Brooklyn The Borough | The New York Observer

Brooklyn, The Borough: Landlord As a Second Language

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:12:18 -0500

A week ago, I received an email about a vacant industrial warehouse on 46th Street in Sunset Park that recently sold for $1,100,000. Each of the 4,900 square feet came to $225. I wondered why a bare bones property like this would cost so much, but somewhere out there a landlord was probably excited that it cost so little.

This is the landlord-tenant language divide. Tenants often...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Sartorial Swingers!

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:06:41 -0500

"WE ARE IN A RECESSION!" screamed the words from my in-box back on Nov. 16, and whether it was official yet or not, the wardrobes of Brooklyn's 20-somethings were feeling it.

The email was from my friend Rachel, inviting me to a clothing swap at her Boerum Hill apartment. After listing other monetary commitments, family holiday presents and the cost of living these days, she pondered, "When do we New York...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Lights, Camera, BK!

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 08:34:56 -0500

On the day before Thanksgiving, at the corner of Prospect Place and Washington Avenue, Harvey Keitel put back the driver's seat of a vintage ambulance and caught a little shut-eye. Looking like his role as the similarly vice-ridden cop in the 1992 film Bad Lieutenant, Mr. Keitel awaited set-up for his next scene as Lieutenant Gene Hunt on the ABC show Life On Mars.

Plenty of Brooklynites have humorous anecdotes...

Brooklyn, The Borough: The Great Shop Chop of '08

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:54:31 -0500

On Monday, the door to the new and expanded Beacon's Closet, a consignment shop now on the corner of Warren Street and Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, opened. Along with a burst of cold air came not a customer but a stink bomb.

"All I heard was a bang and then ahhhh," said Tiffany, a blonde, tweed-laden shopgirl, as she mimicked the reaction by covering her face with both hands. Though,...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Library (Not) Fine

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:04:58 -0500

"It's not like libraries are over-funded!" said Soledad O'Brien, master of ceremonies for the 12th annual fundraising gala for the Brooklyn Public Library on Thursday. "It's not like, ‘Trim the fat off those libraries!' Those are cuts that are going to be very much felt."

Ms. O'Brien was drinking a glass of water in the children's section of the central branch in Grand Army Plaza in advance of her hosting...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Brooklyn Holds Its Breath

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:39:02 -0500

Over the last weekend of the presidential election, the now ubiquitous Shepard Fairey-designed poster of a sacrosanct Barack Obama dotted the windows of shops and homes throughout Brooklyn. At the Gate, in Park Slope, the word "hope" below the senator's smiling countenance had been amended to Slope.

Brooklyn, like the rest of New York State, is bound to vote overwhelmingly for Senator Obama, but with the race tightening in...

Brooklyn, The Borough: ACORN in BK

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:26:22 -0400

Last Wednesday, on the evening of the final presidential debate of this cycle, held at Hofstra University, Senator John McCain alleged in the most cautious terms he could muster, that ACORN "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

Nearby, in the Uniondale section of Hempstead Iona Emsley cringed. For the last 19 years, Ms. Emsley has...

Brooklyn, The Borough: A One-Man Gentrification Slam

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:47:30 -0400

Danny Hoch knows where the money is.

"It's funny," Mr. Hoch said via phone from his home in Williamsburg. "There's a guy about a block away from me – an old school Puerto Rican cat – and there's a new ATM machine on Grand Street, so he's like, 'Yo man, I be seeing these kids, man, they go to the ATM machine and they forget and they just leave their...

Brooklyn, The Borough: The Quietest Places To Pass a Sunday

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:16:36 -0400

"Do you hear the crickets?," asked Ali Jafri, a broker for Prudential Douglas Elliman. We were standing on the ninth-floor balcony of a brand-new three-bedroom condominium for sale at 20 Bayard Street in Williamsburg. "That's something you won't get in Manhattan."

These days, Mr. Jafri might hear crickets more often than he'd like. It was the Sunday before the European markets began to tumble, during peak open house hours,...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Artists Assume Their Position Amid Crisis

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:19:49 -0400

When the Dow plummeted on Monday after Congress failed to pass a bailout for Wall Street's many woes, Brooklyn's creative class was already bracing itself. A downturn at the top of the food chain can't bode well for those closer to the bottom, like the plethora of visual and performing artists that reside here.

"It's just a drag," said Karen Brooks Hopkins, the president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, whose...

