Monday, August 1, 2011

The NY Times: Lost in Gowanus

A regular reader of this blog (there are one or two), who is no fan of the NY Times, drew my attention (rather triumphantly, I have to disclose) to certain inaccuracies in today's Real Estate article on development in Gowanus.  The Times, ever attempting to be an urban pioneer, does seem a bit, er, geographically challenged when it crosses the East River.  I suggest a street map & a compass might help the next would-be Lewis or Clark of the Outer Boroughs.  Take this snippet:

At the corner of Bond Street and Third Avenue, one block from the canal on the Carroll Gardens side, a condo development is 75 percent sold out. Studios in the building start at $316,000 and go all the way up to $1.55 million, for a 2,259-square-foot unit with two bedrooms, a recreation room, a rear yard and a terrace.       

I hate to break this to the Times, but actually Bond Street & Third Avenue are parallel with each other, & do not intersect.  I believe the author of the article, Marc Santora, meant Third Street.  If we keep reading (must we?), we find this:

Neighborhood groups won a fight to prevent the area from being rezoned for residential development, concerned that it would result in a landscape similar to the one along Fourth Avenue, which is generally considered the southern edge of Park Slope.

Hmm, I think the southern edge of Park Slope would be right next to Greenwood Heights & a piece of Windsor Terrace, wouldn't it?  Who are these mysterious people who generally consider it any other way?  Lost somewhere I suppose.

Perhaps some people may find these errors rather trivial, but this is the Times we're talking about here.  Doesn't it have fact checkers or something?  It's not like it's some piddling little blog that someone (me perhaps?) plays around with on respite from the day job, blithely getting facts mixed up and ending up with a mish-mash of links, blurry photographs, & Youtube videos.  Isn't it meant to be real journalism?

No comments: