In what probably felt like a throwback to the bad old days of the Hotel St. George, Pineapple Street residents were “treated” to loud late night fisticuffs reportedly between dorm students early Saturday morning. One resident sent this dispatch:
There was a fight Friday night under the sidewalk shed on Pineapple Street just east of Hicks Street between students from the Pace University dorm on Henry in the old St George about 2am. This started with 2 people, grew to three, then more joined in. Actual argument changed into a fight with people running out into the street, girls and boys joined in together, about 7-8 participants. I called 911 several times, but it was about 20 minutes until a police car showed up.
I left my name and phone number with 911. Action stopped when I opened my window and screamed out “We called 911!” Participants mostly headed off toward Henry Street.
Back in the day, regular brawls and altercations were part of everyday life in and around the St. George. Now that rowdy students seem to be moving in regularly (Guder and Rex were dormers), is it time for the “dorm experiment” to end?
Fisticuffs? In BH? Say it ain’t so! Forgive me if I don’t take this with utmost gravity, but youth will occasionally…act immaturely. (As we know, adults would never do such a thing.)
Hope, however, that no one was hurt!
Time for the dorm experiment to end? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s hard to think of a better use for that odd collection of buildings. I think the kids overall have been a great benefit to the neighborhood. God bless ‘em.
I heard this and looked out to see the police arrive and the participants flee.
Hope they didn’t wake up the homeless guy who has been camped under the sidewalk shed for a week.
oh, and I don’t feel that they add anything to the “nabe” but an annoyance.
This happens on the Clark St. side as well, particularly once the weather gets better and the students start hanging outside to smoke and return from nights out drinking.
In general though, it is more just being loud and rowdy than fighting. Not that it is any better for the residence nearby (nor the students trying to sleep) but at least no one gets hurt. Police are usually slow to respond if it just them being loud. Seems no different with the fighting from what the OP stated.
EHS (the co. that runs these places) seems to care even less and the individuals who man the entries to the building are entirely unresponsive.
Back in what day, Homer? Could you be more specific?
Back in the day, I remember being chased out of Club Wildfire with some friends (we were all on roller skates and barely teens). It didnt result in fisticuffs, though, all of our fighting was done in Squibb Park.
“Back in the day, regular brawls and altercations were part of everyday life in and around the St. George. Now that rowdy students seem to be moving in regularly (Guder and Rex were dormers), is it time for the “dorm experiment” to end?”
That neighborhood should welcome more students. Students are generally well behaved and bring money into the neighborhood. Would you prefer to go back to the old days of “regular brawls and altercations”?
Jeez, Homer. Way to break the first rule of Fight Club.
While I don’t subscribe to the theory of “kids will be kids, so give them a pass”, I also don’t subscribe to the theory that since some acted like this we should “end the dorm experiment” You remember what it was like BEFORE the “experiment”? Crack whores hanging out in front of the St.George, being harassed by 1/2 naked people in the Clark Street Station. Drunks all over the place?
I’ll vote to keep the students there, thank you very much
From the NY Times, describing the 1970s and 80s:
“At the same time the many elderly tenants still in the older hotel section were the victims of muggings by drug addicts and derelicts who had access to what had become one of the city’s largest problem buildings, with a topless club called Wild Fyre on the ground floor.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/realestate/streetscapes-st-george-hotel-the-hard-life-of-a-brooklyn-heights-grande-dame.html?pagewanted=1
It’s amazing how many residents of this neighborhood think they live in Westchester. This is NEW YORK CITY! We should just airlift BH to upstate New York.
Amen, Adam. And I’m glad people on this thread seem to realize the alternative to students isn’t tea-drinking Brits setting up a chess club in there.
It’s amazing how many residents of this neighborhood think they live in a respect-free-zone! This is a NEIGHBORHOOD! We should just airlift folks who think that thinking about other people is a character flaw to wherever they can be as selfish as they wanna be together.
wait, students got into a fight? cops were called? kids scattered?
wow. whatever can happen next!
I have no issue with the kids. nice to have younger people around. I feel for them being here tho. What the hell is there to do? When I was in college you could smoke pot in your room without much fear and then go out and drink. Legally! Now they sit and smoke tobacco outside. I really do feel for them.
I think the least EHS could do is to put a coffee shop down in that basement so they had a place to go. Or an all-night cafeteria. Or a lounge. It seems a little pathetic
Old timers said the fight was the most excitement they’d seen in years, and promptly fell back asleep…
As a college drop out students annoy me in general. Especially the fashion crimes they commit daily by standing in sweatpants and hoodies in public smoking outdoors. They should arrest anyone who wears a hoodie in public unless they are at the gym.
Perhaps I am getting old, but to me, “kids” whose antics might be excused generally fall into the early to mid teens category. These “kids” are well into their twenties and should behave (and dress) like the adults they think they are.
I don’t think that the students’ financial contribution would be outweighed by revenue generated by tourists (if the new dorm was a hotel like it was originally supposed to be) or by new residents of luxury rentals or co-ops/condos (because everything is “luxury” these days).
