8/31/11
Portside Exhibit Highlights Mariners' Role on 9/11
The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that between 350,000 and 500,000 people were evacuated by boat from lower Manhattan during the hours after the 9/11 disaster, many of them carried by volunteer private and commercial vessels.
There were 5 Coast Guard cutters, 12 small boats, and more than 100 public and private vessels operating at the scene.
For four days after the attacks, the boats continued to provision rescue workers at Ground Zero with fuel, supplies, and river water to fight fires.
The mariners' largely unsung efforts went on for months, as the equivalent of 2,400 barges or 93,346 trucks full of rubble was ferried away from Manhattan by boat, except for the ritual last column, which was trucked away.
Hauling the rubble by sea allowed the Ground Zero cleanup to be completed in just 8 months, sparing the city the impact of land-based haulage.
PortSide, in creating the exhibit, sought to highlight the mariners' contributions to the 9/11 story, which have implications for the city's waterfront redevelopment.
Not-for-profit Lilac Preservation Project co-sponsors.
Photographs and oral history were contributed by award-winning photojournalist and PortSide founder Carolina Salguero, vessel and rubble removal crews, MARAD, and the Center for National Policy.
On Wednesday, September 14, from 7:00-8:30, Salguero and Jessica DuLong, journalist and Chief Engineer of retired fireboat Harvey, will give a related talk.
For more information, visit the Website.
8/30/11
The South Brooklyn Rapist Strikes Again
This is at least the second time he has stalked a victim from the Prospect Avenue R station.
The timing of the attack is a change-up. Four earlier attacks took place between 10:30 PM and 4 AM. The timing of the attacks may relate to the rapist's work schedule.
The suspect is described as Hispanic, 25-30 years old, 5"7' and 165 lbs. His spree, which began in March of this year, included an armed rape attempt in Bay Ridge in May. His first three victims fought free. The fourth was not so lucky.
The first assault happened in Park Slope around 11:30 PM on March 20, when the assailant followed a 24-year-old woman from the Prospect Avenue R train station back to her 16th Street block. He grabbed her from behind, pushed her against an iron gate, ripped her leggings, and put his hands down the back of her pants. Screaming and fighting, the woman broke free and the assailant ran away, pulling up his pants as he ran.
A neighbor's surveillance video captured the incident in chilling detail. The Daily News reported it a month later, on April 22, without mention of a criminal investigation. The video was published the next day, April 23, by the Brooklyn Paper, also without further details. As it turned out, there were no further details. Park Slope Patch reported on April 26 that local residents were furious that the 72nd Precinct had failed to respond to the victim's 911 call.
According to the Bensonhurst Bean, the NYPD's delay in investigating the Park Slope assault triggered an internal investigation. The 72nd had refused the neighbor's offer of the surveillance video and closed the case, re-opening it only after a female detective interviewed the victim.
The rapist struck again near Ridge Boulevard in Bay Ridge just before midnight on May 3, when he pulled a knife on a woman and tried to force her into a driveway. She broke free and he ran away.
The third assault happened near 55th Street in Sunset Park at 10:30 PM on May 29, when the rapist pushed a 22-year-old woman to the ground and tried to sexually assault her. She fought back and he fled.
The fourth assault also happened on 55th Street in Sunset Park, just before 3 AM on June 5, when the rapist followed a 28-year-old woman home from a Dunkin' Donuts and sexually assaulted her inside the vestibule of her apartment building.
That woman picked Bensonhurst livery cab driver William Giraldo out of a lineup. The three other victims failed to identify Giraldo. Giraldo, who appeared on surveillance video at Dunkin' Donuts, voluntarily came into the precinct for questioning, saying he drove a fare to JFK Airport after leaving the coffee shop. Police sources have told the Daily News they don't think his case will survive a grand jury.
A total of five attempted sexual assaults and one completed sexual assault have been attributed to the South Brooklyn rapist since this spring. There may be more assaults that have either not been reported or that the NYPD has not yet connected up -- and there could be more than one perpetrator.
The article from Gothamist.
Earlier coverage from this blog.
New Weapon in Fourth Avenue Trash Wars: Surveillance Video
I found an eyewitness: at Sakman's Candy Store, on Fourth Avenue next to the Bay Ridge Avenue R station, where I buy my Daily News every morning.
Talking trash bins with the proprietor the other day on the way to work, I learned that he regularly saw Fourth Avenue residents leaving household trash in the corner bins, either pushing plastic shopping bags through the little openings at the top or leaving big black trash bags next to them.
His solution to the problem was more proactive than Ahl's, though.
