Bay Ridge Festival of the Arts

The 42nd Annual Bay Ridge Festival of the Arts Exhibition and Sale will take place from Monday, April 5 through Sunday, April 11 at the Parish Hall of the Lutheran Church of The Good Shepherd at 7420 Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge.

The Festival is open to all artists, whether from Brooklyn, the other four boroughs, New York State or beyond.

The Festival showcases the work of amateur and professional painters, photographers, craftspeople and musicians.

Through the sale of artwork, and through its patrons, the Festival, a not-for-profit organization, raises money for The Bay Ridge Festival of the Arts Scholarship Fund, which provides scholarship grants to local high school graduates pursuing degrees in the arts.

Since its founding in 1968, the Festival has raised over $270,000 in scholarship funds.

To increase awareness of the event, Festival president Chandra Hira and vice president Dave Foss have re-designed the organization's website and mounted both a Facebook (Bay Ridge Festival of the Arts, Inc.) and a Twitter page (BayRidgeArtFest.)

Bay Ridge native Hira, a Fort Hamilton High School graduate and 1992 Bay Ridge Festival of the Arts scholarship recipient, has a BFA in Graphic Design from Pennsylvania's Kutztown University, and works as a promotions art director in the magazine publishing industry. Foss, who will head the Festival's jury committee, is an award-winning art photographer with an international reputation.

Here's the week-long schedule of events:

Artwork accepted, Monday, April 5, between 11 AM and 1PM and 3 PM and 8 PM;

Opening Reception, Thursday, April 8, 6:30 to 9:30 PM; meet the artists, preview the show and listen to music by pianist Elliot Sneider;

Art Exhibit and Performance by A Capella Group The Sweet Adelines, Friday, April 9, 6:30 to 9:30 PM; 

Art Exhibit and Craft Show, Saturday, April 10th, 11AM to 5 PM; crafters will include glass painters, textile artists, woodworkers and jewelers; 

Art Exhibit and Performance by the Gorns (rock, folk, blues and country), Saturday, April 10, 6:30 to 9:30 PM;  

Art Exhibit, Sunday, April 11, 11 PM to 5PM.

A plant sale to benefit The Guild for Exceptional Children will be held on each day of the Festival.

On opening night, the Festival will also be raffling off goods donated by local businesses and patrons, and there will be a 50/50 raffle each night of the event, all proceeds to support the Scholarship Fund.

Bowery Stairs

Judge Stops School Closings

In a setback to the Bloomberg administration, State Supreme Court Justice Joan Lobis last week blocked the city's decision to close 19 New York City public schools for "poor performance", finding "significant violations" of the state law governing mayoral control of city schools.

Justice Lobis warned that the entire mayoral control law must be enforced, not just the part that gives the mayor control of the schools.

The lawsuit was filed by elected officials, parents, the United Federation of Teachers, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The DOE, said the Judge, has to go back to square one and make its case to close the schools again, with “meaningful community involvement".

The city says it will appeal. Unless the decision is reversed, the 19 schools on the Department of Education's hit list, including Brooklyn's Paul Robeson High School, will stay open for at least another year.

The lawsuit held up some 85,000 high school acceptance letters. Those letters are now going out to 8th graders citywide, including about 8,500 to kids who had applied to the schools proposed for closing and were told they couldn't go there.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein blamed the United Federation of Teachers for bringing the lawsuit, accusing the UFT of saving their jobs on the backs of kids consigned to "failing schools".

Twelve of the schools scheduled to close this year were graded “proficient” on their last quality review.

Calling his closure process "robust", Klein contended that the DOE had allowed thousands of people to express their views -- it just didn't agree with them.

Klein, who argued that the DOE's legal errors didn't justify blocking the closings, promised a re-do. Bloomberg has said he will close the schools in the lowest decile by the end of the school term.

The Bloomberg administration has closed 91 public schools since 2002, moving clusters of smaller "boutique" schools and charter schools into their buildings.

According to the Bloomberg administration, closing public schools has improved graduation rates. The boutique schools average 70% graduation compared to 63% citywide.

