Category: Random

Laura B writes on the Park Slope Message Board:

Please help me find Olive a home.

She’s an adorable 8-week-old tuxedo kitten we found in a parking lot on Bergen street. She’s everything you want a kitten to be: playful, charming, wide-eyed. She does goofy kitten things like chase a little ball around maniacally, then climb into your lap or into bed with you to catch some zzzs.

She’s been vetted, is healthy, and is up to date on her shots.

Aaaaw and all that in the Park Slope Message Board

So, the Associated Press may have dubbed Brooklyn “the place to be”… Is Minnesota “the place to be from”?

There seems to be a disproportionately high number of Minnesota expats in the area, at least judging from the chatter on the Park Slope Message Board.

According to CHE, Brooklyn actutely lacks:

1. Gedney pickles
2. Summit
3. Cheese curds
4. $12 cases of Huber Bock
5. Vietnamese farmers selling thai basil bunches for $1
6. Isles cinnamon rolls
7. Canoe put-ins
8. Snow emergency parking
9. Food-coops with non-working memberhip
10. Cross-country ski trails
11. Punk kids on double-high bikes (hmm… Williamsburg?)
12. Abundant Ethiopian food
13. Wild rice soup
14. Radio K
15. Surdyk’s
16. Loons/mergansers/grebes
17. Swimming lakes

And apparently Brooklyn is OK without:
1. Seed art
2. Real mosquitoes
3. Katherine Lanpher (hmm… isn’t she in Manhattan??)

Minnesota’s the place to be from, you betcha: Park Slope Message Board

We just received this Onion-esque parody of “SmartMom”, the Park Slope blogger-turned-Brooklyn Papers columnist:

“SmartMom” tells some interesting stories, and she’s done some great things for the blogging community in Park Slope… but she has a writing style that some people cannot read without physically cringing, judging from opinions on the Park Slope message board:

From SlipperySlope: “SlipperySlope does not like Smartmom. SlipperySlope does not understand why Smartmom feels the need to write in the 3rd person. SlipperySlope wants to know if Smartmom is married to ‘Jimmy’ from Seinfeld.”

From Rose: “I don’t know why I feel compelled to read her blog; it is so consistently irritating. It’s just the same damn thing over and over: She lives on 3rd Street. She is jealous of people with money. Her kids went to 321. She knows everyone in Park Slope. She is jealous of Jennifer Connelly because she has a big expensive house. She is jealous of Jonathan Safran Foer because he has a big expensive house. Did I mention that she lives on 3rd Street?”

From Drano: “If you read the column strictly as a parody of the stereotypical self-absorbed, over-educated Park Slope denizen it’s brilliant stuff. And I do feel that there’s at least a slight chance that the joke is on all of us.”

In SmartMom’s defense, the venerable Gersh Kuntzman (now editor of the Brooklyn Papers) posted this on the message board: “… she is an acquired taste that I urge you to acquire. She is a rare Brooklyn talent and I am so happy to be in the position of nurturing that talent (others would prefer to resent her, I guess).”

The author of DumbWhore says, “I just did made paper copies to scatter around the neighborhood. I had to do something. I couldn’t just do nothing.” We’re not supposed to divulge the author’s identity… but we can say that the resemblance to columns in The Onion is not coincidental.

LINK: SmartMom discussion on the Park Slope Message Board

more-eggs-please writes in the Park Slope Message Boards:

“I was walking my dog along Berkeley Pl betwen 6th and 7th last night around 11 pm and came across the following ridiculous typed note taped to a bicycle seat. The bike was locked to a street cleaning sign next to the street:”

” ‘Please chain your bike to a different location,’ the note read in 18-point Times New Roman. ‘We’ve checked and we are liable if anyone trips over your biked and falls on our property. Thank you for your understanding.’ ”

“Is it just me or is this totally absurd? First of all, the bike was in no way obstructing anyone’s passage on the sidewalk in front of the two buildings it was straddling (which begs the question: whose property is this bike on, anyway?)”

“I was tempted to throw myself over the bike and scream for help and threaten to sue the owners of the building(s) since I felt they deserved such an inconvenient consequence for having such a stupid issue with this bike. Instead, I peeled off the note from the bike’s seat and took it home. Alas, the note was REPLACED (this time with even more tape) by the time my husband walked by the same spot this morning.”

“Does anyone else think these people are INSANE? This is in front of 109-111 Berkeley. Is this what PS is turning into? Would these people prefer to see more cars than bikes? Or, are they saying they’d rather this person park his/her bike in front of a neighbor’s house instead of theirs? I don’t think that’s very neighborly at all.”

Regardless of what you think of the note, you have to admit that this is becoming a classic example of Brooklyn neighbor interaction – witness this note deposited, relatively recently, in the handlebar basket of a bike on Park Place:

Agree to Disagree in the Park Slope Message Boards

Amidst rumors that the Pavilion Park Slope theater (on Prospect Park West) is closing, seven24 writes in the Park Slope Message Boards: “In 1996 the day the Pavilion opened, I began working the concession stand. Thru my time there I was grossed out on multiple occasions. ”

“The manager at the time demanded the popcorn left over at night be re-used by mixing it with fresh popcorn in the morning.”