He pointed out the "WARNING" sticker posted on the green trash bin outside his front door, which reads "These premises are 24/hour Video/Audio Recorded and Remotely Monitored for prosecution of any crime against these premises. 718-781-7716. We have peace of mind...Do you?
So here's lookin' at you, Trash Gremlin!
Those screen captures should make ticketing a piece of cake, wouldn't you think?
8/29/11
Gravesend Coin Dealer Beaten to Death
There may have been as many as four people, including a female, and four vehicles, involved at the scene of the abduction.
The gang apparently targeted and stalked Halfon because he was known to carry a lot of cash and other valuables.
Halfon was beaten, presumably robbed, stuffed into the trunk of the Volvo, and dumped on the sidewalk on East 7th Street, near Avenue N in Midwood, about a mile away from his shop and just two blocks from his home.
A passing motorist found him unconscious, with severe head wounds. He was pronounced dead on arrival at New York Community Hospital.
The Medical Examiner's office has ruled his death a homicide.
Friends and neighbors called Halfon a "wonderful" man -- kind, soft-spoken, gentle.
The perpetrators were caught on surveillance video. According to a Daily News source, one of them got out of the car covered in Halfon's blood and nonchalantly walked away, throwing his bloody T-shirt, a Yankees hat and a gray hoodie in a sewer before joining the rest of the group. (The NYPD would later collect the items as evidence.)
You can watch the surveillance video in the linked posts.
One of the perpetrators is now in custody. The NYPD has arrested 26-year-old Andrew Jackson, whose fingerprints were on the death car, in Staten Island.
The NYPD is asking for help from the public in identifying the others. If you know any of them, call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477), send a tip to www.nypdcrimestoppers.com, or text 274637 (CRIMES), then enter TIP577.
More from the Daily News.
More from the New York Post.
More from the Village Voice.
More from CBS.
More from ABC.
More from CBS.
8/28/11
Tickets for Brooklyn Indie Fest Available Online
The complete lineup of bands is now available on the event website. (Check out Corn Mo, The Mast and Soul.)
Tickets are $25 for a day pass and $55 for a 3-day pass. Buy tickets online at LITTLEFIELDNYC.COM.
Cued up outside Littlefield all weekend will be a stellar lineup of NYC food trucks and vendors, including WAFELS AND DINGES.
On Friday, September 16 from 1-3 PM, lawyers from Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and New York Law School will host a free panel discussion/Q and A on licensing, copyright protection and legal representation for artists and interested festival-goers. Nearby host venue TBD.
The Lifelong Lure of a Historic House
The asking price was $700,000.
Ruggiero went to see the house on her lunch hour, and fell in love with its elegant simplicity. She immediately decided, despite its poor condition and her then-husband's lack of interest, to meet the asking price.
While there are surviving Greek Revival wooden houses in New York City, the Farrell House, as it is known, is rare for being free-standing.
When Ruggiero bought it, the house was well on its way to demolition-by-neglect. A developer was planning to demolish the house, whose owner had died three years earlier, and put up an apartment building.
Local preservationists intervened, asking the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the house, once owned by prominent Tammany Hall politician James P. Farrell, a local landmark.
Ruggiero restored the house to period with the assistance of an architect, using old photographs. The restoration continues to this day.
The article from the New York Times.
DEC Fracking Panel Meets Behind Closed Doors
Because its recommendations are non-binding and its meetings are therefore exempt from the state's public meetings law, the panel met in secret.
DEC Commissioner Joseph Martens said that he will seek two sets of recommendations from the panel: one on whether state agencies have the resources they need to regulate gas drilling; the other on whether local governments have the resources they need to handle the impacts of gas drilling.
The DEC, which would issue fracking permits, is also charged with monitoring the drilling industry and enforcing state environmental regulations. While the drilling industry has been in New York State for a long time, fracking, which poses an unprecedented environmental threat, is a whole new ballgame.
Fracking is expected to explode in New York State if the DEC begins permitting it.
The DEC is now finalizing an environmental review of fracking, due in draft on August 31.
It's hard to imagine how the DEC, running on empty since at least 2008 due to budget and staffing cuts, can find the resources it needs to oversee fracking. Martens' public doubts about whether his agency is up to the job are mystifying, in light of the Cuomo administration's relentless push to permit fracking -- against growing public opposition.
Republican State Senator Sen. Thomas Libous, a member of the panel, said that the DEC must be provided with the "resources to move the process forward". "Resources" means budget. Every agency the DEC brings on board to help absorb the fracking caseload will be looking for budget. As a result, the DEC's budget demand will probably double -- at a time when the state is in a fiscal crisis.
