For me, 2008 was not a year to celebrate.
This morning's Brian Lehrer show featured Steve Zeitlin, executive director of City Lore, and "Brooks of Sheffield", pseudonymous author of the Lost City blog, doing a postmortem on the New York City establishments that closed in 2008 that we will miss the most.
Two well-established Bay Ridge conservative Republican ops, Bob Capano and John Quaglione, are weighing a run against incumbent Democratic Council Member Vincent Gentile (43rd CD) in his bid for a second elected term.
Firefighters responding to a 911 report of a fire in Owl's Head Park at around 4:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning found the burned body of an apparently homeless man in a steep, brushy area ironically known as "Dead Man's Hill".
Lunchtime action in Manhattan. 
The Pearl Diner. Classic sign; not so classic food.
Ocean Hill-Brownsville was once an Italian neighborhood.
The Campaign for Community-Based Planning has published a year-end roundup of what it sees as the year's top planning stories.
At the crossover from the N to the R at the 59th Street platform, I saw these young Palestinian guys from Bay Ridge returning from a protest.
New Yorkers are becoming increasingly interested in the details of the city that surrounds them. Pioneering blogs like Forgotten New York have contributed to this growing awareness of context.
Downtown weekly The Villager asked some Manhattan "movers and shakers" to reflect on the real estate bust of 2008 and their development concerns for 2009.
Brooklyn's famous Quaker parrots have a friend in Queens Councilman Tony Avella, who has drafted pro-parrot legislation establishing rules for relocating their nests and making it illegal to capture them.
Next month, the Department of City Planning begins its final review of the re-zoning of Brighton Beach.
The Taqwacores, a novel by American Muslim convert Michael Muhammad Knight, has become the Catcher in the Rye for young American Muslims.
JMH Development, owner of the almost-landmarked Austin, Nichols & Co. Warehouse in Williamsburg, has given a deed of easement to the Trust for Architectural Easements, creating a historic preservation easement prohibiting the destruction of the building and preserving its height and shape.
The story of how the Democrats have managed to turn their newly-won state senate majority into a political disaster was summed up by Village Voice columnist Tom Robbins in a word: impenetrable.
Forty-one-year old Democratic Queens City Councilmember Hiram Monserrate has been charged with assault in the slashing of his 29-year-old girlfriend Karla Giraldo during an argument at his apartment on Friday.
Testy 72-year-old Bay Ridge super Richard Martin, who became the laughing-stock of the local blogosphere earlier this year, has been fired from his job and evicted from his apartment.
President-elect Barack Obama will be sworn in at a time when America is facing unprecedented economic challenges.
The ASPCA, targeting those dog owners most in need of free services, has launched a multimedia ad campaign, in English and Spanish, promoting its mobile spay-neuter clinics.
As of Friday, three witnesses had came forward in the Jean Roberts hit-and-run case. According to the NYPD, they have described the car as a four-door beige sedan driven by a woman somewhere between 20 and 40 years old.
The spire of St. Paul's against the ghostly tower of 7 World Trade.
Broadway and Fulton, in front of St. Paul's.
St. Paul's churchyard, at Broadway and Vesey.
Snowy ash berries on 77th Street, near Madison.
They eat cats in China.
The Brooklyn Arts Council is sponsoring a series of dance events in Bay Ridge in January, featuring Norwegian, Lebanese and Palestinian dance classes and a Norwegian/Levantine dance party.
The collapse of investor Bernie Madoff's fictional financial empire, believed to be the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, has put a major hurt on the real estate industry in New York City.Commercial brokers, developers and wealthy families all had money with Madoff, who operated the same way that big real estate operates: on trust, personality, pedigree and reputation.
Now, because of Madoff, deals all over the city are dead or on hold.
Developers who pledged their Madoff investments as collateral are worried that their banks will call for substitute guarantees they can't provide.
Some Madoff investors have been forced to sell their apartments.
The level of devastation is called "astounding", with developers and investors absorbing multi-million dollar losses. Brokerages, property companies and building owners are among Madoff's victims.