“For some reason unknown to me, there were pigeons living in the stock room.”

“Ask yourself this: If you were the manager, and you found small holes bitten in to a sack of popcorn seeds, would you throw out the whole sack? The first time I met the exterminator I was glad when he left the theatre empty handed, until the next time he showed up and removed a garbage bag filled with dead rodents.”

“Believe me, there are worse things to worry about than small screens at the Pavilion.”

Is the Pavilion Park Slope movie theater closing? Read more in the Park Slope Message Boards

Before you drop $950,000 for that handyman’s special in Gowanus/G-Slope/BoCoCa East, you might want to consider the likelihood that Brooklyn’s hottest nabe may soon end up at the bottom of the Gowanus canal.

Alex Tingle’s GoogleMaps-flood data mashup lets you set different global warming sea levels and watch as New York City — and Gowanus in particular — sinks beneath the waves.

Pictured at right: the new Gowanus Bay after a 9m sea level rise.

quijibo writes in the Prospect Heights Message Boards:

the next “friends”ian hit tv series will be about…

a lesbian couple who adopt an ecuadorean orphan
who doublepark their strollers at the tea lounge
shop at the food co-op + back to the land
are vegan

and there’s al the window washer guy
this one brooklyn native,
who fancies himself to be mucho mucho street
i mean like streeter than street

al employs a bunch of hispanic men to wash store windows
up and down 5th avenue

and they have these amazingly decorated bicycles
with huge handlebars
festooned with decoration –fulla bling
and wait. do they drink?
yeh. they drink
and they all go to total wine bar for drinks

*these fotos are from my friend’s flickr blog http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidbivins/sets/585137/

Not sure what this has to do with Stabbing Death in Prospect Park in the Prospect Heights Message Boards

Ziggly writes in the Park Slope Message Boards:

I am moving my family to Park Slope (near the Union street train station on 4th ave) in a month and was wondering what the best way to get from JFK to PS would be. I will have myself, wife and 15 month old toddler. We will have 4 large suitcases, 4 carry ons and a car seat. We will be arriving at 8am. I figure my options are…

1. Airtrain to Howard beach station and take the A train in, transfer to the F take that to 9th street/4th ave station and transfer to the R to get to Union street

2. Take Airtrain to Jamaica station, take the Long Island Railroad to Flatbush then take the R to Union street. Does anyone have experience taking a lot of luggage on the LIRR?

3. Car service or cab it. I am on a tight budget and was concerned about getting a cab during what I anticipate to be rush hour AM traffic.

Any thoughts? Discuss in the Park Slope Message Boards

…and wave ’em like you just don’t care: kagey_b’s most interesting photo.

Q. Will Katie Couric make a good “CBS Evening News” anchor?

“She has always done a good job and I don’t know why she wouldn’t on the new show. I like when she comes out in public for interviews. She has a nice smile. I’ll miss seeing her reporting … in the mornings.” –Glen Martin, 56, Park Slope

Updates will be posted as they become available.

Is it real?

Neighborhood Improvement via the Park Slope Message Boards:

“I wouldn’t mind a fancy-ish gym, like Equinox.”

“Previously I was longing for a good Indian restaurant, but now we have the lovely Kinara!”

“Ethiopian food! I’d walk over to PS more often for that.”

“I don’t care–as long as it isn’t another realtor or coffee bar …”

“An In-and-Out Burger. Or at least a White Castle.”

“… the return of a real butcher, but United has been pretty good to me since the guys on 7th left and I wouldn’t switch back.”

“A soccer bar, but hopefully we’ll be getting that once the FloydNY spin off opens.” (hmm… isn’t there a new Irish bar that’s promoting itself as a soccer bar?)

“A nice movie theater. I don’t like the one on PPW …”

“A coffee bar that doesn’t allow strollers or laptop users.”

“… we need a drug store (w/ late hours) in the 4th-5th Ave area …” (Neergard is 24/7, right?)

“A decent fish market. Don’t get me started on the ones on 7th Avenue…”

“A belgian beer/frites and maybe mussels place. not too pricey…”

What else? Park Slope Message Boards

dope on the slope writes in the Park Slope Message Boards:

“We’ve started a group on flickr to chronicle the evolution of Gowanus from what it is today into whatever it will become. If you are a shutterbug who takes pictures of the area or know someone who is, please pass along this link:”

http://www.flickr.com/groups/gowanees/

“Even if you don’t plan on contributing photographs to the pool, stop by for a visit.”

Read more: Park Slope Message Boards

UFO over Prospect Park?

CatsFive writes: “August, 2003, the night of the blackout on the eastern seaboard, I went up to my apartment’s roof and took this 45-second exposure of a police helicopter coming up and over Prospect Park (Park Slope). Sorry, it’s not a UFO!”

More about this picture can be read here.

