I’m fried. I’ll be back next week. Maybe a couple posts from other authors will come in. My enemies get a break.

A Ridgewood cop I know told me there’s going to be a rally at 1717 Troutman tomorrow morning. I found nothing online about it, strangely. He says only that his chief told him to be there at 9am, and that he’s not sure what the size of the rally will be. He added, for what it’s worth, that he’s under the impression that the stores on the ground floor had sewage problems, but that the apartments upstairs seemed fine.

UPDATE: The organizer wrote in:

The so-called “rally” which is actually a press conference will be tomorrow in front of 17-17 Troutman 11385. We’ve invited every press contact we’ve ever thought of and hope to bring as much attention to this matter as possible. Please be there at 10:00 AM. New York is a city that is only worth it when one considers its incredible culture. As much as we like to make fun of the art/fashion crowd, we depend on their existence and vibrancy. I know the people from 1717. They’re givers; they’re not here to get rich. Come support them.

Who cares if they’re trying to get rich or not? Nobody should be thrown out of their home at a moment’s notice, and the City shouldn’t be butting into private contracts between consenting adults, though it seems sometimes that that’s all it does.

Photo from Save Ridgewood Reservoir

The Ridgewood Reservoir was a main water source for Brooklyn in the 1800s, built by entrepreneurs to keep the then-City’s booming population from dying of thirst. After consolidation with New York City, Brooklyn’s water system was mostly relegated to a back up for Brooklyn in emergencies. After 1989, it was abandoned to nature. A forest grew where it stood, providing a home for various migratory bird species. Now the City, sensing something wonderful has been created without its direction, wants to bulldoze it all in a fit of spite. Well, no, but I’m sure it has something to do with keeping someone’s cousin Vinnie in business. I mean, what good are City jobs without the ability to rake in the contracts for your relatives?

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe says what’s the big deal? It’s just some weeds that grew in a puddle:

“These are really accidental landscapes that have grown up out of lack of maintenance and lack of use.”

So, the City let something rot…not terribly long ago, and now they want to “do something” (how Rooseveltian) to “fix” the mistake. This is just what we need, another freakin ball field ostensibly to battle “diabetes and heart disease,” the twin bogeymen of New York City, though I think the Commissioner forgot asthma. How about making it so that you can’t buy twinkies with food stamps? We don’t need the city spending money to bulldoze trees for something that will just turn into yet another dump city park. Remember, the Reservoir doesn’t have fancy coops on its edges to pour money in once the City fails.

I’m not a treehugger type, but it seems that if a forest grew up around the City’s negligence, it should stay. We can use all the trees we can get in New York.

The light wasn’t great, but I had to take this shot of the church steeple above a T-intersection in Ridgewood.

New York City Councilman Tony Avella hearts parking lots.

New Yorkers never fail to set my eyes rolling. Their reverse-provincial, insulated expectations of what life is and more importantly, what the government should do for them, just keeps on amusing. Take this Queens Ledger (or is it the Brooklyn Downtown Star?) article about Graham Avenue business owners complaining that the City is getting rid of a public parking lot so that affordable housing can be built on it. Mind you, there will still be parking, there will just be less of it and it won’t be damn near free.

Ahmed Khan, owner of Sneaker Spot, said customers will not come if they have to park ten blocks away. “If you don’t give [them] parking in front of [or] behind the store, nobody shops.”

The Sneaker Spot? We’re quickly disabused of the idea that this might be a strip of bafflingly expensive vintage clothing boutiques and raw vegan restaurants. Graham Avenue isn’t luxurious, it’s a dump — so it’s not the wealthy driving these cars. No, in North Brooklyn, it’s the so-called poor who drive. Consider that they are the ones who will (supposedly) benefit from this affordable housing development, and this starts to become a real head-scratcher. Just a thought, but, maybe if these families got rid of their 2 or 3 cars per household, they could afford market rent like the rest of us. Ever taken a walk or a bike ride through the projects? The parking lots and side streets are full of shiny new cars. For the record, the very few “hipster” “trustfunders” (derogatory terms for stylish, employed young white people) I know who have cars drive shitbox beaters. But I digress.

Apparently, affordable housing isn’t enough, this city now needs affordable parking for the minority of residents who drive. And allegedly, these doubtlessly fat, lazy ass people who won’t walk a few blocks are who keep the merchants of Graham Avenue in business.

[City] councilman [Tony Avella] remarked that if a commercial area becomes blighted, it affects the rest of the neighborhood. “If stores can’t make it and you start to close, residential areas are affected because now there’s no place to shop.”

His argument is that Graham Avenue will, uh, become blighted, and presumably that this will make the surrounding, uh, pristine residential areas less desireable. Hey Councilman, you ever heard of gentrification? There aren’t exactly a lot of downward pressures on Brooklyn real estate these days. Remember the affordable housing scheme that was the excuse for you coming to East Williamsburg to pander to voters and make it look like you’re doing something valuable? After all, it’s the only reason you care about — and likely even know the existence of — some scrap of city-owned asphalt. Get your head out of the 1970s. What’s next, tax breaks for fried chicken joints and stores that sell $8 pairs of jeans on the sidewalk?

Every other thriving retail strip in Brooklyn, no matter what economic segment it serves, does just fine without city-owned parking lots, and in some cases without any parking at all. What’s so special about Graham Avenue?

