DUMBO! Get Ready to Fight! The Toll Brothers are trying to move in...

I rarely look to the the press for local news but this time I can't help myself.The Troll Brothers are now looking to annoy the people of DUMBO now with another unneccesary condo. Toll Brother V.P David Von Sprecklesen is all hot and bothered about clogging the open sky with another Toll Brothers montrosity. He says and I quote from The Brooklyn Paper article:“It’s a big vacant site — people would like to see some activity there,”. “Our goal is to have the whole process finished by April, and start building shortly thereafter.” He also mentioned that if there were no landsmarks commision they would just build over 12 stories. Hello! David! This site is located between two very important NYC bridges. This man just is crazy to build near the water no matter what!This is what they built in Williamsburg..BARF!
*Photocredit: Curbed

People of DUMBO get ready to rally!!!!!

I hope the neighborhood of DUMBO proves your assumptions wrong as far as what "people would like to see". Just give it up. Please. The condos in Brooklyn are festering and empty. Why are you so intent in littering the landscape?

Click here for over 50 F.I.B posts about the Toll Brothers and the Gowanus.

Raw Sewage on the Gowanus Today!

Welcome Future 3rd & Bond Condo Dwellers and Whole Food Shoppers! This is what the rain brings on the picturesque Gowanus Canal!! Enjoy the sight of a big hulking chunk of raw sewage! I was privileged to see it (and smell it) as I crossed the 3rd Street Bridge today!

P.S- The Whole Food site has been untouched for weeks, there is now a lake in the middle of the site. Keep dreaming Baby J condo people, it will be years before the Whole Foods site is cleaned up and built, you should really take that perk out of your ad campaign!

Latest Carroll Gardens "Developments"

Check out the CORD Blog (Carroll Gardens Organization to Respectfully Develop) to find out the latest on what is happening with the building plans for 360 Smith Street. The lot has been cleared (not that was hard-it was a parking lot!)and the brownstone next door vacated. Apparantly the city says that 2nd Place is a wide street, if you know 2nd Place you know that it is EXTREMELY narrow, I guess the "gardens" of Carroll Gardens are considered part of the street...it's such a joke that they say it is "wide", if you are in a car it is IMPOSSIBLE to pass another car on that street! In fact it is even difficult to WALK by a car on that block.I recall that they were planning to put the entrance to the underground parking garage there. Yeah just what we need at the subway station, cars exiting and entering where there is heavy foot traffic on a narrow sidewalk. Brilliant.

I guestimate once all the Scarano buildings are done along with the lowrise condos on Bond Street & Third there will be over 500 new residents...uh ya think we could get a supermarket we can WALK to? Or is it assumed we will all go to Whole Foods which will be built long after these buildings go up!

Some thoughts on what they want to build on my end of the hood at 3rd Street and Bond. They will be building low rise condominiums, this is an "as a right " property as well. I was wondering if they have tested the toxic waste dump that they will be sitting on. I heard through the grapevine that clean up will be "minimal". I guess being a block away from the Whole Foods site (which has been sitting unbuilt upon for almost four years) makes the ground at 3rd & Bond Street ALOT different! I'm SURE the levels of cyanide, mercury, benzene, pesticides, V.O.C's & PCB's are MUCH lower! Can the sewage pipes handle the approximate 300 new residents to the block (90 units, I'm just guestimating) probrably not. I am told that they can barely handle the few homes and businesses down here as it is.

Ah well Bond Street will no longer be my "Tobacco Road" nothing lasts for ever....if anyone reading this is part of that "Friends of Bond" group contact me with what is going on, the people that organize it seem to be M.I.A , I'm feeling like a one man army.

Another Subway Story

The other night I was waiting for the F train at 42nd Street to return home to Brooklyn. I was leaning against a pole thinking, "damn it's hot as hell down here.." when this girl pops around the other side of the pole and says, “Excuse me, I hope I am not bothering you but I was wondering if I could ask you a question to help me do some research on an article I am writing.”

