Brooklyn Heights Blog

Neil Freeman is an urban planner, artist, and Brooklyn resident. His work appears on his website, fake is the new real. Thanks to Urban Omnibus, we’ve been alerted to a project of Freeman’s that should be of interest to all Brooklynites, including Heights residents. This is his “Brooklyn Typology. ” In Freeman’s words:

Brookyn Typology is an investigation of borough’s population and urban form. It consists of 2100 photographs taken in a sample of blockgroups in Brooklyn, plus detailed Census, historical, and typological data about the residential and housing in area. Together, the interlinked photographs and
data form a portrait of the urban fabric of Brooklyn.

Two of the “blockgroups” included in “Brooklyn Typology” are in the Heights: tract 3.01, blockgroup 1, consisting of the area bounded by Pineapple Street on the north, Hicks Street on the east, Pierrepont Street on the south, and Willow Street on the west; and tract 5, blockgroup 2 bounded by Pierrepont on the north, Clinton Street on the east, Joralemon Street on the south, and Henry Street on the west. Read more »

Brooklyn Heights own version of D.A. Pennebaker, Karl Junkersfeld is back with more of his unique kind of video vérité.   In this first clip he celebrates NYC Restaurant Week.

After the jump his epic three part tour of Fort Greene, a must-see for anyone who dreams to venture beyond the boundaries of Brooklyn Heights. Read more »

Former Magnetic Field mainstay Dick Swizzle will be hosting his Sudden Death Game Show Tuesday night (6/16) on the big stage at the Bell House [149 7th Street].

According to The Brooklyn Paper, They Might Be Giants will be playing a free show in Prospect Park on July 11. Read more at CHB.

Tres Belle petite medi-spa, relocated recently from 43 Clark St. (inside the Eastern Athletic club)  to new digs in Boerum Hill at 105 Bond Street and offers a range of therapeutic treatments including laser hair removal, microdermabrasion, facials and more.   Read more at CHB.

According to today’s Brooklyn Paper:

With $261 million of federal transportation funding from the so-called “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” headed to New York City, Hizzoner said on Monday that he would use the cash to complete major shovel-ready projects including long-planned renovations of the Brooklyn Bridge — while redeploying the city money that had been allotted for the jobs to other infrastructure projects.

Other Brooklyn projects that the Mayor said will benefit include the improvement of the Flatbush Avenue streetscape between Tillary Street and Hanson Place, and reconstruction of the Coney Island Boardwalk.

Melanie Hope Greenberg — 32-year Brooklyn Heights resident and a longtime author/illustrator of children’s books — is on tour, and if her fans at PS 58 are any indication, she’s a rock star.

Greenberg — who was named to The BHB 10 last year — gets inspiration for her books from the neighborhood around her, and for her latest book, “Mermaids on Parade,” focuses on the annual Mermaid Parade in Coney Island.

And so there she was, on Tuesday morning in the snow, reading her book to first and second graders at PS 58 in Carroll Gardens, who couldn’t stop squealing with delight whenever they saw pictures of the boardwalk or the Cyclone. Read more »

(Note: This article is meant to be read with a nice glass of chianti and maybe a calzone…a little Sinatra music wouldn’t hurt.)

Okay, I’m gonna try and avoid as many Goodfellas/Sopranos/Godfather references here as I can, but what is up with Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and “this thing of ours?”

As reported yesterday in the New York Daily News, Marty, his predecessor Howard Golden and Federal Judge Jack Weinstein, (the Kosher Nostra), gave a Carroll Gardens (Red Hook) restaurant owner (mobster), a pass for paying tribute to a made member of the Gambino Crime Family.

Joseph Chirico, owner of Marco Polo (or as we say in Brooklyn, Marco Polo’s) Italian Restaurant, was facing up to a year “away at school” for forking over $1,500 to the Family. However, the Kosher Nostra flipped for Chirico! Can the calamari be THAT good? Read more »

Cobble Hill Association President Jeff Strabone has foiled Two Trees’ attempt to disguise height-limit-busting cabana penthouses at 194 Atlantic Avenue as “stair bulkheads”.  Read more at Cobble Hill Blog.

Yesterday evening, despite heavy rain during the day and still threatening skies, 200 or so people gathered in Fort Greene Park to attend the rededication of the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, which honors the approximately 11,500 Revolutionary War combatants captured by the British who died aboard old warships anchored in Wallabout Bay (adjacent to the present Brooklyn Navy Yard site) and used to house prisoners of war.  Conditions aboard these ships were so horrendous that almost one third of those imprisoned did not survive.  The monument, a Doric column designed by the eminent architect Stanford White, was dedicated exactly 100 years before, also on a rainy day, in a ceremony at which then President-Elect William Howard Taft was the guest of honor. Read more »