Brookbit: Happy Birthday New York Shitty

New York Shitty turns two today. Huge congratulations to NYS and our friend and major contributor Miss Heather, who's tossed us hundreds of photos for hundreds of GL posts. What began as a blog largely covering the byproduct of man's best friend has, over the last two years, turned into an eclectic collection of photos and information that ranges widely through Brooklyn and often turns its attention to important neighborhood quality of life issues that otherwise wouldn't get any coverage. New York Shitty is raw and it is edgy, but most importantly, it's relevant, sharp and funny. Here's to many more years.

Brooklyn Blogfest Comcing on May 8

The Third Annual Brooklyn Blogfest is approaching quickly. It will take place on May 8 at 8PM at the Brooklyn Lyceum, which is located at 270 Fourth Avenue (at President Street) in Park Slope. Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn's Louise Crawford, who founded the event and has worked hard on it every year, is putting together the best program yet, including a video by Blue Barn Pictures, a salute to Brooklyn’s photo bloggers, Top Ten Tips for New Bloggers and a special message from WNYC radio talk show host Brian Lehrer. Speakers will include OTBKB, Creative Times, Bed-Stuy Blog, New York Shitty, Flatbush Gardener, Luna Park Gazette and GL. OTBKB writes that it's "an event for bloggers and non-bloggers alike, the Blogfest brings together citizen journalists, place bloggers, photo bloggers, special interest bloggers, and the creative, quirky, and personal bloggers that make the Brooklyn Blogosphere such a fascinating place to be." More info to come.

Bklink: You Can't Photograph That, Continued

Another week, another tale of a photographer and/or blogger being told by someone on a public street not to take photos. (It happened to us on Friday on Beard Street in Red Hook via a private security guard who stopped his car and said, "You can't take any pictures here. Don't take any pictures.") We digress, however. "McBrooklyn was standing on the sidewalk on the north side of Willoughby Street (near the corner of Duffield/Oratory Place) in Downtown Brooklyn, taking a photo of the new Sheraton hotel going up on Duffield...A uniformed guard told us to stop taking pictures of the hotel -- because photography was not allowed on the sidewalk in front of his Willoughby Street building."--McBrooklyn

Bklink: Bloggers Are Like Roosters

"Here in Brooklyn it's illegal to keep roosters because the crowing makes for poor relations between neighbors, but hearts are not illegal, and thanks to the blogosphere, we hear more and more hearts crowing without any restrictions. In Brooklyn so many blogs maintain vigilance for the sake of the public good, asking for nothing in return. There are actually very few blogs running here in Brooklyn that don't express tremendous passion for justice, truth and beauty in some way. Posts from blogs monitoring the Atlantic Yards project intend to defy those who use power to violate individual rights and promote inappropriate development, others blogger's watchful eyes search for dangers in the form of thoughtless construction practices and other threats to public safety..."--Brooklynometry

New Brooklyn Blog: Carroll Gardens Brooklyn History

We love new blogs that get us to stop skimming and actually read. The wonderful new Carroll Gardens Brooklyn History blog. It combines informative posts about neighborhood history with vintage photos and some more current issues. Check out an excerpt from this post about the Carroll Street Bridge, which is one of our top five Brooklyn landmarks:

Monte’s Venetian Room, an Italian restaurant two blocks away on Carroll Street, repainted the bridge in green, white, and red – the colors of the Italian flag around 1978...On November 12, 1985 the Carroll Street Bridge rolled into the open position to let the tanker Jet Trader pass through the Gowanus Canal. Two days later, an inspection revealed that the bridge was plagued by serious structural problems. These included corroded steel, deck holes and overworked and failing machinery. Department of Transportation engineers did not consider the bridge sound, and therefore decided to leave it in the open position. This severed a nearly 100-year-old link between the Carroll Gardens and Park Slope communities in Brooklyn.

Inadvertently, the designation of the bridge as a City landmark became an obstacle in getting funding to upgrade and repair the bridge. To be eligible for State and Federal funding for the estimated $3 million rehabilitation cost, the bridge would have had to be rebuilt to "modern" standards - with a steel deck instead of a wooden one and with other changes. These would not have been in accordance with the wishes of the Landmarks Commission that requires that the bridge retain its historic elements that include its wooden decking...

All we can say is, keep those posts coming.

