Changes Coming to Boerum Hill; Stabbed in Head with Scissors; and More Brooklyn Briefs

- Brooklyn student stabbed in head with scissors. NY Times

- Someone shot cellphone video of the firefighter -- engulfed in flames -- who was pulled to safety out of the third floor of a Brooklyn brownstone.  LiveLeak

- Imagine that: Now the city has to tell you if your kid's school is contaminated with toxic PCBs. Brooklyn Eagle

- Legislation legalizing the hailing of livery cabs in the outer boroughs probably will become law. Brooklyn Politics Blog

- Jonathan Ames, creator of the cancelled Bored to Death, invites all fans to come "to the Brooklyn Inn tomorrow night, Wednesday, and I'll buy you a drink." Gothamist

- Do you recognize this thief? Brooklynian

- Big changes coming to Boerum Hill. Brooklyn Eagle

- Seasons restaurant on Henry Street in Broolyn Heights is gone, and an Indian restaurant may be coming in. BHB

- The 1st Annual Brownstone Dreidel Spin-Off:  Friends, latkas, sushi, craft beer, doughnuts, music and your dreidel wager...what more can you ask for? Brooklynian

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Brooklyn Heights' P.S. 8 May Get Its Middle School

Parents at P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights (shown above) are keeping their fingers crossed, hoping a site proposed for their new middle school in Downtown Brooklyn comes through.

The Brooklyn Eagle reports that the city hopes to locate the P.S. 8 extension in a building housing George Westinghouse High School and City Polytechnic High School at 105 Tech Place, fronting Tillary Street.

Let's hope it all works out. Families in the Heights haven't had a public middle school option for decades.
Many P.S. 8 children have gone on to a Fort Greene middle school, the Urban Assembly School of Arts &  Letters, but that school will be cutting its enrollment in half soon.

More here.

- P.S. 8 Annex Going Up Fast; Now Parents Want a Middle School
- Put Middle School in Brooklyn Heights' P.S. 8, Says Yassky

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A Century of Changes at 30 Henry Street, Brooklyn Heights

Big changes are coming to 30 Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights, the present home of the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper. According to Brownstoner, a five-story, six-unit condo will rise in the Brooklyn Heights Historic District, and an LPC hearing on the design is scheduled for today.

The photo above shows what 30 Henry Street (which includes 78 - 82 Middagh Street) looked like at the beginning of the 20th century. The automobile on the right looks to be 1920s or 30s.  The four-story building all the way to the left is still there today, and can be seen on the contemporary photo below.

In 1884, Mr. Charles G. Kahl ran an ad in the Brooklyn Eagle trying to rent out a small store for candy and stationary, with apartments for adults. Those interested were to see him at 82 Middagh, corner of Henry.

Those residing at 30 Henry / 82 Middagh over the years included Susan Dunn, a widow of carey Dunn (1840); John O'Neal, a glasscutter (1867);and Alexander Mills (early 1920s). Sadly, in 1922, Mills tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat with a razor. While the surgeons and nurse at Long island College Hospital were bending over him preparing to sew up his wound, he leaped from the operating table and out the window before he could be stopped. "Death greated him silently in the busy street." (Fulton History)

A 1938 Certificate of Occupancy shows at least part of the building being used for storage for the confection of bagels. The first floor was used for parking trucks. In 1951 the first floor was used for storing paint and tools; the second floor was used as an office staffed by 5 men and 2 women.

Here's the corner as it looks today, as the headquarters of the Brooklyn Eagle. (The property also includes the apartment at 78 Middagh Street.) It was probably built in the late 50s or early 60s. Notice the building's "stepped" roofline. The Midcentury Mundane blog describes the building in this way:

"This building in Brooklyn Heights at the corner of Henry and Middagh Streets is the most mundane of the mundane, but somehow pleasing with its stepped roofline, attractive brick color and original metal and glass display windows."

Ace Wire Brush Company

By 1964 the building was the home of Mr. Levy's Ace Wire Brush Company, where you could get five different sizes of radiator brushes, round or square chimney brushes, all types of brooms, or special brushes that cleaned the chimneys of over-sized model trains. A friendly woman named Martha helped behind the counter and sometimes gave away miniature brooms to neighborhood children. Several of the company's industrial lifts are still inside the Eagle offices.

