Neighborhood HOLIDAY TREE RECYCLING

In Cooperation with Mulchfest 2012 by City of New York/ Parks and Recreation Department

Saturday, January 7 and Sunday, January 8, 2012

Drop off your Holiday trees at the location below.

Wreaths and garlands cannot be accepted. Please remove lights and decorations.  No artificial trees!

Location: Cobble Hill Park: Clinton and Verandah Place

9:30 am – 1:30 pm

MULCH BAGS WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR THOSE WISHING TO TAKE MULCH FOR THEIR GARDENS OR TREE PITS.

Trees will not be accepted after the scheduled times.

Sponsored by:

Cobble Hill Tree Fund ,  Cobble Hill Association,  Friends of Cobble Hill Park, and  Boy Scout Troops 213 & 815

NY Post: “Bored to Death” creator Jonathan Ames racked up a $1,600 bar tab by throwing a boozy wake for his canceled HBO show Wednesday. “Welcome to the premiere — I mean, the funeral,” Ames told one of many well-wishers who packed Boerum Hill’s Brooklyn Inn after he tweeted followers to come “at 10pm & i’ll buy you a drink!” The turnout surprised Ames. “I was not expecting this. I’m gonna lose a lot of money,” he joked, adding, “Everyone gets one drink. Don’t abuse the privilege.” The writer earlier treated the show’s crew to brews at nearby 61 Local. Borough President Marty Markowitz called during the Brooklyn Inn bash to say he wanted pictures for his newsletter. A flack said Markowitz and his wife were “huge fans” and “very disappointed and angry” the show was scrapped. Ames ambled out at 1:30 a.m. in search of an ATM: Like many Brooklyn hotspots, the Inn is cash-only. Stars John Hodgman and Heather Burns were on the scene. Ted Danson, Jason Schwartzman and Zach Galifianakis were in LA.

Pink dot is Sadies, area in green is Cobble Hill, red Carroll Gardens

The Brooklyn Paper writes about the newly opened Sadie’s Kitchen at 243 Degraw Street.  The paper does create some “confusion” in that it identifies the establishment as being in both Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens.

Using our nifty color coded Cobble Hill or not Cobble Hill map, we’ve determined that Sadies is, in fact, in Cobble Hill.  Thus making the Brooklyn Paper half right (insert snarky comment here).

Brooklyn Paper: Can Sadie’s Kitchen — a Southern prepared foods shop-slash-gourmet mac and cheese parlor with a 1930s diner-meets-country kitchen interior (oh, another one of those!) — beat the curse of 243 Degraw St.?

The diminutive Cobble Hill spot has proved a graveyard of failed restaurant attempts in recent years, counting Chicory, Ultimate Burgers and Dogs, and Cielo Café as casualties.

“We actually considered ourselves lucky to get this space,” laughed Sadie’s co-owner Damien Vizuete, who — along with partner Peter Sibilia — has been opening restaurants from Manhattan to Miami Beach for over 20 years. “We know very well why businesses fail, and its not always bad food or service,” he added. “For example, this space has a totally electric kitchen — you can’t cook with gas. Previous people had tried three-course meals here, steaks, burgers — too ambitious.”

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, or Kwanzaa, come join us as we celebrate the Holiday Season at the 5^th Annual Columbia Waterfront District Tree Lighting Event. The festivities start at 5:00 pm on Friday, December 9^th, 2011 at the Human Compass Garden, located at the corner of Sackett and Columbia Streets. This year’s event will feature live Holiday Jazz Music by the Less Magnetic Band and an assortment of free refreshments from local restaurants and businesses.  Santa Claus will also spread more cheer by handing out toys to children at the event.