Madoff worked the tri-state country club circuit, where he was regarded as a "genius" who delivered great returns. You had to have at least $20 million just to get an introduction to him. Some developers gave Madoff all their money.
The Madoff scandal has been called "the nail in the coffin" for New York's commercial real estate industry.
Facing a fiscal meltdown, the MTA has approved an $11 billion budget for 2009 that will inflict deep service cuts and sharp fare increases.The cuts don't take effect until spring, by which time the MTA hopes the state -- facing its own budget crisis -- has come up with a bailout.
The MTA says it has our backs in Albany -- which has until March to act -- but the Authority appears to have no coordinated lobbying strategy in place.
The hole in the MTA budget is $1.2 billion.
As early as May, the MTA will close subway station booths, eliminate station staff and cut back off-peak bus service. Other big changes, like eliminating the W and Z subway lines, are a year off.
Hearings on the fare increase and service cuts start in January, with a vote expected in March.
Former MTA chair Richard Ravitch has proposed a bailout plan, supported by Governor Paterson, that would impose a regional payroll tax and toll the East River and Harlem River bridges -- holding next year's fare increases to 8% and staving off most service cuts.
Without a bailout, transit fares could hit $2.50, with a monthly unlimited-ride Metrocard costing over $100.
The MTA's finances are expected to get worse going forward.
The article from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/nyregion/18transit.html
More on the MTA budget from Crain's:
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081217/FREE/812179991
The local impact of the MTA budget cuts, from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle: http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=10&id=25341
Mayor Bloomberg turned up at the annual Brooklyn GOP holiday dinner at the Bay Ridge Manor this week -- along with a possible rival.
Gov. Paterson's proposed budget, released a month early, seeks to fill a $15.4 billion budget gap over the next 2 years by increasing fees and cutting services.It will cut $3.5 billion out of the state Medicaid budget and $2 billion in school funding.
Paterson plans to lay off more than 3,100 public employees, likely through a merger of seven state agencies and the closure of state facilities.
Paterson has set a deadline of March 1, a month before the state’s budget deadline, saying that the state could save $1.3 billion by passing the budget a month early.
The article from Gotham Gazette:
http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/
Mayor Bloomberg reacts to the Governor's budget proposal:
http://www.ny1.com/Default.aspx?ArID=90768
Assemblyman Richard Brodsky is on a mission. He believes that the Bloomberg administration pressured city tax assessors to inflate the value of the land under the new Yankee Stadium in order to qualify the Yankees for nearly $1 billion in tax-free bonds.
Heather McCowan's efforts to bring ferry service to the 69th Street Pier earned her a Community Board seat, but it looks like the ferry won't be stopping in Bay Ridge anytime soon.
According to the federal bankruptcy courts, New Yorkers are filing for bankruptcy at a faster pace than the rest of the country.
The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission has designated two new landmarks: St. Nicholas of Myra Orthodox Church at 288 East 10th Street near Avenue A, and the former headquarters of the American Society of Civil Engineers at 220 W. 57th Street.
On Sunday, Vito Fossella hosted a luncheon for nearly 1,000 family members, politicians and voters, including Mayor Bloomberg, before trooping off to serve his 5-day DWI sentence.
According to the Daily News, disgraced Brooklyn pol Clarence Norman, in jail since 2007 serving a 3-9 year sentence for campaign corruption and extortion, is back in the city on work-release at Lincoln Correctional Facility.
One of countless creches that have gone up around the neighborhood this week.
Beautifully-detailed wooden cornices on an old apartment building on 3rd Avenue.
This message became a meditation for me.
As we've noticed, more and more of the New York City Transit System is being slathered with advertising. Some subway stations seem to have big stick-on ads on every wall.
The Brooklyn Preservation Council, now a 501(c)(3)(A) corporation, will meet on Tuesday, December 16th at 6 PM at Brooklyn Borough Hall in the first floor conference room.
The trendy Lower East Side, once the destination neighborhood for arriving waves of immigrants, is now a heritage tourism hotspot.The article, as published in the Contra Costa Times:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/travel/ci_11186466
The Times reports that highly-paid professional workers like lawyers, architects and accountants are swelling New York City's unemployment rolls as the effects of the financial crisis spread through the professional service, construction and retail sectors.A report from nonprofit research group Fiscal Policy Institute found that in October, the number of unemployed white-collar workers outside the financial industry was up by more than 40% over last October, with unemployed college graduates up by 50%.
