Neighborhood Threat

Since other blogs have been writing off the Studio B situation as irrelevant, let me outline here what you need to do to fight this club, in my humble opinion:

1. Call 311 each and every single time there is a problem. Every time. Every night. Do not let them tell you that someone else just called in the same complaint or that there are already too many complaints. You are well within your rights to insist that they take your complaint.
2. If 311 gives you numbers of other city agencies to call your complaints into during business hours, take down the numbers and DO IT.
3. Call the non-emergency line of the 94th Precinct every time you call 311 and give your complaint to them too.
4. Of course it goes without saying that IF YOU HEAR GUNFIRE, CALL 911. DO NOT OPEN YOUR WINDOWS AND LOOK OUTSIDE! CALL 911! This is not an episode of “Cops”.
5. Keep a log of everything that happens. Dates, times, incident descriptions.
6. Contact CB1 and find out when the next Public Safety committee meeting is. Bring your log to the meeting with copies for the committee.
7. Write letters to the mainstream media: that means the local newspapers. They all have neighborhood reporters of some type.
8. Contact every blog in the city with information about what is going on at Club Exit and what it is like to live near them.
9. Join the CB1 email list and follow what’s going on in the neighborhood and see if you can find venues for bringing your story to or if there are committees you can join to help remedy the problems or bring them to the attention of additional city agencies.
10. Organize your neighbors. Leaflet the neighborhood. Start a petition. Get people together so that everyone is doing all of the things on this list as often as possible.

There. That’s what I would do if I lived near Club Exit. But I don’t, so I don’t know what’s going on except what I read - which, given the problems I hear about the club, should be a lot more than I do.

It is not my job to fight the Club Exit fight. But at least I’m offering tangible suggestions about what should be done.

This title has always belonged to the Sally Army across from the L entrance at Bedford & N. 7th. It broke my heart every time I looked at it. Big footprint, good FAR, and the location of the gods.

But they wouldn’t sell. They wouldn’t even talk to people about selling. I know at least a dozen people who tried to open up that debate. Lots of creative suggestions as well.

It made no sense that they wouldn’t sell. One of the tactics someone I know took was that they were actually going against doing God’s work by not selling, because the money they could make could fund countless programs that were part of their mission. It didn’t matter. They just wouldn’t even consider selling.

The other thing that killed me about that location was that it was BUTT-UGLY. Someone gets off the train in much-vaunted Williamsburg and they see what looks like a burnt-out, abandoned building. Even the smelly bodegas on the corners renovated themselves with the profit gained from being on that corner.

And now, today, Gothamist tells us:

Did Apple Buy the Bedford Ave Salvation Army?

I bet there was one helluva price tag.

Gothamist reports that all subway lines will get a General Manager soon. Currently, the only lines that do have a GM are the 7 and the L. I’m not a daily L rider, but after our experience with the General Manager on the 7 train, I am overjoyed to hear that the G train will soon have a repository for our complaints.

The experiment calls for a general manager to take charge of each subway line and make “quick” decisions over train schedules, maintenance of stations, and riders’ complaints.

We are avid Mets fans and spend 30+ games per year out at Shea. In 2007, the MTA instituted Express service after the games, which (aside from the B61, but we’ve covered that) eliminated any temptation to drive to the game, not when we could be home in half an hour. However, in 2008, they instituted a “Super-Express” which initially only stopped at Woodside, Queensboro Plaza and Grand Central. While we just got off at Queensboro to wait for the B61 (as creepy as it is to do that), the boyfriend wrote to the GM, pointing out that eliminating the Court Square stop deprived riders of the connection to the G.

Three weeks later they wrote back to tell him that three other people also complained of the same thing, and that they had reinstituted that stop. (No, seriously. They even made announcements at Shea about it.) You can read about our adventure here.

If four people could cause that to happen on the 7 train, imagine what a band of determined Greenpoint residents can do to transform G train service.

Coming up: a bus driver reveals the complaint number of the Grand Street depot (after 6 buses went by on Friday OUT OF SERVICE)

At this point I’m the last blogger in Brooklyn to write about <a href=”http://www.nag-brooklyn.org/blog/2008/09/guest-post-safe-biking-in-north.html”>the terrible accident between a bike rider and a Northside car service driver</a>. A letter was sent out to the community and CB1 urging a boycott of Northside, and there was some debate back and forth on the CB1 mailing list about the virtues of this approach.