This year for the first time, the mayoral control law required a significant public role in closing decisions, including hearings, detailed impact statements and a vote by the mayor's Panel for Educational Policy before the decisions were final.

In January, the panel affirmed all 19 closings after a public hearing at which hundreds of teachers, students and parents delivered 9 hours of angry comments.

The article from the New York Times.

The aftermath of the decision, from Gotham Gazette.

Unprotected

The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission has calendared a designation hearing for the 120-year-old Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection at 59 East 2nd Street in Manhattan's East Village.

The Cathedral, designed by Josiah Cleveland Cady, was converted to a chapel in 1867 by the New York Mission Society, and once offered services in German, Hungarian, Italian and Russian. The Orthodox Church of America bought the building in 1943.

In what is becoming a standard call-and-response pattern, echoing the fight to landmark -- and un-landmark -- the Upper West Side's West Park Presbyterian Church, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and local elected officials are urging neighborhood residents to turn out for the designation hearing and support landmarking, while Orthodox clergy argue that the city's "interference" would be financially burdensome to the congregation.

The clergy threaten that landmarking would force the cathedral to cut the pay and reduce the benefits of its staff; that the building would be allowed to rot; and that it would eventually be sold to a developer.

These arguments are apparently based on the fact that landmarking would mean LPC oversight of any changes to the building.

The article from DNA.

Bay Ridge St. Patrick's Day Parade 2010

NYU to Add 3 Million Square Feet

In advance of New York University's public announcement of its "2031" expansion plan on April 14, the New York Times, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, community groups and elected offcials have gleaned some of the details.

The university plans to grow by roughly 3 million square feet in the Village and nearby areas over the next 20 years, a rate of about 150,000 sq. ft. a year.  By comparison, NYU’s rate of growth over the past 40 years has been about 80,000 sq. ft. per year.  So the university's growth rate would nearly double under the 2031 plan.

That 3 million sq. ft. of space would add up to about 17 new buildings the size of NYU's 26-story dorm on East 12th Street -- the tallest building in the EastVillage -- or the Javits Center multiplied by 4.5.

Borough President Scott Stringer's local Community Task Force on NYU Development, which includes GVSHP, has made the following recommendations to NYU regarding the plan:

• NYU should first seek to locate new facilities in satellite locations outside the Village and surrounding area;
  
• NYU must demonstrate why new facilities need to be located in the already-over-saturated Village;
  
• NYU should respect and maintain the low-scale, moderate-density historic character of the Village;
  
• NYU's adding 3 million square feet of space would overwhelm the Village;
  
• Shoehorning massive new development into the open space in the “superblocks” south of Washington Square Park would be unacceptable;
  
• NYU should support and respect the proposed South Village Historic District by refraining from demolition, new construction and alterations until the area is landmarked;
  
• NYU must look at alternative locations, including the Financial District and Long Island City, for its satellites, and should consider taking over some of the stalled and abandoned construction projects throughout the city.
  

Much of NYU’s 2031 plan appears to directly contradict these recommendations.

NYU has thrown the community a bone in the form of an offer provide space for a public elementary school.  But when NYU was given control the Silver Towers superblock 40 years ago and promised to provide a public elementary school, that commitment was never kept.

There will be an open house to unveil the 2031 plan on Wednesday, April 14 from 5:30 to 8pm at the Kimmel Center, Washington Square South and LaGuardia Place, 10th floor.

More from NY1 News.

More from the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC News, and Gothamist.

More from Business Week.

The New Key Food

Shopped the new Key Food today for the first time since it opened, and found it clean, pleasant and well-stocked.

Rev. Billy vs. Mountaintop Removal

Anti-consumerist preacher/performance artist Rev. Billy, whose deceptively madcap ministry includes "Buy Nothing Day", has joined the growing Appalachian movement against Dirty Coal.

The Rev. and his Life After Shopping Choir will appear at the Highline Ballroom for a “Mountaintop Revival” on Sunday April 18 at 1 PM.  (Earth Day is April 22.)

Rev. Billy's "Life After Shopping" doctrine includes the belief that strip mining (of which mountaintop removal is the 800-pound gorilla) is a consumerizing devil as sinister as predatory retail.

