Starman Forever - RIP

Lafayette Street, 1/11/16

1947 - 2016

What a privilege to have lived the 1970s with a David Bowie soundtrack.  I met him in 1972, in the middle of a Ziggy tour, as the band was passing through a hotel where I was staying.  A transformative adolescent moment! - spellbound ever since.

RIP.

Train

La Royale

There's a new sign on on the awning of the ever-mysterious Mezini, at 492 Fifth. Mezini leased its space at 492 in 2010, and finally opened in June of 2013 as a higher-end seafood restaurant. Within a few months the place had devolved into a hookah joint, with curtains kept permanently closed. Mezini shut up shop last summer. The current sign indicates a move to a standard bar concept: beer and burgers.

Let's look back in pictures:


January 2013 - Mezini Opening Soon!

A month after opening - cheap beer!

January 2014 - Hookah Available Here!

March '15 - exhortations to potential customers

August '15 - the shrubbery is gone

Links

Farewell to Dreamy's/Golden Mens Wear days. Will Queen-in-Bazaar be revealed once more?



The first drone-specific shop in NYC will be on Fourth Avenue (Brooklyn) (Commercial Observer)

Eyeing Diversity, New Push for Demographic Data on Community Board Members (Gotham Gazette)

Enjoy the NYPL's new, enhanced access to its public domain images (NYPL)

Library Bookmobile, 1950's

A Station Near You - Closing (Sometime) Soon

MTA Will Completely Close 30 Subway Stations For Months-Long "Re-Vamp"(Gothamist)

The Prospect Av. R station is on the list, and before the planned work is complete, by 2020 (give or take several years?), it could be completely closed for a period of six to twelve months.   While a renovation is certainly needed, a complete closure is likely to make for slow & uncomfortable travel on an already overcrowded line.

Also announced yesterday, the plan to bring Wi-Fi to the whole subway system by the end of 2016, and cell-phone service by the end of 2017.  By the end of 2018 digital ticket purchases and mobile ticketing will be in use on buses and subways. Metrocards are on the way out.

Wi-Fi & cell service is inevitable I guess, but system-wide access will mean more screen-zombie activity, and more extraneous cell-phone conversation.  I like the subway and buses as places to read (paper) and observe the miniature dramas of transit life.  I waste enough time online as it is, and for me, venturing out and about without the constant self-absorption of screen-attachment is the only way to live in the city completely.

Household Gods (3)

Plans Revealed for the Sunset Park Station House

The Brooklyn Paper reports today on plans for the conversion of the old, long-abandoned 68th Precinct station house & stables in Sunset Park. The renovation is to include condos, a "high-end" cafe, and a community center. Here's a preliminary rendering:

Ben Herzog Architect PC (Brooklyn Paper)

Busy on 9th

9th Street between Third & Fourth is seeing plenty of action these days.  At vacant ground next to the American Legion, believed by some to be a Revolutionary War burial site, the DOE hopes to construct a Pre-K center.

Four years ago

Adjacent to the site, at 203, a five-story apartment building is rising, after an interesting circumnavigation of permit procedure.

October, 2015

Up the street at 217, a large detached house, one of a number of grand wooden buildings that once lined 9th, is to make way for a "community facility and residential dwelling," if plans are approved.

Now, higher up still, two attached brick buildings are being marketed as a development site for $4,800,000.

Marcus & Millichap is pleased to present 227-229 9th Street(Block: 01003, Lot: 0045/46), located between 3rd and 4th avenue, in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, NY. The lot measures 50 ft x 80 ft and is zoned R6A. The max allowed FAR is 3 offering a total of approx. 12,000 buildable square feet.

Development El Dorado

Re yesterday's post on Fifth and 13th., I've heard that 513 Fifth has been sold (no recorded sale as yet), and that there'll be an apartment building going up.  The 511 deli, still open for now, will be closing, though not immediately.  No word on Frank's barbershop.  But this one's already gone:

Bimbos & Heros

The Grupo Bimbo bakery bear is drowning in graffiti on the side of a delivery
truck at Fourth and 9th.

Why Bimbo, we wonder?  Let's ask Wikipedia to explain.

The name Bimbo was first coined in 1945. The main hypothesis is that it resulted from the combination of Bingo and Bambi. Later, the founders would know that the children in Italian bimbo are told, while in Hungarian, the word means cocoon and, curiously, the phoneme used in China to name sounds very similar to bread.
The corporate image, a small white teddy bear, resulted from the drawing that came to Mr. Jaime Jorba in a Christmas card, and whom Anita Mata, wife of Jaime Sendra, dressed with a white apron and a chef’s hat, as was given a loaf of bread under his arm.

Aha!

The Metro Gourmet deli (seen above) got one of those refits where you can't actually see through the windows any more, as they're blocked by row upon row of similar packages  - in this case potato chips.  It makes for a very dreary look indeed.  In the 80's Catene Italian deli was still at this corner, though in later years it left 239 and operated just out of 237.  A classic deli, Catene's closed in 2011.





