Boerum Hill

The biggest problem with Clover Club, the new loungey bar on Smith Street in Boerum Hill, is that it gets Brooklyn pretension all wrong.

Everything looks like it came straight from the Jazz Age section of a Restoration Hardware catalog: tin ceiling, dark wood paneling, etched-glass light fixtures, black-and-white photos of indeterminate provenance of mustachioed men at a bar, leather-upholstered benches, and an overly descriptive menu of cocktails like the "Hemingway Cobbler" and the "Highland Smash."

In other words, it's all just a wee bit too contrived. Other new bars on Smith Street have managed to tread the fine line between overly precious and just precious enough to satisfy the finicky tastes of the intellectual-hipster crowd (see: Brooklyn Social, the JakeWalk, Gowanus Yacht Club).  read more »

Flocks of 21- to 35-year-olds moved to Brooklyn in 2008, as the condo boom gave way to a renters’ market, reports The Brooklyn Eagle.

Almost half of the new renters in the first quarter of this year were between 21 to 25 years old, and 93 percent were under 35. The typical renter in neighborhoods like Clinton Hill, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace and Boerum Heights is usually attached, works freelance in entertainment or the arts, makes around $50,000 a year, and needs no guarantor to be approved for an apartment.

What's different now is that most of the new renters do not come from Manhattan.  read more »

Outside of the East Village, the leafy brownstone neighborhoods of Brooklyn are the defacto homesteads for New York's entertainment types. Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger "moved to Brooklyn for light and space and air," the actress has said, and their neighbors Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard got a $1.75 million brownstone last year with no less than seven fireplaces.

But what about the non-millionaire types who want that light and space and air and fire? On the northern border of Mr. Ledger’s old neighborhood, Boerum Hill, a sustainable 97,000-square-foot affordable-housing building for artists, called the Schermerhorn House, was just topped off.  read more »

• Restoration heroes Beyer Blinder Belle are fixing up the Empire State Building: uncovering the lobby's gold-and-silver "celestial sky" ceiling mural. But, of course, the original lighting will be replaced by "modern, energy-efficient fixtures" [Interior Design]
• Tragically, Brooklyn bars are now officially over-packed: "Manhattanites are actually commuting to our fair borough to party in Boerum Hill, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, and Williamsburg." [Brooklyn Record/Time Out NY]
• Speaking of Park Slope: Residents turned out in droves last night to bemoan plans [above] for bicycle lanes: "There is no way in hell there is going to be a bike lane on Ninth Street," a charming Sloper screamed before the meeting started. Why? "A bike lane would interfere with double parking." [Curbed]
• The neighborhood isn't as hip as it was in the Truman Capote/Norman Mailer days of yore, but Brooklyn Heights' open houses are still a hot ticket. A studio is up for $265,000; a house costs 13 times more. [NY Mag] - Max Abelson
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• Ian Schrager's old friend Philippe Starck is designing a 207-unit condo on the un-hip stretch of East 23rd Street between First and Second Avenue. And the place will be called Gramercy--even though Starck's condo isn't quite so close to the famous park. [Real Deal]
• Thanks to the picture-perfect Brooklyn brownstones, the "burgeoning dining and nightlife scene," and the handsome celebrity couples, Boerum Hill is officially ritzy. Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope are totally jealous. [N.Y. Mag]
• Who's going to Morandi, the Waverly Inn's hot new neighborhood rival? Jay McInerney, Lorne Michaels, the artist John Alexander, Joe Bastianich, maybe Michael Kors, and "old-time, grayhaired, neighborhood lefty feminist Birkenstock babes." [House + Garden]
• After more than two sad decades in storage, Central Park's grandest ceiling returns. And the Bethesda Terrace Arcade [above] only cost a mere $7 million to renovate. [Gothamist] - Max Abelson
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If you can't beat 'em, bank on 'em. Each week, Chris Shott of Counter Espionage and Shott on Location acclaim will mark the city's banking boom by highlighting new additions to its burgeoning corner-branch population.

For years, the bucolic boutique-lined streets of Boerum Hill went untouched by the banking industry's ravenous real-estate appetite.

Not anymore: Astoria-based Marathon Bank of New York, a U.S. subsidiary of the Piraeus Bank of Greece, opened its 14th area branch there on Friday morning--occupying not one but two connected storefronts with separate entrances on Atlantic Avenue and Bond Street.

"Senior management really wanted to have the first bank in the area," said Zoe Koutsoupakis, Marathon's senior vice president, who added that the 2,187-square-foot location provides ample space for meetings with loan applicants. (The bank specializes in mid-size commercial and construction loans, she explained.)

The new Marathon's nearest full-service banking competitor is a Chase branch on Flatbush Avenue--a location which neighborhood broker James Crow described as "a schlepp."

Still, Mr. Crow, who works across the street from the new Marathon, suggested that locals weren't struggling for lack of cash, given the number of nearby corner stores with their own ATMs.

Yet Marathon's ATM charges a withdrawl fee of only $1.50--a whopping 25 cents less than the two corner stores directly across Atlantic.

"We're a very competitive bank, let's put it that way," said Ms. Koutsoupakis.

- Chris Shott

In the wake of Boerum Hill’s “It”-ification, my father and I recently decided to r  read more »

May 28, 2006 11:38 a.m. 8 pounds, 12 ounces Lenox Hill Hospital    read more »

It was less than a year ago that Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams bought a $3.6 million townhouse in Boerum Hill, instantly becoming the neighborhood's "it" couple. And now, they've taken refuge in the Hollywood Hills.

Sadly, there will be no more subway sightings (They're Just Like Us!), or anti-Ratner rants. Remember when these two movie stars joined forces with other movies stars (and some literary types), in an effort to lobby on behalf of Brooklyn residents?

As the Daily News reported just two months ago:

"His vision will increase traffic, pollution and asthma," said Ledger's fiancee, actress Michelle Williams, another board member. The couple recently bought a Boerum Hill brownstone, where they live with their young daughter, Matilda.

"If Mr. Ratner lived here, he would understand what we love about it and why we want to preserve our open skies."

Hopefully, for the sake of our beleaguered West Coast transplants, Bruce Ratner won't now try to build an arena in the Hollywood Hills.

- Michael Calderone

UPDATE: NoLandGrab has scooped all the "professional snarks" out there, diving head first into what the they consider a "cauldron of celebrity gossip." (Cauldron, eh? Was that intentional)? Anyway, contrary to the reports in the July 21st Daily Telegraph that Mr. Ledger was abandoning Brooklyn--information seized upon by all those snarky blogs-- the couple might be staying in the borough after all, according to NoLandGrab. See, that Hollywood home might simply be a pied-a-terre. And Daniel Goldstein breathes a deep sigh of relief.  read more »

Petition  read more »

Sarah Barack and Christopher Berend   Met: Fall 1998 Engaged: August 2005  read more »

The chicest thing you can be right now in Manhattan is Australian!  read more »