Assuming A Lot About Brokers

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:50:40 -0400

"If anything the media has downplayed the effect this crash will have on RE, in other words TS, methinks you're a broker. God, RE people are the biggest, most vile liars in NYC, do you really think anyone believes the pro RE quotes that we read in the Times or the Observer and especially NY Rag? When I have to interview a broker I just assume 90% of what he/she is telling me is...

Prescription for the Wall Street Crisis

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:18:54 -0400

"Why do people think all this financial sector woe is going to have that big an impact? Other people have money, not just people on Wall Street. Prices in Manhattan probably won't come down, that will send buyers to Brooklyn. The financial sector only accounts for about fifteen to twenty percent of the real estate market in Manhattan, and thats including the bonuses. Brooklyn will probably have declines and that will make it more...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Wall Street Views From Another Bank

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:30:03 -0400

As a chillier wind sliced through Brooklyn's popular corridors last Saturday night, it was hard to imagine by the looks of things that anything was wrong with the economy. On North Sixth Street in Williamsburg, young women with Louis Vuitton bags teetered in Manolo Blahniks on the arms of their white-collared dates. Booze coursed through veins as the music at Sea shook passersby with stentorian beats.

But the next...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Our Town

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:36:47 -0400

"First off, there's no question--in my humble opinion--that the literary center of New York has moved to Brooklyn," said our oh-so-humble Borough President Marty Markowitz celebrating the Brooklyn Book Festival in the ornate lobby of Borough Hall this past Sunday. "The authors live here, the illustrators live here, and the energy--there's that energy!--among residents of Brooklyn.

"There's no question that those in their twenties and early thirties--I think, just...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Can the Q Be the Next L?

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:28:15 -0400

I love the Q train. O.K., I love the B, too, but it's the Q that's stolen my heart.

When I moved back to Brooklyn in January, the biggest factor in finding an apartment was its proximity to this train line, and especially to the 7th Avenue station (a nice change of pace after riding the G train for three years). It's just far enough into Brooklyn that I am in...

Luxury Rental Buildings: the New Gated Communities

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:54:27 -0400

"A great follow-up to this would be about how the luxury rental buildings in the city are becoming very close to gated communities, they just happen to go up instead of out (like they do in the 'burbs)." ["Brooklyn, The Borough: Brooklyn's...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Brooklyn's Cul-de-Sac

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:58:20 -0400

One of my favorite things about the suburbs are the supermarkets. I love the sprawling aisles, the enormous selection, the friendly cashier and, of course, the car that brings all those heavy, super-sized containers home.

Though the suburban life is plentiful in many ways, space is a major one, it is urban dwelling that I and many others have chosen. Notably, in Park Slope. Last week, I was invited for beers...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Tour Bus of The Traveling Skintight Pants

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:35:02 -0400

"That's Brooklyn Heights over there," said the 47-year-old driver of a Brooklyn-bound double-decker Gray Line tour bus, pointing across the East River. "Wherever there's water, there's money, and I don't mean a puddle on the street."

I had just boarded the at the South Street Seaport, paid my $41 fare, and taken my seat at the front of the top level, prepared to spend two hours Monday viewing my borough through...

A Question on Lots of People's Minds

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:12:07 -0400

"What is so special about Brooklyn?? That's all we ever read about in this rag. Are you telling me the snotty (white) infants in Park Slope will be getting a better slice of life than the (brown/white/asian) kids in Astoria and Jackson Heights??" ["Brooklyn, The Borough: Growing Up New...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Growing Up New York

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:52:13 -0400

"I just thought the whole thing was fabulous – what a great childhood you had!," responded my mom when I asked her why in the world she ever decided to raise her children in Manhattan. In the 1980s. On Eighth Avenue and 53rd Street. "You got to see a side of the world other kids don't."

I can't argue with that, nor am I disappointed with my parents' decision.

They...

Brooklyn, The Borough: The New Williamsburg!

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:19:53 -0400

"Atlantic City is the new Williamsburg," former Siberia bar owner and sometimes Fox contributor Tracy Westmoreland told me as the wind whipped through his long goatee at a rest stop somewhere in New Jersey.

He might not be wrong.

While Williamsburg has spent the last decade getting a face lift, Atlantic City did the same, with developers putting up towers on the waterfront. While Brooklyn got...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Space Race

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:57:16 -0400

"The lifestyle is so different in Texas," my friend Rhett said to me recently, citing cart space concerns at his local supermarket in South Slope. "Here it's like you bump into each other and nobody acknowledges it."

