None of this is verified, so I can’t give any more detail, but there are several rumors floating around that I figured I’d share with you here, just all in one post.

Around the corner from me is a collapsed house, which a tipster told me was recently bought by a guy who is busily buying up neighbors’ air rights so that he can build a condo tower. This would definitely add some shadow to my yard at certain times of day in certain seasons, but would I rather have neighbors who quietly admire my garden towering over me rather than neighbors who throw, uh, “used” glue traps in my yard? You bet. Sure, we probably couldn’t use the fire pit anymore due to uppity neighbor complaints, but what price property values? All I care about is that the new building isn’t floating in a sea of parking like the monstrosity on Grove. Given the small size of the lot, that seems unlikely.

Speaking of the building jam-packed with lovely neighbors who send me gifts via air mail, it was recently sold for $1.5 million. Sounds like a lot, but it has 15 units and a storefront, and there’s a lot of Section 8 up in there. My tipster says the new owner plans condos, like I had suspected previously. How will he work that out, I asked. Tipster assures me “he’s got tricks up his sleeves. Give him a year.” Expect life for the tenants to get worse before they get better. Someone alert the Village Voice!

Over on Troutman Street is a gigantic lot, the former home of the Castle Braid Company (I don’t have any more info than that — what does a braid company make?). It’s been a work site for a long time, but nothing was going on the last time I was near it. Recently my neighbor said he spoke to someone on the site, and they told him 140 or 170 (he can’t remember which) condos were being built at the site. That’s a lot of units — does that mean another tower? Then one of my housemates was walking by and said there were foundations in, and it looked like several buildings.

Here’s a downer: across the street, where I thought they were building subsidized coops, it turns out the city may own the buildings, and just booted the old people out to renovate — and they are moving them back in! Along with the deli that was on the corner. Many questions come to mind — how did they legally determine who the “good” tenants were, since the super of the building above (that got sold for condos) says the “bad” ones are not coming back? Even if they must legally offer the apartments to the old tenants, why in the hell are they putting the same crackhead deli back in the commercial space? And why did they spend so much money making the buildings look so good just to plunk the same old tenants back in? And where have the tenants been for the last YEAR? This all makes so little sense…but who knows with this city. The housing laws are from Bizarro World. The buildings do look pretty good, though, as you can see in the photo above.

On the “stuff opening” front, that bar I mentioned a while back is definitely happening, somewhere on Starr Street. My contact says he will let me know if they want any more leaked, probably when they have the location and opening date set.

Yes No Maybe is still a big maybe. When I spoke to the owner months ago, he said he wanted to be open in three weeks. There are still piles of dirt and debris in front of the building, though the garden area is looking nice, even if it’s just because it’s summer and everything is growing in very nicely. I’m sure the holdup has something…well, everything to do with the city giving him a hard time. No good deed goes unpunished, as my mom says.

And then there’s the owner of a Thai restaurant on Grand in Williamsburg who has had it with high rent and is looking to move to Bushwick. That’s pretty much all the info I have on that.

Anyone else have any other rumors to share?

Agents and owners: if you want to feature your apartments in the roundup, it’s free! But please send me an attractive, high-resolution photo, or several photos.

#1 — $1800 — loft: 1000sqft! This place is huge and nice. Great floors, huge space, seems like it has some exposed brick, big windows, super nice kitchen and bath. Location is not wonderful but at least it’s convenient to the J train. PETS OK Hancock and Broadway

#2 — $1400 — 2 bedroom: One block to the L… the Wilson L. I know, you never heard of it. It’s the absolute end of Bushwick. But the exposed brick walls are cool and the Ikea kitchen looks good. Great price for a nice place, even though the distance will tack a few minutes on to your commute…but then, what price an actual seat on the L train at rush hour? I think it’s worth it. Decatur and Wilson

#3 — $995 — 1 bedroom: Are the clean streets of Ridgewood more your style? Check out this place — 3 short blocks to the M, and just a 5 minute stroll to the Myrtle-Wyckoff L. The ad says it all: “sunny,” “spacious,” “SUPER-high ceilings,” and what sells it for me — “bring your plants!” CATS OK Putnam and Seneca

#4 — $1200 — 2 bedroom: More Ridgewood goodness. Dig the old wood floors, the big doorway into the kitchen area, and the location — right by good eats in Ridgewood and the L line in Bushwick. CATS OK Madison and Cypress

#5 — $1100 — 2 bedroom RR: It accepts pets, is $1100, and looks clean. Nothing else to say. PETS OK Covert and Broadway

The mansion is still for rent — the headline says $3800 but the ad still says $4500. Sloppy.

As an extension of our growing community here on BushwickBK.com, we have created a photo pool on Flickr. To share your photos of the people, places, things and events happening in and around Bushwick, join the pool and send them to the group.

Something I didn’t know: the neighborhood beautification organization Trees Not Trash is responsible for getting planted all of the street trees except one (probably that huge one at the corner of Bogart and Seigel) in the part of the East Williamsburg industrial area considered to be inside the Bushwick orbit. Gothamist got TNT founder Kate Gilliam to talk about how she started, her admiration for Bette Midler’s community garden activism, and ways to clean up your neighborhood.

TNT is having a benefit show this Saturday: so check it out!

Last Saturday, I had the good fortune to attend the walking tour of Bushwick that Jeremy advertised in an earlier posting. Led by Adam Schwartz, curator of the Up From Flames exhibition at the Brooklyn Historical Society, the tour also featured fascinating commentary by John A. Dereszewski, who was a community leader in Bushwick during the worst of the arson and looting of ‘77.

Some walking tours have the feel of a not-particularly-exciting history dissertation, but this was not one of them. Schwartz and Co. mainly focused on the turbulent history of the neighborhood, from the slow decline of the late 60s and early 70s to the rejuvenation that followed in the wake of the crack epidemic and the inevitable gentrification that seems to be the fate of many a Brooklyn neighborhood.

Though we did not visit some fairly notable sites like St. Barbara’s Church (one of New York’s greatest houses of worship, in my opinion), the tour explored neighborhood stalwarts like the Hope Gardens housing project, described as “highly successful,” and the reorganized Bushwick High School, both of which point to better things for the residents of Bushwick. At the same time, the hideous condo development on Grove St., which was another stop on the tour, suggests that many of these residents won’t be around to enjoy the improving quality of life.

I am not a resident of Bushwick, but I do work here, and I am very curious about what readers think the future holds in store. Will the new residents and those who survived Bushwick’s lowest points find a balance, as has been the case in Fort Greene (where I reside) and Ditmas Park (where I used to teach)? Or will the tide of new development simply erase the past — as it has in Puerto Rican pockets of Park Slope or countless ethnic neighborhoods in Manhattan?
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One day a while back, we were walking on Wyckoff and noticed the building at 358 Grove Street looming in the distance. I said, “oh let’s go see what those are like.” Nothing could have prepared me for turning that corner at Grove: before me stood a huge glob of crappy stucco about 12 stories high, with a lobby set down below the street, surrounded by huge patches of gleaming white concrete parking lots devoid of any possibility of greenery. I almost said “forget it,” but I figured I might as well see the units.

Entering feels like being admitted to the hospital — quite a sterile experience. The lobby was not finished then, and they were halfway through staining the plywood panels that orange-brown color that corporate types for some reason think people associate with modern design. We tried to figure out how to access the sales office, but the elevator didn’t work, there were no signs, and nobody was around — despite the open house having been advertised.

We left that day not thinking much of the scene set by the big brown-and-creme spaceship, but assuming the finishes inside were probably pretty decent and the views from the big windows might heal all bruised architectural sensibilities.

But no. My friend went to see them himself last weekend, and though he unfortunately didn’t take any pictures, this is his report:

I recently visited the Grove condominiums, and was very dissapointed with the overall finish of the building. The facade is pretty nice, so I was expecting much better than what I saw. As you walk in the building, the lobby walls are lined with plywood. There is a way to make this kind of treatment look fabulous, but this was not it. It was an extremely cheap solution that looks like shit.

The apartments themselves were laid out pretty well, but who are you kidding with these crappy finishes? If you are asking 430K for a 2 bedroom unit this deep into Bushwick (not Williamsburg or even East Williamsburg) with the train going past your window (which is not much of a problem because the developer did do a pretty good job of soundproofing the windows), you better have nicer finishes than this: the kitchens were straight out of Home Depot, and had no storage space at all. I mean, I don’t cook much, but I still need a place to store dry food. The bathroom had some vile blue tile and really cheap fixtures.

I will say that the salespeople were great and did know their stuff, but the product is really not worth the money. At this price the finishes should definitely be luxury.

It seems others feel the same way: Brownstoner commenters chimed in with comments like “the bathrooms and kitchens are cheap and tasteless,” “the counter is really an eyesore,” and “8 ft. ceilings = ‘luxury’ condo!??”