Martens, who expects the panel's recommendations by early November, will fold them into his agency's budget request to Gov. Andrew Cuomo in December.
The panel's next secret meeting is planned for mid-September.
Five new panel members were announced last week, including Chemung County Executive Thomas Santulli, Robert Williams of the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, and Brad Gill, executive director of the state Independent Oil and Gas Association.
Lawmakers joined with conservation and anti-fracking groups this week to ask that the comment period for the DEC's draft review of fracking be extended from 60 to 180 days.
Martens won't say whether he will extend the comment period, nor will he say whether he will accede to the demand for public hearings on the draft review.
The article from Press Connects.
Rally at Gov. Cuomo's Office to Ban Fracking
On August 31, the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is scheduled to release its draft impact statement on fracking, which proposes to open most of the state to the high-risk drilling process.
By Gov. Cuomo's fiat, the comment period for the draft impact statement has been shorted from 180 to 60 days. Environmental advocates joined by some state legislators, are calling on the governor to extend the comment period.
The more New Yorkers have learned about the impact of fracking over the past two years, the louder and stronger their opposition has grown. But more voices are needed in the call for Gov. Cuomo to put clean water, public health, our communities and our state's environment above oil and gas industry profits.
Bottom line: there are alternatives to "natural gas" (a tarted-up way of saying methane), there are no alternatives to water.
Join clean water advocacy group Food and Water Watch -- and me -- for a rally outside of Governor Cuomo's Manhattan office at 633 Third Avenue in Manhattan at Noon on August 31.
Register online for the event here.
8/27/11
Taking Democracy Back
America has become a corporatocracy. Ordinary Americans know how badly they are getting screwed, but they don't know where to begin to fight back; they don't have a plan; and they don't have the guts. One thing is sure: as long as Americans remain in denial, corporatocracy will continue.
Abolitionist Harriet Tubman, a conductor on the Underground Railroad who helped free more than 700 slaves in the Union Army’s Combahee River raid, said: “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
Job One is admitting the truth. We may still be in denial, but the indie media and our innate common sense have at least made us begin to doubt the logic of the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, and the corporate state.
But what would our gameplan be? How have other oppressed people freed themselves? Americans lack that kind of political street smarts. Sociologist Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy or David Zeigler’s documentary Sir! No Sir! might be a place to start.
Every American political movement since the Revolution has depended upon "disruptive power". Frances Fox Piven’s Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, tells how people have defied the rules and disrupted the system.
During the Great Depression, when American unemployment was at 25%, auto workers engaged in massive solidarity actions, including the Flint, Michigan sit-down, which began in 1936 with two auto workers refusing to leave a General Motors factory, and ended with the United Auto Workers union being recognized as a bargaining agent.
That's the kind of attitude it takes to win.
Lawrence Goodwyn, in The Populist Movement, tells how the late-19th-century farmers' insurgency known as “The Alliance” became the biggest labor solidarity movement in American history and enabled economic self-sufficiency through worker-owned co-ops.
Goodwyn found that successful populist movements depend on "individual self-respect” and “collective self-confidence”. People with no self-respect don't fight back. Organizations that lack collective self-confidence lose. You need both self-respect and collective self-confidence to win.
The Populist Movement, which started from where we are now, nearly transformed our democracy. Their stumbling early efforts grew into a coordinated mass movement extending across the American continent. We can do the same.
Morale, like strategy and tactics, is critical to winning. Many Americans feel defeated and demoralized because they see corporatocracy holding all the chips. But our very demoralization is a bigger handicap than poverty.
People who put up with too much crap for too long eventually give up. Many Americans are so demoralized by their losses, their struggles, their isolation, the abuse they've suffered, that they've lost the will to fight back.
This phenomenon is seen in subjugated societies. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and El Salvadoran Ignacio Martin-Baró's writing on “liberation psychology" address it. The music of Reggae god Bob Marley addresses it.
Americans are embarrassed to admit that, after decades of corporate subjugation, they live in the state Bob Marley called "mental slavery".
But truth is power. When the world believed that the Soviet Union and its Communist rulers were all-powerful, the shipyard workers of Gdansk, Poland, by refusing to go away, won their battle by exposing the weakness at the heart of the Communist system.
The citizens of Iceland have refused to accept taxation for the costs imposed by the financial elite that scuttled their economy. In a 2010 referendum, 93% voted against debt repayment. A new constitution is now being drafted that would free Iceland from the grip of international finance.
A lesson of the 2011 Arab spring that bears repeating is that tyrants are often more fragile than they seem. Until the moment of change comes, we don't know what is possible.
If you want change, be ready to seize the day.
