Neighborhood Threat

Yep. They’re sure paying attention to the fact that they have no cabaret license and have no certificate of occupancy for that second floor, aren’t they?

Our house is not a bunch of sissies; I have travelled in Africa, India and Southeast Asia, and I will eat from street vendors judiciously. However, the DOH results in Greenpoint continue to make us sad, and we quietly have to avoid some favorites and go back to some former classics that had been retired from overuse - and vice versa.

I also find that the attitude of the staff at the restaurant makes a difference to me when I review the DOH rating. If it is someone who I feel like is making all best efforts, I might overlook an infraction or two. I’m not talking about things like not having a choking poster up, I’m talking the more egregious errors. However, if you’ve been a jerk when I’ve been in, or less than friendly, or if you appear completely incompetent, I have no confidence at all in your ability to keep things clean. No doubt, it is tough to run a restaurant in NYC. No doubt that the DOH is cracking down more zealously than they used to. I imagine the truth is somewhere in the middle, which is why I’ll give some people the benefit of the doubt.

You can look up the DOH results for Greenpoint here.

Given the last paragraph, I have no desire to call anyone in particular out. Just want to make people aware that the results are available to them and they can make their own choices.

We moved our car off of Banker.

We took a walk by the place on the way home from work. The tarps were off the openings at the front of the roof garden and they were attaching something that looked like guy wires to the front of the openings, clearly designed to stop the hipsters from falling out of the openings. That’s the kind of thing that strikes me that you do well before the night you open, but what do I know? They look flimsy and completely inadequate and given the kinds of things I’ve seen DOB refuse to license, kind of shocked me that they would be legal.

Oh, wait.

Now, it wasn’t nice weather Friday night, so we had the windows closed, and the baseball game started late, so we had an ambient noise filter. On the other hand, it doesn’t start getting obnoxiously loud at Studio B until well after midnight. We are lucky that our building is reasonably well insulated and that we were really goddamn tired, and the windows being closed was a big plus. So the first night of the roof deck didn’t seem to be any noisier than your usual Friday or whatever night. However, there was 100% more police presence than any night we have ever seen. We also saw what looked like a fire department official vehicle out front around 1am (Miss Heather says 1:30, I’ll trust her report).

But I don’t have the worst of it and I know it. So, neighbors, how was it for you this weekend? Oh, and they’re going to have another party on Wednesday. From 10-4 am. Because, you know, no one has to actually work - not when daddy’s paying the rent on your loft share out at Morgan.

(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

I found out about the evacuation of 475 Kent through the website of a writer, who was distraught that she’d come home from a book tour to find out that she’d been evicted while she was away. I click on the link and it goes to 475 Kent.

When I was planning my move to Brooklyn, 475 Kent was one of the buildings I was considering. I wanted to live in a creative community and I wanted a big open space, but in the end we went the traditional apartment route because while it would have been great for me, it probably wouldn’t have been so great for my other half. Thus we ended up in Greenpoint.

But 475 Kent being evicted breaks my heart. This is not one of the loft buildings full of stupid hipster kids from Iowa, like out at Morgan or Jefferson, these were some of the OG’s. There was a difference, you could feel it when you walked into the building (and I have been in all of these buildings).

The threatened demise of 475 Kent breaks my heart because we are slowly killing this city of its life and its creativity and the things that makes it tick, the things that made me want to come back, the things that make people dream about this city and spend their whole lives planning how they can manage to come and live here. It is already so hard, it has always been hard.

But this isn’t hard. This is just fucking inhumane.

I understand the safety violations and the concerns for safety. Everyone here is pushing everything to the edge: the landlord, FDNY, DOB. But this is a group of tenants who are not whining about entitlement, they are prepared to TAKE ACTION and restore their homes, their community, and their livelihood in most cases.

Listen, I hate hipsters more than the next person. That is not this building.

I just feel like every day I am watching the soul of this city vanish.

much respect to the residents of 475 kent. don’t back down.

I spent a year and a half working in real estate. The truth about Greenpoint real estate is that there is very little available, because people don’t move if they have a good deal, and because most of it rents via word of mouth, personal referrals, and then finally, the local real estate agents, many of whom are Polish-speaking. They will occasionally show up on Craigslist*, but most of the great finds simply do not.

Google maps are great and all, but there is no replacement for shoe leather. It astounded me when people would call me, looking for an apartment in Greenpoint, but had never ever come here and walked around. If you haven’t done that, you are wasting your time. So go get on the train and then come back here.

The best way to find an apartment in Greenpoint is to come out here, preferably during the week, and walk around and ASK. Dress nicely, be polite, and go into stores and restaurants and coffee shops and ASK. Ask your friends who live here to ask their landlords - even if they don’t have anything available, all landlords know each other. But, again, ASK. This is not something that yields immediate results. But it is the absolute best way to find a great deal and not have a million people competing with you.

Walking around also acquaints you with the neighborhood, if you’re not already. Get a map. Walk around. See the grocery store, the dry cleaner, the 99 cent stores. See where the G train exits are, ride the B61 to LIC and see how easy the connection to the 7 is. Don’t reject the part of Greenpoint that’s on the other side of McGuinness, because some of the nicest streets are over there. But you won’t find them if you don’t walk around and see for yourself.

