Bedford-Stuyvesant

Even though he was an honoree, Governor David Paterson couldn’t make it to the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation’s 40th anniversary gala on Thursday night. He was campaigning for Barack Obama.

Things have changed, indeed, for the central Brooklyn neighborhood and its boosters in the 40 years since Senators Robert Kennedy and Jacob Javits founded the preservationist Restoration Corporation.

Women dressed to the nines cried with amazement and pride at lavishly set tables in Steiner Studios in Brooklyn Navy Yard. When Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz made opening remarks about Restoration’s recent successes, including a $25 million renovation to restore and to modernize Restoration Plaza on Fulton Street, the dining room stirred with self-congratulatory remarks.  read more »

The Daily News on Wednesday lays out a convincing argument that the foreclosure wave sweeping parts of the United States may drench the outer-boroughs as well. The argument uses numbers from a study by the nonprofit Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project--and the numbers are sobering:

In some areas of South Jamaica and Bedford-Stuyvesant, as many as 10 homes per block faced foreclosure last year... Mortgage lenders have filed 3,116 new motions to foreclose against delinquent homeowners since Jan. 1... Our city is now on track to surpass 15,000 filings this year, more than double the total two years ago, according to the study, which examines one- to four-family homes.

The News, like many, blames the predatory practices of some subprime-mortgage lenders, those who feasted on the aspirations of people craving homeownership during the housing boom, people who probably shouldn't have had large sums of money loaned to them.

The dearth of such mortgages in Manhattan, however, ensures that at least one borough will likely escape the wave washing ashore from Staten Island through the Bronx.

- Tom Acitelli

• London's wonderful mayor Ken Livingstone wants to charge gas-guzzling cars £25 to enter London's "congestion charge zone." What will Mayor Mike do in response? One can only hope that he bans Hummers, at least those yellow ones. [Times of London, via Streetsblog]
• The crawl toward gentrification out in Bed-Stuy is speeding up thanks to a few restaurants on Bedford Avenue (with expensive names like Le Toukouleur.) The street is apparently "turning into something of a Restaurant Row for the neighborhood," even though it's on "an otherwise pretty foresaken stretch of road." [Brooklyn Record]
• But if one small store could ever summarize a mammoth borough, it would be Enamoo in Brooklyn. You'll find a "mixture of vintage household items with uniquely-designed t-shirts and nice little arrangements of plants." Throw in the "trademark antique cheese crates planted neatly with aloe-like vegetation" and you've got upscale New York City in your hands. [Apartment Therapy]
• Superior Inks Warehouse, the last factory on Greenwich Village's waterfront, will probably not live to see its 88th year. On the plus side, a 15-story luxury condo will take its place. Hurrah! Everyone loves more 15-story luxury condos! [NY1]
- Max Abelson
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The Black Brooklyn Empowerment Convention of 2006 has been a fascination of mine since I got my hands on the first email about it...which referred to David Yassky as a white individual and threw a spotlight on the racial implications of his congressional race.

Then we found out about a not-so-publicized meeting of convention organizers with Eliot Spitzer, where they demanded more blacks get jobs in all state agencies.

Now, comes word that all that convention planning and organizing has left the group in debt. Below is a copy of the group's latest agenda, which someone was kind enough to send along.

Note item No. 6:

To: Planning Committee, Black Brooklyn Empowerment Convention 2006

From: Councilman Al Vann

Re: Follow-up Meeting The next meeting of the Brooklyn Black Empowerment Convention will be held on Saturday, November 4, 2006 at 1360 Fulton Street, 3rd Floor- The Skylight Gallery, Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration.

As usual, we shall begin promptly at 10:00 a.m. and adjourn by 12 noon. Among the issues to be considered:

1. Report from meeting with Attorney General Eliot Spitzer

2. Update on "Cluster" activities and plans

3. Post-convention restructuring of Planning Committee

4. Printing and distribution of ratified Agenda

5. Use of Convention's web site and email address

6. Eliminating convention debt

7. Open agenda

Thank you.

A spokeswoman for the convention declined to put a dollar amount on the convention debt.

-- Azi Paybarah

A trip to the East End last week was met with rain, wind and cold eating away the last full week of summer. Sad for Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, whose Monday-through-Thursday vacation in Montauk was washed out.

"It rained every day," he said, after a press conference in Bed-Stuy on Tuesday. He sounded a little disgusted. "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Then it ended on Thursday late in the morning, early in the afternoon."

Mr. Markowitz stayed in Panoramic View on Old Montauk Highway, "right near Gurney's," with the Weather Channel's Local on the 8s replaying over and over inside the room. He and his wife figured, what with 100% chance of precipitation, it was time to eat.

"We went to lunch, even though I don't like lobster rolls," he said. "My favorite restaurant this week was a place called Harvest by the Pond. They really got something going. It's delicious, really delicious. It's not inexpensive, unlike Gosman's, which is mid-priced, which is why I love it."

Nightlife for the Markowitzes was spent with nightly strolls down the mainstrip in Montauk. And did they hit Gin Lane?