Want to jump into the game? How about MoveOn.Org's August 2011 Recess Action at Rep. Michael Grimm's Staten Island Office, 265 New Dorp Lane (Map), Staten Island, on Wednesday, August 31st, at 12:00 PM?The post from Alternet.
It's time Rep. Grimm, "the people's candidate", met "the people".
Bay Ridge Hunkers Down
Everything charged up? Check.
Candles? Check.
Food? Check.
Water? Check.
Ice? Check.
Stuff outside stowed? Check.
Movies? Check.
Jack Daniels? Check.
Then goodnight, Irene.
8/26/11
Clarence Gets Down with the Big 6-0
Invited guests are instructed to pick their afros, dust off their bellbottoms, hip huggers and platform shoes, and get down and boogie.
The event features a complimentary buffet and cash bar.
Norman began serving his three-to-nine-year sentence for campaign corruption and extortion in 2007. He was transferred to a work release program in Manhattan in 2008, denied parole in March 2010, then discharged last March.
The post from the Albany Times Union.
Irene: MTA Shutting Down, Evacuation Underway
 |
| View of Hurricane Irene from Space |
Use the Hurricane Evacuation Zone Finder to find out if you live in Zone A.
Here's a downloadable PDF map of NYC's hurricane evacuation zones.
No part of Bay Ridge is in Zone A.
If you know people in Zone A, please call and urge them to get out now -- and offer them a place to stay if you can.
If you live in Zone A, leave by no later than 5 PM tomorrow, and if you can't stay with friends or family outside the zone, head for the nearest city Evacuation Center. The centers are now open.
MTA service, including subways, buses, and railroads will begin shutting down at Noon tomorrow, so if you're evacuating, keep in mind that MTA will no longer be an option tomorrow afternoon.
More from AP.
Poll: Nearly 90% of Americans Disapprove of Congress
Congress' approval rating has dropped to a record 12%, down from 21% percent in June, before the debt deal. Overall, 87% of Americans disapproved of Congress' performance.
GOP attack dog The Tea Party and Republican House Speaker John Boehner have lost support, and Americans increasingly favor raising taxes -- not just cutting spending -- to reduce the federal deficit.
Independent voters, an important and much-sought-after demographic, are shifting toward raising taxes as part of a deficit/debt solution.
The poll made the unusual finding -- sure to worry local Congressional representative Michael Grimm -- that more Americans now disapprove of their own representative than Congress at large. Some said the debt ceiling smackdown made them doubt their own lawmaker's ability to govern. Sixty-five percent say they want their Congressional representative out in 2012.
The poll shows the gap between American voters' perspective and the Tea Party's cut-it-or-shut-it rhetoric that put Conservative Republicans like Grimm in Congress last year having widened to a chasm.
According to the poll, Americans now trust neither party's stewardship, but fault in particular the Republicans' refusal to compromise.
A divided Congress returns to Washington this fall to face the same fiscal issues they failed to resolve this summer -- sure to affect the 2012 elections.
See poll results here.
The article from the AP.
Dyker Heights: Domestic Violence History Ends in Murder
The victim's screams as she was being stabbed to death prompted the neighbors to call 9-1-1.
The 68th Precinct, which responded to the scene, subdued and disarmed Xiao-Bao, reportedly still holding the murder weapon after slashing his own wrists with it, and took him to Lutheran Medical Center.
He is jailed pending arraignment on a second-degree murder and fourth-degree weapons possession charges.
The murder was the last chapter in the couple's domestic violence history. They had filed domestic violence complaints against each other with Brooklyn's 72nd Precinct as recently at March of this year. No word on the outcome of those complaints.
The unnamed victim joins Tatyana Larisa Prikhodko of Sheepshead Bay and Daniella Mannino of Bensonhurst on Brooklyn's growing list of domestic violence casualties.
A state legislative initiative would create a domestic violence offender database, like the sex offenders database, allowing people to type in a name and find out if someone has ever been arrested for domestic violence.
The Brooklyn DA's office maintains a bureau offering outreach to domestic violence victims.
National not-for profit Safe Horizon offers a multi-lingual 24/7 domestic violence hotline at 1-800-621-4673.
Heather Chin's article from the Home Reporter.
Verizon Strike Ends
Forty-five thousand unionized Verizon workers returned to work this week, after 15 days on strike, on the strength of the company's agreement to bargain in good faith.Union leaders said that was their objective.
As talks continue, the Communication Workers (CWA) and Electrical Workers (IBEW) are working under their old contracts, and have agreed not to strike again for at least 30 days.
With workers from Virginia to Massachusetts on strike, Verizon fell behind on installations and repairs and was plagued by reports of outages.