Distaster strikes the Slope. Our embedded correspondents report that the famed Costas statue (featured below) was removed – or stolen – last night. We’re led to believe it was theft by the rather unceremonious, gaping hole left in the ground . Photos of the scene to follow…

UPDATE
Time Out New York‘s Darren D’Addario proves to be a more intrepid journalist than your correspondent. He goes straight to the source, property owner Barbara Capozzi, who says “A man named Costas did work on my building and he left it there as a gift. I was surprised to see it there myself.” Asked if the bust will remain, she replies “I’ll probably move it out to a house I have on Long Island. But it’s a delicate situation, and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”

We’ll miss ya, Costas.

A new addition to the Eighth Avenue streetscape popped up over the past month or so. The building, located at Eighth and Union, recently had a brownstone rehab… is this what happens to the leftover concrete?

Does anyone have any idea who this “Costas” person is? The property records show the owner of the lot as Barbara Capozzi.

View additional photo 1

View additional photo 2

Up over at Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn.

“Best name for a Brooklyn Blog” goes to Dope on the Slope, who recently snapped this picture of The Hanged Man, an “odd illusion (I hope) at the intersection of Union and Prospect Park West.”

Other winners include Brownstoner and Curbed, which of course need no introduction; Aaron Naparstek, who is unstoppable, even by bollards; Dope and A Brooklyn Life both have an incredible eye and we can only hope they double their Brooklyn blogging efforts in 2006. Callalillie needs an agent, right now, if she doesn’t already have one, and F Train has been impressive for a long while. B61 Productions really “gets it” and we really hope for big things from that site 2006. Etc…

Chicks Dig Santa.

kungfucat writes: “when I looked out my window this morning to admire my new view i found to my surprise a beautiful blanket of snow…”

… to Open for Gentrification, according to the New York Times:

“The Gowanus Canal often stinks and is almost always spotted with slicks of oil. The streets alongside it are practically deserted, the silence broken by the rumble of concrete mixers and oil tankers or the screech of buzz saws…”

“Yet many of the 14,500 people whose homes flank the canal love the neighborhood’s jagged, anarchic feel and do not want to see its industrial character nibbled away.”

Read more…

Photo: Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

John Freeman Gill writes in the New York Times: “New Yorkers … are not known for their tolerance of things that protrude, dangle, leak or waft from a neighbor’s yard into theirs. But on Sixth Street near Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, there stands – looms, really – a notable exception: a gargantuan weeping willow tree whose canopy cloaks four full yards and tickles the airspace of a fifth.”

“By a peculiar coincidence, this giant among trees is owned by a giant among men, a 6-foot-5 former University of Michigan basketball player named John Morgan. When Mr. Morgan bought the house 16 years ago with his wife, Linda, the dwelling was hideous, but the willow already had an otherworldly quality. ‘The only thing attractive about the house was the tree,’ Mr. Morgan said. ‘It was magical, and I said, ‘I just can’t not have this.’ ”

Link: Under the Spreading Willow Tree [New York Times]

Discuss: Park Slope Message Boards

From the New York Times: “A bear with a prominent grease spot on his little beige nose spends his days wedged behind the bumper guard of an ironworker’s pickup in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. A fuzzy rabbit and a clown, garroted by a bungee cord, slump from the front of a Dodge van in Park Slope. Stewie, the evil baby from “Family Guy,” scowls from the grille of a Pepperidge Farm delivery truck in Brooklyn Heights, mold occasionally sprouting from his forehead…”

[Pictured: Stuffed toys strapped onto a van in Park Slope, Brooklyn. David F. Gallagher for NYT]

ic96 writes in the Park Slope Message Boards: “How is the marathon watching in Park Slope on 4th Ave? I’ve normally gone to the Upper East Side bars/restaurants to hang out for marathon watching. How is it in the Slope?”

Discuss: Park Slope Message Boards:

Barbershop in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

chippenziedeutch pontificates: “‘hipster’ is sooo 2003… Nowadays, it’s Whatever-You-Are-Currently-Into + ‘mafia’.”

Examples:

“I went to the Tea Lounge last night, but couldn’t get past the Toddler Mafia.”

“Going to see the Portastatic and John Vanderslice show at Southpaw? It’s sure to be filled to the brim with the Horn-Rimmed Glasses Mafia.”

“I stopped going to Great Lakes once it got overrun by the Hipster Mafia.” [Please note acceptable use of “Hipster” in modern “Mafia” context – Ed]

“I went to 2 Toms for dinner last night. It’s an old standby for the Mafia Mafia.”

_______________

SOURCE: chippenziedeutch in the Park Slope Message Boards

monoecious writes on the Park Slope Community Journal: “i’m looking for a photobooth in park slope. anyone know of one, or can i get confirmation on whether or not there is still one at buttermilk bar?”

Pimping our own forum: Park Slope Message Boards

Hey! You found us. Welcome.

What next? You may want to go play in the Park Slope Message Boards. Or send your feedback (anything! really!) to [email protected].

chippenziedeutch wrote in the Park Slope message boards: “Did anyone else hear those two loud explosions last night (Friday) (around 9:00ish)? I was in a backyard and it seriously sounded like someone had done blowed something up. Anyone know what it was?”

Read more: Bombs on 5th Ave.? [Park Slope Message Boards]