… “On the 12th day of Christmas, Bruce Ratner took from me/
12 months of taxes/
11 blocks of sidewalks/
10 acres peopled/
nine cultures mixing/
eight unclogged …
Prospect Heights on the Colbert Report!
EmilyM writes in the Prospect Heights Message Boards: “Stephen Colbert has been doing a 434-part* series on the congressional districts and last night, while we were all at Festivus, he did ours! He talked about Eastern Parkway, the Caribbean Day Parade, and interviewed Major Owens. It was pretty funny.”
Catch it before it drops off the front page of the Colbert Report (click here for links and more info).
Worst Case Scenarios: What if They Strike Tonight and Scabs Take Over?
Brooklyn Subway Refugees
Scenes from summer 2003, originally uploaded by CatsFive, who wrote: “During the 2003 blackout, the subways, which run on electricity, all stopped. Lots of riders had to exit the subway in some pretty unusual ways.”
OK, we got a temporary reprieve… last we heard, the latest deadline is tonight at 12:01 am. To get you in the mood, STACEY posted the following tidbit (about the strike from the early 1900s) in the Prospect Heights Message Boards:
“Subway motormen on the BRT had gone out on strike on Nov. 1st, 1918. Dispatchers and supervisors were pressed into service as replacement workers. That day, dispatcher Antonio Luciano was assigned as motorman on the Brighton Line that ran at that time from Park Row over the Brooklyn Bridge (which had train traffic at the time) and Fulton Street to the current Franklin Shuttle. He had never before operated elevated trains in passenger service.“
“… Luciano had to navigate an S-shaped curve on what would later be called the Franklin Shuttle at Malbone Street. The speed limit at the location was posted as 6 MPH, but those on the scene later reported that he roared through at what must have been 50 MPH. The first car held the rails, suffering only minor damage, but the second and third cars derailed, the second being demolished and the third nearly so. About 100 passengers lost their lives, though Luciano was spared.”
Don’t PANIC: Prospect Heights Message Boards
You missed the Daily Heights FESTIVUS Party…
alafairnadia writes: “yay festivus! … we got: newbies; stacey as festivus elf (and is getting free drinks next happy hour…); random airings of grievances; feats of strength. we lacked a pole. we had veg. burgers.
Prospect Heights Message Boards
Local DHer makes the NYT… actually, we all did…
DH fan Jon Keegan, an illustrator living in Prospect Heights, wrote in: “I was interviewed by the New York Times for this Sunday’s paper…They are doing a “Living in…” for Prospect Heights. I made sure to give dailyheights a good plug!”
Thanks, Jon… Looks like NYT writer JEFF VANDAM was pretty impressed with the DH community… we got mentioned twice in the article, and the NYT Prospect Heights slideshow is narrated by Mark McCartney, aka Mr. Tips, a regular on DH’s Prospect Heights Message Boards. Here are some excerpts from the NYT article:
“ON the heavily trafficked Web site www.dailyheights.com, a recent poll asked visitors to vote on new SoHo-style nicknames for Prospect Heights, their beloved Brooklyn neighborhood. While there was some support for ToPoSlo (Too Poor to live in the Slope) and HoSloFugee (Home for Slope Refugees), the biggest winner by far was not a name, but a criticism: ‘This poll is extraordinarily dumb…’ ”
“… ‘There’s a great cultural corridor here,’ said Jon Keegan, an illustrator who moved in 2002 from Park Slope into Newswalk, a Dean Street loft building formerly home to a Daily News printing plant, with his wife, Julie, a painter. ‘There’s this sweet spot of being between BAM and the Brooklyn Museum – Prospect Heights is so perfect for that,’ he said, referring to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.”
“Yet as Mr. Keegan and his fellow users of dailyheights.com are well aware, there is an undercurrent to all of the recent success of Prospect Heights: the plans of the developer Bruce Ratner to build a sizable complex of shopping, offices, housing and a Frank Gehry-designed arena for his New York Nets over the railyards on Atlantic Avenue. Concerns about eminent domain issues and the project’s potential impact on the area’s density are widespread, as is uncertainty over what form it will finally take.
“Still, not everyone is up in arms. Mark McCartney, a computer programmer who rents a one-bedroom apartment on Washington Avenue with his fiancée, Beth Elliott, lives south of the proposed project’s area. ‘We’re so far away it wouldn’t affect us,’ he said. ‘And I don’t like basketball.’ ”
Mr. Tips wonders why they used that quote… and more discussion:
Prospect Heights Message Boards
666 Pacific Street
So Fricking Ominous… Thanks to Curbed.com (“Will Evil Be Crushed?”) for reminding DH of an issue that has been right under our nose for so long.
And thanks for giving props to Atomische, taker of this incredible photo, and one of the original colonists of the Prospect Heights Photo Pool.
Rap-Id-Wrap Building Disappears in a Flash. Where's the Permit?
Lucas writes to Daily Heights about the coveted Rap-Id-Wrap building on Bergen St.: “Walked by last night (Dec. 9) and it was gone. I never got to say goodbye. Folks on the forum noticed, too….
Before (photo © 2005 Frank Lynch):
After (from Lucas):
Guest writes: “I saw them tearing it down at about 11 am yesterday morning. I spoke with one of the demolition crew and he said they could tear the whole thing down in just a few hours. It was pretty fantastic to watch this giant machine with a claw tearing into the building as snow was falling.”
The status of the permit was called into question, but Ben writes: “hard to say if there is a permit or not. None shows up on the DOB website, but in a complaint from 12/9 a permit No. is referenced…”
About That Big Boom Today, and all the Helicopters and …
Guest writes: “A manhole cover blew on 5th ave. They started off ABC 6:00 news with this ‘breaking news’.”
Pitu adds: “Channel 7 is reporting … two buildings evacuated for carbon monoxide on Fifth Ave near Flatbush … ”
Details: Prospect Heights Message Boards
PHOTO: Originally uploaded by the known universe.
In Memory of Rojo
You’ve probably walked past this one (guess where):
Rojo Soupios
died
March 3, 1996
Peace for our beautiful baby boy.
We love you, Angel.
Forever.
Quick Take: Tavern on Dean
“We really liked it. We sat in the back room and they played old R&B and the Beatles the whole time.”
“I don’t recommend the calamari appetizer — rubbery, hard to bite through. He really liked his shell steak, though. I wasn’t crazy about my catfish, but I’d still return to the place because the menu was better than I expected.”