Open Thread Wednesday

Is there anything to be done about abusive panhandlers? There is an obese young man who solicits money in the neighborhood on a daily basis – often on the bench across Atlantic from Trader Joe’s, but also sometimes on Montague and other times in Cobble Hill.

Every time I pass him without my husband, he says really disgusting sexual things (not the “hey baby” type of street harassment, but truly gross, personalized comments). I am always with my son, who is fortunately still too young to understand, but won’t be for much longer.

This has happened to me so often that there must be a ton of women in the neighborhood with the same experience. I am pretty sick of hearing this garbage from him, and would to do something – report him? ask a cop to speak with him? – but have no idea what, if anything, might actually make a difference.

Any ideas?

I’m really sorry you have to deal with this. Call 911 discreetly from around the corner and wait for them so he doesn’t leave. Sexually harassing women on the street should not be acceptable. Even if they do nothing, they’ll take personal note and it’ll be on record of some sort. If people continue drawing attention to the issue, they’ll eventually have to do something.

Send someone with a club to beat some respect into him.

Does anybody know what happened to the historic marker for the Fort Stirling parklet? It has vanished…

Also, does anybody know why we now have the cheapy green globe subway indicator & not the old lantern type that had been at Court St. station next to the church?

Same thing happened while I walked by. Not sure if it was towards me or the women walking next to me but he said really inappropriate things in crappy Spanish. A man actually called him out on it a few weeks ago and the young man started cursing at him.

Montague Street doesn’t end at the Promenade, there is a small “U” section at Furman.

A friend of mine mentioned the exact same thing to me a week or two ago.

Maybe you’ll change your tune when they turn Montague or Remsen or Pierrepont into the same fiasco that Joralemon has become.

I live on Montague, always have.
Fact is, the park isn’t going away and routing park traffic around the Heights is a pipe dream, it’s never gonna happen. Better to route the bulk of the park goers down the street that can handle it best. The park has changed the neighborhood forevermore, get over it and move on.

I am not letting anyone “roll over” me. I simply see, the reality of the physical universe doesn’t support your hypothesis.

Left to you we’d still be British subjects and the BQE would be running up Hicks Street!

First we lost the venerable Brooklyn Museum, which trundled its priceless artwork into storage or gave it away to other museums, under the dubious mandate of appealing to “the community.” You’ll find the costume collection safe at the Met. And in the place of artwork, we have cavernous spaces filled with second-rate daubs or nothing at all. A couple of years ago, one of the Rockefeller rooms contained glass dildoes in a vase; a dining room from a Southern plantation was festooned with plastic guano, a contemporary artist’s take on priceless furnishings. So much for craftsmanship.

Then we lost Prospect Park, in summer filled with kerosene fumes from hundreds of barbecues and the booming of as many radios. It might be “the people’s park,” but the people need to take care of its natural beauty, or they’ll find that they’ve returned it to its 1980s state of decay. At one time, the police tried to enforce the “no fires” signs. I guess they gave up. But think of this: For years the park had to have signs tacked to tree trunks saying “Please do not dump hot coals here.” Really? You have to tell people that? I haven’t seen them lately, but then I rarely walk in the park in mid-summer.

Why can’t people take home their garbage in the same containers they brought into Prospect Park for their picnics?

Now it appears we are losing Brooklyn Heights, for many of us a quiet place to amble and take in a sunset and then return to our own neighborhoods. Joralemon Street was a favorite stroll. But one evening after seeing about 15-20 bicycles racing up from the new park, their riders screaming through and darting in front of cars (that had the right of way) and jamming traffic for blocks, I fear that the old peace will be difficult to maintain.

Loutishness is the new normal. Conversing quietly while walking is a lost art. Perhaps tossing rocks through 100-year-old glass doors is a way of saying, “I am here.”

Museums, parks, and streets lined with irreplaceable architecture are places we go to be lifted outside of ourselves, and to aspire to better things, not where we go to reinforce our smallness. At least, that was true of my grandparents, and their generation, who arrived here penniless before World War I and reared their children to work hard in school and lead responsible, if entirely ordinary, lives.

It sounds like code, perhaps, but truly it is not. To me, color means very little; behavior is what counts.

If I trusted white America, I’d have moved out of Brooklyn, where I was born and have lived for over 60 years, long ago. But I have a feeling that, for what I could afford, living among white trash, with their guns and whathaveyou, might be even worse than living with what I see in Brooklyn.

It’s hard to fix some things. Fixing eighteen-year olds whose begetters have never taught them anything much is next to impossible.

No matter what color they are.

Besides, history does regress, maybe not entirely, but things do on occasion get worse. From the land of Beethoven and Brahms came National Socialism and poison gas; after George Washington, Jefferson Davis; from America comes Donald Trump; after Thurgood Marshall, Justice Thomas. A widening gyre?

Whenever some people run short of facts the “R” word instantly comes out.

Listen to all of you, endless limp debates. If we had one real man of action we’d have a quick end of this nonesense.

And all we get from you is a bunch of nimby complaining and no realistic solutions.