"I didn't go to East Hampton," he said. "I'm not into that Hamptons scene."

When the weather did finally turnaround on Thursday, Mr. Markowtiz tore off his Shelter Island sweatshirt, skipped lunch and took off for the beach.

"I gotta little tan," he said. "I had a T-shirt on and a pair of shorts and I took my T-shirt off for a couple hours."

Mr. Markowitz said he only tanned his front-side, and acquired a little farmer-tan effect. 'It's all gone by now," he said.

By Friday it was time to pack-up and come home to Brooklyn. On the L.I.E., Mr. Markowitz and his wife traveled down an empty New York-bound lane in their 2000 Toyota Avalon. —John Koblin

John Koblin hit the streets of Bed Stuy and Forte Greene, two neighborhoods in Brooklyn's 10th Congressional District. That's where incumbent Ed Towns is being challenged by City Councilman Charles Barron and Assemblyman Roger Green.

The people who spoke with Koblin in these two parts of the district had a wide range of issues for their next congressman.

-- Azi Paybarah

Via Gowanus Lounge, on Sunday there will be a rally to protest yet another out-of-scale development in Clinton Hill/Bed-Stuy. Not only are the developers at 335-345 Greene Avenue using the oft-abused "community facilities" floor-area-ratio boost, it appears they're not exactly following safety guidelines:

The demo, being done by the fine folks at MMG Design, has been extremely unsafe and unprofessional. They are the most unpleasant people I have ever spoken to. I called and spoke with the owner Marie Grasso one day when I looked out our back window and they had workmen 20 feet up on the wall above our yard, prying off cinder blocks off directly above the head of my 2 year old son who was playing in the yard and my wife who was hanging the laundry. This is without any kind of protective fence or netting, or even the human decency to yell down and let us know they were working and that maybe we should move the kid.

-Matthew Grace  read more »

The (incidentally fabulous) Elaine Louie has a piece in today's House and Home section on what happens when your view gets all bricked up.

That'll teach you to buy an apartment with windows on the lot-line!

It seems what happens is you put ersatz windows made of mirrors where your useless windows are, and also you kind-of festoon the place with Interior Design.

If you're buying, that is. This happened to a friend of ours renting in Williamsburg with significantly less fabulous results. His solution: Move to Bed Stuy!

But the funny thing about people covered in the Times is the way their ample supply of money helps to mitigate their plight. (Do we hear crickets? OK, we cover rich people, too.)

Seriously, it's a fun piece.

Lurking inside, however, is a less light-hearted observation which we've made before, too: "Last year the city approved the construction of 25,208 housing units - more than in any year since 1972, according to the Planning Department. (A housing unit can be a single apartment or an entire town house.) So far this year officials have authorized 15,870 more units, setting a pace that could make 2006 a record year for residential construction."

Umm ... let's watch out for oversupply, or the Manhattan real-estate bubble might actually burst, and finding a way to repurpose the vanity in your bathroom when they brick over your window will be the least of your concerns.

Also in today's Times: Deedle-dee-dee-dee-dee / Two ladies!

Insane roommates let boyfriends move in to lower rent; The Times thinks of a non-menage-a-trois headline; and another observation about the market in general:  read more »

"There's definitely a housing shortage," Ms. Dekidjiev said. "For affordable apartments, people just have to think of more options, make compromises and be more creative."

Phew! - Tom McGeveran

City Limits has a nice round-up of some of the City Council races worth watching, with this rather harsh introduction to one Brooklyn contest:

"Outgoing incumbent Tracy Boyland, publicly derided for poor council attendance and lackluster performance, has represented the district since 1997; her father and brother have represented nearby Bedford-Stuyvesant in the state assembly since 1982. Determined to keep the family business alive, William Boyland, Sr.--Tracy's father, 64--emerged from retirement to take on a field of 14 candidates."  read more »

UPDATE: Gotham Gazette has also been reporting out several contested Council races.

The folks over at the Center for an Urban Future aren't going to like this, but Joel Kotkin has a new article arguing fairly persuasively that the future is actually suburban. Planners, architects, and environmentalists, he says, should get used to it.

Kotkin offers some data to back up the claim that "the notions of suburban decline or a big-time downtown revival are delusional.

"All the growth predicted recently for the 30 top U.S. downtowns through 2010 turns out to be less than half the suburban growth of greater Seattle during the 1990s," he writes. "Many cities that are seen as harbingers of a dense urban future—San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis—have actually lost population since the millennium, following some gains in the 1990s. "

Kotkin doesn't mention New York, and his piece is another mark of how anomalous the city we're living in now really is, floating on a flood of immigration and a real estate boom that's touching the South Bronx and Bed-Stuy.  read more »

(Jarringly, the Economist just ratified the Brooklyn boom with a piece calling the borough "Manhattan's Left Bank." Here come the limeys!)

In the Jan. 8 issue of TheNew Yorker, Daphne Merkin describes her multiple stays on the psychiatric  read more »

Spike Lee's Summer of Sam , from a screenplay by Victor Colicchio, Michael Imperioli and Mr.  read more »