Vintage-toys.com sells this historic Ace Wire Brush Co. blotter.

From the historical 1940s-era blotter shown above, it appears that the Ace Wire brush Company had its first factory on Cadman Plaza East where the Cadman Towers are now (it was called Fulton Street back then.)
 

Tomorrow

Mr. and Mrs. Levy are gone, Martha has moved on, the children have sold the building, the Eagle will be moving, and a five-story, six-unit condo will be built.

Notice the new condo will fit in five stories where the building next to it, though the same height, has only four. Brownstoner has more details and renderings of the new condo.

The Brooklyn Heights Association thinks the new building's design is pretty blah. Executive Director Judy Stanton told the Brooklyn Eagle the building site "cries out for a distinctive and much more contemporary design than that which was shown to the BHA last week.

“Fortis has hired excellent architects in BKSK, and the BHA has respectfully asked them to return to the drafting board to create a building that celebrates our time."

Photos:
- Top historical photograph of old Brooklyn heights, photographer unknown. Roughly 1929.
- Photo of present-day Brooklyn Eagle courtesy of Property Shark
- Rendering of proposed condo courtesy of BKSK via Brownstoner

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Everybody Was Christmas Shopping At the Brooklyn Flea This Weekend

Were you at the Brooklyn Flea this weekend? We dropped by to do some not-quite-last-minute-Christmas shopping and it seemed like half of Brooklyn was there.

The Flea is located at Skylight One Hanson at the former Williamsburg Savings Bank. Besides the usual Saturday and Sunday hours, the Flea will be open additional dates for Christmas shopping: Wednesday, December 21; and Thursday, December 22, from 2 to 9 p.m.

You can pretty much find anything at the Flea, from old typewriters to handmade glass objects to clothing to jewelry made out of old LP records. Here are a few things that caught our eye:

Porcelain milk-bottle vases and coasters by Alyssa Ettinger. The vases come in several sizes, feature delicate colors on the interior, and range from $30 - $50. The coasters are wafer-thin and have different textures.

Antique Hudson River brick planters filled with easy-care alpine succulents (you can leave them out all winter). Roughly $40, at Little Gardens.

Antique seltzer water bottles. They don't make these anymore. (Not sure who the vendor is, but they're on the ground floor on the left side.) About $35.

Tiny little moss terrariums built inside light bulbs, glass jars and blown glass orbs made by Twig Terrariums.

Beside plant life (easy to maintain, they say) each terrarium contains a little scene with teeny-tiny people.

There are hundreds of other vendors at the Brooklyn Flea. Here's a list. With three floors of antiques, clothing, jewelry, crafts and oddball collectibles, you'll likely find something there that you'll want to buy for someone.

Don't forget to get some lunch in the food court downstairs. (Vendors include Asia Dog, Milk Truck, Red Hook Lobster Pound and others.) Head back upstairs to finish off with some maple bacon cupcakes from Kumquat cupcakery.

- Christmas shopping at the Flea in 2010


Photos by MK Metz

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New Grimaldi's; Bob Diamond's $100 Million Lawsuit; Restaurants; and More Brooklyn Briefs

- They lined up around the block to try out the new Grimaldi's this weekend. NY1

- City blocks Whole Foods until the grocer proves it won’t mess up the Gowanus. Brooklyn Paper

- Bob Diamond of Atlantic Avenue Tunnel fame has a new lawyer and a new strategy in his $100 million lawsuit against the City of New York, the city Department of Transportation (DOT), the Fire Department and others. Brooklyn Eagle

- $6.8 million Brooklyn Heights townhouse is in teardown condition. Curbed

- Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes’ refusal to name Orthodox Jewish child molesters prosecuted by his office has the community outraged. Failed Messiah

- In two weeks 2,000 office cleaners and building service workers across the city could go on strike. Brooklyn Eagle

- A new restaurant opened on Atlantic Avenue on Friday night, complete with 50 Cent on the sound system, a comic book for every customer, and house-made kale chips while you wait. Carroll Gardens Patch

- Marty Golden endorses Mitt Romney. Brooklyn Politics Blog

- A Stuyvesant High School senior died after a he was struck by a boozed-up driver while standing on a Brooklyn street divider. NY Daily News

- Brooklyn junior high school racks up most suspensions in city for sexting. NY Post

- The 10 most insane delusions of Kim Jong-il. Gawker

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Success Academy Gets Prime Brooklyn School Buildings; NYC Parents Becoming Increasingly Radicalized

Wednesday night's meeting of the Mayor's Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) was a riot in slow motion.

