Open Thread Wednesday

By on August 1, 2017 11:51 pm in open thread

What’s on your mind? Comment away!

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  • middaghmatron

    I have a car in this city just for this week and lucked out with a space down in Cobble Hill. Have to move it before 9am tomorrow morning and am driving out Friday morning. Is a garage for that ~24 hours my best bet?

  • Andrew Porter

    Wow, Wednesday already? How time flies!

    Here’s another BH postcard from days gone by. This one shows the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, with the old Squibb Pharmaceutical Building at the left. Note how the street, maybe Henry, goes right down to Fulton Street. This is, of course, before the BQE destroyed much of the northern Heights:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b6b1b053dc72ac46932ee66cbf56e8788386e907f05f031c1a2e36c901414ac6.jpg

  • meschwar

    If it were me, I’d get out of the spot tonight and drive around to find a spot that I could leave the car in until Friday. Depends on your tolerance for driving around and how far away you’re willing to park. I can almost always find a spot in cobble hill or boerum Hill without too much pain.

  • Jorale-man

    Pro-Hitler And Trump Graffiti Found On Brooklyn Bridge: https://patch.com/new-york/heights-dumbo/hitler-did-nothing-wrong-donald-trump-scrawled-brooklyn-bridge
    Content aside, what possesses someone to draw on a city landmark? And I see there’s other graffiti around it too.

  • Roberto

    Four Health Department inspectors confiscated ice cream from a food truck on Cadman Plaza West a week ago because the seller had no permit. The problem that was not addressed was the noisy, stinking, diesel generator – something used by food trucks all over the city. https://www.fastcompany.com/3046478/new-yorks-new-solar-powered-food-carts-are-cool-but-wait-until-they-run-on-food-waste

  • StudioBrooklyn

    Anyone else read this as a [rather ineffectual] anti-Trump message? An absurd statement, followed by the copyright symbol, seeming to imply an attribution to Trump, like a made-up quote…”Trump is so dumb he would say something like this!”?

    Content aside, humans have been scrawling pictures and messages on things since long before our species discovered fire. The reasons are myriad and complex.

  • Jorale-man

    Very sad. It’s the same mentality that gives us littering, spitting, etc. If this is a protest message, there are certainly better ways to get one’s point across than this…

  • You know who this is…..

    Well, this is just one more of the hoax/false flag incidents…exactly like the foot of Atlantic Ave park incident/hoax..which has plagued this area since Hillary the great’s defeat.

  • bpelle

    They just need to get a bunch of upper-class white people to gather in unity. That will scare away the infamous Brooklyn Heights Nazis!

  • Jorale-man

    I’m probably the only person who noticed this but the old horse hitching posts on the NW corner of Joralemon & Clinton Streets have been removed. There were 3 or 4 of them left, a nice reminder of the neighborhood’s past, but now there’s cement where the posts once stood.

    Sad that these are ripped out while cracked sidewalks and empty, litter-filled tree planters on the same block are allowed to remain.

  • StudioBrooklyn

    The building there has been shrouded in scaffolding for a while. I wonder if this removal was related? I never noticed the hitching posts to be honest. Maybe Andrew Porter has a photo of them?

  • Bornhere

    From the beloved Google maps:

  • Bornhere

    I have been trying to post a saved jpg from Google maps, but it isn’t working. But they are clearly visible — and they were so very neat.

  • StudioBrooklyn

    So those little posts are horse hitching posts? Did they used to have crossbars? I always thought they were to keep cars from driving up on the sidewalk or something, but that makes more sense.

    By the way, you should investigate how to take a screen grab; it’s very useful. The procedure will depend on your operating system. :)

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8baf6ae3ee9c8637cf53395b9f20ea123167e46672a572ae374d68aafb592810.png

  • Bornhere

    I didn’t realize their purpose, either. (And I am the queen of screen grabs — it just wouldn’t work, for some reason. Mac. All Mac, all the time.)

  • StudioBrooklyn

    Well I don’t know about anyone else but I’m going to just hitch my horse to the scaffolding until I find someplace better.

  • pepper

    What’s the deal with the tree that was down all weekend on Colombia Heights? Has it been removed yet? Very post apocalyptic that it was there for 48 hours minumum with no removal.

  • cranberry

    I wonder if these are protected by Landmarks and the owners of the building will be required to replace them.

  • Jorale-man

    One of them had its top broken off for a while. Perhaps the others were going downhill too. I have a friend in that building – I’ll try and find out more.

  • Banet

    Were they hitching posts? I don’t recall any kind of ring on top for tying up a horse. I thought they were just old-fashioned bollards to protect pedestrians. Like the decrepit one on the NE corner of Hicks and Pierrepont.

  • Andrew Porter

    These are NOT old horse hitching posts, but instead are contemporary bollards, meant to prevent cars and trucks from driving onto the sidewalk. They are used, especially in London, but also in this country, especially around courts and other government buildings. There are a bunch of them on Cadman Plaza East, in front of the Federal buildings there.

    I have no idea why you think these are ancient. Here’s an image for them, from a current company that makes and sells them:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/63c23bb4a70477e40ada2dfbb4b82cb3550f075fd4506588c0a556a54c06ea4f.jpg

  • Andrew Porter

    I add that there are many places around BH where you can see the old metal devices used for scraping horse manure and mud off your boots, before you go inside. Those ARE from the 19th Century. There are the ones set into the sidewalk next to stoops, and those that are a part of the metal balustrade itself:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8b20745a50acd4831beb813ba02d0b544c6f81f58d83d8c0b930276b62a804a7.png

  • Andrew Porter

    It was a big branch, not the entire tree, and came down in the thunderstorms that came through during the night a few days ago. Because of possible Long-Horned Beetle infestation, all downed trees and branches are put through a wood chipper (like Durst’s first wife was, allegedly).

  • pepper

    Fascinating! Thanks @disqus_UxVlbPXzBJ:disqus