If you have some free time Tuesday evening and a spare $5, consider a trip to Union Hall in Park Slope to see Adult Education Presents: Brooklyn. There will be presentations on Coney Island; corrupt Brooklyn politicians of yore; and Brooklyn’s annexation by New York. And I will be presenting on the Brooklyn accent. Questions I’ll be answering include: Does dese dem and dose qualify as a Brooklyn accent? Where does youse come from? And how do I curse in Brooklynese?

Well, you should be so lucky to find out. Hope to see you there, I could use some friendly faces!

More information on rabies and how to avoid it can be found on the Dept. of Health & Mental Hygiene’s web site.

Hanco’s Park Slope location was featured this week on hipster haven This American Life, which tells the story of the identical menus at Hanco’s and Henry’s, a banh mi shop just blocks away. The Brooklyn Paper reported last year on the similarities between the two sandwich shops, calling it a “war” in which “the collateral damage is delicious.”

This American Life’s newest episode is available for streaming here.

Flickr Photo by consumedithis

Brooklyn Paper: Neighbors have been complaining about the unoccupied three-story house — and its owner, Saltina — for years, and city inspectors have written up the building for dozens of violations.

But Saltina, who lives in upstate Westchester, doesn’t care.

“Let them complain,” he told us. “I’ve been a big contribution to the quality of life on that block and all I get from the neighbors is grief. Whatever liens and citations I have at this point, I will work them out when I [sell it]. I’ve been here since 1969 and dealing with these people has made my skin thick.”

He even threatened his neighbors, saying he would “sue all their asses” if they continue to fight his stewardship of the property.

A resident of Bergen Street between 5th and 6th Avenue gives producers of the HBO smash Bored to Death an eyeful with this sign (above) posted below their “No Parking” sign:

People who park here don’t necessarily live on this block & won’t see these signs. They will believe they are legally parked until 7:30am on Tues. If you care as you say you do about inconveniencing the neighborhood you wouldn’t wait until 3 days prior to put up signs. A minimum of one week so people would see it when they parked would be considerate.

The show will shoot there Tuesday (4/20).

[via 6h057.net]

Flickr photo by threecee

Barflies, freaks, misfits and malcontents rejoice! The evil forces of “Eminent Domain” will not kill the legendary Freddy’s Bar & Backroom which sits in the footprint of the Atlantic Yards development project. The bar announced today that they’ll moving to a new location at Fourth Avenue and Union Street in Park Slope.

Manager Donald O’Finn released this statement today:

Freddy’s Bar is not closing, it’s moving.
We are presently in negotiations with a landlord who is not a billionaire at 4th Ave and Union Street.

We will be having a Victory party on April 30th to celebrate what the little guy has been able to do in fighting a billionaire and the corrupt government agency that he controls. We feel we have dealt fatal blows to Ratner’s organization. The nets will not be sold to an international criminal, because the NBA can’t afford to be associated with organized crime.

Freddy’s Bar is not giving up the fight, we stand in solidarity with Prokhorov’s sanctions-busting victims in Zimbabwe, and with the people of Yonkers who are paying the price for a Ratner bribery scandal. We will continuing to stand against the corruption that has dominated our lives for the last 7 years, and are looking forward to moving out from under this sword of Damocles.

Forest City Ratner will leave Brooklyn a thousand years before Freddy’s Bar does. . . they have missed mortgage payments on their Metrotech Center, and the Yonkers and Zimbabwe sanctions busting scandals are criminal acts. The question is will they run out of money first, or face prosecution first. I am sure that both will happen.

The move is about the employees, and the business. We’re little guys. We can’t run our business into the ground as Ratner has and still survive. We have a lot of mouths to feed and we are not billionaires. The move is strategic. Very soon “Freddy’s Next Bar” will be standing tall, and Ratner will be in rubble, with no stadium, and hopefully with justice and karma finding him. This is a guy who closed a family homeless shelter in the dead of winter.
In order to assure our capacity to keep Freddy’s alive in a another location, and keep people employed… we have to move the contents of the bar in a particular timely fashion to “Lock down’ the next space, and thus we will not be facing an eviction situation in which a protest by chaining ourselves could happen. The Chains (“The Chains of Justice”) have served their purpose…to raise awareness of corruption, and they will move with us, forever installed on that bar as a symbol of a united community and that community’s power for affecting change.
The owner of Freddy’s has had to consider those employed at Freddy’s as well as his own situation, needing employment and food on the table. He made a difficult decision to pull out in such a way as to keep the contents of the bar and move it into another location. If we wait for condemnation we might sacrifice too much. I can’t yet confirm the location since everything is moving very fast, and it is not locked down yet, but the area we are hoping to secure is on 4th Ave near Union Street.
We hope to open this new space as soon as possible, 2 or 3 months hopefully. The email address will not change… nor the web address.

