Brooklyn The Borough

On Monday, the door to the new and expanded Beacon's Closet, a consignment shop now on the corner of Warren Street and Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, opened. Along with a burst of cold air came not a customer but a stink bomb.

"All I heard was a bang and then ahhhh," said Tiffany, a blonde, tweed-laden shopgirl, as she mimicked the reaction by covering her face with both hands. Though, she added, customers continued shopping despite the stinky interruption.

Retailers across Brooklyn hope that will prove true for consumers this holiday season, despite the foul retail forecast.

"I think there's a certain amount of fear in everybody that people will not come out and spend," said Peter Meyer, chair of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and a president at TD North Bank.  read more »

"It's not like libraries are over-funded!" said Soledad O'Brien, master of ceremonies for the 12th annual fundraising gala for the Brooklyn Public Library on Thursday. "It's not like, ‘Trim the fat off those libraries!' Those are cuts that are going to be very much felt."

Ms. O'Brien was drinking a glass of water in the children's section of the central branch in Grand Army Plaza in advance of her hosting duties. We were discussing Governor David Paterson's proposed $20 million cut -- 20 percent of the overall budget -- to state library funding as reported by the Library Journal earlier in the day.  read more »

Over the last weekend of the presidential election, the now ubiquitous Shepard Fairey-designed poster of a sacrosanct Barack Obama dotted the windows of shops and homes throughout Brooklyn. At the Gate, in Park Slope, the word "hope" below the senator's smiling countenance had been amended to Slope.

Brooklyn, like the rest of New York State, is bound to vote overwhelmingly for Senator Obama, but with the race tightening in its last days – and even with polls heavily in his favor – the residents of Kings County are at once excited and apprehensive about what tomorrow will bring.

Mauri Weakley, 25, a fashion merchandiser who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant was shopping in a local Brooklyn boutique recently when conversation turned to the election.  read more »

Last Wednesday, on the evening of the final presidential debate of this cycle, held at Hofstra University, Senator John McCain alleged in the most cautious terms he could muster, that ACORN "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." 

Nearby, in the Uniondale section of Hempstead Iona Emsley cringed.  For the last 19 years, Ms. Emsley has worked with various chapters of ACORN--in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island--to fight for social, housing and immigrant rights.   read more »

Danny Hoch knows where the money is.

"It's funny," Mr. Hoch said via phone from his home in Williamsburg. "There's a guy about a block away from me – an old school Puerto Rican cat – and there's a new ATM machine on Grand Street, so he's like, 'Yo man, I be seeing these kids, man, they go to the ATM machine and they forget and they just leave their receipts in there, and I go and I get them because I want to see how much money they got in their bank account.'

"He's like, 'Yo, these kids be lookin' bummy, I mean the bummiest, motherfucking, cheap looking kids and they got like $150,000 in their savings account, $280,000 in their savings account.  read more »

"Do you hear the crickets?," asked Ali Jafri, a broker for Prudential Douglas Elliman. We were standing on the ninth-floor balcony of a brand-new three-bedroom condominium for sale at 20 Bayard Street in Williamsburg. "That's something you won't get in Manhattan."

These days, Mr. Jafri might hear crickets more often than he'd like. It was the Sunday before the European markets began to tumble, during peak open house hours, and the buyer traffic through Brooklyn's newer towers was slow. Just a few days earlier, The New York Times had declared that "the credit crisis and the turmoil on Wall Street are bringing New York's real estate boom to an end.  read more »

When the Dow plummeted on Monday after Congress failed to pass a bailout for Wall Street's many woes, Brooklyn's creative class was already bracing itself. A downturn at the top of the food chain can't bode well for those closer to the bottom, like the plethora of visual and performing artists that reside here.

"It's just a drag," said Karen Brooks Hopkins, the president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, whose fall season opens this week. "What I feel bad about is that the arts organizations, the cultural organizations, have finally recovered from 9/11, and now this.