Two Bushwick institutions were awarded “Best of NYC” in the Village Voice this week:

Goodbye Blue Monday for “Best Place To See Great Up-and-Coming Bands Before They Embrace Their Own Hype”

Trees Not Trash for “Best Reason To Take Up Gardening”

Congrats to both winners and here’s hoping that next year’s awards features even more Bushwick businesses (which will hopefully be open by then).

It’s about to get cold, but why should that stop the city from booting some 220 people out of their apartments without allowing them to retrieve much more than a few handfuls of clothing? Apparently the building at 1717 Troutman (home of Allen Supply, my favorite bazaar-like Chinese hardware store) is “imminently perilous to life.”

Inspectors said they found various fire sprinkler, exit, electrical and plumbing violations, and determined that residential use was a violation of the property’s zoning for manufacturing.

I’m going to say it was the last one that is pissing the city off. Really, how many complete shitholes in Bushwick go unevicted even though some have intermittent water service, a ruined and dangerous electrical system, and even undermined foundations? But they’re zoned residential, so the city is content with fines and violations.

Yes, these are illegal, and likely somewhat dangerous lofts — you know, that housing type that made New York an art capital, that gave artists a place to starve with at least a roof over their heads, that gave birth to neighborhoods like Tribeca and SoHo. And in the end, they knew what they were getting into, and why the spaces were so cheap. After all, aren’t they adults? Can’t they decide for themselves what risks they will and will not take? This all ignores the plain fact that if the landlord were allowed by the zoning to convert this building into proper residential lofts, he would very likely do it and none of this would be an issue.

I’m sure some of you are gloating, stewing in smug satisfaction at people thrown out on the streets, just because you hate landlords and profit. You’re bad people. Luckily the Red Cross has stepped up to the plate and is finding some temporary housing for the displaced.

There’s a new art zine on the scene called ArtCal and in it I review the new major mural that went up in Bushwick.

Incorporating the barrios’ German past, fire filled not-so-distant past, hipster present and still undecided future, there’s a lot going on in this color display that may be the first public attempt by members of the non-hipster community to comment on Bushwick then, now and tomorrow. Here’s an excerpt and check out the full post here:

A few weeks ago a new mural entitled, “Time Flies: A History of Bushwick” was unveiled at the corner of Woodbine and Knickerbocker in the heart of Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. The 400-foot painting wraps around a corner and gives the site a warm inviting presence that most street corners in the area lack.

Created by artists and students from the Academy of Urban Planning, El Puente Academy, and Groundswell Community Mural Project, the mammoth project was under the direction of muralist Joe Matunis and continues a tradition that has long been a Bushwick tradition — community murals.

In 1992, an earlier mural stood at this otherwise quiet corner and symptomatic of the time, it confronted issues of drugs, crime and social justice–which grappled this community.

Fast forward to 2007 and Bushwick has changed from the front lines of the city’s drug wars to the next up-and-coming neighborhood. While the new wave of highly-educated hipsters homestead in this north Brooklyn neighborhood, “Time Flies” is one of the first public efforts by the predominantly black and Hispanic citizens of Bushwick to articulate their own thoughts about the neighborhood’s future…

Check out the full article on ArtCal.

Bushwick Avenue brownstones. Photo from Forgotten NY

The cool folks at Reclaimed Home, a site for people renovating their houses on the cheap, gave a shout out to Bushwick today…such as it was. News flash: Bushwick is not being newly populated only by hipsters. In fact, it’s probably being evenly newly populated by whites and (non-white) Mexicans. But I already digress. Not all white people are hipsters, for christ’s sake. Gah.

It’s cool that they mentioned that yes, Bushwick has brownstones, rare as they may be. And they linked to us, so their points double.

But bathtubs in kitchens? That was never something that went on in these parts, that was for the overcrowded tenements of the Lower East Side (in which my great-grandparents slummed it after fleeing the Bolsheviks). Am I wrong?

When we moved in here, there were no mice or bugs of any kind, which was strange because it’s a very old house and the previous inhabitants were… not so clean. We saw plenty of evidence of previous infestations — closets full of mouse turds, dead German cockroaches all over the place, gnawed wood — but no live specimens. This lasted for months until a nearby lot was being cleared of the debris of a house that had burned down. Apparently the mice that lived in that mess took off for greener pastures — our yard and house. They terrorized us for two weeks, crapping on the kitchen counters and in the silverware drawers, darting between our legs, and then abruptly disappeared. There was an occasional mouse here and there for the next few months, and now they’re starting to nest downstairs, to the chagrin of one of my housemates.

We tried humane traps. The mice laugh. We tried snap traps. The mice roll their eyes. I finally allowed the above housemate to bring home glue traps, which he laid out like a force field across the path where the mice enter. They just don’t cross the line. We hypothesized that the mice know the smell of the glue. Whatever the reason, nobody in this entire house has ever caught a mouse in any kind of trap. And our dog, bred to hunt mice in German castles, is useless. I have been hearing similar stories from other people in the hood, and it seems that Bushwick mice have street smarts: they know what will kill them and they avoid it.

For now, I’m stuffing holes with steel wool and being maniacal about keeping the trash sealed up. I’m even scattering cotton balls with peppermint oil on them along their living room-kitchen run path. I haven’t seen any in a couple of weeks, so it could be working. When we dip into freezing temperatures, I think the battle will only become more difficult.

Anyone else have rodent horror or success stories to share?