Bklink: Brooklyn Blogfest

"It's official. We're having the 3rd Annual Brooklyn Blogfest at the Brooklyn Lyceum (Fourth Avenue and President) on May 8th at 8 p.m. This year's theme: Place Matters; Blogging My World. The Blogfest, an annual gathering of Brooklyn Bloggers, is for everyone. Bloggers and non-bloggers alike. What happens at the Blogfest? Lots of bloggers, non-bloggers, media, and others show up. A formal presentation with speakers and video will be followed by a shout-out and then some social time. It should be quite a get-together and I'm very excited about the new venue.--OTBKB

Bklink: More Adventures with Picture Taking

"Sunday while I was at the point, the parks department was summonsing some paintballers, and as I was taking pictures of them, this woman who never identified herself (pictured above) said “Excuse me you can’t take pictures of officers doing their jobs“. I responded by saying that Yes I can, that’s your misinformed opinion. Nothing came of it and she continued to do her job as you can see."--GerritsenBeach.Net

Bklink: Blogfest is Set

The 3rd Annual Brooklyn Blogfest will be on May 8th, 2008 at 8 p.m. at the Brooklyn Lyceum on Fourth Avenue and Union Street right on top of the R train's Union Street station. Cool venue for a cool event.--OTBKB

Bklink: Happy Birthday, Fading Ad Blog!

The Fading Ad Blog, which fascinates us every day with its photos and words, has turned one. Among the things it features on its first anniversary is some auto-related signage from Clinton Hill and the Kingston Lounge in Crown Heights. Happy birthday, and here's to a second year of cool stuff.

Brookbit: Bay Ridge Loses a Blog

We were sad to get an email overnight from the person behind the Right in Bay Ridge blog announcing that the blog is being suspended. The email said, "After much reflection and a shift in priorities, I have decided not to continue running the Right in Bay Ridge blog any longer...Should I be able to revitalize this blog later on, I will let you know." Right in Bay Ridge was one of the strongest and most reliable blogs coming out of that neighborhood. It will be missed.--GL Inbox

New Brooklyn Blog: Lornagrlphotos

Blogger and flickr photographer Lorna Keuning, whose work we like very much, has launched a new photo blog, appropriately called lornaglrphotos. The first photos she has put up are killer cool. Lorna has been chronicling her own life at her lornagrl blog, which is also worth checking out if you're interested in knowing something about the person behind the photos. We are so looking forward to seeing more.

New Brooklyn Blog: Art Dog

The Carroll Gardens development battle over the building at 360 Smith Street has spawned many things, including a neighborhood group that has agitated for a downzoning and development moratorium and the wall we named "The Democracy Wall." This is about the latter. Apparently the person who goes by "Art Dog" and has created many of the grassroots posters has started a blog called....drum roll...Art Dog to tell the story. Art Dog describes himself as follows:

I am an erudite Brooklynite though I was born a common street mutt...I worked my way up the ladder after my parents insisted I attend Columbia University. My major was "Film" but I lacked the looks and stature for the leading roles I sought in Tinseltown. After much hemming and hawing, I decided to settle back home in Gowanus, where I was born to a single Mom, and start an organic, vegetarian dog chow business which I run today. My puppies are all schooled at home and my bitch (I mean my wife) has her Doctorate in Animal Psychology from NYU.

We can guarantee one thing about the Art Dog blog: It will be fun to look at and colorful. Check out Art Dog.

Check Out Some Industrial and Working Brooklyn

We've posted some links recently to items on the Fading Ad Blog by Frank H. Jump, which has been around for nearly a year, but every time we look at it we're captivated by some of the Brooklyn posts. (We wish we'd found it and put in our RSS feed a looong time ago.) The blog ranges broadly, but there's often a fantastic focus on corners of Brooklyn that many people rarely visit like Canarsie and even more obscure blocks in Red Hook. The photo above is from a post yesterday about Old Dutch Brewers Inc. on East 42nd Street in East Flatbush. The shot below is one from a post on Hecht's Hardware on Foster Avenue in East Flatbush. We could go and on and on with mentions of posts we're loving, but simply suggest a click over to Fading Ad and a good look around.

New Brooklyn Blog: General Greene

The first thing we'll say about the brand new Fort Greene blog called General Greene is that we're looking forward to big things from it. It's the work of two Fort Greene residents, Jim Colgan and Scott Lamb, and features an excellent mix of neighborhood posts including some excellent items about the neighborhood's long history. Check out yesterday's post on a meeting about creating a new Fort Greene/Clinton Hill food coop and, then, check out an excellent post comparing prices of products ordered at Fresh Direct versus the same products purchased at the Park Slope Food Coop. For something completely different, there's this post with some interesting history about Fort Greene Park. The blog bills itself as "Stories of, about and from Fort Greene" and it takes its name from General Nathanial Greene, for whom Fort Greene is named. We offer General Greene a warm and big welcome and look forward to reading it and learning from it every day.

Bklink: Brooklyn Bloggers

Brooklyn bloggers had one of their semi-regular meet ups yesterday at the Frank White Cafe + Gallery in Clinton Hill. The meeting was hosted by the Clinton Hill Blog. Check out an excellent photo set of the meeting posted by Flatbush Gardener on his flckr page.--Flatbush Gardener/flickr

New Brooklyn Blog: Ami Underground

Let's say you spend a lot of time on the train and you're also an artist and illustrator. What are you going to do? Simple: do sketches on the train, scan them and start a blog to post them. That's what Ami Undeground, a new blog from a Brooklyn resident is all about. The image above is from one of last week's posts of a sketch made on the Q from Ditmas Park. The blog is very new and we look forward to more.