Energy consumption, says the Rev., is as powerful a compulsion as shopping.

In the Rev.'s spiritual crosshairs is JP Morgan Chase, a key investor in mountaintop removal mining.

"Follow the money", exhorts the Rev., all the way from from the branch bank on the corner through to the poisoned streams, coal dust, sick children, CO2 emissions and silent springs of stricken Appalachia.

To view the Rev.'s JP Morgan Chase vid, click here.

For more information about mountaintop removal, the Mountaintop Revival on April 18 or Rev. Billy, visit the website.

Take the Rainforest Action Network's Pledge to End Mountaintop Removal.

Got Church?

A Daily News article today detailed the 37-year struggle of Bay Ridge's Narrows Community Theater to find a permanent home.

On June 30, the NCT has to leave its current home at Salem Lutheran Church on 67th Street in Bay Ridge.  The church, which invited the NCT to locate there hoping to grow its congregation, has decided to close, forcing the theater group to cancel its summer production and acting workshop series.

The NCT lost its space at Ft. Hamilton Army base, where it had rented for 3 years, due to new security rules imposed the day after the 9/11 attacks -- and was never allowed to go back to get its costumes, lighting and props.

Since then, the group has rented space in various neighborhood churches and schools, renting lighting and sound equipment for each production.

The not-for-profit amateur group, which typically puts on Broadway shows, can't afford the kind of premium commercial rents that typify Bay Ridge.

The NCT's next show, "Oliver," opens April 30.

The article from the Daily News.

Protests Halt Hydrofracking Near National Forest

As energy prices rise, conservationists are increasingly concerned that oil and gas drilling -- particularly "hydrofracking"-- will proliferate in our national forests without careful review or adequate environmental protections.

Hydrofracking for natural gas creates fractures and fissures in underground rocks, which are then injected with chemicals, potentially contaminating streams, groundwater and wells.

A coalition of conservation organizations, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Trout Unlimited, the West Virginia Wilderness Coalition, the National Wildlife Federation, the Wilderness Society, and Friends of Blackwater, succeeded last week in stopping the Federal Bureau of Land Management from auctioning off publicly-owned oil and gas reserves under the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia.

The groups warned that oil and gas drilling would threaten endangered bats, native brook trout, clean water and scenic natural resources in the Forest.

The BLM was preparing to auction those reserves as part of a broader sale that includes federal lands and resources in Ohio, Alabama, Arkansas and other states.

According to a spokesperson for the Friends of Blackwater, the Forest Service has put up sites for oil and gas development without doing any preliminary analysis or consultation to ensure the protection of wildlife, clean water and underground cave systems.

Conservationists worry that the geology in West Virginia's Pendleton and Randolph counties, which includes many underground fissures and channels, makes local water resources particularly vulnerable to pollution as the result of hydrofracking.

Pop-Up Retail

In December, "pop-up" retail space, promising "visibility without commitment", came to Metropolitan Ave in Williamsburg.

Metropolitan Green, a stylish new building at 439 Metropolitan Avenue, offers "revolving storefronts" -- short-term retail space designed to give small businesses, such as artisans and entrepreneurs, a brick and mortar presence without the commitment of a long-term lease.

Pop-up shops are quickly gaining popularity in the city because, in the current economy, a limited tenancy is very attractive to new businesses testing the market for their products or services.

The street-level rentals, in a LEED-registered green building on a heavily-trafficked section of Metropolitan Avenue 2 blocks from the subway, offer tenants 600 square feet of space with high ceilings, big windows, 2 exposures and a rear deck.

Rentals are scalable, ranging from a weekend to a month.

For more information about Metropolitan Green, visit the Website: www.MetropolitanGreen.com

MTA Service Cuts

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has ratified a package of service cuts to close a $383 million hole in its 2010 budget that wipes out B51 bus service through Downtown Brooklyn and over the Manhattan Bridge and the B39 from Williamsburg to the Lower East Side.

