On the Sofa: GL Reader Comments

Every week, we like to pick a few comments that GL readers have left during the previous seven days and highlight a few of them. Here are this week's somewhat random selections:

340 Court Street #2: Collateral Damage Edition. "You don't think anything can shake these brownstones until a backhoe starts banging away in the next lot, then it does seem like London in the Blitz. We live about 100 yards due west of this house and our block shook like this when they were sinking a new elevator shaft for the library's new handicapped entrance. We had some interior wall crack; we also had to fix water damage to our side wall foundation walls when their excavation exposed it to the elements."

J.J. Byrne Park: Slow Going in Boymelgreen Section. "The building's nowhere near finished. The building owner's caught in the money crunch, like many other developers of his type. His other building on Atlantic Ave. across the street from the jail is having the same problems - exterior looks mostly finished but there's a lot inside that needs work."

A Beautiful Carroll Gardens Recollection. "I feel that Carroll Gardens is not alone in what this person is saying. I live in a building where a woman lived and so did half of her family. She moved nextdoor and raised 5 children in one or two apartments. Back in the day when If someone moved out, you could claim that space and move right in. She has stories of the delis and movie theatres that lined court street. The old bars along the Waterfront. I think there is comraderie among some of the new guard, but, not all. I have been watching the generational ebb and flow for almost 20 years. I am hurt, now, when I walk into a store on Smith Street and am followed, as if I am a shoplifter. Even more saddened when I am percieved as a cold hearted "Liberal". The days of stoop chats are waning, especially in CG. Soon our beloved row houses, which I had taken for granted all these years, will all wear caps of glass and steel and no one will care, years from now, what came before...downsize, now. Preserve what is unique for future generations."

Citypoint Tower: 65 Stories on Flatbush. "For me the problem's not height, per se, and it's not a matter of NIMBY-ism. The problem with Downtown Brooklyn is that within five years it will be a Rich People Only, zone and have only a tiny smattering of non-white faces. That's boring and ugly."