Local businesses are slowly coming into the digital era from the Daily News: ""We were losing customers like crazy," said Alimena, 49, who owns Body Elite, a fitness center in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, that's been in business for 27 years. Despite offering free month-long passes to members who referred others to join, advertising and offering jobless members a lower rate, Alimena was losing 30 to 40 people a month as people moved from the neighborhood or let their memberships expire.
"The neighborhood is not exactly a reasonable rent area," he said."
Brad Lander, a rational thinker and relative newbie to elected politics, has come out with some pretty basic, logical, constructive comments on the Prospect Park West Bike Lane. He continues today, in the Brooklyn Paper, citing his own survey:
"But it’s time to accept the facts: Extensive data show the project is a success. The community board asked for it. The vast majority of neighborhood residents support it. The Department of Transportation is proposing a few modifications to make it work even better. Prospect Park West is safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and even drivers."
Of course, the Brooklyn Paper would be remiss if they didn't talk about the massive uprising of popular angst over the bike lane (read: a few old, rich people on prospect Park West who must have had neck surgery keeping them from looking left and right. One wonders if they can cross any street safely), in an opposing view point article:
"Bike lanes improve the health, safety, and environment of the city." Ok, great start! What next?
"To access the park, pedestrians must cross multiple lanes of one-way moving traffic. Then they must pass through a floating row of parked cars that obstructs their view of the two-way bike lane, which they must enter blindly, before reaching the curb."
:-( I was unaware they were issuing horse blinders to all pedestrians crossing PPW.
"Under the guise of “traffic calming,” and ignoring other viable alternatives, the city removed an automobile lane, thereby causing congestion as well as significant air and noise pollution."
Willfully ignoring the FACT that removal of a travel lane has caused a decrease in the number of accidents and average speed of vehicles traveling on PPW, fewer cars somehow equals more air pollution to NBBL.
"Last year, the Department of Transportation installed this two-way obstructed lane and has since converted this “pilot program” into a permanent fixture without properly evaluating it or addressing local residents’ concerns."
One assumes that NBBL were either not present or not well represented at the numerous Community Board 6 meetings where the bike lane was discussed, where the ONLY (asinine) objections that were raised were about the loss of a few parking spaces. "We think our alternatives are sound and will make our beautiful, historic neighborhood an even safer and more pleasant place."
Their alternatives are to add back a lane of traffic, and to move bike traffic into the park, where the City refuses to completely ban cars, creating no barriers between bike and car movements. Seems like NBBL would be very happy with completely separate paths for all different modes of transit (a Segway path, perhaps), since we can not interact with each other. Maybe they want PPW to look like this.
This is the next in a series of videos created for the Carroll Gardens Diary of the changing streetscape of Carroll Gardens, Red Hook and Columbia Street from the 1950's through today. Most of the changes are due to the trench of the BQE, but there have also been huge changes in the port.
Today's is the perpetually changing end of Hamilton Avenue.
Another of the long line of interesting ideas comes out via the Brooklyn Paper:
"He told this newspaper that his notion is to annex the “underused” western portion of the park near Court Street for the piazza, setting up tables, chairs and awnings — a cosmopolitan space where area cafés could serve drinks and food.
“When you see in Italy and Argentina plazas and piazzas really being used by all the people of a neighborhood, it’s a wonderful part of urban life,” Andersen said."
I'm not sure exactly what section of the park he wants to turn over to private enterprise. The western half of the park has the ball field, basketball hoops, hosts hockey games and is where people illegally let their dogs run around off the leash. While it may not be a grand public interactive space on the caliber of South American or European cities, to call that section of the park "underused" demonstrates either a willful ignorance, or a staggeringly self-centered view of public space.
Could the Gowanus Canal be a tourist locale? From the Brooklyn Paper:
"Yes, the gritty area alongside one of the most polluted bodies of water in the country could be added to the National Register of Historic Places — and is also being considered for the same historic district status granted to well-heeled enclaves such as Brooklyn Heights — in a new push by preservationists.
The Manhattan-based Historic District Council is pushing the state to nominate the canal zone for national designation as part of its “Six to Celebrate,” an inaugural program intended to focus attention on a half-dozen endangered areas.
The list is compiled from community requests — and in this case, the Friends and Residents of the Greater Gowanus got the tar ball rolling."
Look for some double-decker buses rolling down Nevins Street!
