Whole Foods opens in Brooklyn

The lonnng awaited and debated Brooklyn Whole Foods opened in Gowanus, eight years after it was first proposed.  The open was a few hours ago and according to third hand reporting, it's awash in hipsters clambering for vinyl records and all that's organic, twee, trend and probably more expensive than Trader Joe's and Fairway. 

Gothamist and NY Times' Vivian Yee (@VivianHYee) has more deets.

Wonder if this will ease crowding at the other two? 

And does this switch Gowanus off the local track to full on gentrification and express renewal?

Photo Wednesday 03/3/10 : Gowanus Edition

Time to do a little self congratulatory dance! Why? If you haven't heard the Gowanus Canal was granted SuperFund status by the Federal Government which means basically that after 100 plus years of oil, lead, car and body parts polluting the once pristine oyster lined waterway, it will now be cleaned under specific guidelines. Congrats to Gowanus, especially all the people in the surrounding areas, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Wyckoff, Park Slope, who've fought again the city's lower standards and the pressure from developers who wanted to do less cleanup.

Special cheer and thanks to the Found in Brooklyn blog whose posts have keep me in the know on this issue way better than the established media has. Thanks (wiggle wiggle)

Second dance goes to me (yay me, wiggle, wiggle) for getting my photowednesday post up last week (though I did forget I scheduled the bottom part of this post and started to get frantic about time last night) and of all things for me to pick as my future post topic I chose the Gowanus Canal. Awesome I see the future and it will be! Love it when I'm prescient. (below is the original post)
The Gowanus portion of the BQE makes no sense to me. It never has been possible for my brain to wrap around it because of it's enormity. The fact that something this mammoth is in Brooklyn. I think that every time and yet I have so few photos of the Gowanus Canal spanning portion of this highway because my photos never seem to do a good job expressing more than a few unspecific words. With this one I realized scale (at least) is what's lacking the people in frame give a good sense of what is the easily tallest roadway in any of the 5 boroughs.

Photo Wednesday 02/17/10 : Elevated Edition

(This Photo Wednesday originally appeared last two weeks ago and was bumped because of this)



This image comes from the 4th Avenue subway station offices at night,(served by the F and (for now) G lines. The 4th Avenue subway station is one of those points in the MTA system that gives a sense of how interconnected a railway the subway is. Above street level is a wide set of four tracks and two platforms, then two stairs below you have the underground R,W (and sometimes N & D lines).

The next Manhattan bound station, Smith–9th Streets has the best view in the subway system and is the highest altitude station but this picture shows a rare view too. Those upper windows with decades of graffiti are yet to be buffed but somehow illuminated and the are part of former offices of the old IND transit company. I've been using that station since the 70's and I've never seen those windows lit up. I'm wondering if it has to do with the renovations of these stations that is going on for the next few years.

Two sites I love and have never given enough credit to: www.forgotten-ny.com and www.nycsubway.org provide more details about this station situated at the bottom of Park Slope, such as the fact that  it's a viaduct, level in it's construction, although it looks like a bridge, because the west end is elevated and the east goes straight into the hill of Park Slope which rises around it.

The subway makes for an appropriate "Photo Wednesday" since I've been seeing a whole lot of subway lately.

Weekend One-Liners 8/14-8/16 Another Party Edition

Friday Night August 14th

Long Island City:
Roof Party NY Ravel Hotel
8-08 Queens Plaza South 7pm - 2am

Saturday August 15th

ROCK THE BLOCK BK" -Brooklyn's Urban Arts Festival
Saturday 12pm to Sunday 4:00am
147 Front St. Betwn Jay St. & Pearl
Literally a ton of events, performers, DJs, among several venues, check the website:
(Among them the group HEAvy, DJ Scratch & DJ Spinna...)
For tickets & more info:
http://www.rocktheblockbk.com

Gowanus:
The Old American Can Factory, Courtyard
232 3rd Street, bet. 3rd and 4th Avenue 11pm - 4am
AFROKINETIC+Chris Annibell present

CARMINA SOUL feat. GE-OLOGY
DJ CHRIS ANNIBELL, AMON on percussion
+ EDWARD JAHN on visuals
@ The Old American Can Factory

Celebrating Afrokinetic Photographer
Amanda Adams-Louis's Birthday!!!

