New York City is the best place to live in the entire world…until it isn’t. Until lugging five bags of groceries seven blocks home from the supermarket turns into an Ironman-like competition, and until the thought of shlepping ten pounds of overdue laundry to the cleaners feels as insurmountable as Mt. Everest. Well, for those of you in the Brooklyn Heights vicinity, the latter just got a wee bit easier, thanks to SpotlessCity.com, a new service that lets people find every dry cleaner and laundromat in their area, and schedule pickups & deliveries from the cleaner of their choice directly through the site. Continue Reading →
About Julie Kanfer
Brooklyn Heights People: Dan Horan of Five Acre Farms
To be clear, Five Acre Farms is not a farm at all. There is no pastoral landscape where cows graze, no ever-present smell of manure percolating the air. There is no big red barn, no silo, no wooden sign on an oak tree announcing that Five Acre Farms is two miles down the road to the left. That’s because Dan Horan, the President and CEO of Five Acre Farms, lives on Montague Terrace, right here in Brooklyn Heights. Continue Reading →
Brooklyn Heights People: Dr. Dylan Kwait
In many ways, Brooklyn Heights resident Dylan Kwait is your typical psychotic person who decides to run a marathon: he’s young (33), active, and, as a radiology resident at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Medical Center, barely able squeeze running into his hectic schedule. But in one really big way, Kwait is a rarity among marathoners, having been diagnosed five years ago with type-1 diabetes, a condition he controls by giving himself daily insulin shots to make up for his body’s deficit. Continue Reading →
Brooklyn Heights People: Zak and Gillette Wing of Holler & Squall
Contrary to popular opinion, Atlantic Avenue west of Hicks Street is good for more than just a cheap brew at Montero’s, or a visit to the beautiful park at Pier Six. Turns out this oft-forgotten stretch of road is prime territory for obtaining a six-foot-long stuffed zebra from Tommy Hilfiger’s Connecticut estate.
“I told Zak that if he didn’t buy it, I wouldn’t love him anymore,” Gillette Wing said of the oversized animal her husband Zak eventually agreed to purchase, though she admitted, “It’s kind of a hard sell.” Continue Reading →
Volleyball for the People, or for Profit?
photo courtesy of McBrooklyn
The pristine sand volleyball courts at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6 offer one of the best views in town. As luck would have it, playing volleyball on them is also free. Enter Big City Volleyball and Metro Beach Sports, two city-wide volleyball leagues, and suddenly that privilege costs a pretty penny, even if league director David Walker doesn’t think so.
“It’s actually not too hefty when you consider Pier 25 in Manhattan is $1,350 a team,” he told me yesterday. At Pier 6, a team of four costs $750 for the season, and a team of six costs $950.
But the price is not for naught: participating teams play one pre-season game, followed by eight regular season games and playoffs, all organized by Big City Volleyball; also, and perhaps most important, there is a free t-shirt involved. Continue Reading →
Brooklyn Heights Goes Wild with Julie Feinstein
Julie Feinstein
Julie Feinstein has lived in Brooklyn Heights for 20 years, she thinks, but it is only in the last 18 months or so that she’s been able to really enjoy whatever it is that comprises this neighborhood’s urban wildlife.
“This park has been fabulous,” she said, standing in Brooklyn Bridge Park’s grassy Pier One. She particularly enjoys the ponds, where she has seen various birds, insects, and the occasional muskrat. Last year, she watched as the first generation of dragonflies colonized one of the ponds.
Know Your Brooklyn Heights CSAs
In case you’re one of the four people left in brownstone Brooklyn who has not been sold on the wonders of participating in a CSA, allow me to explain why these three letters are being clumped together, and why they are suddenly, strikingly hip.
CSA stands for Community Shared Agriculture—meaning that a community (hi, Brooklyn Heights!) literally shares agriculture from a local farm. For a period that generally runs from June until November, farmers bring their produce—fruits, vegetables, flowers, herbs, and, in some cases, cheese and meat—once a week to a site in the neighborhood for pickup. Members pay—up front—for full or half shares that vary in price, gather their package on the designated day, and are usually required to volunteer a few hours during the season at the distribution location. Continue Reading →
Brooklyn Heights People: Theater 2020′s Judith Jarosz and David Fuller
If Judith Jarosz’s infectious energy and David Fuller’s quiet confidence are any indication of what Theatre 2020: Visions for a New Millennium will be like, then expect their new theater endeavor to be serious, and seriously entertaining.
“We look at everything like an opportunity,” Jarosz, whose personality is as fiery as her mane of red hair, said recently over a cup of coffee at Heights Café. “That’s the kind of people we are.” Continue Reading →
Brooklyn Heights People: Valerie Frankel
Valerie Frankel—author, blogger, journalist—has lived in Brooklyn Heights since 1992, and in that time has watched the neighborhood change dramatically. Which can be both a blessing and a curse.
“Where Heights Café is now, there used to be this really old-fashioned, greasy diner, where the underside of the table had an inch worth of gum,” she recalled over the phone a few days ago, waxing nostalgic about Montague Street. “The place you go for French fries with brown gravy at midnight.” Continue Reading →
Brooklyn Fashion Unzipped by Shop it To Me: What is Brooklyn Heights Wearing?
Among many traits, like being hipper than everybody else at all times, Brooklyn is known for its progressiveness, with bars, restaurants, and clothing brands latching on to the borough’s certain coolness as a way to define their style. But Shop It To Me, the website that thinks of itself as an online personal shopper, recently sought to define Brooklyn’s style in a more literal way, using a system they have already implemented in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Manhattan and San Francisco.
