We're All Getting 70 Cents from the Brooklyn Bridge Park/ Con-Ed Sale

BBP's John Street site.  Photo: Google Maps

Con Edison customers will each get a tiny piece of the money Brooklyn Bridge Park will pay the utility for their John Street site at the north end of the park in DUMBO, the New York Times reports.

Con-Ed has asked state utility regulators to approve its plan to sell 3.4 acres between John Street and the East River for $9.2 million.

That amounts to about $1.40 for each of the company’s 3.2 million customers, the Times calculates. Con-Ed says they're going to split this with their customers.

How are you going to spend your 70 cents?

Related:
- Brooklyn Bridge Park issues RFP for John Street site development. Crain's,  Brooklyn Eagle  

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Brooklyn Songwriter Mike Doughty Will Record Your Own Personal Song for $543.09

Songwriter Mike Doughty -- our new favorite Brooklyn artist -- performs "Country Roads" in this video, with harmony by Rosanne Cash and mountaineering moves by Jack Duncan. (Hear snippets of his album The Flip Is Another Honey here.)

If you want to hear him perform in person Doughty will be playing at the Gowanus Canal Conservancy's second annual Winter Festival on Saturday, January 12. 

Recently he held a “Dogs/Demons one-on-one-at-Mike-Doughty’s-actual-home." People went over to his apartment in Brooklyn and he recorded versions of “Dogs/Demons” just for them.

Dogs/Demons is not on an album and it’s not available on the internet, or anywhere else. It’s available only on a digital voice recorder – the very one that the song was played into. And only that one.

Dogs/Demons costs $543.09. At the beginning of the recording Doughty states the date, time, location, the series number, and the full first, middle, and last name of the person who orders it. He also signs and numbers the recorder. You can order one here.

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'Just Divorced' in Brooklyn Heights

Photo: MK Metz

We saw this car -- with the words "Just Divorced" painted on the back window -- on Henry Street near the Brooklyn Heights movie theater Tuesday night (and thought it was pretty funny).

Last night we looked up the signature written underneath -- "@ariblau" -- and discovered it belongs to comedian Ari Blau. Ari Blau pulls a lot of pranks and posts them on YouTube.

Here's one called "Fake Marriage Proposal Prank."


Maybe that's why he's "just divorced."

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$14,000/ Month Rent; Carroll Gardens Homeless Shelter; and More Brooklyn Briefs

- Renting in Brooklyn Heights? Try $14,000/ month for 2,800 square feet. Brooklyn Eagle

- Here's what's happening with the proposed homeless shelter in Carroll Gardens. (It involves lawyers.) PMFA

- An extremely rare photograph of the 1865 Brooklyn Atlantics is expected to bring in more than $100,000 at auction. UPI 

- Grimaldi's, Brooklyn's pizza place with legendary lines, is spreading out to L.A., where they will have a chemist to mix up water comparable to Brooklyn's own. Grubstreet

- Justice Schack: 'I'd rather handle killers than divorcing couples. Brooklyn Eagle

- 91-year-old woman was hit three times by stray bullets in East New York, Brooklyn. NY1

- A massive, two-story restaurant is coming to a warehouse in Gowanus. Brownstoner  

- Drug-resistant gonorrhea has now reached the U.S. "in sizable numbers." Scientific American 

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Oh, Oh: Flu Cases Soaring Across Brooklyn / NYC

Influenza cases are soaring across the country -- and New York City is being hit especially hard, according to a story published in the Brooklyn Eagle.

As of January 8, emergency rooms across Brooklyn were being hit with 100 - 150 patients with flu-like symptoms every day, and that number is on the upswing.

A doctor at LICH (Long Island College Hospital) told the Eagle that the ER department was seeing double the usual number of flu patients, many of them children, and strongly urged people to get flu shots.

- Flu cases soaring across NYC; hospital ERs packed  Brooklyn Eagle

- Where to get a flu shot in NYC McBrooklyn

Illustration courtesy of the NYC Dept. of Health, from the cover of the "Cover Your Cough" brochure.