"So it's hard, you know, but I also feel that New York City has got an edge because of its cultural life," she continued with a bit more cheer, "and the cultural institutions provide a tremendous return for a very small investment.  read more »

"If anything the media has downplayed the effect this crash will have on RE, in other words TS, methinks you're a broker. God, RE people are the biggest, most vile liars in NYC, do you really think anyone believes the pro RE quotes that we read in the Times or the Observer and especially NY Rag? When I have to interview a broker I just assume 90% of what he/she is telling me is untrue. Eventually the brokers--when vacancy rates for new "luxury" condos in some overly hyped hood are at 80%--will get a well-deserved comeuppance." ["Brooklyn, The Borough: Wall Street Views From Another Bank"]

"Why do people think all this financial sector woe is going to have that big an impact? Other people have money, not just people on Wall Street. Prices in Manhattan probably won't come down, that will send buyers to Brooklyn. The financial sector only accounts for about fifteen to twenty percent of the real estate market in Manhattan, and thats including the bonuses. Brooklyn will probably have declines and that will make it more attractive. It was after the savings and loan crisis that Brooklyn emerged. Why wouldn't it prosper under the same exact circumstance? People need to suck it up, take a stiff drink or a Zoloft and move the hell on. Stop being so pessimistic already." ["Brooklyn, The Borough: Wall Street Views From Another Bank"]

As a chillier wind sliced through Brooklyn's popular corridors last Saturday night, it was hard to imagine by the looks of things that anything was wrong with the economy. On North Sixth Street in Williamsburg, young women with Louis Vuitton bags teetered in Manolo Blahniks on the arms of their white-collared dates. Booze coursed through veins as the music at Sea shook passersby with stentorian beats.

But the next day at the sleepy Brooklyn Inn, the 138-year-old Boerum Hill bar frequented by local financial types, The Times' Sunday business section sat menacingly on the oak bar as Leonard Cohen's "So Long Marianne" wafted through the air.  read more »

"First off, there's no question--in my humble opinion--that the literary center of New York has moved to Brooklyn," said our oh-so-humble Borough President Marty Markowitz celebrating the Brooklyn Book Festival in the ornate lobby of Borough Hall this past Sunday. "The authors live here, the illustrators live here, and the energy--there's that energy!--among residents of Brooklyn.

"There's no question that those in their twenties and early thirties--I think, just from a quick look--seem to be a significant part of the turnout today, and last year too. So it shows that obviously something is happening."

I strolled around Borough Hall Park, pausing at vendors who had set up shop for the annual festival, which is in it's third year.  read more »

I love the Q train. O.K., I love the B, too, but it's the Q that's stolen my heart.

When I moved back to Brooklyn in January, the biggest factor in finding an apartment was its proximity to this train line, and especially to the 7th Avenue station (a nice change of pace after riding the G train for three years). It's just far enough into Brooklyn that I am in a quiet, residential neighborhood, but also only the third stop into the borough, easily depositing me anywhere I need to go in Manhattan.

Like the L train of the early ‘00s, the neighborhoods along the Q/B line have seen new crops of people popping out of its stations along a path rumbling through central and southern Brooklyn, from Downtown, Park Slope, Midwood and Ditmas Park, through Sheepshead Bay and, via an expert right turn, Brighton Beach and Coney Island.  read more »

"A great follow-up to this would be about how the luxury rental buildings in the city are becoming very close to gated communities, they just happen to go up instead of out (like they do in the 'burbs)." ["Brooklyn, The Borough: Brooklyn's Cul-de-Sac"]

One of my favorite things about the suburbs are the supermarkets. I love the sprawling aisles, the enormous selection, the friendly cashier and, of course, the car that brings all those heavy, super-sized containers home.

Though the suburban life is plentiful in many ways, space is a major one, it is urban dwelling that I and many others have chosen. Notably, in Park Slope. Last week, I was invited for beers in the comfy backyard of a gorgeous brownstone in the Slope and we got to talking about what life is like in Brooklyn's utopian paradise.

My date and I sat drinking Stella Artois with a couple of local husbands on a balcony overlooking a lovely garden.  read more »

"That's Brooklyn Heights over there," said the 47-year-old driver of a Brooklyn-bound double-decker Gray Line tour bus, pointing across the East River. "Wherever there's water, there's money, and I don't mean a puddle on the street."

