What neighborhood do you live in, and what do you like most about it?

I live in south Park Slope (on 13th Street, between 4th & 5th Avenues), and I love many things about it. I like being able to walk my kids to a great, neighborhood school (they go to PS 107), with an excellent teacher and principal, active parents, small classes, and a commitment to well-rounded education. That is, unfortunately, too rare in our city, and it is something we treasure. We love Prospect Park, where we walk, run, bike, play sports, ice skate, have birthday parties, see our neighbors, and get to have a little taste of natural beauty in the midst of our very urban world. I love the small, locally-owned businesses, where you know the owners and the other customers, that help make it a neighborhood. I love the diversity of our community — our neighbors on 13th Street are teachers, an ironworker, a nurse, actors, a restauranteur, writers and artists, you name it. Finally, we really value living in a neighborhood where so many people share a set of progressive values — where we agree to invest our time and energy and money in strengthening public & civic institutions (public schools, parks, transit, libraries; non-profit and charitable organizations; etc), where we work together to preserve livable communities, and where we try to make sure that genuine opportunities exist for everyone who calls this city home.

Where are you originally from, and how does it compare to Brooklyn?

My wife and I have lived in Brooklyn for the past 17 years. Before that, I lived for a year in Manhattan, a year in London, in Chicago, and originally in St. Louis. I love Brooklyn for its combination of neighborhood & metropolis — for the fact that it can sometimes feel that you’re living in a small village, where you know your neighbors and work to preserve neighborhood quality-of-life, while you’re right in the heart of the world’s most diverse and dynamic city. I don’t think there’s any place quite like it.

How do you, personally, contribute to your community?

I’ve been working together with neighbors to strengthen our community for my entire adult life. I spent 10 years as director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, which works to preserve and create affordable housing, help people find jobs and learn English, and organize residents and workers to come together for a better community. I’m the chair of the Housing & Community Development Committee of Community Board 6, where I’ve pushed for a new responsible contractor policy and worked with others to save the school-based health clinics operated by Long Island College Hospital. For the past two years, I’ve helped organize the BrooklynPTA.org 5k fun/walk for our neighborhood public schools. I’m a little-league coach (basketball right now, previously baseball and soccer), a member of a local synagogue, and active in our PTA. I believe that public service is vital, and plan to put a strong emphasis on promoting & highlighting it in our community.

If you could change one thing in your neighborhood, what would it be?

For the past two decades, I’ve been working to preserve and create affordable housing, so kids who grow up here can stay here, so families can afford to live here, so our neighborhoods can continue to be diverse. We’ve had some successes, but overall rents and sales prices have risen far beyond the reach of too many families. One thing I’d really like to save — that we are lucky to have, but that is unfortunately under real threat — are the locally-owned small businesses that line our commercial avenues. I’ll work hard to address this issue in the City Council.

What is your favorite restaurant/hangout?

Wow, really hard to pick one favorite. For restaurants: Rosewater, Frankie’s 457, Aunt Suzie’s, Anthony’s, Johnny Mack’s, Dizzy’s, Daisy’s, and Jafran (on Church Avenue). For parks: Van Voorhees (where my son plays baseball and football), Washington Park (formerly JJ Byrne), Prospect Park, Greenwood Playground, and the Red Hook Pool. For bars: Commonwealth, Abilene, Union Hall. For only-in-Brooklyn: Buzz-a-Rama (the slot-car racing place in Kensington), the Latin American food vendors in Red Hook, and summer weekends in Coney Island (ok, not quite the 39th District, but still right out the F line).

My parents also live nearby, and that makes it easy to check in on them, and my maternal grandmother. The children can visit plenty, have fun and experience their warmth/unconditional love. Because my family has been here for generations, there’s hardly a block where I don’t know someone, and there’s stories and old friends and ghosts of 1,000s of people that are no longer living in CG that still evoke memories. St. Agnes/St. Paul and Sacred Hearts/St. Stephens parishes have family history. Conversations had with older residents about their youth, come back to me. Little stories can be relayed as I walk with my 8 year old daughter, like pulling the tongue of a German Shepard every time I’d passed “its area gate” as a 6 yr old, on the way to grandma’s house. Mom and pop shops that are long gone, that served me free lime-rickeys & egg creams…or where I’d had to go after an elderly woman lowered a basket from a top-floor with $5 and a grocery list (which I’d done 100s of times in my youth). Guzzi’s pizza. Years and years of teenage fun, and sports/street games played between my friends and then, later visiting rival groups to challenge for softball, football or roller hockey.

But, our area is far, far more than nostalgia. We lived in Park Slope for 3 years to ’06 (and do miss the peace & quiet, easy walks to Prospect Park, and friends we’d made, of course, and the Q train and Mr. Won Ton and Roma Pizza and the Brooklyn Academy of Music on 7th Avenue, and an easier walk home from the Park Slope Food Coop after shopping). In Carroll Gardens, people walk outside and stay outside for hours on end. A walk to get a newspaper & iced coffee can take an hour, across the many friendly people you’d meet that want to talk. And night, as Smith Street is a hotbed of nightlife across its bars/restaurants. Some people would complain about the noise, but we’re used to it. As if the sounds of emergency vehicles down Union St. and loud shouts by 40-something frat boys, emerging from bars at 3am have blended into the familiarity and history across generations that can be unspoken, but understood.

Where are you originally from, and how does it compare to Brooklyn?
Brooklyn, and nothing compares. Born in Long Island College Hospital…guess which Council candidate would fight tooth & nail for it to remain a strong health-care option across our areas. Was raised in Carroll Gardens, when it was called South Brooklyn much more commonly. Also lived in Cobble Hill for about 5 years, before being wed to Cindy and having the first Wedding Reception at the Brooklyn Marriott Downtown, which still has our pictures & story of how we met, before their 3rd floor offices. Essentially, we’ve lived in Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Park Slope and my life experiences have taken me across each area of District 39, long before I’d decided to run for Council.