Curbed: Jon Sherman, founder and head designer of the wallpaper firm Flavor Paper,packed up and moved himself and his business to the commercial hinterlands of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, he must have known the new place would have to make a splash. The new industrial-looking building, designed by Jeff Kovel of Skylab Architecture, is kitted out on the interior with some of Flavor Paper’s most striking designs. The roof garden is bordered by bright purple paneling, the master bedroom of Sherman’s personal penthouse is done up in faux fur, and the skylit living room features a deeply textured modern fireplace. Quite a showplace for Flavor Paper’s products, enough to keep clients like Lenny Kravitz and Frank Gehry coming across the river.

“We were told by the state that the BQE was in danger of collapsing in the 80s,” CHA President Roy Sloane tells 1010 WINS. “It’s also pathetic that they put all these years and effort in, spent money on all sorts of designs and are now dropping it.”

NYT/Schoolbook: Though a handful of Cobble Hill parents said they wanted the school to open to mitigate waiting lists at other nearby schools, a majority of the audience was composed of parents and teachers from the two secondary schools, who criticized the plans’ effects on their schools.

The Brooklyn School for Global Studies and the School for International Studies share most of the school building.

Under the new plan, which will be voted on at the Dec. 14 meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, each school would lose 10 to 12 regular-size classrooms over the next several years as the charter school expands.

Jeff Tripp, a teacher at the School for International Studies, criticized the city’s plan for giving more gym time to the charter school students than either of the secondary schools’ students. Mr. Tripp said the city’s space-sharing plan was like that of a “fire marshal giving a concert.”

Fruity. Nutty. Savory. Sweet.

From cobblers, crisps, buckles and pandowdies to whoopie pies, tarts, strudels, empanadas, borek, Chinese egg custard tarts, pasteles, crostatas – EVERYTHING pie-inspired will be on hand, as PS 29 in Cobble Hill embraces the hottest food trend of 2011 with EAT, PIE & SHOP.

This holiday festival, flea market and pie-tasting bonanza’s big draw is not only a gigantic TASTING opportunity (more than 300 pies expected) –but also a celebrity-judged PIE BAKING CONTEST (celebrity judges include Gail Simmons, Food & Wine and “Top Chef,” Danielle Kyrillos, “Top Chef: Just Desserts, Chef Marc Anthony Bynum of Food Network’s Chopped).

EAT, PIE & SHOP
Sunday, December 4th
11am till 4pm
PS 29 – 425 Henry Street, Brooklyn

Other draws include a flea market featuring dozens of local, artisan holiday gifts – and activities for the kids.

Event FEATURES:
Pie Social – Home Baked AND Professional Pies
Pie Contest – featuring TOP CHEF celebrity judge panel
Gift Fair – Artisan products with over 20 vendors
Kids Activities – workshops by Children’s Museum of the Arts

SPONSORS: Half Pint Citizen, Fork & Pencil, Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain, Shake Shack, Children’s Museum of the Arts and Mini Max Toys & Cuts!

PS 29 is hoping that by embracing the 2011 pie trend, they’ll increase the take from this annual event – as the school’s PTA must raise more than $600 per child to maintain it’s current programs.

For more event information: www.eatpieandshop.org

NY Post: They had been living in Cobble Hill and needed more space.

“We had looked at about five places, and then we went to get dinner [at a neighborhood Thai restaurant on Court Street owned by a friend]. And our friend’s like, ‘You guys look bushed,’” recalls De Marrais. “He told us, ‘I’m moving out of my apartment; you should go check it out. Here’s the keys. Go check it out now.’”

They did, and it was love at first sight. “We were walking around like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ This place is amazing, and we would dance around this place the first few years we lived here.”

Brooklyn Ink: Food for Occupiers in Zuccotti Park is being cooked in Boerum Hill and East New York, shipped to Lower Manhattan in donated vans and, occasionally, yellow taxi cabs.

The amount of food required to meet demand has reached a peak since the protests began in mid-September, Chef Eric Smith said. The voluntary kitchen staff, constantly shuttling food in from Brooklyn, is now preparing three meals a day for nearly 2,000 people.

Sean Dolan, chief cook at the protest, says one problem organizers face is an inability to “discriminate” between protestors and freeloaders.