I had just boarded the at the South Street Seaport, paid my $41 fare, and taken my seat at the front of the top level, prepared to spend two hours Monday viewing my borough through the eyes of a stranger. The driver was warming up the crowd with a rendition of the Drifters' "Under the Boardwalk" while we waited for our actual guide, an older Southern man named Robert, who has lived in New York since 1971.  read more »

"What is so special about Brooklyn?? That's all we ever read about in this rag. Are you telling me the snotty (white) infants in Park Slope will be getting a better slice of life than the (brown/white/asian) kids in Astoria and Jackson Heights??" ["Brooklyn, The Borough: Growing Up New York"]

"I just thought the whole thing was fabulous – what a great childhood you had!," responded my mom when I asked her why in the world she ever decided to raise her children in Manhattan. In the 1980s. On Eighth Avenue and 53rd Street. "You got to see a side of the world other kids don't."

I can't argue with that, nor am I disappointed with my parents' decision.

They moved to the West Side from the East 50s in 1974, a decision my mom remembers as inconceivable for most people in her middle-class demographic at the time. My parents were given financial incentives to move west, and took them, settling in a cramped, but new three-bedroom apartment where they remained until financial incentives were offered to get them out of their rent-stabilized apartment just a few years ago.  read more »

"Atlantic City is the new Williamsburg," former Siberia bar owner and sometimes Fox contributor Tracy Westmoreland told me as the wind whipped through his long goatee at a rest stop somewhere in New Jersey.

He might not be wrong.

While Williamsburg has spent the last decade getting a face lift, Atlantic City did the same, with developers putting up towers on the waterfront. While Brooklyn got luxurious condos, Atlantic City got luxurious hotels: the Chelsea, the Borgata, the Water Club and, tallest of them all, Harrah's. Crime and drugs are still busy in both, but hidden a few blocks in from the unsuspecting eye, and developers are falling over themselves to draw the young and the hip to the waterfront in both locations.  read more »

"The lifestyle is so different in Texas," my friend Rhett said to me recently, citing cart space concerns at his local supermarket in South Slope. "Here it's like you bump into each other and nobody acknowledges it."

It got me thinking about what a different, more spacious lifestyle would be like. Do we really need more space?

Last weekend, I visited my friend Dave's childhood home in New Jersey for a pool party, because - yay! - they have those in the suburbs. (Though they're increasingly common in the city, I suppose, as my friend Jenna moved into a building with a pool recently.  read more »

On a recent warm summer evening, two young professional couples sat idly chatting before a performance of Hamlet at Central Park's Delacorte Theater.

"Have you been to the new Ikea in Red Hook?" one of the young men asked his companions, receiving a chorus of "no, not yet!" in response.

On came a list of household items wanted, but not necessarily needed. "I was a bit worried about getting everything home on the ferry," one young lady said.

"I can help you," said her male companion.

With the opening of Ikea Brooklyn on June 18, no longer is a trip to Elizabeth, N.  read more »

There he was standing in front of me giggling, arms outstretched, and totally naked. He was bald and wrinkled, like the dancing old man from those Six Flags commercials, but he was just over a foot tall and, from his mostly toothless smile, drooled a bit. His mom scooped him up and got him dressed.

I recently joined a south Brooklyn YMCA and this locker room scene isn't so unusual.

Brooklyn moms and their offspring have been enjoying the Y for a century and a half, but never has parenthood taken so many blows to its reputation.  read more »

"Have you been to Dumbo yet?" my mother asked me over the phone last week.

I certainly had, and was eager to show her around, so we made plans to spend Sunday afternoon perusing the sights down underneath the Manhattan Bridge overpass and in nearby Fort Greene. "I guess I have to get to know Brooklyn," she sighed, her surrender flag finally raised.

Mom is new to Brooklyn. She has been a Manhattanite for close to four decades, and while both of her kids have lived in Brooklyn for the past four years, she rarely comes out to experience the borough. Lately though, she's shown far more interest.

She picked me up early Sunday afternoon and we drove over to Dumbo.  read more »

Regarding this morning's Brooklyn, The Borough: A Tree Salad Grows in Brooklyn: "Uh, I've lived in Crown Heights for six years, and this ain't a restaurant row: It's base-level sustenance. No one in their right mind would travel to Washington Avenue to go to that Thai place."