And, yes, sure. Call the brokers and check the Craigslist ads because there will be some one-offs offered by owners who don’t have the time and energy to deal with the phone calls and the appointments and the paperwork. But it’s not easy and it’s definitely not going to get any easier. The one thing you have going for you is that most people don’t want to live in Greenpoint, they all want to live in Williamsburg.

Good luck!

Despite my maternal grandparents coming from Poland, I do not speak or read Polish (they never would have allowed it), but I do think that one of the local Polish dailies had a headline story about the possibility of a Manhattan ferry running from GREENPOINT.

Perhaps someone fluent in the language could help? Was I imagining this?

I was just saying last night that the issue I think that gets overlooked in this neighborhood is transportation. This could solve some of the problems. (Some, not all.)

While everyone is prepared for meeting Mayor Mike at the Polonaise tonight, I’d like to point out that Community Board #1’s monthly Public Safety Meeting is tonight. This is the place where you can find out who has applied for a liquor license.

I note a Greenpoint newcomer: The Stuffed Owl, 988-990 Manhattan Avenue (new) Which is between India and Huron. Will need to go check it out, if Miss Heather doesn’t beat me to it. (And lest you think that’s snarky, I’m actually counting on her getting to it before me!)

Sorry for the dearth in posting recently. New job and baseball sorrow. Will pick things up soon, I promise.

Please take the survey if you are at all concerned about restoring a vital neighborhood resource. There’s a lot of attention being given to the survey from the indie music community, which is all well and good, but most of them don’t live in the area, and frankly there already more than enough concert venues in New York City.

While I’m happy to see the pool space being used instead of lying dormant, and acknowledge that the concerts at the Pool have brought the McCarren Park Pool into mainstream consciousness, I don’t see it being a major loss to the music community, or to the community, if in future concerts are not the main focus of the space. I don’t think it’s the greatest concert venue ever, and don’t want to see a neighborhood resource co-opted by people who don’t live in the neighborhood.

I realize this makes me sound like a cranky old fart, and I probably am one to some extent, but *people* live here - families, old people, single people, new immigrants - NOT just hipsters. I don’t want to see the pool turned into a hipster oasis because just plain folks didn’t take the time to make their voices heard, while the indie rock blogosphere rallies the troops and makes the Parks Dept. think that everyone would just be fine if concerts were the main activity at the Pool.

So if you live in the neighborhood, please take the time to fill out the survey. Please.

After the most recent incident with Studio B crowds, we received something very interesting in the mail. It is a request from the city for more information, and gives us an option to have them come to our house to check noise levels during the time the club is open - they actually ask you what time the noise generally occurs and that they can come to our house to measure it.

Either it’s about the new noise regs, or other people have complained and they’re one step away from issuing citations to the club.

Or both.

[Just be a good neighbor. Every other bar in New York City has a sign saying, Please respect our neigbhors and enforces it. This goes for the rest of the Greenpoint newcomers.]

FRIDAY NIGHT
The boyfriend was coming back from a work event, and had phoned when he was leaving. About an hour and a half later, I’m starting to be concerned that he’s not home yet, combined with being concerned about the noise from the street outside. There’s more than the usual volume of murmuring, loud shouting, bottles being thrown, traffic backing up.

I’m about to pick up the phone to call 311, when I hear a key in the door. The boyfriend had been home for about half an hour, but was on the corner monitoring the shouting and bottle breaking. 311 told him that he had to call 911 because of the bottle throwing. The boyfriend also noted that everyone from inside the club appeared to be on the sidewalk.

The cops did show up about 20 minutes later but at that point the crowd had dissipated and the bottle breakers had headed elsewhere.

SATURDAY NIGHT
We came back from babysitting my niece and nephew in Jersey around 2am (their parents had gone to Live Earth). Banker St. was as busy as it would be at 8pm on a Friday night. Cabs are pulling up and discharging people on the corner every few minutes. We are trying to unload the car with a SUV impatiently waiting for us to move away from the trunk so they can pull up to the bumper and park behind us. I stood on the sidewalk waiting for the SUV to park, because it was full of girls wearing club gear, and didn’t trust them to not ding the car.

It wasn’t that hot but we shut the windows and turned on the air conditioning because in the hour it took us to get ready for bed, the noise was ridiculous. People standing in the middle of the street hugging. People having conversations for 10 minutes as they get into a cab, blocking traffic, causing drivers to honk. Etc.

Sunday morning, the street was full of trash. i mean, FULL OF TRASH. At first I thought that one of the newly-supplied city garbage cans that stand on the corners of Banker St. and Franklin St. had blown over, but they were there (and full to the gills). The street was full of hundreds and hundreds of club postcard fliers EVERYWHERE. Studio B has gotten good about cleaning up the sidewalk right in front of the club, but the residual trash that goes down the block to 239 Banker (which is unoccupied) and the industrial properties across the street are now accumulating trash after busy nights as well.

Some calls to 311 are on the list for today.