This girl or shall I say woman was in her early 20’s at the most, dressed in retro 80’s fashion, you know when they wear those uncomfortable 80’s secretary pumps with the ironic polyester business lady dresses? She had that look. I decided to kill some time and indulge her anyway.

It ends up that she worked for Conde Naste in the advertising department but really wanted to be a writer. Her “research” was regarding whether I was “for” or “against” cel phone usage in the subway. Of course I am against because people need a break from listening to other’s personal conversations SOMETIMES! The subway is too close for comfort as it is. Who needs to hear an entire train asking, “What’s for dinner?” or listen to ridiculous lover’s quarrels like I have the few times I’ve been on the Long Island Rail Road.

Well, she started in about how she can not live without her PDA device, how she freaks out if she is unable to be reached in case she has an important meeting and can’t make it because she is stuck on the train. She went on for a while, I started to think, “this girl is no writer, she just using me as a confessional for some reason. Do I look like a bartender or something?"

The train arrives. I thought we were going to end this conversation but she sits next to me like we are the best of friends. I learn that she lives between Avenues C & D on the lower east side. She lives with 5 roommates with one bathroom and that she pays $750 to live in 8x10 room with no window. She thought it was a really good deal but would really like some privacy sometimes.

Her next topic was “well the neighborhood is really changing, it's terrible.”

I’m thinking, that neighborhood changed long ago, how could it be possibly changing more? If this girl is living down on Avenue D (Avenue Death as it was called in thee olden days) and saying how good it is, what is making it change for the worse? Why is it changing?

The answer.

“Luxury Condos”.

No matter where you go, you can’t escape them. Even nutty girls on the train (yeah I know I was there too...) are noticing that they are sucking the soul out of our fair city.

This conversation took between 42nd Street and Broadway/Lafayette.

How I spent my 7/7/07.

Man, am I glad I didn’t go to that drumming thing over at Brooklyn Bridge Park yesterday! Sounded like it turned out to be an over crowded nightmare. It was sort of fascinating to me that the Boredoms had managed to attract such a crowd. Was it the Boredoms or the hype of the importance of the date 7/7/07? OK I just answered my own question, clearly it was the latter….What did we do on 6/6/06? Does anybody remember?! On 7/7/07 I could NOT get out of bed or out of my house, it must have been the centrifugal force of the sun telling me to stay home and meditate or simply exhaustion. So, after the sun set I ventured out and it was quite a lovely evening.

A friend was in town from LA and wanted to meet at the Motor City Bar on Ludlow Street in Manhattan. I ventured out into the 7/7/07 night to join Margie aka Vena Virago and CalmX (long time East Village resident and artist).Well, we lasted about 10 minutes before fleeing. The saturday night bar scene on Ludlow Street is pretty soulless. The music at Motor City was loud yet you still couldn’t hear it. SO the three of us old timers ended up at the Mars Bar, one of the or shall I say THE ONLY old school cheap punk rock NYC bar left. It is now surrounded by what else? Luxury condos! The ugliest tall tower glass and metal kind with Whole Foods just a hop skip and a jump away. The Marz is still doling out the cheap drinks (2 really strong vodka drinks and one beer = $11.00)has ranting bartenders, (this evenings hostess started complaining at the top of her lungs when someone put some jazz type music on…’WHO PUT THIS SH*T! ON!!” Of course she intercepted it and put on what SHE wanted to hear, “Too many creeps’ by the Bush Tetras) and a cast of regulars right out of “Midnight Cowboy” mixed in with an eclectic bunch of others. There is a lot of coming and going at the Marz Bar (it is a total “I’m waiting for my man’ bar, IF you know what I mean) but it's sort of a punk rock "Cheers" for all the "black sheeps" of the family to feel at home. I salute you Marz Bar, long may you continue to be a zit on the airbrushed cityscape that our town has become. You are REAL.