Comments on The Gowanus Lounge: What GL Said to BL About Blogging, Pete Hamill, Et...

Anonymous: and your what point is what? In fact, a...

2007-06-17T13:26:00.000-04:00

Anonymous: and your what point is what? In fact, as shitty as almost all of the papers are-- & as feckless shills for real estate, natch-- as a whole they are at least a LITTLE bit better than "the blogs," which are white white white and WHITE, with little apparent desire to discover what's beyond that in terms of all the PEOPLE (Red Hook food vendor tokenism aside).

artistically, i'm an absolutist so Robert can do whatever he likes but c'mon, L@@K at the photo he posted for his Sunday links...

Q: what is this crap, Home Simple?

awwwwwww, Brooklyn, so... COZY!!

(especially if you have your own fancy backyard furniture. how about photos of illegal dumping, Robert, or torched cars or homeless encampments or... lots of things (WORKING factories) instead, i.e. images that are NOT repeated ad nauseum everywhere by everyone ALL THE TIME (bc reality ain't good for the real estate biz or bloggers who call certain types of people "sketchy.")

since this blog takes its title from the canal, how about representative coverage of ALL of those who live and ** work ** between say Hoyt & 4th Avenue? if you want respect as an alternative than BE the alternative and that means linking up to THE STREETS as they exist, not a bunch of other mostly like-minded lily bloggers.

Debbie Hammill-- I think she meant DOROTHY, ooops-- dropped a jewel on youse too: Mr. Fig. one free beer to the first person who finds me a single blog discussing this (it might be out there, i don't know). and if you do NOT know who/what Mr. Fig is... than please don't think most blogs know SHIT.

because i'm feeling generous, i'll throw Brooks, Robert and Anonymous a bone:

read ALL of the late J.A. Lobbia's columns in the Village Voice, or as many are archived. the first one to look for in terms of local flava is here--

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/9921,lobbia,6033,5.html

it's a little old school, i know, but you have to confront the old school to understand the new. youse owe me.

M. Poggi of Butler St

the following, that you wrote, is true for print j...

2007-06-16T22:08:00.000-04:00

the following, that you wrote, is true for print journalists as well, no?

"There is not enough diversity among bloggers by race, ethnicity, socio-economic background and even neighborhood. There are too many newcomers to neighborhoods writing about them and not enough lifelong residents."

props for the Hammill beatdown & Brooks, i'm puzzl...

2007-06-16T19:36:00.000-04:00

props for the Hammill beatdown & Brooks, i'm puzzled where the respect for Pete comes from? what precisely has he done about BK in the last, oh, 30 years? he's been through the (gin)mill sure & mighta quipped about the non-existance of "Green-wood Heights" (i agree) but he's an ersatz everyman HACK who's not even in the same galaxy as Breslin, let alone. (having a passport with same stamps as 100s of other jokers doesn't impress me, sorry.) there's a great Brooklyn reportage book I suspect you've not read or else you would have been down on Hammill's wild Irish horseshit long ago.

as for blogs: yah, the ** potential ** is there, thank you for noting that, but the potential is, by and large... not even close to being realized. the race, class biases are not be understated either because every idea you have for representing Brooklyn can be extended to ... well, let's just say check the census (as much of a moving target as that is) and NOTE: immigration is still way greater (in #s, not power) than ANY of the jillion condo projects. which do need to be scrutinized but

1) not to exclusion
2) not with mere "irony"

the not-even-borderline racism of the Kensington & Prospect-Lefferts blogs is beyond loathesome too, and not for any "PC reasons," rather their intellectual failure to RECOGNIZE even the outline of everything else around them.

rememner, SOME people learned BK & the city thru friends, books (& Hammill's drinking memoir isn't even a good version of THAT schlock), the subway, bike, sneaker and... the community papers. The Times is almost always crap on the city, esp. Brooklyn (only good thing about Atlantic Yards is it finally woke some people up to that), the News a joke, Newsday in serious decline (but was excellent at their best).

The Post, because of their weird populist streak, is actually decent on corruption issues; They don't get as deep as the Voice at their best but they've done more than most, just ask Mr. Fig.*

Deb

p/s: the (total lack of) ethics (or street smarts) of dilettante 'photobloggers' who blow spots needs to be addressed also, but i'm not the gal to do it.

* name everyone reading this should recognize.

I've long been admirer of Pete Hamill. It depresse...

2007-06-16T14:23:00.000-04:00

I've long been admirer of Pete Hamill. It depresses me to hear him saying something so—I'm sorry—stupid. It makes me think he's become uninformed and out of touch, too stuck in his 1950s-1970s view of the journo world. Newspapers and reporting are in a very different place today than when he pounded the sidewalk. The main reason I started my blog "Lost City" was because those editors Hamill speak of refused to, or were not interested in, covering the New York stories that I felt were important.

Hamill has also seemed to have forgotten that it i...

2007-06-16T13:52:00.000-04:00

Hamill has also seemed to have forgotten that it is really difficult to get a "paying" job if you came up like him. The days where you start in the mailroom and work your way up are over. If you don't go to some fancy college (like NYU) you are not going to report for the big newspapers.The fact that he thinks no one has the right to get their voice heard unless you are edited and getting paid is pretty sad. He sounds fearful or maybe a little jealous!