Ending the strike before a new contract was in place was controversial, but most workers were relieved to return to work, despite fears that, with the pressure off, Verizon will balk again.
Both sides have made concessions. Verizon has agreed to take certain demands off the table and CWA has agreed to lift a cap on overtime.
Verizon has crushed union organizing drives on its growing wireless side, even closing facilities to stop workers from organizing. As a result, just 30% of the company's workforce is unionized -- with only 70 of those workers in the wireless division.
But when those 70 workers risked their jobs by going out on strike, there was a spike in wireless side workers asking about union membership.
Unionized Verizon workers know that the company wants to replace them with non-union labor. Many were afraid that the longer the strike continued, the more likely it was that their jobs would be pulled out from under them, yet they willingly took that chance.
Verizon has suspended eighty striking workers and subjected them to disciplinary action, including 60-year-old Paula Vinciguerra, president of CWA Local 2106 in Salisbury, Maryland, who was arrested and suspended from her job for sitting down in front of a truck driven by a scab laborer.
CWA has pledged to fight the disciplinary actions.
For union workers, the strike was a mobilizing force.
The post from LaborNotes.
8/24/11
Tempest in a Trash Bin
And now that the city Department of Sanitation, at State Senator Marty Golden's request, has replaced the wire mesh bins that CB 10 had removed with taller, covered green receptacles, it's gotten political.
CB 10 adopted the trash bin removal idea from CB 11 in Bensonhurst after DSNY reduced trash collections on Fourth Avenue last year.
CB 10 Environmental Committee Chair Greg Ahl objects to the trash bins because, well, people use them -- he thinks to illegally dump their household trash.
By Ahl's logic, removing the bins causes the trash to disappear -- because the Trash Gremlins only come out to dump when there's a corner bin in sight, in case you didn't know that.
Ahl tested his idea by having DSNY remove the trash bins along Fourth Avenue from 68th Street to Ovington Avenue earlier this year. He maintains that, after an initial spike in trash, things got cleaner.
I've been photographing that intersection, with trash bins and without, over the past year or so, so I know something about this controversy.
It's time, I think, that CB 10 found out how much of that "illegally dumped household trash" is being picked up -- legally -- by private commercial haulers hired by Fourth Avenue business owners, and how many Fourth Avenue business owners have been driven by Ahl's shenanigans to policing their own sidewalks in order to avoid getting ticketed by DSNY.
One more question: why, if CB 10 is convinced that people living in commercial buildings on Fourth Avenue are illegally disposing of their household trash, doesn't it make any effort to better educate them -- or to increase enforcement by DSNY?
Kvetching to the Brooklyn Paper doesn't change anything.
Hershey's Using Foreign Exchange Students as Forced Labor
When the students complained about their low-paying, back-breaking jobs packing chocolate and the plant's 24/7 schedule, Hershey's threatened to have them deported.
The students are staging a walkout to protest the abusive conditions in the plant, demanding that Hershey's tell the truth about its "cultural exchange" program.
The students were recruited by Hershey's from Ghana, Turkey, Mongolia, and other countries this summer, then chain-ganged into $8 an hour -- minus housing costs -- manufacturing jobs.
According to the National Guestworker Alliance, which is helping the students, Hershey's is using them as substitutes for the 500 American workers it will lay off over the next year.
Hershey's plan is working: the company has posted $130 million in profits in just the last three months.
The foreign exchange students are demanding their money back; and that their jobs go to American workers earning a living wage.
Here's the students' petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/hershey-stop-exploiting-student-guestworkers
8/23/11
Fracking Correlated to Increased Seismic Activity
Several earthquakes in the U.S., Japan and Canada have been caused by injecting fluids into deep underground wells for waste disposal and secondary recovery of oil.
Millions of gallons of chemical-laced wastewater from fracking operations are also pumped into underground wells -- the same process that has caused earthquakes.
Earlier this year, a wave of earthquakes occurred near gas drilling operations in Arkansas. And a recent study correlated increased seismic activity in Texas' Barnett Shale with the injection of fracking fluid into the rock formation.
The article from WNYC.
Reading Works at the Old Stone House: Re-Thinking Italian America
The $5 suggested donation includes wine and refreshments. Featured books will be on sale.
Curator Joanna Clapps Herman's presentation brings together a group of Italian American scholars and authors to uncover previously-hidden details of Italian-American history, as it was created, lived and spoken.
Italian-Americans came later than some other ethnic groups in this country to studying and writing about their own customs, culture, folkways and history. But in the last 25 years, a rich body of written material has been created examining every aspect of Italian-American culture and manners.