What the hell is this developer thinking? The agent told my friend that if he’s looking for higher end finishes and better architecture, they have something planned nearby — two four-story buildings that will start around $600/sqft. Yeah, you read that right. Bushwick.

Hello Bushwickians…Bushwickers….do we have a name? Well, I do, and its Matt. I am the latest addition to the BushwickBK.com stable of bloggers, and I wanted to take a quick second of your day to introduce myself. I am 23 years old and recently moved to Bushwick with my boyfriend. We came from Arizona via Connecticut, which is a story in and of itself, but suffice it to say we’re happy to be here and we’re loving Bushwick! A little bit about myself - I am currently unemployed (hoping to change that in the next few days), I love to read, cook, and blog, I enjoy walking my dog in Maria Hernandez Park and practicing my Spanish with the nice girl at the Panaderia on the corner of Starr and Knickerbocker, and one time I almost got stabbed by a guy with a broken Corona bottle in Ecuador.

I plan on focusing my posts on the culinary side of Bushwick, so you can expect things like restaurant and grocery shop reviews, farmer’s market reports, and the like. I’ll also keep an eye on whats happening at Maria Hernandez Park. If there is anything going on that you would like to see covered here on BushwickBK.com but are too lazy to do it yourself, just let me know!

Have a happy Wednesday!

I don’t know what vintners would think of Bushwick back yards as far as terroir, but if they were in a pinch, they could definitely plant grapes here and craft some crappy grappa.

Our story begins a few months ago — well, scratch that, it starts decades ago, I’m sure, when the Garofalo family likely planted the vines. But the story as it relates to me began when I noticed these vines twirling up out of the rubble and muck between the two big ghetto weed trees (excuse me, I don’t know the Latin name). They had little green balls on them, but like the other weed vines strangling the half-dead ghetto trees, I figured they were just some more ugly ass seed pods.

Fast forward to last weekend, and I had some friends over for a BBQ. I pick a bunch of the balls and realized that they resembled grapes. Jen said, “they do look like grapes!” My neighbor Lolo said “they are grapes.” They are? “Yes, of course.” Then he pointed to the tree at the back of his yard — it’s dead, but the entire thing is covered in grapes.

I was so thrilled to have something from Italian Bushwick survive Puerto Rican Bushwick, that I started reading up on training and pruning. I have no idea how they’ll taste when they’re ripe, but the novelty is enough for me.
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Hi everyone, I wanted to briefly introduce myself as a new poster on this fine blog. Jeremy has been kind enough to bring me on board, and I’ll be posting on a fairly regular basis on topics relating to Bushwick and East Williamsburg.

A little about myself: I write, mostly on literature and education, for The Village Voice, The New Republic Online, Salon, and The New Criterion. Though I am a native of St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida), my adopted home is New York, and I am going to be posting some on the fascinating history of Bushwick and Williamsburg — as Jeremy has already done on many occasions.

I also teach at The Brooklyn Latin School, a new selective high school that sits at the quite loud intersection of Bushwick Avenue and McKibbin Street. This is technically East Williamsburg, but my school is very much tied to the surrounding area, including Bushwick, and I’ll try to tackle some educational issues without sounding preachy or self-righteous.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I look forward to my first venture into blogging and hope that you enjoy reading my posts.

“The Changeling” from BedStuyBlog was snooping around our hood the other day, trying to foment a turf war, who knows, and snapped some shots of this building at Willoughby and Broadway.

“I love this building, even though would probably look more at home in Soho or Tribeca. I hope that it will bring some nice retail to the area. The DOB filings posted in the window indicate that this building was involved in manufacturing and that it is currently being transformed into retail and residential units.”

I’m aware of the building, and it’s been in exactly this condition since the first time I saw it last year. What’s the hold up? Is there even a hold up — for all I know, people could be living there but the retail isn’t filled yet. It’s a nice storefront but I’m not sure Bushwick is quite ready for a retailer/restaurant that could take up that amount of space and pay the price of a newly-souped up building.

“While I’m happy to see something so nice in this area, who wants to live spitting distance from an elevated train?”

I was at a loft party recently, in this crazy old building on Ellery, about 2 buildings off of Broadway, and the train wasn’t loud at all even with the windows open. Of course, that’s nothing like being so close to the tracks you can read Lisette’s earrings on the J train.

Anyone know what’s up with this place?
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