How do you, personally, contribute to your community?
That’s easy, I do everything for anyone at anytime. For the Brooklyn Youth Association of Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill I coach softball all summer long. Within the Prospect Park Youth Baseball League, I also Head Coach for the Sacred Hearts Cardinals program — meaning running practices, dealing with 17 psyches, and carrying the equipment, setting the field up/bases in the Park (for younger teams) and generally leading boys and girls along from baseball skills to patience, focus, caring about the welfare of others (cheering).

Being there for others, with a watchful eye as well. Last month, for example I’d headed to the Brooklyn Tech ‘protest’ event when initial word was that others may join in from the flanks and provoke violence as Kansas hate cult was demonstrating. I went to make sure the students were protected from any nonsense, and ultimately helped 3 kids away from possible confrontations with NYPD officers (being the HS students didn’t understand why such hateful people can have police protection). Was able to also relay to community leaders closer to home, that these people weren’t threats at all, and were a bizarre family/band of attention-getters that were better off ignored (although I’d gone to a Kane St. synagogue too, just in case).

A few years back, I’d caught a staggering man at Jay St./Boro Hall just before he could fall before an A-train and ultimately walked/carried the drunk man from the Carroll St. station to Henry Street (stopping for him to be sick, 4-5x). No big deal. Early on I’d taught inner-city kids with college aptitudes across every summer and also coached softball. There’s an aspect of volunteerism from simply being a good friend and neighbor, and where I’m from that even extends to taking in the trash pails of your neighbors, if you see them around the sidewalks before they do. There’s plenty that goes on without anyone knowing, like shoveling many walkways/gates, during a snowfall (especially the elderly). Brooklyn born and bred, means something. There’s no pretense about life, here.

If you could change one thing in your neighborhood, what would it be?
Two things. The cost of renting or owning homes. The way local realtors have pulled off what seems like sure collusion and disregard to comparable pricing, in keeping prices high and not releasing homes for sale or relaying all bids to owners (holding them for 6-8-10+ months until their prices are met). It seems to me, that instead of lowering prices in accordance with the Recession and borrowing difficulties – Asking Prices of home went up by percentages above their value, in anticipation of lowering them back down to an amount that was originally simply overreaching in the first place. (But, all you need is one buyer, playing that game.) The cost pressures on families, seniors, young singles just starting “prices out” a staggering number of people.

Secondly, excessive car speeding on our streets has to be curtailed by stronger penalty and enforcement. Careless driving is rampant, from drivers slowly impeding on where pedestrians are walking across crosswalks, to not seeming to care about slowing down near schools or stop signs, for that matter.

What is you favorite restaurant/hangout?
Kind of like the low lighting, friendly feel of the Red Rose or Union-Smith Cafe. Hangout? I’ll go with Smith Social Club [sic], although with a great number of extended family/friends & 2 kids my days of hanging out are long over… (but, I certainly do miss the Montague St. Saloon).

Our citizen journalist in Brooklyn Heights, Karl Junkersfeld, asked the folks at Hibino for a photograph of Mayor Bloomberg at the restaurant on Wednesday night… and they sent one!

This in from a CHB tipster:

Mayor Bloomberg dined at Hibino on Henry Street last night, with local neighborhood small business owners including the operators of the Stinky Brooklyn micro-empire. Apparently the mayor called the meeting himself. And we applaud the choice of Hibino, which quietly might be the best restaurant in the neighborhood, but doesn’t get much fuss since it’s off the Smith/Court axis.

And Brooklyn Heights Blog commenter/video auteur Karl Junkersfeld confirms the sighting:

Was at Hibino restaurant (Pacific and Henry), last night Wednesday, and in came Bloomberg and his posse. Nice to see the mayor in Brooklyn Heights/Cobble Hill area.

NY Post: Levin, who lives in Greenpoint, noted that he was looking to spend less than $6,000 per month on commercial space, his allocated budget from the City Council, and found prices on Atlantic Avenue too high.

Boerum Hill Association President Howard Kolins encouraged him instead to look more closely at Schermerhorn Street which currently has lots of open storefronts and new buildings coming on line soon.

“$6,000 a month and under is not a lot of money for this area, per square footage. I’m not sure how much space he needs,” said Kolins. “If he winds up in Boerum Hill, that would be great. We would be thrilled.”

The Brooklyn Paper interviews GOP candidate Joe Nardiello and Green candidate David Pechefsky:

Brooklyn Paper:  “I can beat him — 80 percent of the public has had enough with politicians and politics as usual,”[Nardiello] said. “Brad Lander is politics as usual.”…

“We have to engage him,” [Pechefsky says], pausing some more. “There were so many unanswered questions from the primary campaign, such as what are you going to do when you get to the City Council?”

The Funeral Director, who has worked for Assemblymember Millman and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz,  easily beat his closest competition in the survey, Brad Lander, by 12 percentage points. 

Here are the final results of the poll:

John Heyer 69 33%
Brad Lander 53 25%
Josh Skaller 41 20%
Gary Reilly 29 14%
Bob Zuckerman 12 6%
Undecided 4 2%

And some D-39 primary resources:

Brooklyn Paper endorses Heyer

NY Times Election Guide to 39th

Candidate websites: Brad Lander, Josh Skaller, Bob Zuckerman, John Heyer, Gary Reilly.

Democratic NYC Council D39 candidate Bob Zuckerman has released an online ad that attacks two of his opponents in the race – Josh Skaller and Brad Lander.

Washington D.C. based animator Andrew Arnold created “Skaller” and “Lander” for the ad.

The Homer Fink Show – Gary Reilly MP3