(UPDATE: Photos of SantaCon 2011 here.)
Some cities have the running of the bulls. New York City has its own death-defying event: the New York City Santacon, which takes place this Saturday.
That means hundreds (if not thousands) of Santas in cheap suits, along with gingerbread men, giant presents, Hannukah Harries, snowflakes, sugarplum fairies, frisky reindeer, toy soldiers, and Santa mash-ups will be rampaging along the streets of New York, lurching from bar to bar, dancing, drinking and engaging in general lunacy with gay abandon.
The Brooklyn Cacophony Society was the original sponsor of Santacon (since at least 1998). The secretive Society said in 2005 that Santacon is: “a not-for-profit, nonpolitical, non-religious demented Santa Clause convention. We do it for no reason. SantaCon happens in major cities all over the world.”
- SantaCon 2010
- The March of Zany Santas: From Downtown over Brooklyn Bridge Brooklyn Eagle
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Wednesday, December 7, 2011
You Better Watch Out: SantaCon Is Coming to Town
New 'Restaurant Row;' Brooklyn Heights Noise Complaints; and More Brooklyn Briefs
- New high-end "restaurant row" coming to Adams and Willoughby Streets in Downtown Brooklyn. Brooklyn Eagle
- Poor old Brooklyn: Almost 21 percent of the elderly in Brooklyn live below the poverty line, compared to about 11 percent in NY State and 9 percent nationwide. The Brooklyn Ink
- Late-night construction at 25 Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights has neighbors burning mad. BHB
- A Brooklyn bus passenger was robbed of his iPhone — but police found it using an app and busted the deli worker who bought it off the thieves. NY Daily News
- The Gap -- coming to 400 Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn -- is moving full speed ahead. Brownstoner
- The renovation of Ozzie's Coffee, on Fifth Avenue and Carroll Street, has been well worth the wait. Here's Park Slope
- The L train has been shut down on so many weekends this year it's killed Williamsburg businesses. Crain's NY
- Here's the full cop Facebook page with negative comments about the West Indian day Parade, courtesy of Gothamist.
- Con Edison has decided not to pull the plug on a holiday art show featuring “pagan”-themed pieces by a Park Slope artist. Brooklyn Paper
- Bank of America says it has opened customer assistance centers in Brooklyn and elsewhere so that borrowers can discuss options for alternatives to foreclosure. Marketwatch . . . But Occupy Wall Street has developed a quicker, more efficient solution to the foreclosure crisis in Brooklyn. Gothamist
- Now there's an app to make complaining about the taxi that wouldn't take you to Brooklyn even easier. Village Voice
- Brian Lehrer to host school choice discussion at Pratt on Thursday. Brooklyn Eagle
- Amazon launches appalling attack on local shops. Gawker
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40-Foot Christmas Tree Lights Up Brooklyn Borough Hall
On Monday Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz threw the switch and illuminated the 40-foot-tall Christmas tree in Brooklyn Borough Hall Plaza. The balsam fir will sparkle with holiday colors each night through the holiday season.
Free holiday cookies were handed out and, of course, there was a special guest appearance from Santa himself.
Photos by Kathryn Kirk
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Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Too Bad Chumps: Red Hook, Gowanus Parents Won't Be Able to Attend DOE's Ed Panel Vote On Success Academy Charter School
Newtown Creek High School was chosen because you can't get there from here. (DOE says the Manhattan site where the meeting was originally scheduled suddenly became unavailable.)
With the closing of the G station at Smith and 9th (until sometime in 2012) Success Academy Charter School's target audience in Red Hook and Gowanus won't be able to attend the meeting at all unless they take the bus routes shown above, which take over an hour from Cobble Hill (if they're running on time) and won't be able to carry the hundreds of interested parents and advocates.
Add 35 minutes and another bus if traveling from Red Hook.
Subway time from other sections of District 15 add up to more than an hour.
Moskowitz has been spending literally millions of dollars pushing her Success Academy Cobble Hill charter schools plans. Buses for her Manhattan supporters will magically appear -- maybe even city buses. (Mayor Bloomberg's "private bus company.")
According to the NY Daily News, the Success Charter Network spent $1.6 million in the 2009-2010 school year just for publicity and recruitment of new students, the group's financial reports show. The money comes from private hedge fund executives and conservative foundations.
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz sent a letter to Schools Chancellor Walcott yesterday saying that he has received hundreds of emails requesting that the December 14 PEP meeting be switched to Brooklyn Tech.
His letter reads in part: "I believe that if the lower Manhattan space suddenly became unavailable, it should have been moved to Brooklyn in the first place. Considering that so many of the proposals on the agenda for this meeting directly affect school communities and proposed co-locations in Brooklyn – I would like to strongly urge you to change the location to Brooklyn Technical High School."
"The placement of Success Academy has many in the community concerned about why their needs are not being heard. Perhaps a meeting at Brooklyn Tech could be an opportunity to ask the community for their suggestions going forward."
DOE's kowtowing to wealthy hedge fund managers is becoming more and more obvious in this fiasco.
Map courtesy of Google Maps
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So Many Brooklynites In Prison It Affects Legislative Districts
From the Brooklyn Eagle: "In a decision that will likely add more 'voters' to Kings County than any other county in the state, a court ruled last week that prisoners must be counted among voters back in their home neighborhoods rather than in upstate prisons for the purpose of redrawing state legislative districts, a likely blow to the slim Republican majority in New York’s Senate."