Each of the featured authors brings to light a hidden aspect of Italian-American life: history, language, vernacular culture and archaic customs:
- Joseph Sciorra is Associate Director for Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at Queens College (CUNY). A folklorist, he has published on religious practices, cultural landscapes, and popular music.
- Nancy Carnevale is Associate Professor of History at Montclair State University and author of A New Language, A New World: Italian Immigrants in the United States, 1890-1945 (University of Illinois Press, 2009), winner of a 2010 American Book Award.
- Jennifer Guglielmo specializes in the history of immigration, race, women, and labor in the United States, and is an Associate Professor of History at Smith College. Her recent book Living the Revolution: Italian Women's Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945 (UNC Press, 2010) documents Italian immigrant women's commitment to revolutionary and transnational social movements, and explores how this activism diminished as they became white working-class Americans.
- Curator Joanna Clapps Herman has published poetry, fiction, memoirs and essays. Her latest publication is her memoir, The Anarchist Bastard: Growing Up Italian In America (SUNY Albany Press, March 2011) She is co-editor of Wild Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana (Fordham University Press, 2008), as well as co-editor of Our Roots Are Deep With Passion (Other Press, 2007).
8/21/11
Laboz Gets Sweet Deal on Piece of Brooklyn Municipal Building
Al Laboz bought the first two floors of the building from the city for $10 million -- about half what the real estate is worth, according to the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership.
The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership had been marketing the space to developers since 2007, to "increase revenues".
Many had hoped the building would become an Apple store. What they're getting is high-end retail and an upscale restaurant.
Why did Laboz get an insider price? Well, because he's an insider: an executive of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and chair of the Fulton Street Mall Association. (He's bringing retailer H and M to the Fulton Street Mall next year.)
Cue Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz' tired "jobs" (not Steve, we couldn't get him) mantra.
Laboz made headlines in 2007 for evicting small business owners on Willoughby Street to make room for his 30-story retail and residential space between Bridge and Duffield streets.
The buildings are still empty, three years later.
Nothing says "good government" quite like selling a piece of city hall to a mom-and-pop-killing insider -- at half price.
The article from the Brooklyn Paper.
Re-Inventing Fort Hamilton
The U.S. Defense Department will be looking for $400 billion in savings over the next decade, likely from base closures. A cycle that begins in 2013 will target bases for closure in 2015. Gillibrand will be involved in that process.
She wants to ensure that Fort Hamilton, New York City's only active military base and a critical local security hub for federal agencies, can continue its mission as the city's guardian.
The presence of the historic, 180-year-old Brooklyn fort, home to about 1,500 people, is key to preventing terrorist attacks on New York City, by providing immediate response and support capability.
The fort is also the country’s second largest induction center, processing and screening approximately 16,000 recruits a year, as well as a recruitment center and headquarters for the Army Corps of Engineers.
Gillibrand wants a feasibility study to weigh enlarging the fort's mission to gather in other agencies with shared operational and training needs, in order to achieve synergy and necessary cost reductions through a joint operations approach.
Since 1993, six military installations in New York City have been closed. Fort Hamilton narrowly missed closure in 2005.
The Fort Hamilton website.
Linda Johnson to Head BPL
Johnson, interim executive director of the BPL since July 2010, will oversee the management and operations of the entire Brooklyn Public Library system.
Johnson, a lawyer, is expected to build on her skills and experience as a manager and successful fundraiser in the not-for-profit sector to enlarge the library's endowment.
Serving Brooklyn’s 2.5 million residents through 60 local branches, the Brooklyn Public Library, the nation's fifth largest, is an independent system, separate from the New York City and Queens libraries.
Local Democratic City Council Member Vinnie Gentile, who chairs the Council's Select Committee on Libraries, praised Johnson for a plan to increase hours at Brooklyn library branches, despite funding constraints.
Coney Island Strongman Spectacular!
The Coney Island Strongman Spectacular, hosted by Sideshows by the Seashore, 1208 Surf Ave.(Corner of Surf and 12th) in Coney Island, is the brainchild of Chris Rider, one of strongest men on the planet, and "Adam, the First Real Man", a mainstay at Sideshows by the Seashore and master of ceremonies for the event.
If it can be bent, twisted, smashed, broken, torn, shredded, or demolished by a human being -- it will be at the Coney Island Strongman Spectacular.
Such a colossal show of human strength -- featuring the strongest men on the East Coast showcasing unique acts and superhuman feats -- .has not been seen in Coney Island for 60 years.
Expect the classic strongman standards, as well as feats unique to each of the performers.
Tickets are $10 in advance or $12 at the door.
