having three gin and tonics on Smith Street isn’t exactly wild rebellion or even “behaving like a bunch of twentysomething hipsters”. Is it possible that you’re just pretty normal 40-somethings and that’s terrifying, so you’re enlarging your exploits to make them seem sleazier and wilder than they are?Sohn: [No Response]
Dobkin: My third reaction was that I’d like to know which of these following behaviors you describe you’re regularly engaging in and why: “But we’re masturbating excessively, cheating on good people, doing coke in newly price-inflated townhouses, and sexting compulsively—though rarely with our partners.” How much masturbation is “excessive”? Do people really still do coke, in Brooklyn? Give me an example of a “sext” that you’ve recently sent or received.
Sohn: [No Response]
Dobkin:My fourth reaction, is that the issues you and your friends have, of Park Slope “boredom” which “turns to terror” when your kids hit PS321, seems like a parody of White People Problems. Like if your biggest challenges are too much time on your hands and real estate envy, maybe volunteer or get another job or something? People are dying in Syria! Is this a legitimate reaction?
Sohn: [No Response]
Dobkin: Can I suggest that maybe you’re just hanging out with the wrong group of people? I mean, if everyone around you is throwing back Xanax and raw-dogging it just to FEEL SOMETHING and then having unplanned kids because they’re too stupid to use birth control, is it possible it’s not Park Slope’s fault, and rather, it might be hanging around with really immature people?Sohn: [No Response]
29.08.12
Grimpeur Bros. Specialty Coffee: Hurricane Sandy
via grimpeurbrosspecialtycoffee:
We were lucky. Hurricane Sandy did little more than rattle our windows and flicker the lights. When we took our dog out to do her business, we grit our teeth as the wind howled. The morning after when we went outside, leaves were strewn about the place, some large branches fell down and few trees…
Our Brooklyn HQ was out and about yesterday in Red Hook and Coney Island, Brooklyn serving coffee, OJ, and bagels to our fellow New Yorkers dealing with the clean up and recovery from Hurricane Sandy.
We’ve had it easy. Nigel and his family are ok. Some business plans were disrupted but it doesn’t compare to what New Yorkers are going through right now. The aftermath of the storm is brutal and will be felt for a long time.
Don’t forget the Rockaways, Far Rockaways, Coney Island, Seagate, Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach, Staten Island, and large parts of New Jersey. Winter is coming and people are hurting.
Please consider helping today and in the future.
If you live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, check out Congregation Beth Elohim’s site for what is needed most on a daily basis.
If you’d like to help volunteer efforts, you can sign up here.
Thanks.
DISCLOSURE: I am a Co-Founder and one of the Grimpeur Bros.
05.11.12