"I'm in this business for 40 years," said Joe Chirico, standing in front of Marco Polo Ristorante, the restaurant he owns on Court Street in Carroll Gardens. "I started with Joe's Luncheonette two doors away--after so many years of being in fast food, I decided I needed to open a good restaurant."

Last week, Mr. Chirico was celebrating the 25th anniversary of his Italian restaurant with family and longtime friends and customers, including Borough President Marty Markowitz. When the restaurant opened, Mr. Chirico said of the neighborhood, "It was mostly Italian, but now it's changed for the better. We're getting more young people coming from everywhere, especially from Manhattan. This neighborhood is special, it became a very, very happening neighborhood for professional people; everybody likes to live in Carroll Gardens."

And now a new generation of entrepreneurs are following in Mr. Chirico's footsteps all over the borough, and that is especially true in Prospect Heights.  read more »

I finally got a bike. It's a vintage Fuji, and it belonged to my dad. I took it out for a spin through Prospect Park over Memorial Day weekend. I zoomed around the park, stopping to enjoy the lake for a bit, and again to listen to a drum circle where a large group of people were dancing. I sat on my bike, one foot on the curb, and took in the scene.

A baby-faced police officer around my age approached me and tapped me on the shoulder. I was in the road, and though there were no cars or any threat of danger, he told me to move. I ignored him for a minute before using the Lord's name in vain and peddling off.

Don't get me wrong – I'm well aware that we need police officers. They risk their lives to respond to the ills of society; and they do it for not very much money. That officer was probably still making the NYPD's starting salary, a meager $25,000 per year.

The whole experience happened in just a few minutes, but it got me thinking about my time as a community liaison for a state senator in Brooklyn.  read more »

“I was born in the South Slope on 11th Street off Sixth Avenue,” said Matthew Roff, 33, owner of the new Crown Heights beer garden Franklin Park. “Bar Toto was my bodega.”

Someday someone might say the same about the renovated garage that is now Franklin Park. The hip bar – which opened a few weeks ago at the end of the partially unsavory block on St. John's Place between Classon and Franklin – is simple and inviting. Closer to Franklin Avenue, the area probably looks and feels a lot like Park Slope must have when Mr. Roff was growing up.

The first time friends and I went to the beer garden it was Saturday afternoon. We walked down St. John's Place to Franklin. The four of us looked around — there was no bar in sight. We back tracked up the rowhouse-lined block to find a driveway peppered with outdoor seating. Beyond that, a garage door was raised to reveal a wood-and-tile bar. The indoor seating was full of young professional types. Outside, clouds hovered menacingly.  read more »

On a recent Saturday night, I did a little experiment: I broke the rules of youthful social engagement and went to a bar by myself. I sat in the dimly lit courtyard behind Union Pool in Williamsburg. I made myself available, quietly sipping a pint of Blue Moon.

By 11, small groups had perched themselves all around me on wooden benches chatting about their lives, jobs and families. A group of three pretty ladies gossiped vehemently about their film industry jobs. I sat nearby in my frilly dress eavesdropping. After an hour of enjoying the warm weather, and having not made any new acquaintances, I made my way to sit at the bar. Again, no luck. Rarely are Brooklyn's local watering holes a place to meet new people these days. The age-old complaint of post-college social isolation was now fresh in my mind.

While advising me about my love life, my mother always likes to tell stories about her youthful evenings spent at her local singles bar. The rules of engagement are much different now. It's been a long time since there were social mores about which gender approaches the other, pays for dates or makes the first move on a first date. A cursory glance at Craigslist's missed connections section proves that many 25- to 35-year-olds, especially recent transplants, don't necessarily have the stones to introduce themselves in person.  read more »

What do Jasper Johns, Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz and Keith Haring all have in common? Each artist has work up for sale at the 4th Annual Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM to us locals) Silent Auction.

BAM certainly plays an integral part in the Brooklyn art scene, and the auction, which raises money for BAM's various programs, raked in $237,500 last year. Artists from all over the borough have work for sale—which you can bid on on BAM's Web site—many from Williamsburg, Fort Greene and Prospect Heights. Bidding is open until April 13, when the closing reception will bring in the final bids.

