Open Thread Wednesday

Interesting. I can understand the Court Street corridor as being a rat haven but I’m surprised to see the central Heights on there. I wonder if it’s partly the result of all of the renovation work being done around Henry St. and Monroe Place?

Also surprised to see Dumbo as a problem area – they keep at least the main shopping streets pretty clean down there.

Pest Infestation problems are due to the city being infested by what passes for humans today. Past generations covered garbage, swept up and regularly washed food and nonfood surfaces. At one time we had incineration. We also recognized the clean and neat and shunned the dirty and unkempt. Oh, that’s now so passe in our society as to be outre? Well, folks, you have to live with the results

I don’t think our neighborhoods are so bad compared to wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods. Facts are helpful.

From 1/1/2017 to 3/8/2017 here are the number of rodent complaints filed with 311 for some relevant community districts

BROOKLYN
CD1 93
CD2 62 (includes downtown, Dumbo & BH)
CD3 176
CD6 56
CD8 112
CD9 101

MANHATTAN
CD8 101 (East side, 57th St. to 97th St.)
CD7 122 (West side, 57th St. to 102nd St.)

http://www1.nyc.gov/apps/311srmap/

I’ve enjoyed the elementary school protesters that have marched up Clinton Street a couple times this year. Today there was a group of about 20 or so kids carrying signs and chanting, presumably for International Women’s Day (their teacher was leading the pack). Learning valuable lessons about freedom of speech can go beyond the classroom.

Anyone on here also a Gothamist reader? I was so sad to see that they’ve been bought by DNAinfo which is owned by a right-wing billionaire who has donated millions of dollars to politicians like Donald Trump, Scott Walker and other friends of the Koch brothers…I hate to think that my clicks are generating any money toward those activities.

Not to mention they’ve deleted all negative coverage of the DNAinfo CEO Joe Ricketts from their site. What a shame. I really enjoyed their NYC focus.

Any suggestions for other sites to follow instead (aside, obviously from the wonderful BHB)?

Not enough cats in the gardens. ?

On my frequent dog walks in the parks and surrounding streets, I have seen less rats than in the recent past. There are also a few hawks helping out with the pigeon and rodent situation these days.

Apparently Ricketts hasn’t put a total clamp-down on articles that at least give voice to Trump’s critics. Here’s an excellent example: http://gothamist.com/2017/03/09/mta_see_something_say_something.php

Yeah they continue to have articles that speak against the Trump and GOP platform, but if my visits to the site are still putting money in far-right coffers I want to avoid it if I can :(

Not sure how this works, but …

1) Does anybody know if there’s any way one can deal with community eyesores that “works better” than burning them down. I’m thinking of BH’s worst – can’t be more than 5 that come even close – the corner of Monroe Place and Clark. “Surely,” some combo of the BHA, local pols, lawyers who know how to hold someone’s feet to the fire, etc. – can “jiggle the chain” of some either greedy or incompetent or ?? people who have owned this space for years and years with “nothing to show for it.”

Talk about rats! … Monroe Pl. is used for film shoots and is now undergoing some serious re-development. What’s a community to do? This is such an “outlier” in our nabe that one imagines that there MUST be an attack strategy.

1a) The City Council passed a bill a few years back that allowed someone (Sanitation Dept. ?) to take abandoned bicycles that were clearly “scrap metal” chained to something and dispose of them. Good ordinance “on paper” – did someone lodge a nuisance suit against NYC and scare BdB into a “just leave ’em be” response?!

2) Since the 2 parties are clearly “talking past each other” in connection with the future of Brooklyn Bridge Park – battle of their websites and “a day in court” who knows when (I know it’s supposed to happen later this month, but I’ll bet anything, that’s postponed; further, I’ll bet that the merits are not addressed – some procedural thing will keep that from happening for months more,)

Couldn’t (shouldn’t?!) the BHB provide a forum where both the litigants and the community could make their case!

Think of it as the 2017 version of whatever platform Lincoln and Douglas stood on 150+ years back.

Ed, they’re actually very slowly working on that building, 1 Monroe Place aka 100 Clark Street.

Another BH postcard (making up for last week’s failure to post). This shows the Church of the New Jerusalem, on the corner of Clark Street and Monroe Place. How ironic that this lovely building was replaced by the banal modern buildings which also house a synagogue!

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/768395a31f333eda8cd6eed274f42068abffe21e0419f169236a44b70db9294a.jpg