Blogs

Summary of last night's meeting with Inspector Rodriguez and Vincent Gentile at the 68 Precinct. (Man, could Inspector Rodriguez do double work for Joe Pesci or what? He even SOUNDS like him.)

The meeting was intended to be about the Owls Head Park gang situation, primarily about the shooting two weeks ago, but it touched on a lot of park issues, from illegal barbecuing to large groups of 25 and more taking over big chunks of the park for private parties without permits.

On the shooting deal, here's what Rodriguez said. The two gangs in question are YFL (Yemeni For Life), an Arab group from Eastern Parkway, and a Latino, primarily Mexican, gang (whose name I didn't catch) from Sunset Park. A couple of punks from both gangs go to Fort Hamilton HS, where the friction started last year. It's escalated steadily since, resulting in one of the Latino kids getting knifed on 86th St earlier this year. Two YFL were arrested but the Mexican kids wouldn't cooperate with police nor the DA so the assailants went free.

After that YFL started to increase its presence in Bay Ridge. A few of the YFL were at a hooka bar on 69th St and saw some of the Mexican kids. They got bats and followed them to Owls Head Park. A brawl began and one of the Mexicans pulled a gun. At least one wild shot was fired inside the park in close proximity to children playing there.

In response to this, Rodriguez said that the 68 has beefed up its anti-gang unit and appointed a deputy inspector to run it. He said the gang issue has gotten problematic because these kids used to hang out in groups of 5 and 10 so all the cops had to do is break them up and send them in opposite directions. But now they're showing up in groups of 30, 50 even 100. Breaking them up is a bad solution because that just sends several pissed off groups of 10+ into the side streets, making it even harder for cops to keep an eye on them.

Just a heads up. The Brooklyn Paper is reporting that there's been a spike in burglaries in Bay Ridge over the past month, particularly in our neighborhood.

Pretty much 'nuff said.

(turn down the volume first)

Veggie good news for Ridge! Greenmarket is coming
By Ben Muessig
The Brooklyn Paper

Grocery-starved Bay Ridge will soon get its first farmer’s market — and the fruit and vegetable venders will set up in the former Key Food parking lot, The Brooklyn Paper has learned.

Councilman Vince Gentile (D–Bay Ridge) will reveal at a press conference on Monday afternoon at the corner of Third Avenue and 95th Street — where the now-closed grocery will soon become a Walgreens — that the site has been chosen to host the green market, an agricultural insider told The Paper.

More from The Brooklyn Paper...

Last weekend, as I was standing on the sidewalk talking with Regina, a nicely dressed couple, Dorothy and Alec, stopped their car and were staring at my next door neighbor's house. He rolled down his window and said, "that was my grandparents' house in the 1930s".

It sounded like this was gonna be a good story so I told them to hold on while I got Betsy (it's her house). Betsy, who is mid-40s now, was born in the place. Her grandparents bought it when they were a young couple. So these peoples' grandparents might have been the previous owners.

As it turned out, he had spent a lot of time in the house when he was a little kid in the '30s. Betsy took them on a tour of her place, much of which is still original, and you could tell he was having flashback moments as he recalled the things he used to do in the house and what things used to look like. He related lots of cool stories about the block, what it was like here during WW2, the Liberty ships jamming the harbor waiting to be loaded at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, etc.

They sent Betsy a photo of my house from the 1930s.

After the tornado last year, Karen and I grabbed some shots of the neighborhood. I uploaded them to Flickr.

Bay Ridge Tornado pics

Last year, NYC DOT repaved several Brooklyn avenues. Last month, they began ripping up some cross streets, ours included. I figured this might make a good photo archive moment for the neighborhood blog.

When I first saw the signs pop up on 67th Street I thought it was going to be yet another annoying film shoot.

Does anyone remember when the last street repaving happened here?

Bay Ridge is located in south Brooklyn, or Brooklyn South for the locals.

For Google Maps fans, here we are. We sit on lower NY harbor on the narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island, connected by the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which was the world's longest suspension span bridge for about five minutes when it opened in 1964. One of the coolest things about this neighborhood are the big ships and the lonely foghorns at night which are obliterated only by low-flying helicopters from NYPD's heliport three blocks away.

Bay Ridge is a generally quiet, increasingly upscale bedroom community. It's close enough to Manhattan to be reasonably friendly to daily commuting but far enough away to have it's own distinct community feel. In fact, many Bay Ridgers have no interest at all in Manhattan. I've met people who haven't visited "the city" in a decade or more.

Why should they? For one, Bay Ridge offers one of the best "restaurant rows" in NYC with excellent restaurants like Cebu, Meze, Bay Ridge Sushi, Tuscany Grill and some of the best Italian food in the city. This neighborhood being Irish and Italian, there's certainly no shortage of pubs either, from pretentious wine bars to old school neighborhood tap rooms, like Three Jolly Pigeons.