Brooklyn has certainly always nurtured creative talent—nothing new there. The borough has increasingly become home to prominent names in the fine-arts community. While an afternoon spent in Manhattan's great museums or in Chelsea's galleries is certainly invigorating, poking around unconventional spaces that have sprung up all over Brooklyn can turn into quite the adventure. Brooklyn is an urban jungle peppered with art, inside and outside of the spaces that facilitate creativity.  read more »

It seems like every time you turn the corner these days you run into yet another new bar. This is especially true in the gentrified neighborhoods of Brooklyn and very much so in Prospect Heights. Time Out New York recently ran a page-long charticle on the heavy bar presence on Vanderbilt Avenue, the go-to strip for ProHo nightlife.

The eight-block avenue boasts restaurants, cafes and boutiques for moms and dads puttering around with their stroller-strapped kids during the day and by night there are no less than four drinking establishments and one on the verge of receiving its liquor license. Recently, my friends Adam and Dave joined me in hitting a few of my local spots, including the brand-new Weather Up and the six-year-old Soda.  read more »

It isn't often that New Yorkers get an intimate peek behind their neighbors' closed doors. Even more unusual is a peek inside the intimate life of our state's chief executive. But I digress.

As a child growing up in a 25-story filing cabinet for families and young professionals on West 53rd Street, I lived in apartment 10E. When trick-or-treating or selling my annual Christmas raffle tickets for school, I would get an intimate window into how my neighbors lived. We all have our domains, and regardless of how small they might be, they are ours. But what are we all doing behind those doors?

On March 5, the Center for an Urban Future and the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation hosted a forum on the population boom within Brooklyn’s "creative crescent." The number of creative freelancers--artists, writers, designers, architects, performance artists, musicians, graphic designers and others--increased 33.2 percent from 2002 through 2005; now, roughly 28 percent of the city's creative freelancers live and work in the borough. The Brooklyn home is often more than just a place to lay our heads – it can often act as the genesis for our creative and professional lives.  read more »

If you live in Brooklyn, or any outer-borough really, I'm sure you've seen it before: the requisite post-work grocery bag getting lugged home on the train. Often it's the ubiquitous Whole Foods and Trader Joe bags bouncing along the platform awaiting voyages across the East River.

Recently, the City Council passed a bill – despite intense lobbying against it by food retailers – to issue street vending permits for vegetable stands in the city's poorer neighborhoods. It's clear to anyone living in the areas included in the measure – like my neighbors in Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant – that fresh, decent produce is not as readily available as it is in much of Manhattan. Cue that long trip home from Whole Foods.  read more »

As a teenager I spent a fair amount of time traversing New York City's urban terrain in search of live music. I was partial to punk. I spent a lot of time at Saturday punk matinees at ABC No Rio and the Dumbo art collective DUMBA. At 16, I marched down to the DMV to get a resident ID to prove to CBGB's Hilly Kristal that I was old enough to shove people to an orchestra of power chords.

I remember the devastation of Giuliani's ruling against dancing in bars and the death knell of advancing gentrification, the demise of the places I used to frequent (except for ABC No Rio, which managed to buy its squatted building from the city in the late 90's and is now planning a serious renovation). In a recent article for The Observer, Chris Shott described the debilitating regulatory environment that many music venues contend with now.  read more »

Though I spent three years living in Greenpoint, I often found myself shunning the local nightlife—aside from a few restaurants and my local watering hole the Pencil Factory—for cozy nights in on my quiet residential street. Especially during this time of year. But despite no longer residing there, I've recently found myself traveling north to Williamsburg and Greenpoint for a night out more often and apparently, I'm not alone!

On a recent Thursday, I headed to the Music Hall of Williamsburg to catch a few bands play. On my walk toward the venue, which stands just short of the East River, I bypassed the Thai restaurant Sea, now North 6th Street's bridge-and-tunnel capital. Patrons were falling out of the doors, the line for a table immense, while a DJ boomed hip hop to a crowd donning their Sunday (or Thursday) best. Similarly, up the street, Planet Thai was packed to the brim with people seeking a lounge, restaurant and bar feel all in one.  read more »

One of the major differences, generally speaking, between Manhattan and Brooklyn is the proximity you have to your neighbor. In Manhattan, residents may feel piled on top of each other in shoeboxes or filing cabinets, depending on your metaphor preference, but rarely will they ever get to know one another. In Brooklyn, residents tend to have more space and fewer neighbors, yet the proximity seems closer.