As unemployment shoots up in New York City, it affects a broader spectrum of workers, professional and blue-collar, young and old. And unemployment will continue to rise in the coming months.
There was more bad news from the financial industry this week, when Bank of America announced 30,000 to 35,000 layoffs over the next three years as it digests Merrill Lynch.
The recession hit New York later than the rest of the country, but the city has lost about 10,000 jobs since August and will likely lose more than 150,000 jobs during this recession.
The Fiscal Policy Institute report estimates an average of 10,000 monthly job losses through the end of 2009.
Being highly educated and unemployed is part of a national trend, according to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. Some unemployed American professionals are considering looking for work overseas.
The city comptroller estimates that Wall Street bonuses will be halved this year, lowering city tax revenues by 4.3 percent over the next 6 months.
Managerial jobs and jobs in the health care, social services and arts, entertainment and recreation have, in large part, been spared.
A few weeks back, spokesperson Margie Feinberg said that the New York City Department of Education was prepared to take properties on Fourth Avenue through eminent domain in order to expedite construction of a new 480-seat primary school in Bay Ridge.The Daily News article:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_eminent_domain_cloud_
UPDATE
The Brooklyn Paper reports that the city is moving to acquire the Green Church property as the site of a new grade school.
The source of the Brooklyn Paper report is Dena Libner, communications director for Council Member Vincent Gentile, who proposed the Green Church property to the School Construction Authority last month.
Before the School Construction Authority can close the deal, its plans for the Green Church lot must be subjected to a public review process that Libner says will begin in January.
No mention of this news on Vincent Gentile's blog today. (Odd that Libner, Gentile's Webmaster, scooped her own blog by giving Gersh Kuntzman the exclusive.)
So the senseless destruction of the neighborhood's most important historic building may have facilitated the construction of a grade school to accommodate the burgeoning number of young children in Bay Ridge.
How could this outcome be seen as anything but a net loss?
Desolation Row
Hasidic South Williamsburg has been riled up for months about the new bike lanes in their neighborhood. They object to the "immodest" dress of female bikers, and the fact that the bike lanes take up street space.
For the second time in a 3-month period, Mayor Bloomberg has called for across-the-board cuts in the city's budget.The Mayor is still holding the $400 property tax rebate for homeowners, and wants the City Council to approve a 7% property tax hike in January — 6 months ahead of schedule.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn wants the homeowner rebate checks, which have already been allocated, to go out immediately.
The Council, reluctant to raise taxes, has taken the unusual step of calling for its own budget cuts.
Sign in the rear window of an old white Grand Marquise parked down the street from my house last night.
Some City Council members, concerned about the budget, have pronounced the Bloomberg administration's proposed senior center restructuring plan "dead on arrival".A Department for the Aging (DFTA) request for proposals (RFP), part of its ongoing modernization push, went nowhere with the Council's subcommittee on senior centers last week.
The RFP aims both to increase utilization rates and reduce the number of centers.
There are now 329 senior centers in New York. DFTA wants to consolidate programming in as many as 310 centers, calling the centers "underutilized".
The agency is revamping its meal delivery and case management systems. It's planned "hub and neighborhood" senior center system was to be the next step.
Council Member James Vacca, chair of the senior centers subcommittee, thinks DFTA has cooked its utilization rates.
The council's biggest concern, though, is the cost of the planned restructuring: $117 million, which Speaker Christine Quinn called "dangerous excess".
Senior citizens themselves oppose the changes, hand-delivering 13,000 letters protesting the DFTA plan.
The DFTA RFP is not likely to be accepted as currently written.
Maria del Carmen Arroyo, chair of the council's committee on aging, has suggested a small pilot project based on the RFP.
The article from City Limits:
City Comptroller William Thompson has been making phone calls to prospective supporters to assure them that he is running for mayor.Since the City Council's term limits extension bill was passed, Thompson and Anthony Weiner, also running for mayor, have been dogged by rumors that they will drop out of the mayoral race and run for re-election to their own posts.