It got me thinking about what a different, more spacious lifestyle would be like. Do we really need more space?

Last weekend, I visited my friend Dave's childhood home...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Ikea's Benevolent Despotism

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:13:54 -0400

On a recent warm summer evening, two young professional couples sat idly chatting before a performance of Hamlet at Central Park's Delacorte Theater.

"Have you been to the new Ikea in Red Hook?" one of the young men asked his companions, receiving a chorus of "no, not yet!" in response.

On came a list of household items wanted, but not necessarily needed. "I was a bit...

Brooklyn, The Borough: In Defense of Parenthood

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:15:56 -0400

There he was standing in front of me giggling, arms outstretched, and totally naked. He was bald and wrinkled, like the dancing old man from those Six Flags commercials, but he was just over a foot tall and, from his mostly toothless smile, drooled a bit. His mom scooped him up and got him dressed.

I recently joined a south Brooklyn YMCA and this locker room scene isn't...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Mom Drops By Campus

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:36:29 -0400

"Have you been to Dumbo yet?" my mother asked me over the phone last week.

I certainly had, and was eager to show her around, so we made plans to spend Sunday afternoon perusing the sights down underneath the Manhattan Bridge overpass and in nearby Fort Greene. "I guess I have to get to know Brooklyn," she sighed, her surrender flag finally raised.

Mom is new to Brooklyn. She...

Comment: Thai on Washington Avenue

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:53:02 -0400

Regarding this morning's Brooklyn, The Borough: A Tree Salad Grows in Brooklyn: "Uh, I've lived in Crown Heights for six years, and this ain't a restaurant row: It's base-level sustenance. No one in their right mind would travel to Washington Avenue to go to that Thai...

Brooklyn, The Borough: A Tree Salad Grows in Brooklyn

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:00:56 -0400

"I'm in this business for 40 years," said Joe Chirico, standing in front of Marco Polo Ristorante, the restaurant he owns on Court Street in Carroll Gardens. "I started with Joe's Luncheonette two doors away--after so many years of being in fast food, I decided I needed to open a good restaurant."

Last week, Mr. Chirico was celebrating the 25th anniversary of his Italian restaurant with family and...

Brooklyn, The Borough: The Thinning Blue Line in Brownstone Land

Thu, 29 May 2008 16:37:01 -0400

I finally got a bike. It's a vintage Fuji, and it belonged to my dad. I took it out for a spin through Prospect Park over Memorial Day weekend. I zoomed around the park, stopping to enjoy the lake for a bit, and again to listen to a drum circle where a large group of people were dancing. I sat on my bike, one foot on the curb, and took...

Brooklyn, The Borough: A Case of Gentrification

Fri, 23 May 2008 00:06:24 -0400

“I was born in the South Slope on 11th Street off Sixth Avenue,” said Matthew Roff, 33, owner of the new Crown Heights beer garden Franklin Park. “Bar Toto was my bodega.”

Someday someone might say the same about the renovated garage that is now Franklin Park. The hip bar – which opened a few weeks ago at the end of the partially unsavory block on St. John's Place between Classon and Franklin...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Bowling Alone in Williamsburg

Wed, 14 May 2008 19:06:05 -0400

On a recent Saturday night, I did a little experiment: I broke the rules of youthful social engagement and went to a bar by myself. I sat in the dimly lit courtyard behind Union Pool in Williamsburg. I made myself available, quietly sipping a pint of Blue Moon.

By 11, small groups had perched themselves all around me on wooden benches chatting about their lives, jobs and families. A group of...

Brooklyn, the Borough: The Art of Brooklyn

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:08:32 -0400

What do Jasper Johns, Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz and Keith Haring all have in common? Each artist has work up for sale at the 4th Annual Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM to us locals) Silent Auction.

BAM certainly plays an integral part in the Brooklyn art scene, and the auction, which raises money for BAM's various programs, raked in $237,500 last year. Artists from all over the borough have work for...

Brooklyn, The Borough: The Kings of Beer

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:49:53 -0400

It seems like every time you turn the corner these days you run into yet another new bar. This is especially true in the gentrified neighborhoods of Brooklyn and very much so in Prospect Heights. Time Out New York recently ran a page-long charticle on the heavy bar presence on Vanderbilt Avenue, the go-to strip for ProHo nightlife.

The eight-block avenue boasts restaurants, cafes and boutiques for moms...

