Brooklyn Heights Blog

The folks at Gotham Sidewalks will host their inaugural Brooklyn Baseball bike tour Sunday (11/8) at 11am:

Most baseball fans know about the great Brooklyn Dodger teams of the 1950s…Jackie Robinson’s signing, the magic of Ebbets Field, or the meteoric rise of Brooklyn’s own Sandy Koufax. But did you know that baseball’s first superstar was a Brooklynite? And that the “Trolley Dodgers” began playing in Park Slope? This bike tour takes you from the roots of Civil War era “base ball” to the exodus of the Dodgers in 1957… all while rolling along one of the finest circuits of urban bike paths in the country. The route is about 10-miles long, includes some uphill biking, and takes about 3 hours.

Meet in Park Slope, Brooklyn in front of the Brooklyn Bicycles shop (some bike rentals available at a special daily rate of $25) at the corner of 9th St. & 6th Ave. Trains: F/G to 7th Ave.; or R/M to 4th Ave.

Former BHA president and retired advertising kingpin Neil Calet lets loose on the city’s plan to allow more tourist helicopters to operate out of the downtown Manhattan heliport, directly across the East River from Brooklyn Heights.  The NY Post speculates that could mean an additional 75 tourist flights above Brooklyn Heights per day.

Chopper noise is so bad now, Calet tells the paper that “[w]e can no longer sit on our balcony because even nose-to-nose conversation is impossible.”

The Brooklyn Heights Association has publicly stated that it wants an outright ban on the helicopter flights.

Bring on more tourists! Bring on more lookey looooos!  Thanks to a piece on the NY Times website, we’re sure our streets will be more crowded with day trippers - a great thing for our local businesses!  Siggy’s, River Cafe and Cranberry’s among others get shout outs in the article.

The New York Times has produced an informative and picturesque video, narrated by Corey Kilgannon, about Governors Island, now accessable by ferry from Fulton Landing. You can read about Homer and Mrs. Fink’s visit to the Island here.

According to the Mayor’s Office, the NYC Waterfalls brought $69 million in revenue to the city—greater than the initial estimate of $55 million—and 1.4 million people came to see them.  So they say.

“People didn’t buy tickets or pass through a turnstile to experience the Waterfalls, but this exhibition brought people to areas of the City they might not otherwise ever have visited,” said the Mayor, whose statistics also indicated that 23% of the viewers, including 44,500 New Yorkers, saw the Waterfalls on what was their first trip to the Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts.

The numbers are from Audience Research & Analysis, who conducted visitor surveys at seven vantage points, as well as from figures reported by ferry boat operators.  Also accounted for were the hundreds of thousands who saw the Waterfalls as part of their daily routines.

On the cyberspace end of things, 512,000 people visited the nycwaterfalls.org website; more than 6,000 photos were posted on flickr.com, 1,200 posts were made by individual and professional bloggers, and more than 200 YouTube videos of the installations were posted.

Every Sunday for the month of July, between 10am and 5pm, the Montague BID will transform Montague Street into a “pedestrian piazza” — which they stress will NOT be a street fair. Between Clinton Street and Montague Terrace, tables and chairs will be set up in the middle of the street, and the local merchants — such as Korres, Starbucks, Design Within Reach, and I kid you not, Key Food — will peddle their wares and give away swag. La Traviata and Caffe Buon Gusto will have expanded seating areas, and Hair Profiles will offer “al fresco” haircuts!

What about traffic? Read more »

The Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy has issued this statement in regard to last week’s court ruling allowing the construction of Brooklyn Bridge Park to continue: Read more »

The New York Times has a piece today on the Floating Pool Lady:

New York Times: Coney Island on the Mind: A faux beach opened two summers ago in Long Island City, Queens, accessible by water taxi. If I’m going to take a taxi, I might as well go to the airport. So off I go, to the newest hybrid, the Floating Pool Lady, a large swimming pool on a barge in the East River, and a “beach” made of genuine sand, rimmed by burlap and plunked in a concrete lot. The beach, which opened on July 4 near the foot of Joralemon Street, just off Brooklyn Heights, looks like an egg yolk sizzling in the sun.

A second egg yolk a small distance away holds soccer nets and room for beach volleyball. If, from my towel, I look only at my polished toenails covered by sand and only five degrees to my right, where an Asian couple on beach chairs is persuading their 7-year-old daughter to wear sunscreen, or five degrees to my left, where two young women in black bikinis are lying belly down on colorful towels, reading fashion magazines, I do believe that I am at a beach.

It was mentioned in the comments of a previous post, and I can personally confirm it: A Ricky's "beauty shop" will be taking over the space formerly occupied by Tapestry on Montague. Yes, no longer will you have to trek all the way to Manhattan for some glitter and your favorite flavored lube. They have been looking for "high-profile, high trafficked" locations in NYC (and South Beach!) for a while now, and I guess they are large enough to afford the ridiculously high rent.

For those unfamiliar with the chain, Ricky's describes itself as an "edgy, ultra-hip 'beauty shop' specializing in unique fashion accessories, cosmetics, and beauty supplies", but everyone knows all the real fun is in the back room behind the beads. What do you think, will this make Montague fabulous?

According to an article in the New York Post, the Bloomberg administration will be providing $15 million "as part of an overhaul that will include modernized bus shelters, benches and other contemporary street furniture, with more lighting and trees." 

Other noted improvements include $3-4M set aside to create 10,000 square ft of green space at the former Albee Square mall, as well as extending a continuous planted median from the Brooklyn Bridge to Atlantic Avenue.

Fulton Mall is definitely in need of being updated, but will new bus shelters and more trees create a better, more attractive shopping environment?