Brooklynites exist closer to the urban frontier.  read more »

Apparently it's quite controversial to discuss the experience of living in Brooklyn when it comes to the topic of race. A few weeks back, I dared to talk about it and received a lot of flack. But in my hood, Prospect Heights, and anywhere really, race, class and gentrification are heavy topics, and I'm not going to shy away from them.

After graduating college, I spent close to two years working in central Brooklyn politics, commuting south every morning from my apartment in Greenpoint to a state senator's office on Flatbush Avenue near Lincoln Place. I worked with families whose homes were in disrepair, mediating fights with landlords over HPD cases; and with community groups, landlords and community affairs police officers over drug-related crime. All the work merely put band-aids on a broken system. I often returned home in utter shock. Perhaps you've seen The Wire.  read more »

It's easy to feel helpless and vulnerable during your apartment search, tired of hoofing it from place to place, and being let down almost every time. On top of that, I was skeptical of my realtor, Angel, a 50-ish Asian woman who drives a Jaguar, when she first showed me the apartment I inevitably took.

Not unlike a character out of a real estate cartoon, Angel met me in front of a building she owns just down the street from the apartment she was renting me. She made it immediately clear how much of an over-sharer she is. “I rent my two-bedroom apartments for $2,000! You will get a good deal here!,” she squealed, before double-speaking. “I represent YOU! This is not my building, I work for the landlord!”

It was hard to know what was true and what was her poor attempt at salesmanship, or, even worse, if she was being dishonest. But, after seeing a few other places, I went ahead with it anyway. I needed a place, and my roommate, Will, had a strict deadline to get out of his place that was approaching in a matter of days. Angel was the only realtor showing us a decent amount of space at a reasonable price.  read more »

On a recent chilly night, I was bundled up and on my way to Boerum Hill to have dinner at a friend's apartment. As I walked down Washington Avenue the B45 bus pulled up next to me, and I hesitated. “Which would be faster, the train or the bus?” I thought. Before I could make a decision, the bus doors had shuttered. Luckily, the light at Atlantic and Washington was still red and I approached the bus and knocked on the door. The driver, a middle-aged African-American man, refused to open the door, gesturing to the next stop, three street crossings away, even though his bus was still idling perfectly in front of a designated stop. It was 15 degrees outside and I'll admit it, I felt like the driver was sticking it to me for being white.  read more »

As I briefly mentioned last week, amenities and good location are hard to come by, especially at the same time and at a decent price. While looking at an apartment three (very long) blocks off the Dekalb L stop, I noticed little signs of revival in the outstretches of Bushwick—the facade of a tenement building repaired, construction workers milling about in paint-splattered overalls with ladders. A sign that the tidal wave of Williamsburgian revival will soon fall upon it. However, thus far, it hasn't.

The apartment cost $1,600 a month, though the realtor—a kind Hasidic man who immediately explained his inability to shake my hand before offering his to my boyfriend—offered it for $1,550 when I winced at the price. Workers were coming and going over paper that had been set down on the floor to protect newly stained wood floors. Though it was on the first floor, everything was brand-new: kitchen cabinets, walls, moldings, doors, bathroom fixtures. It was clear that the landlord had put money into the place, but I could not justify spending even the discounted $750 per month on a (beautiful) room in Bushwick that I did not feel safe in.  read more »

Editor's Note: The Real Estate presents Brooklyn, The Borough, a weekly column by Observer staffer and native Manhattanite Nicole Brydson about her return to Brooklyn after nearly a year in Hell's Kitchen.

For three years I lived in Greenpoint, the northern Polish colony of Brooklyn. Though I wasn't part of the first wave of gentrification, the wheels of which were long turning--fast--my indigenous neighbors didn't necessarily seem thrilled with the influx of youthful college graduates. But, over the time I spent living there, the process completed itself. Greenpoint, close to Williamsburg and now home to hip bars, natural markets, galleries, brunch spots, fashion-forward boutiques and even a book store, became the convenient and affordable choix de la jeunesse.  read more »