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Thousands of New Yorkers Will Ride the Subway Without Pants this Sunday

Photo: Improv Everywhere

No, it's not the ragged remains of the drunken Santacon revelers -- we're talking about the No Pants Subway Ride, returning to New York City this Sunday at 3 p.m.

The event is staged by the group Improv Everywhere every January, usually on a freezing cold day. This will be the event’s 12th year -- which some say is 11 too many.

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Brooklyn Briefs Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013

- The lawyer for the gunman in the Brooklyn diner murder tried to pin the blame on the victim’s girlfriend. NY Daily News

- Bushwick: Where you just expect your waitress to be naked and scribbled on. Gawker

 - Another Jewish baby catches herpes from dangerous penis sucking circumcision ritual. Failed Messiah 

- Is this a record? Man worked for the same Brooklyn bank for 62 years. Brooklyn Eagle 
 
- Brooklyn moms are tougher than almost anybody. The Local

- It's not over: Occupy Sandy still needs volunteers to help cleaning out flooded homes in Sheepshead Bay. Sheepshead Bites
  
- Carroll Gardens woman outsmarts two robbers outside a bank on Smith Street. Carroll Gardens Patch 

- Your cell phone might be monitoring your movements inside stores. Information Week

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Brooklyn Mom Has Uncanny Ability to Talk People Into Giving Money to Charities

Photo: Tommy Irrera

“I’m very good at fundraising. I can go into a store and ask for a donation of something to auction. I can convince people to come to a charity dinner. Everyone has something they’re good at," Sandy Irrera told the Brooklyn Eagle.

Lucky for us, Irrera, a resident of Dyker Heights, uses her almost supernatural powers for good: to raise money for Ronald McDonald House, the Mapleton Kiwanis Club, American Cancer Society, No More Tears, the Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and other charities.

Her ability to raise funds is so remarkable that her sisters, who also volunteer, simply wait in the car while she runs into stores to get donations.

When her daughters were students Irrera became a Class Mom, helping teachers out. “For some reason they always picked me,” she says.

Wonder why?

More here.

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Remembering Pepper & Potter in Downtown Brooklyn

Pepper & Potter Brooklyn, 1949

A new Hampton Inn is planned for 125 Flatbush Avenue Extension (near Tillary) in Downtown Brooklyn, at the site of the old and now-demolished Pepper & Potter Nash dealership. (Read more about the Hampton Inn here.)

While we remember the old car dealership as a rundown wreck of a building, from these photos available on the Havekost Nash Dealership website, it seems that Lester Potter and Frank Pepper had quite the life back in the day.

Lester and Frank

Their advertising slogan was, "Picky People Pick Pepper & Potter."

Cars and babes, in red-hot Brooklyn.

Sadly, in the 1950's, Pepper and Potter's relationship headed south for mysterious reasons, and the partners separated. (More about this at the NY Times.) Mr. Potter’s son, Robert, ran the dealership until it finally closed in 2003.

Proving that nothing ever dies on the internets, dozens of websites make it appear that the company is still operational.

But good news: The NY Times reports that Frank Pepper's niece Erin contacted Robert Potter after never having met the family, and the relationship seems to be a positive one.

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Brooklyn Deaths; DUMBO Plans; and More Brooklyn Briefs

- Harry Smith, Brooklyn Heights-based poet and publisher, dies at 76. Brooklyn Eagle

- Brooklyn author Sol Yurick dies at 87. WNYC

- Drunk man celebrating his birthday fatally shoots 34-year-old man inside a Clinton Hill diner. NY Daily News  (It was Biggie's favorite diner, says NY Magazine.)

- A Brooklyn monument celebrating residents who fought in the Civil War was vandalized yesterday with buckets of paint. NY Post

- Check out DUMBO's new street and plaza plans at a public workshop Tuesday. Brooklyn Eagle

- Something brewing at long-deserted Montague Street space? BHB

- Now we have a robot whose job is vomiting. Gawker

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