Freddy’s has been the culmination of everything I am and everything I ever wanted in a bar.
I could not be prouder of Freddy’s, it’s community, and it’s accomplishments.

Freddy’s is not an address, it is an idea.

I’ll See you at “FREDDY’S NEXT BAR”…the first one is on me!

[via NY Observer]

Flickr photo by langestuff

Leave it to the hippies at the Park Slope Coop to spoil everyone’s excitement over the Barney’s Coop scheduled to open at 194 Atlantic Avenue.  The Brooklyn Paper reports that PSC GM Joe Holtz claims the tony clothing store is misusing the term “coop” and tarnishing the market’s image in the process.

While Holtz claims he hasn’t decided whether he’ll sue Barney’s — he claims their use of the term is also a violation of New York State law — Barney’s reps say that they’ve had the trademark on their store name for a quarter of a century and that it’s not an issue.

Lawyers interviewed by the paper were split on whether the PSC has a legal leg to stand on.

Squeezed between the similarly charming (and high-ranking) neighborhoods of Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill offers the best of both of those worlds. It’s one stop closer to Manhattan on the F train than the former, and $200 to $300 cheaper per month than the latter. Smith and Court Streets are among the most interesting and diverse retail corridors in the city, and the housing stock is superb, with beautiful and well-maintained nineteenth-century homes and plenty of modern amenities.

Neighborhoods were ranked on a reader-adjustable grading scale that author Nate Silver and staff thoughtfully designed to help housing seekers find their perfect match. Here’s how Cobble Hill/Boerum Hill stacked up (rankings are out of 50):

Brooklyn Heights placed sixth and Carroll Gardens/Gowanus seventh, respectively. It looks like it’s hard to go wrong on this side of town!

Huffington Post.

If you weren’t able to make it to the Brooklyn Taco Experiment at the Bell House this past weekend, check out the HuffPo‘s photos and coverage. Sounds like it was a delicious and carnivore-heavy event. Mark your calendars tentatively for April for the next Experiment event.

In the mood for adventure? We thought so . . .
Come explore the depths of Gowanus, Park Slope and Carroll Gardens – meet some characters, do some shots, hunt and gather things you never knew existed! You could win a sweet cash prize and tons of gift certificates, or at the very least we promise you a Brooklyn night you won’t soon forget.

5pm – 7pm: Happy Hour check-in with $1 off everything and $4 select pints. Free Thanksgiving sub & munchies
7pm – 10pm: Let the scavenging begin!
10pm: Bring your goods back to The Bell House for points towards big prizes including gift certificates from Brooklyn Tattoo, Babeland, Bierkraft, Press 195, and more. Winner takes all! Plus $3 vodka drinks, $5 Jamesons and $5 Hendricks drink specials for hunt participants and a super fun dance-tastic you-don’t-have-to-work-tomorrow party complete with a DJ!

Bus Loops:

Check out these fun Halloween events going on tomorrow and on the big day, Saturday, October 31.

Friday, October 30

Halloween Celebration for Kids at the Carroll Gardens Library (396 Clinton Street), 3:30 pm. Wear a costume and enjoy the fun, free activities with your kids after school.

Monster Mash at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum (145 Brooklyn Avenue), 5 – 8 pm, for all ages. Get your face painted, hear spooky stories, and touch slithery snakes. Costumed DJ dance party, “Wee Little Monster” for preschoolers, Mad Scientist’s Laboratory and more. Due to the popularity of the event each year, advance ticket purchase at the museum’s admission desk ($10 per person, $5 per person for Museum members) is recommended.

Tarot-A-Palooza at the Kris Waldherr Art and Words gallery (1501 Newkirk Avenue, Ditmas Park), 6-11 pm. Participating readers at this pre-Halloween tarot reading marathon include urban shaman Mama Donna Henes and acclaimed tarotist Rene Collins. Admission and refreshments are free, but palm readings prices vary.

One World Symphony Nightmare On Montague Street at St. Ann and the Holy Trinity (157 Montague Street), 8 pm. Frightful favorites will be performed: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice; from Nightmare Before Christmas (1993); Toccata and Fugue in D minor; from Songs and Dances of Death; Erlkönig; The Headless Horseman (2009 world premiere).