“Brooklyn is in our top ten cities of where our members reside,” Tamra Feldman, Shop It To Me’s director of marketing, told me. “We thought coming off fashion week and all the excitement about fashion in New York, it would be fun to do a Brooklyn profile.” Continue Reading →
Brooklyn Tech: Big Spaceship’s Joshua Hirsch
It’s strange to think of a company founded in the year 2000 as a member of an “old guard,” but by DUMBO (aka the New York Digital District) standards, that’s exactly what Big Spaceship, a digital creative agency, is.
“It was all unfinished, raw space,” Joshua Hirsch, Big Spaceship’s Minister of Technology, said of their first home at 70 Washington Street, where a decrepit bathroom down the hall once showed up on a website they were creating for the horror movie “Identity.”
Continue Reading →
A Lunar Eclipse Miracle, Brooklyn Heights Style
When I heard there would be a lunar eclipse on the winter solstice for the first time in 456 years, and that the skies over New York City would be crystal clear that night, I promptly talked my husband into joining me on the roof of our Pierrepont Street low-rise building at 2:41 a.m. to behold this uncommon sight. Continue Reading →
What’s Up with Montague Street Bagels?
If you’ve visited Montague Street Bagels during peak hours on a Saturday or Sunday morning, then you’ve experienced the slow-moving line, the rapid-fire ordering process, and, finally, the tenuous five-to-ten-minute period during which you wonder whether the bagel you desire will actually be the one you receive. Also, you’ve become sort of intrigued by the honor system at the register. (“What kind of cream cheese did you order?” “Um, is plain the cheapest?”) Continue Reading →
Montague Terrace Horror! Beloved Dawn Redwood Downed in Brooklyn Heights
Word on the street (in this case, Montague Terrace) is that one of the four Dawn Redwood trees in Brooklyn Heights was “removed” from the backyard of 2 Montague Terrace. BHB tipster Andrew Porter tell us it was cut down at the order of the co-op board, but we’re still investigating this claim. BHA Executive Director Judy Stanton has received inquiries from concerned Heights residents, and has “no idea” what led to the tree’s eradication. She’s on the case as well, but assured us that the Metasequoia Glyptostroboides, as Dawn Redwoods are officially known, in the front garden of 151 Willow Street is here to stay. Two others purportedly hold court on Pierrepont Street: one in the Monroe Place garden of the First Unitarian Church, the other in the Columbia Heights garden at 1 Pierrepont Street.
Is it possible, as this 2004 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article hints, that the tree came down because it obscured otherwise stellar views of the Manhattan skyline? Continue Reading →
Shake Shack Coming to Brooklyn?
A BHB reader sent in a tip today that Shake Shack, the famed New York City purveyor of hamburgers and other tasty vittles, would soon arrive at the Fulton Mall. The NY Post wrote today that it’s a done deal and so did the Daily News. But before your mouth waters with thoughts frozen custard and salty french fries, we did a little investigating.
But alas, an e-mail from their spokesperson Theresa Mullen was decidedly ambiguous:
We feel extremely fortunate for the great interest in Shake Shack. As you may be aware, we have openly expressed our intention to bring Shake Shack to compelling sites in great neighborhoods. As such, rumors often circulate about potential openings. We have decided not to comment on any of these rumors until we have something concrete to share. At this time we are focusing our efforts on the operations of our existing Shacks, as well as three new Shacks slated to open in 2011: Washington, DC, Battery Park City and Westport, CT.
What do you think? Should Shake Shack make the trip over the bridge to Brooklyn?
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Brooklyn Bugle
- Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Discovery of Slowness” by Sten Nadolny
- Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” by Nathan Englander
- #BackintheDay: The Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique
- March Forth: CFAF Offers Heights “Family Walking Tour”
- Missed Connections at NY Transit Museum on Valentine’s Day
- Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Stranger’s Child” by Alan Hollinghurst
- Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larson
- Transit Museum Introduces New Discussion Series “Problem Solvers” with guest Sarah Kaufman
- Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Thorn and the Blossom” by Theodora Goss
- Transit Museum Plans Day for Special Needs Kids January 22
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Open Thread Wednesday, February 8, 2012
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UPDATE: Shiba Inu “Lili” Is Home!
- P.S. 8 Middle School Approved
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The Brooklyn Bugle’s Knishes Preview at Brooklyn Heights Cinema a Success
- Lost Dog: Lili, a Shiba Inu
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Montague Street, Meet Your New Starbucks
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Le Pain Quotidien Taking Shape
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I Want Candy? 20 Henry Condos At Last Hit The Market
- Squadron Eyeing Run for Borough Prexy?
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Damascus Bakery getting some competition
- Brooklyn Heights Woman Latest Identified 9/11 Victim
- Squadron Eyeing Run for Borough Prexy?
- Here’s Looking At You, Brooklyn
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The Brooklyn Bugle’s Knishes Preview at Brooklyn Heights Cinema a Success
- Pet Adoption Event Sunday
- P.S. 8 Middle School Approved
- Subway Service Alerts
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UPDATE: Shiba Inu “Lili” Is Home!
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TONIGHT! Preview of Heather Quinlan’s “If These Kniches Could Talk”
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I Want Candy? 20 Henry Condos At Last Hit The Market
Nabe Chatter