It's kind of shocking that so many Brooklynites are in prison upstate it actually affects the number of seats we're entitled to. More here.
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Brooklyn Friends School Winter Festival 2011
The Downtown Brooklyn school throws a whale of a carnival / shopping extravaganza with an emphasis on hand-made, sustainable, unusual and high quality. The kids had their bouncy rides and were also rocking out with a DJ in the auditorium
Shopping Local, Doing Good at Brooklyn Friends Winter Fest Brooklyn Eagle
- BFS Winter Festival 2010
- BFS Winter Festival 2009
- BFS Winter Festival 2008
Photos by MK Metz
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Monday, December 5, 2011
Chaos in Brooklyn Supermarket; Jewish Magazine Says 'Gentiles Are Evil'; and More Brooklyn Briefs
- Occupy Wall Street heading to East New York, Brooklyn, on Tuesday. NY Daily News
- A Hasidic Jewish monthly magazine, Der Blitz, based in Borough Park, Brooklyn has begun blotting out the faces of non-Jews in its photographs because "gentiles are evil." Failed Messiah
- The Seddio family has opened their 48th annual no-holds-barred holiday display in Canarsie. The display includes lights, animated figures, a hot air balloon, Ferris wheel and talking animatronics. Brooklyn Eagle
- Brooklyn man sues mother-in-law for spreading rumors that he is infertile and ridden with so many venereal diseases he will be dead in a few months. Gothamist
- Courageous cops rescued a dangling worker from death after a scaffold collapsed in Crown Heights on Saturday. NY Daily News
- Brooklyn artist sculpts "Futurama" characters in 3-D. Technobob
- Video: SUV crashes into Brooklyn supermarket on Nostrand Avenue, causing chaos and injuring man buried under wall of canned goods. Looters rush in, strip store. Gothamist
- Changing demographics in Downtown Brooklyn: Battles over evictions continue at Willoughby Square, the planned park that would displace the only remaining rent-regulated apartments in the neighborhood. The Brooklyn Bureau
- The U.S. Postal Service is pushing ahead with unprecedented cuts to first-class mail that will eliminate next-day delivery. The Street
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85-Year-Old Grandma Strip Searched at JFK: May Sue
An 85-year-old grandmother from Long Island plans to sue the TSA after a humiliating strip search by agents at JFK Airport, according to the NY Daily News.
Lenore Zimmerman, 4-foot-11 and in a wheelchair, said TSA officers brought her to a private room, pulled down her pants (even her underwear, she told the New American and ABC News) and made her raise her arms above her head.“Why are you doing this?” she said she asked the agents, who did not respond.
Her walker banged against her leg and left a bleeding gash which soaked her sock. The wound was exacerbated by the elderly woman's use of anticoagulants. A medic had to treat her injury and she missed her flight.
TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said “proper procedures were followed.” The screening was not recorded on video tape, according to the Miami Herald.
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| Illustration courtesy of this French artist: http://mojito.over-blog.net/article-20125009.html |
Airport screeners in Florida look like total idiots for detaining a pregnant teenage woman over a purse with an embroidered antique gun image on the outside. Apparently TSA told her possession of the purse was a “federal offense.”
The New American quotes a recent Congressional investigation which found TSA screening was based on “theatrics” and had failed to catch one single terrorist so far. "And despite close to $60 billion spent on the apparatus since the attacks of September 11, air travel is no safer."
Past posts on this issue:
- More Stupidity: TSA Pats Down Infant at Kansas City Airport
- TSA Airport Scanner Tests Show More Radiation than Expected
- TSA Now Groping People Getting Off Trains
- Opt Out of Airport Scanners, TSA Groping
- TSA Harassment Video Shows Lack of Real Security
- Brooklyn Councilman Greenfield Launching TSA Abuse Web Site; Working to Ban Airport Scanners
- Full Body Scanners Rolling Out at LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark Airports
- TSA criminals are having a field day stealing your stuff at JFK airport. Queens Crap
- TSA orders cancer-stricken 95-year-old woman to remove adult diaper for creepy security pat down. CNN
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Friday, December 2, 2011
Brooklyn Friends School Winter Festival - Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011
Get a jump on your holiday shopping and bring the kids to this popular Downtown Brooklyn holiday extravaganza.
Brooklyn Friends School’s popular Winter Festival (their 32nd) includes an “all by hand” craft fair with dozens of local artisans; a holiday plant and wreath sale; Bingo; a book fair; a children’s carnival with bouncy rides, mazes and games; children’s crafts; and readings by local children's book authors.
New this year: the Style House, where you can get hair feathers, henna tattoos and hair wraps. Also new: the Middle School Funhouse featuring Rock Band, martial arts interactive performance and a DJ dance party.
Proceeds benefit the Horizons at Brooklyn Friends School summer enrichment program for public school children in Downtown Brooklyn.
- BFS Winter Festival 2010
- BFS Winter Festival 2009
- BFS Winter Festival 2008
Photos by MK Metz
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Gersh Kuntzman Leaving Brooklyn Paper!
A new generation of journalism students will be learning their trade from the man who published a podcast of himself posing nude, having a faux real-estate orgasm described by some as "vomit-inducing," and publishing one too many X-rays of his broken foot.
He also was named “Editor of the Year” by The Suburban Newspapers of America in 2008 and was applauded by many for always being in the mix. We wish him well in his new role.
The Brooklyn Paper was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in 2009.
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