The students’ money (as if it really wasn’t their parents’) seems to be spent largely on cigarettes.
I also don’t think it would devolve back to crack-whore-dom. When you spend all your money on crack (does anyone even do crack anymore?) it’s hard to make $4000/mo rent or to get a mortgage.
Oh waa waa! A street fight in Brooklyn? Who would have predicted? Any guns go off? Anyone get stabbed? Roll over and go back to sleep.
well said, willowtown. anyone over 18 is NOT a kid! they should airlift ALL of the newbies in bklyn back to the cul de sacs they came from. yupsters constantly complain about shit that doesn’t concern them. so people are having an argument–stfu and mind your business!
I heard there actually was talk of an airlift, but the restoration work on the roof precluded that.
I guess the bad-old days were during those years when I foolishly left the Heights in my 20′s to make a bid for immortality in Manhattan, although I did hear some Ripley’s-worth stories.
In general, the students seem to have made little impact on the neighborhood from what I can see, other than this fight and that one jerk that threw cinder-blocks off the roof. But, hey, I had idiot friends who did the same thing back in the 70′s, including one who threw a fire ax off the Hicks Street side that sliced through a car roof.
Anyone who uses the word yuppie is really a relic.
the where MUST be a yuppie.
landlord – i don’t know what a yuppie is apart from what people who need to punch a clock or wear their names on their shirts for work call someone who has a real job.
wtf are you talking about ‘the where’?
I HATE this dorm. Our apartment backs up to the back of the Clark St. side of the dorm and they have a tendency to open their windows and blast absolutely horrible dance and R&B music, especially on Saturday nights. Does anyone know who I can call (besides 311) to complain and/or to get this to stop when it’s happening? I mean, it’s like ridiculously loud.
Where, that actually makes sense to me.
The where rocks
Sometimes, I think The Where is smoking rocks, but sometime he comes through;)
How about better-trained cops on the Henry & Clark Street corner? The students occupying the St. George are showing all of we devoted Heights residents that the “beer belly” routine happens a lot earlier than middle age. Still, if they’ve got to show their butch sides (whichever gender they are), get ‘em deeper into Brooklyn. There are a lot of area of this fine borough where perspiration, temper tantrums, and threats make the man. Not ’round here! But then, they’re away from their paying parents for the first time in their lives. Maybe that’s the inspiration?
I think the kids in the St. George are completely disrespectful of the neighborhood… And their neighbors. Aside from the constant barrage of litter on the street (I picked up 17 paperairplanes over the past three days-all of which came from St. George windows) they are obnixiously loud up and Dow Henry Street nightly. You here them coming from blocks away… As if it were 12 noon rather than 4am. If that makes me an old fuddy fuddy: guilty as charged. If I wanted to live on frat house row, I certainly wouldn’t have moved to beautiful Brooklyn Heights.
I have often thought of asking Christne Gaety (EHS cheif resident) to include a piece about BH history into their welcome packets, thinking that if they appreciated the uniquness of the neighborhood, they might be less inclined to trash it…
Here’s the deal – these are undergrads from crappy schools. If Pace is the best of the lot you get the idea. Grad students would be a different story. However we’re talking about kids in the 13th grade.
The fact that anyone think these kids are well into their just shows how old you really are.
Sorry to say but Pace is a crappy college and these students are not there to study.
But apparently they’re here to par-tay! While none of us may like the idea
of our neighborhood being a satellite residence for a college across the river, some of the
complaints that have been lodged against the students make us sound like we’d prefer to live in Century Village. Beer bottle clutter? Paper airplane litter? Sheesh.
Nabeguy: CLEARLY their selfish antics are not interupting YOUR sleep.Consider yourself lucky, my friend.
I used to live on Clark Street across from the building and fully appreciate the nuisance factor, but you’ve got to admit, complaining about (and counting) paper airplanes has to be a put on, right?
To Randall: Am I really the only one concerned about all the trash that gets thrown down in the streets of Brooklyn Heights — sometimes a mere foot from the cans?? Every time I walk my dog, I pick up the trash (killing two birds, as it were…). When you pay attention, you notice things: someone who always makes the effort to deposit their dogs duty in a baggies, but then throws it on the ground… someone leaves an empty pack of Newports by the CVS on henry street every night… somebody elase, with a very large dog NEVER picks up after it… the Indian from the newstand in the St. George put out a bag filled with thousands of torn lottery tickets yesterday, which quickly got run over by a truck and it took my a full twenty minutes to pick them all up… Pickin up trash is just my thing. Perhaps it is because ot os a problem I can actually DO somthing about. My comment about the number of paper airplanes was a comment on their disrespect for the neighborhood, nothing more. The number is irrelevant. I think it is a larger societal issue. The social contract is just BROKEN. But the point of my comment was this: When that dorm fills up with students, our quality of life takes a nosedive. Simple as that.