Halloween Eve Masquerade at the Green Building (405 Union Street), 9 pm, $20. This event is presented by local favorite Michael Arnella and his Dreamland Orchestra and will feature live jazz, special performances, costume contest, hors d’oeuvres, and cocktails by Court & Spark.

Halloween Saturday, October 31

Brooklyn Heights Halloween Parade, Pierrepont Playground, 10 am. Bring your kids to join the parade and show off their costumes. A bake sale will be held to benefit the Brooklyn Heights Playground Committee.

The Legend of Ichabod Crane at the Brooklyn Lyceum (227 Fourth Avenue), 11 am and 12:30 pm. Based on the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving, this humorous, is appropriate for kids ages 5 and up. Freely adapted and performed by Dan Kitrosser with Ilan Isakov on piano and Directed by Edward Elefterion. $10 for a single ticket, or $30 for a pack of 4, purchased here.

Prospect Park Halloween Haunted Walk and Carnival, 12 – 3 pm. Prospect Park transforms the Nethermead area of the park for its scary Halloween Haunted Walk and Carnival, for kids of all ages. Look out for zombies, wolf men, headless horsemen, and witches. Plenty of fun, including seasonal treats and a puppet show.

Green-Wood Cemetery walk, 1 pm, $20. Celebrate the holiday with tales of murder, mayhem, spirits, and ghosts on Green-Wood’s annual Halloween walking tour with Green-Wood Historian Jeff Richman. This is a very popular tour, so arrive early. Meeting Point: Inside the main entrance at 25th Street at 5th Avenue. Buy tickets online here.

Cobble Hill Halloween Parade, Cobble Hill Park, 4pm. Join the costume parade behind the Jah Pan Steel Drum Band, then trick-or-treat (if you’re and older kid!) around the neighborhood.

BAMboo! BAM Under the Sea, 4-7 pm. Come dressed in your costume best to BAM’s eighth annual Halloween extravaganza,an evening of underwater activities and submarine adventures. From candy giveaways to costume contests and tons of great games, there’s fun for kids of all ages in front of BAM. Lafayette Ave between Ashland Pl. and St. Felix St.

Monster Mash at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum (145 Brooklyn Avenue), 5 – 8 pm, for all ages. Get your face painted, hear spooky stories, and touch slithery snakes. Costumed DJ dance party, “Wee Little Monster” for preschoolers, Mad Scientist’s Laboratory and more. Due to the popularity of the event each year, advance ticket purchase at the museum’s admission desk ($10 per person, $5 per person for Museum members) is recommended.

Flavorpill Halloween 2009 Benefit for Charity Water, undisclosed Brooklyn location, 9pm – 3am, $35. Live performances and open bar all night long, with all proceeds going to Charity Water. The location of this 21+ Brooklyn event will be sent to you after you RSVP, and is easily accessible from trains/Manhattan. Purchase tickets here.

The above photo is an ad on the back of the latest issue of Edible Brooklyn; Union Market, the specialty food shop with two location in Park Slope, will soon be open in the nabe. Judging from a map, it looks like 288 Court Street is the retail location that’s been empty for a few years (with the faded Blockbuster sign on the outside). Do you think we could use a large specialty food store like Union Market, or do the smaller ones we already have do the job?

Brooklyn’s famed Park Slope neighborhood has it all: sprawling, majestic Prospect Park; acclaimed public schools; historic brownstones; and progressive values. Among bohemian bourgeois breeders, claiming a stake in Park Slope has become a competitive sport.

In the park, at the coffee shops, and on the playgrounds of the neighborhood, four women’s lives come together during one long, hot Brooklyn summer. Melora Leigh, a two-time Oscar-winning actress, frustrated with her career and the pressures of raising her adopted toddler, feels the seductive pull of kleptomania; Rebecca Rose, missing the robust sex life of her pre-motherhood days, begins a dangerous flirtation with a handsome neighborhood celebrity; Lizzie O’Donnell, a former lesbian (or “hasbian”), wonders why she is still drawn to women in spite of her sexy husband and adorable baby; and Karen Bryan Shapiro finds herself consumed by two powerful obsessions: her four-year-old son’s well-being and snagging the ultimate three-bedroom apartment in a wellmaintained, P.S. 321-zoned co-op building. As the women’s paths intertwine (and sometimes collide), each must struggle to keep her man, her sanity…and her playdates.

From the perennially hot author and columnist Amy Sohn comes a smart, sexy, satirical peek into the bedrooms and hearts of Prospect Park West.