Sunday August 16th

Weekend One-Liners 6/12-6/14

If you're not as cool as this cat, and you don't have a ton of things planned for the brief sunshine this weekend has to offer, here are a few weekend-one-liners. Also Happy Pride.

Friday 6/12
"3 THE HARD WAY / A WILD MUSICAL RIDE FOR BROOKLYN PRIDE /feat DJ SELLY / DJ LYNNEE DENISE / DJ RIMARKABLE - DET/SF/NY @ LITTLEFIELD - 622 Degraw Street bet. 3rd & 4th Aves.Music and Much more details/tix @ http://www.ticketfly.com/purchase/event/367
PRESENTED BY UBIQUITA WORLDWIDE, GAY GIRLS GUIDE & ILOVEUPEOPLE.COM"

All Weekend (Show Ends Sunday!)
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater At BAM www.bam.org

All Weekend (ends Sunday!)
Northside Music Festival "Four Days of Music & Art in Brooklyn" http://www.northsidefestival.com/

Weekend One-Liners 6/6-6/7

This weekend's one-liners:
Today and tomorrow, Atlantic Art Walk: http://atlanticavenueartwalk.com/home/

Tomorrow Sun 6/7 1st Annual Brooklyn Beer Experiment: http://www.thebrooklynbeerexperiment.blogspot.com/ [gmap]

PhotoWedns 3/18/09 Thank You, Gowanus Lounge

A place to rest.

A "Street Couch" as coined by Robert Guskind of GowanusLounge.com

Brooklyn is a place to rest. Lounge even. That's the way I see it.
No matter how much posh, chic, glass walled, towering steel is projected on us I'll always see Brooklyn as the living room to Manhattan's rumpus room. Being raised in a brownstone on a tree lined street and traveling to Manhattan for BIG shopping, BIG movies, and other types of BIG fun will form that mentality. Some people might want an eight-foot diameter disco ball in their living room, not I. That's why I go to clubs. In Manhattan.

The blog Gowanus Lounge reminded me of that sensibility. If you don't know it's a blog whose view was the Gowanus section of Brooklyn and whose focus seemed to be all things in the world that effected Brooklyn and vice versa. The blog presented a stream of thought provoking neighborhood news, upcoming events and lighthearted features such as the "Street Couches Series" where they'd post a photo of couches that for reasons left to the imagination, furnished the curbside. I enjoyed the challenge posed by the Street Couch Series to look at more than just the literal and apply my imagination to something others might regard as worn and past it's prime. That's how I took it anyway.

Unfortunately, the founder of the blog Robert Guskind, who some have referred to as the "Brooklyn Blogfather" passed away a few weeks ago on March 4th. As I wrote in comments on other blogs I never met him but I enjoyed Gowanus Lounge and am happy that his loved ones are continuing the site.

So last week I was walking through Prospect Heights, (me old stomping grounds) I found not one but two Street Couches, one on the curb and the other footsteps away, on deck.

And suddenly I wasn't just walking down the street surrounded by the discarded past, I was part of an urban fantasy scavenger hunt. I'd found treasure! I whipped out the camera, snapped some pics and thought how simply fortunately it is that Guskind decided to share his views of Brooklyn and imagination with us.

Thank You. Rest (Lounge even) in Peace, Robert Guskind.

Ikea and photo wednesday cometh together!

Ah today's the day, ikea comes to the city proper, specifically to Red Hook Brooklyn.

I gotta be honest, I am of the fickle set of likes and dislikes that drives me to protest a Wal-Mart but welcome an Ikea. Which I guess means I like swedish meatballs more than corn.

Anyway, today wednesday june 18th is opening day so couch hungry brooklynites; run out and get yo'self some, cause they're giving them all away. Okay they're giving like, one away, but it's one more than anybody else, and after you scarf down those cinnamon buns you'll need somewhere to rest your buns, right?

Today's Photo Wednesday
I call this one: "The shimmering clash of human industry and nature."

Which is why today's photo in keeping with the Red Hook theme, comes from the Gowanus Canal which flows around Red Hook and on into Brooklyn's Gowanus / Carroll Gardens neighborhoods.

This pic is also an attempt to spread the wealth of photo wednesdays further around this great city of Brooklyn and to remind us of Red Hook/Gowanus's recent past of industrial abuse. Now that the Ikea's here, let's hope we don't find any "Hopen" floating in the canal.