Brooklyn Loses a Blog: Icky Calling It Quits?

The saddest post we saw yesterday was from Icky in Brooklyn, who announced that, being occupied with other projects, he was not going to be Icky anymore. Having started one of the best neighborhood blogs that appeared in Brooklyn in the last year, we certainly hope we haven't seen the last of his wonderfully researched and often sharply opinionated dispatches from Windsor Terrace and the South Slope. Icky wrote in part:

Have I run out of things to say? Perhaps. Probably more accurately, my mind is elsewhere, and these days I am more enamored of shingle styles, cedar stain, spruce trees, and a new pump for the well. (I'm not kidding.)

I truly have had a lovely time, learned much from my elders, and I am a much better educated New Yorker for my blogging experience. I hope readers will remember the good stuff. (And ignore the bad stuff.)

We certainly recall a lot of good material and we have our fingers crossed that we haven't seen the last of his Icky self.

New Blog #2 -- Prospect: A Year in the Park

Of all the Brooklyn blogs that have debuted in the last six months or so, none has had us looking forward to more from the start than Prospect: A Year in the Park. (OTBKB featured it yesterday.) It's from the blogger behind Crazy Stable and is devoted to daily posts on Prospect Park. From the first post:

Here's the deal: I hereby commit to walking or cycling in Brooklyn's magnificent Prospect Park every day for a year, with as few exceptions as humanly possible, and then showing or telling you at least one cool thing I encountered, through this new blog.

Yeah, so what's the big deal? Lots of people go to the park every day, right? But I don't. I look at it outside my windows, and then I slink around my big ol' house, screen-suck at my computer for work or play, take naps, overeat, watch TV, garden, or chug around Brooklyn in the car doing errands.

And here's a sample from yesterday's post about the Tree of Memory:

Strange, even gothic, discoveries on a day that had already seen its share of emotional turmoil. The park's lake was tranquil, with gulls picking their way across a film of ice.

But this lakeside tree, with its umbrella and filthy pillow, turned out to be the back door to a dwelling; I circled it and discovered the front door.

It should be a nice 2008 full of posts.

New Blog #1 -- The Brooklyn Optimist

The Brooklyn Optimist, whose name we enjoy, is a brand new Brooklyn blog that intends to carve out a niche for itself covering borough politics and community activism and offering up a local perspective on national issue. Its early coverage has been promising and good natured. Take this proposal for solving the nasty rat problem at Borough Hall:

Personally, I think that rather than spraying Joralemon Street with toxic poison, the Parks Department and Borough President Marty Markowitz should run a campaign to promote cat adoption in Brooklyn. For a week, the BP could enclose the grounds around Borough Hall and let homeless cats wander around under the supervision of Animal Care & Control. The cats would get a week out of their cages, the rats would have the fear of God put into them, and passersby could sign up to take home any of the fine feline hunters on prominent display. I guarantee that no exterminator will have greater success ridding Borough Hall of rodents than a throng of cats unleashed.

And, yes, there are posts on more traditional political topics like this too.

New Neighborhood Blog: The Real Flatbush

We're looking forward to interesting things from The Real Flatbush, a new blog that bills itself as being for "non-pretentious people who live in Flatbush." There's this post, for intance, on hook up spots in the neighborhood:

This being a neighborhood blog, I've decided to chronicle the best pick up spots on Flatbush. My favorites are Stop N Shop and Staples, on Regent, C-Town on Church and Argyl and C-Town off New Kirk Plaza. These are great places to meet new people. After 5:30 to 7 on weekdays are the best. This is the after work crowd. Most of the women and men are single professionals. Also on Saturday and Sunday Mid Mourning till 2 PM. I also like the Variety store on the corner of Parkside and Flatbush next to the Duane Reade. I've found that places that are not too pretentious or overdone are great to meet down to earth people.

Or check out this Christmas Day post on "Best Date Spots on Flatbush." In a much more serious vein, have a look at yesterday's post on "Microaggression in Flatbush," which raises some important questions:

I like to park my car near those free standing houses near and around Ditmas Park and Prospect Park South. It seems that the home owners are very stand offish to such things. A while back I parked my car on one of those streets in the morning. On my way back from work I picked up my car. It had been awhile since I checked my oil. I looked under the hood. As I was working on my car a white family that was in a conversation was walking down the street. As soon as they saw me the conversation stopped and there was this silence. The mom hurried her kids into the house. Another white neighbor guy from across the street looked around and went back to his house. Less than a minute later the security patrol car came and decided to park his car right near where I was checking my oil...I then realized that this might have been a microaggresive behavior. Has this ever happen to other Black men living in the area? Part of the reason that I loved Flatbush when I was growing up was that I did not have to deal with that kind of subtle racism from my neighbors.

We look forward to a lot more from The Real Flatbush.