 

Metromix: 249B Fourth Ave. between Carroll and President Sts.
The brothers behind Smith Street beer den Bar Great Harry are opening another brew-centric watering hole, right next to Cattyshack on Fourth Avenue in Park Slope. Mission Dolores, as it’s called, will serve 24 craft beers and one cask ale on tap-18 American, plus six Belgian and German-as well as a handful of DUB meat pies, like it’s done back at Bar Great Harry. The furniture and materials will mostly be salvaged, and the space is “bizarre,” according to co-owner Mike Wiley, who describes it as “a huge Vol de Nuit,” which as far as we’re concerned sounds great. Bonus: Heated floors. The better for lying on the ground in the winter? Pacific Standard, watch your thoughtful, pleasant back. (Late September/early October)

As if the rumor that Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick are the new owners of Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany’s Prospect Park West townhouse wasn’t enough excitement for stroller moms up and down the streets of Park Slope, Publishers Lunch announced last week that HBO and Parker’s production company optioned Prospect Park West, a chick-lit book written by Amy Sohn. (Thanks to a tipster, we know that Sohn’s mother lives in Brooklyn Heights and used to own a business on Cranberry Street.)

Publishers Lunch: Amy Sohn’s forthcoming PROSPECT PARK WEST, a sexy “mommy romp” set over one steamy Brooklyn summer as four women’s lives collide, sold to HBO and Sarah Jessica Parker’s production company, Pretty Matches, with Sohn creating and writing the pilot, via agent Daniel Greenberg at Levine Greenberg, with Creative Artists Agency.

Photo from Brownstoner.

We reported a month and a half ago that the G train route would be expanded south past Smith-9th Street to the Church Avenue F station, and thanks to the above photo sent into Brownstoner, it  looks like it’s finally happening.

This photo was just submitted by a tipster along with the comment, “Evidence that they may actually finally be extending the G train to Church.” In fact, service to Church Avenue is scheduled to start July 5. For more background on the track work and reroutings can be found here.

Tomorrow, June 13, is the first-ever fundraiser held by PortSide NewYork, a young, innovative non-profit organization with diverse programs are about water and the waterfront. PortSide NewYork plans to create waterfront access, arts and recreational boating events, jobs, historical products and policy-programs for diverse economic groups and individuals. The fundraiser is taking place tomorrow evening from 6-9 pm at the Brooklyn Lyceum (227 Fourth Avenue @ President Street in Park Slope). Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, a major supporter of all things waterfront, will speak at the event, which will include food and wine. A large format multimedia installation of images and sounds from PortSide and the harbor will bring the waterfront inside. Proceeds from the fundraiser will support planning and interim programming in Atlantic Basin and shipping of the last two engine cylinders for the Whalen from Seattle. Tickets are $50 and may be purchased here. If you’re free tomorrow, go and show your support!

Long Island College Hospital is in the midst of a precipitous drop in births this year, months after threatening to shut its maternity ward, a decline that is resulting in large increases in deliveries at other Brooklyn hospitals, including a record number of births in 48 hours at one medical center.

Last year, Continuum Health Partners, the hospital consortium that manages LICH, tried to shut down its obstetrics and pediatrics practices, citing high cost of malpractice insurance and low reimbursement levels. However, the State Department of Health denied Continuum’s application to close those departments, citing, among other things, the lack of capacity to handle patient overflow at other Brooklyn hospitals. Now those hospitals are, in some instances, being overwhelmed with additional deliveries, despite several LICH obstetricians having transferred their practices to one of them, Methodist Hospital in Park Slope.

The medical examiner ruled this month that the March 8 death was a homicide because the teenager, Sharif Abdallah, 17, of Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, developed an irregular, fatal heartbeat after the fight because of a pre-existing heart problem.

NYT: But Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, said there would be no change in the charges against the four defendants: Dominick Barbera, 18; Angelo Bracco, 42; and his sons Christian Bracco, 16; and Eric Bracco, 18. The credible testimony before the grand jury does not support making any change in the charges, Mr. Schmetterer said.

The G train route will soon be extended south past Smith-9th Street to the Church Avenue F station.

Brooklyn Eagle: The through service to the new terminal, which would make repairs on the overhead “Culver Viaduct” over the Gowanus Canal easier, will begin on June 7. The viaduct has deteriorated to the extent that much of its exterior structure is shrouded with black netting to protect passers-by. If the trains turn around at Church Avenue, further south, it will free up some of the tracks on the viaduct for needed repairs.

Kudos to our pal/Bell House GM William Crane for creating a huge event that came off as friendly and intimate as it was in the smaller confines of Magnetic Field. William’s pal, Dick Swizzle, will be hosting his Sudden Death Game Show at the Bell House this Tuesday (Cinco De Mayo!).