On the bill are:
- Virginia's Gary "The Brickman" Brown from Virginia, world record holder in the brick lift, and Tommy Heslep, a 170 pounder with one of the world's strongest crushing grips;
- New Jersey's Sonny Barry, still the champ at turning bottle caps inside out with this thumb in his 60s, and Stanley "Stanless Steel" Pleskun, the only man that can bend a US quarter with his fingers;
- New York's Chris "Wonder" Schoeck, pound-for-pound bending some of the toughest bars in the 26-30" range;
- Pennsylvania's Chris Rider, declared "one of the strongest men on this planet" by strength historians and master of hair feats -- he bends steel using the hairs on his head; and Steve Wiener, a master of combination feats like holding a fire hydrant from his head while levering two sledge hammers crucifix style.
8/20/11
Scott Stringer Out to Reform City's ACC
Animal welfare advocates regard the ACC, the Northeast's biggest shelter system, as a woefully underfunded, shamefully mismanaged relic, saying that even recently-announced legislation to increase the agency's budget by $10 million over three years won't make a difference.
PAWS, Stringer's new initiative, aims to make the city a national leader in humane animal treatment by drawing upon the successful Central Park Conservancy model to reform the ACC, reorganizing it into a quasi-independent, not-for-profit organization with a large, diverse board of directors that would bring new blood -- new resources, new expertise, new perspective -- into the system.
PAWS would also comply with existing law by requiring the city to provide full-service shelters in all five boroughs.
You can sign a petition support of the PAWS initiative here: http://www.mbpo.org/paws/.
Local animal welfare advocates, who see PAWS as a precious chance to intervene on behalf of animals in the city shelters, are looking for 10,000 signatures -- not just from New Yorkers, but from everyone who cares about animals: visitors, tourists, former New Yorkers, family members, and those who work and pay taxes here.
Yoga Rocks! Kids Afterschool
Walk-ins are $20 a class. You can buy all 6 classes for $100.
The instructor is Julie Raimondo, a certified Yoga Rocks! Kids teacher. You can reach her at (917-968-1941) or julieraimondo@msn.com.
Pre-register your child at the studio on Monday, September 12 and Tuesday, September 13 from 3:45 to 4:45 PM, or call Yoga in Bay Ridge at 347-420-1272.
Photographer Lori Grinker at powerHouse Arena
on Sunday, September 18, at 5:00 PM at the powerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street in DUMBO.
The phone there is 718-666-3049. The F is closest train, but powerHouse is just a short walk from the A/C/2/3.
Admission is $5.
Distant Relations follows the dispersion of Grinker's family from Lithuania in the late 1800s to North America, England, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, Israel, and the Ukraine. The project is about the universal human experience of diaspora, through transience, estrangement, and finally, rootedness.
There will be an opening reception with wine and a Q and A with the photographer.
Lori Grinker's career as a photographer began in 1981, when she was a student at Parsons School of Design. She followed the career of the young Mike Tyson for a decade, beginning when he was 13. She also photographed the 9/11 disaster.
She has published two books: The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women (Jewish Publication Society, 1989, (6 editions), and Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict (de.MO, March 2005).
Professional recognition has included prizes, fellowships, grants, solo and group exhibits, and acquisitions by the International Center of Photography (ICP), The Jewish Museum in New York City, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
8/19/11
Regional Anti-Fracking Rally in Philly
Drilling industry bigwigs will be in town that day strategizing how to expand the dangerous, high-risk fracking technique virtually regulation-free throughout the Northeast.
The Food and Water Watch Shale Gas Outrage is a counter-convention, rally and demonstration that coincides with the industry's conference.
Inside the Philadelphia Convention Center, industry executives will be schmoozing former Pennsylvania governor and gas industry advisor Tom Ridge, and current Pennsylvania governor and friend of the industry Tom Corbett.
Outside the convention center, Food and Water Watch, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Protecting Our Waters, and dozens of other clean water advocates will be rallying in the street with Gasland director Josh Fox, affected families, entertainers and activists.
The people of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Delaware are at a critical juncture. The fracking-friendly Delaware River Basin Commission is poised to unleash industrial gas drilling on a watershed that supplies drinking water to 15 million people.
The pathetically outnumbered and outgunned New York Department of Environmental Conservation, pushed by New York's fracking-friendly Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is expected to release draft fracking regulations by early September.
For more information and to sign up for the rally, click here.
As you may have noticed, the drilling industry is working to soften us up with a full-court press that includes a pro-fracking ad campaign [Alternet.]
8/18/11
Props to Lady Deborah
As part of its first annual History Day Celebration, the Coney Island Hall of Fame will pay tribute to the fascinating and utterly cool Lady Deborah Moody (1586-1659).