“Rich people can come looking like homeless men, protestors can come in suits,” he explained. “We have to serve everyone.”

 

NY Daily News:  Success Charter Network CEO Eva Moskowitz‘s plan to bring a new charter school to Brownstone Brooklyn is getting mixed reviews.

In recent weeks, Moskowitz has been pitching Success Academy Cobble Hill to the booming population of young families in Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill and Carroll Gardens using a slew of community meetings and flyers.

Network officials last night handed out flyers at the annual Halloween parade in Cobble Hill Park.

But the former councilwoman isn’t always getting the warm reception she wants for what would be SCN’s second school in an upper-middle class neighborhood.

An initial meeting held last week at a house on Bergen Street was filled with 18 receptive parents who wanted to learn more about the proposed school.

“You’ve got a lot of schools here that aren’t working for a lot of families,” Moskowitz told the group last Wednesday night. “We see our schools as identifying talent and nurturing that talent.”

A Cobble Hill man was walking on Boerum Place towards Bergen Street  and a hoard of local teens.  One of the group accosted him, yelling “Boo”.  The amplitude of the youth’s taunt nearly knocked the victim over.  When he confronted the thug, he was met with a big fat knuckle sandwich:

Brooklyn Paper: The victim, who was wearing glasses, was hit in the left eye. His lens shattered, damaging his cornea.

“I fell backwards,” he said. “I couldn’t see anything. I was so dazed and confused that I fell against the wall. But the kids just laughed and hurried off.”

Cops are investigating, but assaults like this are not uncommon in Boerum Hill, where historic multi-million dollar brownstones are cushioned between the Wyckoff and Gowanus housing projects and there are cavernous gaps in the neighborhood’s median income level — from $23,900 to more than $108,000, according to the 2010 census.

The paper lists at least 5 additional attacks by youths in the area this year.

And how does that saying go?  ”Out of the mouths of babes…”:

“My friends like to f–k with people. They find it funny,” said Tatiana Chambers, a ninth grader at the School of International Studies on Baltic Street between Court and Smith streets. “Some kids are really high-strung, and if they feel disrespected they’ll hit somebody.”

This week’s episode of Bored to Death has many twists and turns but it will probably go down in history as coining the phrase “baby cocaine”.

One of the episode’s main plotlines begins when Ray (Zach Galifianakis) visits Cobble Hill Park with his son Spencer.

Watch the episode? Comment below!

NY Times: Warren Street between Bond and Nevins offers many of the things well-off buyers seek in brownstone Brooklyn: a pastoral, leafy feel; long rows of 19th-century town houses; proximity to transportation and charming little restaurants; young families on the block.

But the block also has something that those buyers have traditionally seemed to avoid: two large public housing projects that stand tall at either end, to many New Yorkers enduring symbols of danger, social dysfunction and blight. The map showing the neighborhood on the Web site of the Boerum Hill Association — a group dedicated to preserving and enhancing “the unique qualities of our neighborhood” — includes Warren Street but runs up and around to Wyckoff at points to cut the projects out.

Our prodigal daughter Ryoko is coming back to NY from her travels in Europe. She is only here from the middle of Dec to the beginning of Jan, so if you are looking to finish something, add, or get something new,check with us quick, she is sure to book up quickly.

Record Collecting for Girls: Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time

Smith’s book gives some solid advice to young female music fans just discovering music beyond Miley Cyrus.  Ironically, Smith warns her audience to steer clear of dating fans of… The Smiths saying, “Seriously. Think about your mindset when you listen to The Smiths. Do you not put them on when you’re depressed and self-indulgent? When you feel the world has done you wrong? When you feel unloved and sulky? I absolutely indulge in The Smiths now and then, when circumstances demand it. However, a totally-in-love superfan? No, I don’t want to date that. It’s just not my cup of tea. We can still be friends though. Possibly.”