The points made in the letter boiled down to the fact that in many people’s opinions, Northside has been a bad neighbor, as follows:

• Drivers idle in bus stops, causing the buses to have to stop in the middle of the street. That causes traffic to back up and subsequent delays. (Drivers are not allowed by law to solicit fares on the street. Car service has to be called. There’s a different set of laws than with yellow cabs.)
• Drivers pull up to collect their fares and honk, instead of asking the dispatcher to call the fare and tell them the car is waiting. I can attest to that. I’ve had drivers pull up to our house and honk when I was standing right outside.

My position on the list was that even given all of this - which many vehicles in the neighborhood are guilty of (Mobile Wash units, off-duty ambulances, armored cars) - the issue appeared to be with the individual DRIVER and not the entire fleet of cars.

Since the original call went out (which didn’t come from the injured cyclist), Northside has met with the victim and is covering all of his medical bills. The cynic in me could say, “That’s only because they got caught.” To me, Northside has always been reputable. There’s always a bad egg in every company - I can tell you about the car service we use at the office who tried to take me home to Greenpoint via the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel - but I am glad that this is being resolved.

If you read the interview linked at the top of the item, the cyclist makes many excellent points about bike lanes and what they bring to the community, and also reminds drivers AND CYCLISTS of their responsibilities.

On that note, the CB1 debate brought up a popular complaint of mine, inconsiderate cyclists on the Pulaski Bridge. I understand that it sucks. I understand you don’t want to dismount. But I’ve been run into TWICE, deliberately, by cyclists trying to make a point. I’m not going to ask you to walk your bike across the bridge, but pedestrians get the right of way, and if you have to get off for half a second, deal with it. Just deal with it.

And show up to the CB1 Transportation Committee meeting, where they plan on discussing how to ameliorate that problem.

Check out this flier. Bottle service, buses from Jersey, and line cuts! Wow.

A copy of this is going up to the desk sergeant at the 94th tonight.

How can they be open for ANYTHING right now? No, seriously. Can someone explain this to me?

It’s been an exceedingly pleasant August in our corner of Greenpoint. Our electric bill was cut in half, because we weren’t have to run the air conditioner every night (whether we really needed it or not) in order to drown out the Studio B Idiot Noise.

We came home on Saturday around 11:30 and found a huge crowd gathered outside Studio B. Since we hadn’t seen any movement, nor heard that any permits had been approved, this was odd to us. There was nothing on their calendar, or on any of the local concert websites about a show at Studio B. We asked someone what was going on and all we got was that the club wasn’t open yet.

Finally, when half a dozen yellow school buses pulled up onto Banker and began discharging hipsters, and one of the buses couldn’t control its alarm system, the boyfriend went out to investigate. Apparently this was a private after-party following some event in Coney Island. Many of the people who had been bused up to North Brooklyn had no idea where they ended up, nor did they have any idea how to get home. Two patrol cars drove by slowly, which prompted the security at the club to yell at the bus drivers that they couldn’t leave their buses parked there.

As the night went on, I heard regular yells from someone about how “You can go in, or you can go home, but you can’t stand outside.” I think the yelling was louder than the people outside. The loudest noises to us were the people who regrouped and tried to find taxis right underneath our windows. Neighbors whose backyards abut the club’s back wall report that it was slightly quieter, but still pretty damn loud.

This means that:
1) They didn’t do any of the work that they promised they would
2) They probably won’t do any of that work
3) They’re still flouting the law, because there was definitely dancing, and definitely people, and they definitely don’t have a cabaret license or a C of O (at least that we can find online)

But maybe I am wrong on the law when it comes to private functions. Who really knows with these people?

At least the winter is coming and the windows will be shut.

UPDATE:

There are a lot of links about Saturday night’s escapades, but the most telling one is in the comments here:

then arriving at studio b, complete chaos. a totally disorganized line on arrival, followed up by a 4 bus loads of heads that simply crushed the front door. trapped in a mass of guests several hundred deep while chaos ensues. thankfully the pro’s at studio b take control of the situation by will let all in and actually do so promptly.

music stops. lights go up at 3am and we left. several hundred poorer, a weekend lost and a load of bad vibes banked up on this minimoo/minitek bullshit crew, we depart.