Hundreds of Brooklyn parents and supporters made the long journey (more than an hour for most) to Newtown High School in Corona, Queens. They came to protest Eva Moskowitz's plans to co-locate one of her Success Academy charter schools in the complex at 184 Baltic Street (near Court) that already holds three schools: Brooklyn School for Global Studies, School for International Studies and P.S. 368 for special ed children.

DOE had changed the location of the meeting to this inaccessible school in Queens to discourage attendance but it didn't work.

Parents took to the mic to explain how, with three schools already in the building, the children eat lunch at 10:30 in the morning, and have trouble meeting graduation requirements because there's not enough time in the gym. They also said the DOE didn't take the special ed kids' needs into account in the space survey. Elected representatives spoke about how the charter schools were draining the resources out of public schools.

Other parents warned that the PEP was setting a terrible change in motion and that they would someday reap what they had sown.

A couple of charter school supporters said that a charter school would give children more choice.

No one was listening. The PEP voted to give Moskowitz a couple of nice public school buildings -- one in Cobble Hill and one in Bed Stuy, and approved another charter school co-location in Bed-Stuy.

Vote of 'No Confidence'

Parents have become much more radicalized in the past year or two. Before the official meeting began, the attendees joined Occupy DOE and held their own noisy vote. By an overwhelming majority, the crowd voted "No Confidence" in Mayor Bloomberg's Panel for Educational Policy.

Here's a speech many of them read together before the PEP meeting.

People yelled and spoke over the panel members throughout the meeting. Some wore sock puppets on their hands and yelled at PEP members that they were "Puppets for Educational Policy."

A feeling of lawlessness was in the air. Parents said they had no voice and no representation in the school system. There were many more police and security guards at this meeting than at school board or PEP meetings we've attended in years past.

Sadly, Borough president Marty Markowitz sold out Brooklyn by telling his appointee to the panel,Gbubemi Okotieuro, to vote in favor of the Eva Moskowitz's charter school co-location. Shame!

The Queens and  Bronx appointees abstained.Only Patrick Sullivan of Manhattan showed integrity by voting no. (Here's a great speech he made about his experiences on the PEP.)

There were three sections in the auditorium. Two were packed. This empty one was for the supporters of the Success Academy charter schools.

This may not be the last hearing for the Cobble Hill Success Academy.

District 15's CEC President Jim Devore told the Brooklyn Eagle that "another question needing to be resolved was Success Academy’s stated plan to change its focus from English Language Learners and children attending failing schools out of District 15" to relatively well-off District 15 kids. "A hearing would likely be required to make this change."

For the full story:
Cries of ‘Shame’ Accompany Vote For Cobble Hill Charter School Brooklyn Eagle

Last Night's PEP Meeting NYC Public School Parents

Brooklyn Success Academy Cobble Hill charter school approved, and foes bolt raucous meeting NY Daily News

Charter School Approved for Affluent Brooklyn Enclave NY Times
(Several factual errors in the Times story: 1.Success Academy Cobble Hill wants to expand to 8th grade but only has approval for K-5, and can only squeeze K-4 grade into 184 Baltic Street. 2."The teachers’ union brought opponents by the busload" is not exactly accurate. The teachers' union agreed to supply buses after DOE refused a request by six elected officials to move the meeting back to an accessible location. Many people, including this blogger, took the subway.)

Past posts on this subject:
- Too Bad Chumps: Red Hook, Gowanus Parents Won't Be Able to Attend DOE's Ed Panel Vote On Success Academy Charter School

- Explosive Cobble Hill Success Academy Hearing

- Quite a Brew-Ha-Ha at Cobble Hill Success Academy Charter School Meeting

- Rally Against Cobble Hill Charter School Saturday - 'Success Academy Cobble Hill'

Photos by MK Metz

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'Reuse' Craft Show in Gowanus (and Satan Clause, Just because)

Build It Green! and Sustainable NYC present a Holiday Reuse Craft Fair this weekend, which features local artisans selling fair trade, handmade or "reuse" items.