Driven by religious persecution from her native England, Lady Deborah first landed in Massachusetts, where she was branded "a dangerous woeman."
And as we all know, dangerous women inevitably make their way to New York City.
Lady Deborah, who "wrote the Declaration of Independence 130 years before the men got around to it", founded the town of Gravesend, one of colonial Kings County's original towns, in 1645.
The town was settled under a Dutch charter guaranteeing religious freedom and self-rule.
Lady Deborah was the only woman to found a New World colony, and the first New Yorker to recognize the value and importance of Coney Island, which was originally held in common by residents of the town of Gravesend.
How did Gravesend lose Coney? That's another story, one that Charles Denson, director of the Coney Island History Project, would be happy to tell you, I'm sure.
Celebrate Lady Deborah's life, and enjoy live music, entertainment and history, on Sunday, August 28 from 1 -- 5 PM at the first annual Coney Island History Day celebration, at the Coney Island History Project exhibit center at Deno's Wonder Wheel Park, West 12th Street in Coney Island.
Contact information:
- email events@coneyislandhistory.org.
- Facebook, Twitter and Flickr!
- Web www.coneyislandhistory.org
Complete Streets Bill Signed Into Law
The Complete Streets Law requires transportation officials, when designing any state or federally-funded road or street, to facilitate access not just to cars, but to all users, including pedestrians, bikers and people who move slow because they are elderly or disabled.
In New York City, a pedestrian is killed by a car every 2 1/2 days.
The law contemplates the use of traffic-calming measures like sidewalks, paved shoulders, bike lanes, shared road signage, lane striping, crosswalks, pedestrian signals, ramps, and bus pullouts.
Senior advocacy organization AARP praised the new legislation as necessary. Seniors are cars' most frequent victims.
AARP's next project, now that Complete Streets is law, is full funding for the city DOT's Safe Streets for Seniors Program.
Coverage from Streetsblog.
8/17/11
He's Baaaack!
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who couldn't win a single state in his $59 million bid for the 2008 Republican president nomination, is putting together a 2012 New Hampshire Primary bid.His team wants to move in on the dwindling talent pool now, before Texas Gov. Rick Perry scoops up the few top operatives left in a state.
Giuliani has been working New Hampshire for months now, focusing on the state as a campaign fundraising lever.
He's expected to keep a low profile until after the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, which led to his rise to national prominence-- and his presidential ambitions.
The former Democrat is moderate on issues like abortion and gay marriage, which put him at a disadvantage last time out with the conservative voters who dominate Republican primaries.
His advisers see those issues being trumped in this election cycle by the economy.
Giuliani is good friends with Rick Perry, who endorsed and campaigned for Giuliani in 2008.
Time Out
I first noticed it this afternoon, when found content on this blog that I didn't post. It was about the Verizon strike.
I took it down, and took the blog offline for several hours.
This is the second time this year that the security of this site has been compromised. Looks like I have a lot of reading to do.
For now, I'm headed to the gym for some endorphins. Getting hacked is a major bummer.
8/16/11
Working Reality
Remember that New Yorker story from Grimm's "Mikey Suits" days: Grimm and his married Caribbean squeeze at a Queens nightclub; the belligerent estranged husband; the bouncer; Round 2, where Suits puts some guys' lights out; Round 3, where Suits arrests everybody in the club, etc.?
Grimm did a masterful job, when that story broke, of brushing off the scandal and portraying himself as simply doing what any righteous dude would have done under the circumstances.
So when the Daily News broke the story this week that Carlos Luquis, who carried business cards identifying him as a director of Texas-based company Austin Refuel, of which Grimm owns about a third, is a convicted felon, I was ready for the back-spin.
Grimm and Luquis have a history: they worked together for many years as FBI agents.
Luquis left the agency in 2003 to head security for the Texas Electric Reliability Council. Eighteen months later, he was indicted in a fraudulent scheme in which the council was billed $2 million by companies that didn't exist, for work that was never done.
In 2006, Luquis was convicted in 2 of 6 counts, and served 2 years of a 12-year sentence. He was released in 2008, just before Austin Refuel was incorporated, still owing $200,000 in restitution.
Austin Refuel Texas customers identified Luquis as their company contact. People in the alternative energy business who dealt with Austin Refuel say that Grimm and Luquis were in the business together.
But Grimm denied Luquis was his business partner, calling him an "independent contractor" hired by a mutual friend.
Again, as with the Queens nightclub story, Grimm cast himself as the hero, the guy who rose to the occasion: this time, as the loyal friend who gave Carlos a much-deserved second chance.
The Daily News article.
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