Neighborhood Threat

I sent email yesterday, complaining about last Sunday’s B61 debacle. Today, to my amazement, I received this response, for what it’s worth:

MTA New York City Transit is committed to providing safe, courteous, reliable, and accessible bus service. We received your complaint regarding the difficulties you experienced with B61 service and notified our Road-Operations Unit.

We requested that they give increased attention to the route during Sunday-afternoon hours, make every effort to keep buses close to schedule and properly spaced, and ensure that bus operators are properly accommodating customers at all stops along the route.

Thank you for sharing your concerns with us and for riding MTA New York City Transit buses.

Sincerely,

Art Kelly
Manager, Customer Relations

I know this isn’t like the 7 train, which has a dedicated general manager - we won a battle with them earlier in the year - but I’d like to think that the noise will at least get the weekend coffee klatch down in Red Hook broken up.

Start writing down your bus numbers, people, as they pass you by. And complain. The link is here.

Late Sunday afternoon we got off at Court Square after coming back from visiting my sister in Astoria. According to the timetable, we had missed the previous bus by 4 minutes and had 13 minutes to go until the next bus.

I realize the B61 timetables are a joke. You can always tell if someone isn’t from the neighborhood by the fact that they bother to look at the timetable. That in itself is inexcusable, but it’s just how things were.

With the opening of Ikea, however, the B61 was a brave new world. Drivers had their timetables prominently affixed to their dashboards. Drivers were *hustling*. No more of that lackadaisical meandering down Manhattan Ave. They actually tried to make time. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been meaning to write about my experiences at Worksong Acupuncture, the new-ish acupuncture clinic on Franklin Street between Oak and Calyer. I’m a big fan of acupuncture. I’ve been using it to treat various aliments for the past 10+ years. When the former car service location down the street from my apartment in Brooklyn hung out a shingle advertising Worksong Acupuncture, I decided to check it out, since my go-to resident at the Pacific College of Acupuncture had graduated and moved to North Carolina.
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When I first arrived in Greenpoint, I despaired at finding decent Chinese food. I was ordering from Grace on Franklin for the first month or two until it became completely inedible. Then, I found the Chinese Musician, which is of course everyone’s Chinese stalwart in Greenpoint - and one of the few places that is open until 11pm (and *delivers*).

Until recently.

First, the prices went up drastically. Every restaurant’s prices have gone up, but this was a marked increase.

Then, the quality started to suffer. This ended up not being such a big deal, because it made me eat Chinese (and takeout in general) less. But we regularly put restaurants on a banned list in our house - bad health inspection, bad service, bad quality or any combination of things (for example, Brooklyn Label is on permanent ban because of the service and the prices).

A few weeks ago, I was hungry and it was late so I gave in and went into the Musician. A basic order: sesame noodles, egg rolls, broccoli with garlic sauce. It was the broccoli that did me in. I like crispy vegetables but the broccoli was barely cooked. This is not something I’m going to check for (and I picked up my food, I didn’t have it delivered). That was it. Back on the banned list.

I was sick yesterday afternoon and craving won ton soup. I didn’t want to send the boyfriend into Manhattan, so I ordered from the newly remodeled Grace. now Shanghai Lee (thanks, commenters). A simple order - won ton soup, egg rolls, broccoli with garlic sauce. I’m not expecting Flushing-level quality, but this was at least tasty and edible. Maybe the remodel was more than just that fancy glass front? I’m cautiously optimistic.

I noticed two weekends ago - when we were all still caught up in Studio B brouhaha - that the shutters were up on the corner of Manhattan and Noble and there was lots of lovely woodwork and other activity going on. It looked like the place was actually going to open!

Which it did, on Monday:

I ate there Wednesday night. The sushi was very fresh and tasty. The prices are fair for the quality and portion. This is a marked improvement over Wasabe and probably a little better than the sushi place on Berry and 5th. Prices are competitive with both of those places.

They have a fairly extensive menu (tempura, teriyaki, etc.) which I didn’t even get a chance to explore.

The best thing is, they are open until 11:30 weeknights. 11:30! What is open that late in Greenpoint that isn’t a bar or a bodega?!

Strong recommend.

We left for vacation at 4:30am on Friday morning following the Community Board hearing, so I have not been able to chime in on the discussion until now.

I walked into that meeting feeling as though nothing we would do or say would have any impact, beyond making me feel better that I participated in the process instead of just sitting in my apartment seething. Since the club has continually ignored every single law they wanted to, I felt that nothing we did or said would make any difference. They hired an attorney at $550 an hour (at least) who walked in glad-handing the police captain and trying to take over the meeting and basically telling the committee that they had better approve the application or else, well, it might get approved anyway.

I didn’t want to be at this meeting. I had worked an insane week already, I needed to pack and finish getting ready, we had a very early flight out the next morning. We looked at everything that had happened and that we had done already and thought, we should just let someone else pick up the fight. Luckily, however, Studio B continued with their stupid quotes in the media and it irritated us to the point that we realized that we had no choice but to see it through. We canceled our Thursday evening plans (which had significant meaning to us), spent the weekend packing and running around with last minute errands, and cleared our calendars so we could attend. The only thing I didn’t have time to do was leaflet the neighborhood to encourage people to attend. My leaflet would have made the same points that Susan’s letter did, that we wanted the club to step up and be a good neighbor.

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