Public comments resulted in a few changes from the MTA's original proposal in December, but the following service cuts will take effect in June:

Subway

• Service cutbacks on weekends :  D, F, G, J, M, N, Q and R trains on Saturdays and A, D, F, G, N, Q, and R trains on Sundays;

• The G will usually stop at Court Square in Queens, but all G trains will run during evening hours.

Buses

• The X27 express from Bay Ridge to Downtown will no longer run on weekends.  X27 riders have to use the R train on weekends;

• No overnight service on the B64 from Bay Ridge to Coney Island or the B65 to Downtown.

The article from the Brooklyn Paper.

The Fight for Our Lady of Loreto Continues

I had lost touch with the campaign to save Our Lady of Loreto, on Sackman and Pacific Streets in Brownsville, when I came upon a Daily News article last month about the continuing fight to preserve the church, closed last year by the Brooklyn Diocese.

The Diocese plans to sell the 108-year-old church to the Progress of Peoples Development Corporation, a branch of Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, which would demolish it to build 88 "affordable" housing units.

An alliance of community activists, including a developer and an Italian-American society, is fighting to preserve the church and turn it into a community center.

There would still be room left for 102 "affordable" apartments on nearby church property.

The Brownsville Heritage Center is helping lead the fight to keep the church in one of Brooklyn's most desolate areas.

The Diocese has dismissed the alternative proposal, saying the preservation group can't come up with the $21 million it needs to close the deal.

The preservationists had been negotiating with the Diocese for nearly a year when talks stalled in February after the Diocese stopped taking their calls.

According to a spokesperson from the North East Brooklyn Housing Development Corp., allied with the preservationists, the alternative proposal would work.

There will be a presentation on Our Lady of Loreto on March 27th at 1:00 PM at Christ the King H.S., at 68-02 Metropolitian Ave. in Middle Village Queens.

The community's counter-proposal to the Diocese will be discussed.

Enter and park in the rear.

The event is sponsored by Bella Italia Mia, Inc.

For further information, please call (718) 426-1240

I have posted a link to the preservation group's petition to save the church at the bottom of this page, if you would like to add your signature.

The article from the Daily News.

An upcoming evening at the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation will shed light on the important role that churches -- like Our Lady of Loreto -- played in the lives of New York City's immigrants a century ago:

Helping Italians Settle in the South Village: The Role of Our Lady of Pompeii Parish
An Evening with Mary Elizabeth Brown
Wendesday, April 21, 2010
6:30 - 8:00 P.M.
Our Lady of Pompeii
Father Demo (Basement) Hall
240 Bleecker Street
Free; reservations required.
RSVP to rsvp@gvshp.org or 212-475-9585 ext. 35

Queens Crap reports that the destruction of Our Lady of Loreto has begun.

SoHo

The Anti-Lawn Movement

It all started with wealthy American homeowners trying to make their properties look like English estates.

After World War II, the burgeoning middle class got into the act.

But it wasn't until the advertising-fed American lust for the perfect lawn that followed in the wake of the power mower that the lawn movement in America began in earnest.

Since then, its environmental impact has been staggering.

Some statistics:

• Acre-for-acre, the American lawn sucks up 4 times more pesticides than farmland;
• Lawn-care pesticides kill an estimated 7 million birds every year in the U.S.; 
• The algae blooms killing aquatic life and and suffocating our waterways are caused by phosphorus runoff from lawn fertilizer; 
• Lawn-watering accounts for over half of municipal water use in summer.

The growing anti-lawn movement started with local campaigns against the "mower and blower guys" (you know who you are), which gained momentum in 1991 with the publication of Michael Pollan's book Second Nature.

Pollan called the American lawn "the symbol of everything that is wrong with our relationship to the land."

Cornell’s “Turf Guy” Frank Rossi, who opposes over-fertilization, writes that we need to get rid of the costly American ideal of the "perfect lawn".

Towns like Madison, Wisconsin and Toronto, Canada have taken a step in that direction by banning phosphorus in lawn fertilizer.

In five Canadian provinces, pesticides are banned for non-agricultural uses, and big box stores no longer sell them.

Water shortages as a result of climate change argue strongly against wasteful lawn-watering, now banned in a dozen American states and likely be banned in a dozen more in the near future. 

Duct Tape