2011


Catene has appeared on the blog a few times.  Here are a couple of links:

All Traces Gone
Heros of Borough Park

Fitness, Fitness, Everywhere Fitness ...

I keep seeing the Retro Fitness mobile billboard around the neighborhood.  Finally got a shot of it yesterday, parked by the subway station.

With admirable precision, the sign plugs the 378 Free Parking Spots! But they're not in Park Slope, South or otherwise.

Aren't we gymed out by now?

Corners

I found another early picture that includes 555 Fifth, the corner building at 15th Street.  This one gives a closer view.  The Brooklyn Eagle photograph (Brooklyn Public Library Brooklyn Collection) is suggested as dating from the 1930's, but with no El on the avenue, I'd guess it was taken a decade later.

And while we're time traveling, here's a picture of 511 (currently for rent) when it was still Eldorado carpets.
I love the grainy old 80's tax photos, taken right around the time I came to New York.  As blurry as thirty year-old memories, with some of the details stubbornly resistant to sharper focus.

If you look at the side of 513 today you can see see faint traces of a sign for Eldorado at the top of the building.

In a shot from 2011, you can see it more a little more clearly

For more on the corner, and a great Anders Goldfarb photograph, read here.

Household Gods (2)

On the N Line

Starting on January 18, the MTA will be closing seven northbound platforms on the N line, as a part of station renovations.  MTA officials claim that station closures, and commuter detours, will last (at least) 14 months.

Phase I of the project will see major construction work on the Manhattan-bound station platforms, platform walls, stairs, etc. In order to safely and efficiently perform this work track access is necessary,” Community Board 10 District Manager Josephine Beckmann wrote in an advisory to board members.

It's no surprise that one of the stations getting a fix is the paint-peeling, vaulted-ceilinged New Utrecht.  A temple of transit desolation.  Readers or cinema location enthusiasts might remember that the New Utrecht platform was backdrop to a crucial scene in the film A Most Violent Year.  I'd have loved the film anyway, but seeing a favorite subway locale at a crucial point of the movie was transit/movie-geek nirvana.  I'd grudgingly admit that a renovation is long overdue, but still, the station's gone-to-seed platforms are a thing of beauty.  Catch them while you can.

Afternoon

Where Wheat-pasters Rarely Tread

Women out, stock hipster wielding (excellent) Ta-Nehisi Coates book in.

15th Street

1/2 to 40 YDS

Sign the Petition for More R Trains

Capital New York

How's your commute?  If you live around here, and your ride involves the R train, you'll know the frustration of slow, overcrowded trains & congested stations. Even in off-peak hours, a wait for for a light in the tunnel, and a train dragging its way into into the station, can seem an eternity. The curse of the R train ride is the stuff of transit legend.

Area resident Randy Karr is petitioning the MTA to increase train service, particularly important in the light of a decade's worth of luxury high-rise building on Fourth, without any major infrastructure upgrades to support the attendant booming population.  Careless planning at best, and at worst ...?

Here's the petition statement:

"Since the rezoning of Brooklyn's 4th Avenue in 2005, many hundreds of residential units have been built and many hundreds more are being built or planned. This has increased the population along 4th Avenue by thousands of people, and thousands more are coming. The majority of this recent and new construction is along 4th Avenue between Atlantic Avenue/Barclay Center and 36th Street. The only subway line that makes stops in that section of 4th Avenue is the R train. As one waits for the R train on any of the four stops between 36th Street and Atlantic Avenue/Barclay Center, the D and N trains speed past on the express tracks. Many more frequent R trains are needed."

Please add your support to the petition.  You can sign it here.

From the Sublime to ...

Coming up next Month, a seal & wildfowl spotting walk at Sandy Hook  - $5, including snacks & hot drinks (American Littoral Society).  This is just one of the many events sponsored by the Northeast chapter of the Society, giving area residents a chance to visit and help preserve our local marine habitats.  A wonderful organization!

The Way We'll Eat: Tracking the Hottest Food Trends of 2016 (Brooklyn Magazine, "Celebrating Brooklyn's Charm, Authenticity & Opportunity")
Hi-Tech Takeout: Seamless is so 2013. Last year, innovative companies absolutely flooded the food delivery space, from the carefully curated Caviar, which works exclusively with top-tier eateries; to the David Chang-financed Maple, a full-stack company, which offers dishes from consulting chefs like Mark Ladner and Brooks Headley; to the super-streamlined Arcade, which allows consumers to order that day’s single restaurant selection (such as noodles from Han Dynasty) simply by texting “yes.” And the market is primed to reach peak saturation next year, with Google, uberEats, and Amazon Prime Now all getting into the game.

And at Union Market (Seventh location) 




The terroir is perfect for the dish.

Household God (1)

Sixth

More from Coney Island

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, 
Every inch of space is a miracle, 
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, 
Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same; 
Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, 
           and all that concerns them, 
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. 

                                                     Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1856) 

2016!