This is the first in a series of videos created for the Carroll Gardens Diary of the changing streetscape of Carroll Gardens, Red Hook and Columbia Street from the 1950's through today. Most of the changes are due to the trench of the BQE, but there have also been huge changes in the port.
Today's is a street that has been completely wiped out: Manhassett Place.
Turns out, in the shock of shockers, slower traffic and a mix of uses creates a more dynamic and safer streetscape. Who would have thought? From StreetsBlog, news of the Prospect Park West Bike lane's results, and proposed safety modifications:
"The proposed modifications should make the new Prospect Park West even friendlier to pedestrians. At intersections, the tan paint marking the pedestrian zone of the median will be replaced with raised islands. That should keep parked cars from intruding on pedestrian space. Along the bike path, DOT wants to install “rumble strip” markings to alert riders that they’re approaching an intersection. DOT also suggests rearranging the loading zones at 9th Street and narrowing the bike lane buffer at the very northern end of Prospect Park West in order to better transition into Grand Army Plaza."
The Brooklyn Paper (briefly) reported what is by far the most important fact of the whole bike lane "controversey" - it's safety effects.
"• Crashes are down from an average of 30 in six months to 25, or 16 percent. • Crashes that cause injuries are down from 5.3 in six months to two, a whopping 63-percent drop. • Before the project, a crash was twice as likely to include an injury. • Injuries to all street users dropped 21 percent."
But Community Board 6 is the bastion of progressive bike thought. From the Brooklyn Paper comes this month's worst idea ever:
"Nica Lalli, a writer and member of Community Board 6, said her plan makes cyclists as accountable as motorists — and makes it a cinch for cops to ticket two-wheeled scofflaws.
“Making it easier to give people tickets with bikes will be good revenue for the city,” said Lalli, who admitted she is not a “bike person,” but that she holds no prejudice against cyclists — including her husband."
Since when does making it HARDER to bike in the city make sense? All of this backlash against cyclists is the result of rich, connected car owners making a stink. Here is one fact that should end any debate, as if the safety improvements aren't enough: In Brooklyn, car owners are a minority.
In our recent snow storms, private contractors have had to pick up the slack for the city in some areas. Turns out that one of the private contractors is from the neighborhood! From the Post:
"His 12-hour shift started about 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Bay Street parks department building in Red Hook. After checking his pickup and plow, he made his way to the sanit garage at 12th Street and Second Avenue and was ordered into position at Nelson and Smith streets in Carroll Gardens.
At 10 p.m. as the snow piled up, the order came down to get plowing.
"Its fun," Levit said in a heavy Russian accent, laughing, as the metal hit the pavement. "There’s nobody on the roadways and everybody is home.""
Unfortunately, not according to the proprietor. From the Brooklyn Paper:
"Paris Burlesque Club — which has not yet opened at 18 Commerce St. near Columbia Street — is set to replace the grocery store-sized party hall, Hello Brooklyn, where Sunday night crowds once spilled onto sidewalks and management was last year arrested for selling booze without a license.
Neighbors are already lining up to oppose the new owners’ bid for a difficult-to-get cabaret license, saying they prefer a good night’s sleep to a good night on the town.
“Everybody knows the word ‘burlesque’ is used to mask the words ‘strip joint,’” said Bill Sullivan, who has been fighting noise in the neighborhood for two years. “I can’t even tell you what a nightmare it’s been.”"
"What's going for it? In the canyon of differences between the US and Britain, there is one that stands out and proud: urban America's capacity for ridiculous neighbourhood names. NoLIta, TriBeCa, Dumbo, SoLaTeeDo (I made that last one up). But BoCoCa is stretching it. Newly compiled from three Brooklyn neighbourhoods – Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens – BoCoCa is where you move when you've tired of Williamsburg's twentysomething hepcat shenanigans. Skinny jeans just don't look good crammed with post-childbirth girth (and that's just the dads). You're still, ahem, "with it", just not that "with it". The area has everything a gentrifying couple could want – from leafy brownstones to bespoke cupcake suppliers. Red Hook used to be BoCoCa beyond the pale, a decaying crack den past the Gowanus Expressway. Since Ikea moved in, though, that desolate, post-industrial, miles-from-a-subway-look is so Age of Austerity.
The case against Terribly Bugaboo. Smug and moneyed and not cheap – until you get to Red Hook."
Unfortunately, and sadly, this is quite accurate...
