Open Thread Wednesday

I walked by Heights Kids yesterday and noticed a “SALE – Entire Store” sign. Is that goodbye? I love the store, the service, the selection and have been shopping there since my first child was born, some 14 years ago. I am sad to see them go.

Must have been some bad energy vortex. My GF reported a mother abusing her child to the cops on that corner, yesterday.

That corner is a perfect storm of a few factors. First, there’s the R station so there’s a lot of pedestrians flowing through. Second, a lot of those pedestrians are going to the Social Security Administration, the Courts, or their bank, so they are probably lacking in bonhomie. Third, IMHO the intersection is too narrow and too busy, so everyone is in a bad mood when they have to cross this crowded intersection.

Oh no! That stinks.

Agreed, I’ll add, people competing for cabs, which stop to pick them up and block the intersection… pissing off drivers as well.

The City is replacing all the streetlights and traffic signals to LED lamps as they use much less energy. I don’t think punching the DOT commissioner in the mouth would get you very far, except maybe a few years upstate. Try calling into 311, if they get enough complaints about the lights on residential streets, they might find a way to reduce the lamps output or change their color temperature.

It’s oftentimes all about the individual and their self-entitlement and not the greater good.

Having worked for an LED manufacturer for some time, there are 3 chief reasons municipalities switch to LED streetlights:
1) consumes less energy (as @disqus_tL6rENJhvu:disqus noted)
2) longer lifespan (meaning costly crews don’t need to come out to replace as regularly)
3) brighter (brighter = safer; fewer lights needed per block — for new lamppost installations)

But, yes, so bright!!

Despite promises of “bishop’s crook” versions, these were just installed on Henry at Joralemon. The light cast is depressing, to say the least, but I can now read in the evening by their “glow” and save a fortune with Con Ed….

I was trying to figure out what was so insulting about calling a policy “NIMBY”. If you look at the neighborhood all these years and how it has stayed so beautiful and such a great place to live, isn’t that a direct result of “NIMBYism”????? If we didn’t have NIMBYism in BK Heights, wouldn’t our neighborhood have pink townhouses, massive skyscrapers, a freeway through the middle of it, etc….

I wonder if it’s the same musician that used to play in Cadman Park. Also miss the bagpiper.. now it’s all loud, bad house music and drum circles.

Could you link to the Gothamist article please?

Whoa, Jeff. Let’s calm down. This is NOT who we are as a community:

In a particularly tense moment during Tuesday’s meeting, notorious gadfly and Heights resident Jeffrey Smith stood up to speak. “Now these mutts are running all over the Heights,” he said. “We’ve got a Heights-wide emergency.”

“I’m getting in my goddamn car, I’m going Upstate, I’m going to get a couple cases of shotguns and hand them out,” he told us after the meeting. “Understand?”

Whether NIMBYism is “insulting” to you is kind of up to you and how you deal with criticism (for whatever it’s worth, Concerned, I think you deal very well with constructive criticism and relatively poorly with outright disagreement)…but as I understand it, here’s a brief rundown of the implications:

Positive: implies a pro-active attitude toward neighborhood improvement and a conscientious concern for the well-being of those in one’s immediate surroundings.

Negative: implies a disregard for the state of affairs outside of one’s neighborhood or close surroundings, either through blatant neglect or as an unintended consequence of protecting one’s own close area, which in turn implies a certain kind of privileged or entitled selfishness; the notion that the only thing that matters is what affects you and you alone.

I think attitudes that align with NIMBYism are the natural result of coming to live in a nice place, especially one surrounded by places that are comparatively not as nice. Whether this is a justification is perhaps a more subjective issue…

Heh. You know, we’ve gotten so many offers at this point that it’s hard to decide.