Cobble Hill Association: In our continuing efforts to green the neighborhood, the Cobble Hill Association and amazing folks at PS29 are yet again holding an electronics recycling event with the Lower East Side Ecology Center. What’s more, it’ll include plenty of other recycling opportunities too throughout the day!
• 10a.. to 4pm…Old computers and electronics will be collected by Lower East Side Ecology Center, in conjunction with Cobble Hill Association. See www.lesecologycenter.org to review the list of accepted items at bottom.
• Composting Workshop led by The NYC Compost Project in Brooklyn. Backyard composters will also be for sale.
• Computer hard drive shredding provided by eRecycleNY, PS 29 parent owned EPA compliant electronics recycling company serving the NYC area.
• Clothing rummage sale, proceeds go to PS 29 PTA. Wearable Collections will be picking up remaining clothes, as well as stained & ripped clothing, textiles & stuffed animals.
• Confidential Documents shredded on-site (& then recycled) for a small fee. by Time Shred Services

Residents were also urged to begin contributing to the Cobble Hill wiki site to add their own facts about the area.

Brooklyn Eagle: Morrone spoke Monday night at the annual meeting of the Cobble Hill Association at Long Island College Hospital. He is a teacher at New York University and the author of five books, including An Architectural Guide to Brooklyn.

One of the best physical (as opposed to online) resources, he says, is the library of the Brooklyn Historical Society in Brooklyn Heights. Among other things, it contains several Brooklyn atlases, dating from about 1855 through 1930. These were published by private companies, mainly for fire insurance purposes, and show detailed maps of each street — block by block, lot by lot.

The library also contains “land conveyance [or property] records” from the 19th century. Particularly for older neighborhoods such as Cobble Hill, said Morrone, these are important because the former City of Brooklyn’s Department of Buildings only began keeping records in the 1870s or afterwards.

Walls and Bridges, the Franco/American arts and ideas festival, is returning to New York Oct 19 – 28 for its third season.  The festival brings together French and American performers, artists, philosophers, and writers who otherwise only encounter each other remotely.  There are 14 events over 10 days, bringing the total of Walls & Bridges events in NYC over 2011 to nearly 50.

Over the course of next weekend, Walls and Bridges will present five events at The Invisible Dog in Cobble Hill and all but one are free.

On Saturday we have:

A Tale of Two Chefs: a pop-up restaurant featuring Mathieu Rostaing Tayard (“one of Europe’s most exciting young chefs”-WSJ) paired with Brian Leth of Vinegar Hill House. The two will mix styles and prepare a $20 haute-cuisine lunch box that’ll be served up with discussion of who and what influenced their cooking in surprising ways. $20

• Screening Identities with Danny Glover and Malian filmmaker Mathia Diawara in discussion about African and African-American filmmaking  FREE
• Playing with Cinema: an exploration of French cinema through live representationin a set of performances pairing American choreographers and theater companies with famous scenes from French films by Godard, Tati, Melville and Demy. Performances by Migues Gutierrez, The National Theater of the United States of America, Annie-B Parson, & Dan SaferFREE
• Stranger Strangers: 4 French performance acts premiere in NYC, including digital juggling, a group that wears realistic pig costumes to explore our fascination/abhorrence with pigs,a performance of Professor Bad Trip, and a performer with an unhealthy obsession with Derek JarmanFREE (my pick of the weekend)

On Sunday we have just one show:

• Please Kill Me, the rock musical based on the lauded book of the same title by Legs McNeil, which used hundreds of hours of interviews to present the punk days of NYC, featuring the Velvet Underground, the Ramones, The New York Dolls and more. The show received raves in France, including from La Monde, and will be performed here for one night only.  In English.  FREE

Full event calendar here.

Last week’s episode of Bored to Death featured “faux” Jonathan, played by Jason Schwartzman, spinning on a wheel while having knives thrown at him during a book signing at (where else?) Book Court.  Here’s a video of the REAL Ames doing a similar stunt last year.

So, how you likin’ this season so far?