Reclaimed Home shows examples of what's for sale here, like "gifty tile creations made out of cabinet doors and sewing machine drawers," and "recycled t-shirt pillows" made by TuraLura, who also hand-makes "Satan Clause," an anatomically-correct Santa that is actually Satan under that beard. You read that right. (She won't have any more of these before Christmas, however, but you can order one for later.)

"Frankly Santa and Satan have a lot in common," she writes on TuraLura.com. "Fond of the color red. Inciting envy and stirring up temptations and lusts and whatnot. And Santa does all of this on Jesus’ birthday! Stealing the spotlight from the baby Jesus- how much more satanic can an entity be?"

The fair takes place on Saturday-Sunday, December 17-18th from 10am-5pm at Build It Green! NYC – Gowanus, 69 9th Street, Brooklyn NY 11215

More here.

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Festive Holiday Program by Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra in Brooklyn Heights

The Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra will celebrate the holiday season in a concert to be held on Sunday, December 18, 3 p.m., at the Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn Heights.

The program, conducted by Artistic Director Nicholas Armstrong, will feature two works by Tchaikowsky, the Overture “1812” and the Duke Ellington arrangement of the Nutcracker Suite.

The orchestra will also perform Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice; Dance Rhapsody #1 by Delius and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, A Symphonic Picture.

A holiday reception to meet the musicians will follow the concert with free refreshments. Shoppers can also find some last minute gift items, many featuring the orchestra’s favorite landmark, the Brooklyn Bridge.

Admission is suggested donation of $15. Children are free.

The Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity is located at the corner of Clinton and Montague Streets in Brooklyn Heights, next to the Court Street subway station.


The Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, comprised of talented amateur, semi-professional and professional musicians, is one of New York area's finest community orchestras. Founded 36 years ago as the "Brooklyn Heights Orchestra," the group joins under the baton of Artistic Director Nicholas Armstrong to present five symphonic concerts per season of classical, romantic and 20th-century music.

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Brooklyn's Own Batman; Walcott Flops; and More Brooklyn Briefs

- Just another night for Brooklyn's own Batman. Brooklyn Eagle

- A look at this year's Dyker Heights Christmas lights. Gothamist

- Due to construction, there will be no ice skating in Prospect Park this year. About

- Brokelyn's 25 gifts under $25 is up to number 12, and it's perfect for that single Jewish gal on your gift list. Brokelyn

- The former owner of the Brooklyn Heights Cinema, Norman Adie, pleaded guilty Monday to bilking investors out of $530,000. NY Daily News

- Parents disappointed in Chancellor Walcott and the DOE at big education meeting in Brooklyn. The Local  

- PMFA tells us where to buy one of those trendy Carroll Gardens necklaces. PMFA

- Private schools push for Pier 5 recreation bubble. Brooklyn Paper

- Is SantaCon over? Gothamist

- A database reveals that one of the five most popular words for New York lawmakers is "Brooklyn." NY Daily News

- The best free phone on every carrier. Gizmodo

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Brooklyn Prepper Part 5: What To Do In a Pandemic

From our most favorite disaster prepper ever, the Brooklyn Prepper tells us what to do when the pandemic happens. Especially if it gets really crazy out there.

In this video (warning: 51 minutes) we learn: How do you set up a quarantine room? What do you do if a distant branch of the family shows up at the door? What do you put in your Pandemic Box?

Unlike your typical Walmart-style disaster preppers, Brooklyn Prepper has a uniquely urban perspective. His many videos outline the best way to navigate traffic when the power's out, how to map out your survival plan before the S* Hits The Fan, what emergency items to pack in your kids backpacks, water sources, getting food together, how to construct a blow gun out of PVC pipe.

Favorite quotes from this video:

"Once a weapons-grade flu goes airborne, all bets are off."

"When it comes down to survival, the more the merrier. You think you're going to go to your buggout situation and survive by yourself? What if you break your legs? Who's going to go out hunting, go fishing?"

"I can teach someone to defend themselves with a rifle in two days. It's not rocket science."

- Brooklyn Prepper Gives Survival Tips For When SHTF

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