Open Thread Wednesday 3/11/09

By on March 11, 2009 12:30 am in Brooklyn Heights
Flickr photo by dipdwdog

Flickr photo by dipdwdog

Here’s your chance to let loose about this week’s headlines or anything else that’s on your mind. Comment away!

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  • Andrew Porter

    Since they renovated the Clark Street subway station, the lights point downward, so the beautiful mosaics are in permanent semi-darkness. Really dumb. Also, the long fluorescent lights are covered with steel dust, cutting down the amount of light in the station by perhaps half. They’re never cleaned, either.

    And has anyone noticed that the police booth at the Manhattan end of the station is usually not occupied? I guess the NYPD has decided there’s no terrorist threat to the tunnel under the East River.

  • CJP

    What many people in the neighborhood may not remember is that there was a horrible fire there back in December, 1990 that caused two deaths and 180 injuries. Here’s the link to the official report on what happened.

    http://www.nyccouncil.info/pdf_files/reports/clarkst.pdf

    Bottom line is that we’re all safer now as a result of safety improvements. Just wondering why there was never a plaque at the station remembering those who perished that day?

  • alex

    Just curious if anyone’s on the market for a new apartment in BH, and what you’ve found. I’m a renter contemplating turning owner. I’ve just begun looking around. Seems like prices have dropped a bit but not a ton. Have others found good options?

  • nabeguy

    To the person with the small dog who insists on letting it crap anywhere it pleases on the south side of Middagh St, between Hicks and Henry, you are in violation of the law and common decency. The residents of the Assumption Rectory may be forgiving, but you better pray that I don’t catch you doing this.

  • jay
  • Homer Fink

    we reported that story last week.. more to come… stand by..

  • Anonymous

    Any Girl Scouts selling cookies in the neighborhood? I’m jonesin’ for some Thin Mints!

  • bornhere

    I tend to be an R-train bunny, and it’s nice to be reminded just how beautiful the tile/mosaic work in some subway stations is. I stare at the walls at Court Street (R) and Union Square almost every day and wonder how much it would cost the MTA to run a clean-up train, even a few times a year, just to get the crud off the walls…. (And if they don’t leave at least some of the old wall work at Cortlandt Street, it will be yet another loss.)

  • John

    Nabeguy I hope you do catch the person who is letting their dog do his or her thing on your property. than pick it up and shove it in their face!

  • AEB

    Re subway clean-up in general, I’m daily in the 57th St. West-Side station, which has been under renovation for–oh, it seems like a decade, but it’s actually about two years.

    The remarkable thing is how little seems to have been accomplished. Not only because it’s hard to keep things (looking) new when customers are continually using the facilities, so to speak, but because of the apparent bootlessness of the entire effort.

    For example, new flooring was installed about a year ago. Remarkably, it’s relatively light colored. Almost instantly, it was pock-marked with gum and other dark unmovable ickiness so that it instantly looked as awful as the flooring it replaced.

    “Temporary” plywood dividers create narrow corridors through which rush-hour traffic barely flows…and etc.

    The point of my bitching (besides that its fun to bitch) is that the whole effort doesn’t seem to have been planned. Or planned by anyone with any sense of…anything.

  • Ethan

    Can anyone recommend a good and cheap dry cleaner in the area? I’ve tried a few on Montague but I can’t tell if they’re expensive for the area or not….

  • jiker

    i wish there was more decay at the clark street subway station.

  • Mike

    When the president signs a stimulus bill including almost $8 bn of earmarks (just not called earmarks) and says “this marks an end to the old way of doing business,” doesn’t that sound a lot like “I swear, I will start my diet tomorrow, but first let me eat this entire tub of ice cream so it is not around the house tempting me”?

    I am glad that we were so gung ho for someone who has the foresight to put off those hard decisions.

    I am also glad that our elected Democratic Majority shot down McCain’s efforts to have these “pet projects” (new word for earmarks) removed, not once, but twice. Think about that the next time you are running down the “Democrat” line blindly ticking every box at the next election.

  • Chester

    Troll.

  • heightsdiho

    Ethan – Plaza Cleaners @ 64 Henry!

  • AEB

    So, Mike, are you hoping, like Mr. Limbaugh, that Obama will fail?

    That would show the Democrats, right?

  • nabeguy

    I’m sure in Mike’s mind, he’s already failed. I admit that I’m disappointed by Obama, not so much for allowing the earmarks, which are business as usual in D.C., but for thinking that he could actually do something about them once he was president. McCain, for all his posturing, would have been in exactly the same position…allow the earmarks or freeze the legislation indefinitely while the partisan bickering cranks up. Remember how well that played out for Gingrich and the GOP when they tried to shut down government?

  • Mike

    Not hoping that he will fail at all, thank you. I am merely pointing out that like basically every other politician, he says what is needed to get elected and then does something totally different when he arrives in Washington.

    Thanks Chester, but if I was a troll I would live under a bridge, which I don’t. I will guess that by your lack of a coherent response and name calling that you have no view on any issues, but rather are just willing follow what is sold to you by the media.

  • Mike

    Nabeguy, Obama showed that he does not have a problem using signing statements (which we all know that Bush considerably abused). Couldn’t he have just added another signing statement to put an end to the earmarks in the bill without having to go back to the legislature?

  • DAB

    Mike, signing statements are not inherently problematic, except where Bush used them to be a judge-jury and executioner with respect to provisions he felt violated executive privilege, based on absurd exec. privilege claims. Obama issued his ownorder saying that Bush’s signing statements are not to be relied on by executive agencies in interpreting the law without consulting the AG. In otherwords, not worth the paper they were printed on.

    As for earmarks, they both account for less than 2% of appropriations and do not increase the size of federal expenditures. All they do is specify how money already appropriated should be spent. There can be abuse, yes, but most of the ones McCain likes to talk about have legitimate purposes. (There really is a major threat to Utah’s agriculture from Mormon crickets, for instance.)

    Also, Obama did not write the recent omnibus bill and it’s not even remotely reasonable to suggest he can dicate to every member of congress what they write into bills. Besides, Nancy Pelosi’s been great at pushing Obama to look more closely into Bush’s war crimes and be more aggressive in taking over, instead of propping up, failing banks.

    And, for the record, Obama never promised to end earmarks; he promised greater transparency. And for this, he gets blamed by people who should know better. And with the recession, consumers are doing a lot less wasteful spending, so someone has to pick up the slack! It’s in Keynes.

  • nabeguy

    Live under a bridge=Trolls
    Future Dock Street Residents = ?

  • http://mermaidsonparade.blogspot.com melanie hope greenberg

    The tiles in the Clark St station and other subway mosaics are works of art. I want to sparkle them up with scrub brushes and grout cleaners.