Bococaland: I admit, when I first saw the signage for the now open Mooburger (240 Court St.) back in January, I was skeptical. Organic burgers, snacks, drinks and more is what it was touting. I figured we’d get a small space with plastic tables selling outrageously over-priced burgers to families and the after-school crowd. But when I stopped in Friday night, I was fairly overwhelmed. The restaurant was packed, and the draw of seasonal wine and beers made clear it was open to everyone. The decor was wood and steel, the lighting low and the menu impressive for a burger joint.

Have you checked it out yet?

The Kin

The Brooklyn Bugle rounds up bands featured in its performance series who are playing shows this week at the annual CMJ Music Marathon.

Check out performances by The Kin, MyNameisJohnMichael and more here.

Also playing CMJ is We Are Augustines.  See their Brooklyn Bugle Sessions performance after the jump.

NY Times: Amy Finkel lives in an apartment in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, that does not allow pets. But she does have a groundhog (Chompers), an armadillo (Fleischesser) and a boar (Angel). They are all, however, dead and stuffed — and in the case of the boar, it is just the head.

“I do think I have a tendency to anthropomorphize,” Ms. Finkel said. “But I’m not sure they’re really pets.”

For the last four years, Ms. Finkel, who is 35 and teaches documentary video at Parsons The New School for Design, has been studying what animal lovers do with the bodies of their deceased dependents. She has a passing interest in burial and cremation. But her passion runs to the more unusual extremes of pet remembrance, things like mummification and cloning. Ms. Finkel is currently working on a documentary on the subject, called “Furever,” that is sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts.

 

Join us for a discussion with Francis Morrone about how to research the history of a house or other building in Brooklyn. Morrone will discuss some of the nuts and bolts of basic building research, as well as the myriad avenues opened up in recent years by the internet. The web has changed the whole game. For the serious researcher it has not replaced the necessity of consulting physical archives, but it has made stay-at-home research rewarding as never before.

Learn the secrets of the trade from a professional historian.

Time: 7:30 P.M.
Date: Monday, October 17, 2011
Place: Long Island College Hospital, Conference Room A
Enter at main entrance 339 Hicks (at Atlantic)

All members of the public are invited. No admission charge.

Brooklyn Bugle: Visitors packed into the Urban Folk Art Gallery on Friday night to feast their eyes on a visual banquet served up by creative talents from the eateries and bars along Brooklyn’s Restaurant Row (aka Smith Street) at the opening party for the “Guest Check” collective exhibition.

“I think it’s great that businesses on this street came together to support the people who serve the community,” said attendee Betsy Wise. A sales associate at the nearby Soula shoe store, Wise stopped by to congratulate her friend Danielle Onesto, one of the 11 artists featured in the show.

 

Watching? At Book Court? Comment away!

Today, respected techblog Gigaom asks – How long can AOL stay committed to Patch?

Gigaom: But are there enough bloggers who can fill that gap? And will AOL be sharing any of the advertising revenue it hopes to generate with them?

Huffington Post has also been rolling out more locally-themed topic pages, including several recent ones aimed at readers in Detroit and Miami — and these efforts have also caused speculation about whether the company is more interested in an aggregation approach rather than unique content, since the former is substantially less expensive. The problem for Patch is that the more its sites become lookalike aggregators rather than having a unique voice, the less likely they are to appeal to the market they are aimed at, and the less desirable they will be as an advertising vehicle.

AOL’s management may be committed to Patch for now, but the company can’t continue pouring money into an unprofitable entity forever, no matter how much Webster talks about a “long-term” investment. AOL doesn’t really have the luxury of thinking long term at the moment — Armstrong has to show some positive movement to investors or his job is likely in jeopardy, and without him Patch loses its biggest champion.

Everything seemed just dandy for the eatery at 11:45am yesterday according to their Facebook page where this was posted:

Come join us for a bite this evening and watch them film a scene for the new PanAm show on Smith Street. The streets are pretty clear — they didn’t block off all the side streets like they usually do when they film.
Hope to see you later–Jonathan/Sarah