Thompson's campaign Website is due to launch this week.
In a City Room interview, Thompson said that he wants to take the city back "from the billionaires".
The article from Politicker:
More than 40% of American homes have at least one video game console, and all that gaming adds up to serious demand for electricity.
Citywide, building permits fell 70% in October compared with the same month a year ago.
Governor Paterson has criticized the MTA's plan to cut service and impose a 23% fare and toll increase as taking New York back to the 1960s and 1970s.Gov. David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorse Ravitch's recommendations.
The fate of the plan now lies with the State Legislature.
Ravitch, who was widely credited with rescuing the New York City Transit System in the early 1980s, said the MTA's operating deficit was much bigger than anyone could have predicted. He called the commission’s recommendations an "effort to spread the burden" that must be taken as a whole.
While riders have to pay their "fair share", said Ravitch, the city's growth and prosperity depend on a healthy, growing transit system.
Ravitch said the MTA currently has no money for its next 5-year capital plan for the period from 2010 and 2014, which could run as much as $14 billion.
Ravitch said that providing the MTA with a recurring, inflation-sensitive revenue stream would result in an improved transportation system and increase ridership and regional growth.
The MTA's capital expenditures haven't grown since 2004.
Calling bus service, a "priority", Ravitch urged the creation of a Regional Bus Authority within the MTA and the creation of bus rapid transit routes.
Mayor Bloomberg has praised Ravitch as someone who understands the city and understands all the pieces of the problem.
The article from the New York Times:
A new company called CabEasy offers New Yorkers the option of finding other riders going their way and, at the same time, calculating the CO2 emissions they save by sharing a cab. CabEasy joins other ride-sharing services like Ride Amigos, Split A Cab and Hitchsters.
The Upper East Side has the city's only group ride program, which operates from a taxi stand on York Ave. The program, launched in 1987, offers shared rides to Wall Street for $3.50 per rider.
The city's Taxi and Limousine Commission and the Design Trust for Public Spaces have released a report calling for ride-share stands at the Yankees' and Mets' stadiums at game time.
The TLC has also recommended a ride-share pricing structure during peak hours that would result in a 25% discount per rider for short trips -- and more money for the cabbie.
The article from Gotham Gazette:
The only thing standing in the way of the Union Square Pavilion being turned into a swanky restaurant is a decision made by State Supreme Court Justice Jane S. Solomon in April of this year.
My elderly uncle, a World War II vet, forwards me a lot of chain e-mails. It's one of the ways he stays in touch with the family.
I noticed today as I was schlepping by the Yellow Hook Townhomes development on 74th Street that there were "sold" signs up in the windows of several units.
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Robert Menendez has reached out to Caroline Kennedy to see if she's interested in Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be empty Senate seat. Menendez is believed to favor Kennedy because he thinks she could tap into an extended network of wealthy, influential Democrats to raise money for the 2010 re-election campaign.
The Times reports that Governor David Paterson has already spoken with Kennedy about the appointment.
Paterson's former chief of staff and right hand man, former Jesuit priest Charles O'Byrne, is a confidante of the Kennedy family.
The article from the New York Observer:
http://www.observer.com/2008/politics/dscc-chief-meet-caroline-kennedy
Caroline withdraws her name from consideration, from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/21/caroline.kennedy/index.html#cnnSTCText
On Monday, the City Council's transportation committee will take up the Bikes in Buildings Bill, which would remove a major obstacle to bike commuting: unfriendly buildings.The legislation would give bike commuters who work in commercial buildings the right to bring their bikes into the workplace as long as their employer consents.
The bill was praised by advocates Transportation Alternatives as one of the easiest ways to foster biking to work.
Things look good for the bill: Bloomberg reports the mayor and most of the city council support it
Monday's hearing begins at 1:00 p.m. in the main council chamber at City Hall.
The Real Estate Board of New York, which calls bikes in buildings a liability problem, is expected to testify in opposition to the bill.
The post from Streetsblog:
You don't have to be a foodie to join a food co-op. They're a great way to eat better, save money, and meet people from the neighborhood.