Brooklyn, The Borough: The Two-Bedroom Studio

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:59:18 -0400

It isn't often that New Yorkers get an intimate peek behind their neighbors' closed doors. Even more unusual is a peek inside the intimate life of our state's chief executive. But I digress.

As a child growing up in a 25-story filing cabinet for families and young professionals on West 53rd Street, I lived in apartment 10E. When trick-or-treating or selling my annual Christmas raffle tickets for school, I would get...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Sloppy Seconds on the Soymilk and a Bin Full of Pig Snouts

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:00:51 -0500

If you live in Brooklyn, or any outer-borough really, I'm sure you've seen it before: the requisite post-work grocery bag getting lugged home on the train. Often it's the ubiquitous Whole Foods and Trader Joe bags bouncing along the platform awaiting voyages across the East River.

Recently, the City Council passed a bill – despite intense lobbying against it by food retailers – to issue street vending permits...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Roll Over, Manhattan!

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:18:08 -0500

As a teenager I spent a fair amount of time traversing New York City's urban terrain in search of live music. I was partial to punk. I spent a lot of time at Saturday punk matinees at ABC No Rio and the Dumbo art collective DUMBA. At 16, I marched down to the DMV to get a resident ID to prove to CBGB's Hilly Kristal that I was old enough to...

Brooklyn, The Borough: Avenue A Crosses the River

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:04:02 -0500

Though I spent three years living in Greenpoint, I often found myself shunning the local nightlife—aside from a few restaurants and my local watering hole the Pencil Factory—for cozy nights in on my quiet residential street. Especially during this time of year. But despite no longer residing there, I've recently found myself traveling north to Williamsburg and Greenpoint for a night out more often and apparently, I'm not alone!

Brooklyn, The Borough: On Target

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:56:26 -0500

One of the major differences, generally speaking, between Manhattan and Brooklyn is the proximity you have to your neighbor. In Manhattan, residents may feel piled on top of each other in shoeboxes or filing cabinets, depending on your metaphor preference, but rarely will they ever get to know one another. In Brooklyn, residents tend to have more space and fewer neighbors, yet the proximity seems closer.

Brooklynites exist closer to the...

Brooklyn, The Borough: A Personal Wire

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:07:59 -0500

Apparently it's quite controversial to discuss the experience of living in Brooklyn when it comes to the topic of race. A few weeks back, I dared to talk about it and received a lot of flack. But in my hood, Prospect Heights, and anywhere really, race, class and gentrification are heavy topics, and I'm not going to shy away from them.

After graduating college, I spent close to two years working...

Brooklyn, The Borough: My Angel Gave Me Hell

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:52:07 -0500

It's easy to feel helpless and vulnerable during your apartment search, tired of hoofing it from place to place, and being let down almost every time. On top of that, I was skeptical of my realtor, Angel, a 50-ish Asian woman who drives a Jaguar, when she first showed me the apartment I inevitably took.

Not unlike a character out of a real estate cartoon, Angel met me in front of a...

Brooklyn, The Borough:
Destined to Be Gentrified and Gentrifying

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:56:05 -0500

On a recent chilly night, I was bundled up and on my way to Boerum Hill to have dinner at a friend's apartment. As I walked down Washington Avenue the B45 bus pulled up next to me, and I hesitated. “Which would be faster, the train or the bus?” I thought. Before I could make a decision, the bus doors had shuttered. Luckily, the light at Atlantic and Washington was...

Brooklyn, The Borough: An Electric Boyfriend Works the New Apartment

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:10:28 -0500

As I briefly mentioned last week, amenities and good location are hard to come by, especially at the same time and at a decent price. While looking at an apartment three (very long) blocks off the Dekalb L stop, I noticed little signs of revival in the outstretches of Bushwick—the facade of a tenement building repaired, construction workers milling about in paint-splattered overalls with ladders. A sign that the tidal wave of Williamsburgian revival...

Brooklyn, The Borough:
Escaping Hupsters for New Prospects

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:41:02 -0500

Editor's Note: The Real Estate presents Brooklyn, The Borough, a weekly column by Observer staffer and native Manhattanite Nicole Brydson about her return to Brooklyn after nearly a year in Hell's Kitchen.

For three years I lived in Greenpoint, the northern Polish colony of Brooklyn. Though I wasn't part of the first wave of gentrification, the wheels of which were long turning--fast--my indigenous neighbors didn't necessarily seem thrilled with the influx of youthful...