A Forest City Ratner spokesman has told the Daily News that work on Vanderbilt Rail Yards, the planned site of a basketball arena and 16 towers that are part of the mammoth Atlantic Yards development, has stopped because of all the lawsuits challenging the development.Atlantic Yards opponents think that's just a cover story, and that Ratner has stopped work because he's out of money.
The Atlantic Yards Report, which broke the work stoppage story, says Ratner may be hedging his bets.
Daniel Goldstein, of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, has called on the state to halt the project, calling "speculation and over-development" a "key cause of the current recession".
According to Goldstein, neither the city nor the state can afford the kind of speculative luxury housing and frivolous sports arenas that Ratner wants to build.
DDDB would like to see Atlantic Yards broken into smaller parcels put out to bid under The Unity Plan.
The New Yorker, in a concurrent offering, visualizes a post-recession urban landscape dotted with vacant lots that could become "urban tar pits".
"Blight" is a relative term.
In a recent Courier article (apparently only available in hard copy) reporter Helen Klein observes that a month after the demolition of the Green Church, Bricolage Designs, architect for buyer-developer Abe Betesh (Abeco Management), has failed to get any plans approved by the city's Department of Buildings (DOB).
In an uncannily prophetic article originally published by The New York Times in 2003, New York City's approach to economic development was called "obsolete".
A colored light display in the window of an Indian restaurant on Second Avenue, one of several on that block vying for the (unofficial) East Village light string championship.
Bay Ridge City Council Member Vincent Gentile sees Mayor Bloomberg's recent call for deep budget cuts as an important opening for potential mayoral challengers. Gentile calls Bloomberg's cuts, including possibly raising property taxes, rescinding the $400 homeowners rebate and charging money to use plastic bags, an "assault" on middle class New Yorkers.
Gentile recently told a group of Bay Ridge voters that people are looking for an alternative candidate to emerge, and that anyone interested in the job had better start campaigning soon.
So far, the field includes Representative Anthony Weiner, City Comptroller Bill Thompson and City Council Member Tony Avella.
Gentile stressed that, to capitalize on the mayor's slide in popularity, candidates need to "come out front" now, and that candidates who don't risk losing voters who are "pulling away" from Mayor Bloomberg and looking for an alternative.
In its 4th and final article in an informative but ultimately unsatisfying series of articles on historic preservation in New York City, the Times focuses on the give and take between preservationists and developers, citing the St. Vincent's plan to demolish 9 buildings in the middle of the Greenwich Village Historic District to build a 20-story medical center and condominiums.LPC Chair Robert Tierney, who said the LPC must strike a balance between competing interests, struck the balance in favor of St. Vincent's and against the white saw-tooth-sided O'Toole building, a 1964 Mid-Century Modern structure on Seventh Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets.
The LPC approved the demolition of the O'Toole building last month.
Veteran commissioner Christopher Moore, who voted for demolition, characterized landmarking as a bargaining process, a matter of acknowledging "real world" pressures.
Preservationists and politicians counter that the Bloomberg administration has let big developers off the leash while the LPC, the city's landmarks watchdog, has backed down.
Tony Avella, a Queens city councilman who is running for mayor, said in typically blunt fashion that real estate controls the city's agenda and that, if real estate doesn't want something to happen, it won't.
First Deputy Mayor Patricia E. Harris, whose portfolio includes the LPC, said the Bloomberg administration doesn't think about development without thinking about preservation.
Some architectural historians think the divide between developers and preservationists can be bridged, citing the success of historic districts like TriBeCa, designated in 1992, which has become one of the city’s most sought-after neighborhoods.
The feast day of St. Lucy (also known as St. Lucia) is observed on December 13th in several European countries and in America.
A corner of the beautiful old terrazzo floor in the hallway of a Thompson Street walkup.
A primitive-looking coffee cup hanging outside a shop on Thompson.
Inane grafitti on Thompson.
A tower crane looming over Broome Street.
An ATM standing at attention on Broome.
A bright red scooter sitting in front of a green brick building on Broome.
The four-story high SoHo graffiti rat, caught in the act on Broome.
