There was supposed to be a #1 but the landlord never responded with the info, so I’m posting this as-is since I have no more time today. Sorry!

#2 — $2100 — 3br: Sweet owner-occupied house on attractive St. Nicholas Avenue. Decent details, “gorgeous light,” tiled mantle, and washing machine in unit. Top floor overlooking the garden.
PETS OK St. Nicholas and Bleecker DeKalb L

#3 — $1100 — 1br: Great deal on a decent block. Nice wood floors, just a regular old apartment.
PETS OK Stanhope and Bushwick Kosciuszko J

#4 — $1650 — 3br: Looks like a decent place. Wood floors, “new stainless” kitchen, bonus room.
Cornelia and Knickerbocker Myrtle-Wyckoff LM

#5 — $1400 — 2br: “Charming brownstone” — “safest area in all Bushwick”? Linden and Bushwick? Please, the block has its own gang. Not saying the Linden Street Bloods are anything but a hilarious anachronism to be laughed at and ignored, but still, let’s not indulge in hyperbole by saying it’s the safest area in the entire neighborhood. It is an attractive block and the place looks nice.
Linden and Bushwick Gates JZ

from the wtf file: Credit where it’s, uh, due? You decide. This guy is pimping a miniscule apartment for $1100 in his uncle’s (”pretty much the worst landlord possible”) building which is “as shitty as it gets.” But the apartment is an “oasis” with brick walls and a sleeping loft. Saying there are no cool bars or restaurants in the neighborhood is just him being dick.

Bushwick wannabe: It says Bushwick/East Williamsburg but it’s neither. It’s Bed-Stuy! Cool-looking place though.

Artists and artisans will be hocking their wares at 3rd Ward next Saturday. There will also be classes, performances, giveaways, and discounts!

195 Morgan, East Williamsburg
Saturday, December 8th from 12-8pm

I found in the NYT archives this morning a bit about the mechanics of the merger of Bushwick and Williamsburg with Brooklyn [pdf]. It’s pretty dry, but some notable bits are that Greenpoint was part of the Town of Bushwick, and what is currently Bushwick was considered a rural district. Also, Bushwick was the only entity of the three that was in the black.

Tamarinds are sticky, dense, sweet and sour brown pods that grow in tropical areas around the world, including my home region of South Florida. In the Caribbean and Mexico, it is usually used for sweet preparations, as opposed to the more savory dishes of South and Southeast Asian food.

Do not even bother buying the whole tamarind pods, they are a pain in the ass to process and it’s not worth it. You can buy it already processed in blocks, and you might want to if you plan on using it in savory preparations. For my purposes, I just buy a big jug of tamarind syrup, which I get at the Associated on Knickerbocker. It’s all natural — just tamarind pulp, water, and sugar. Many times they use corn syrup, so if you want to avoid that, find a brand with sugar.

My favorite — and the most basic — way to use this fruit is for agua de tamarindo. Just pour a few tablespoons into a glass, fill the rest up with water and ice, mix to dissolve the syrup, and drink. I like bubbles, so I usually use seltzer instead of water, but it’s the same thing. I also once made a cocktail at a BBQ once with tamarind syrup, seltzer, and dark rum, which was pretty good.

It’s not traditional but you can also cook with tamarind syrup. An obvious way to use it is as a glaze. I put about half a cup of it in a small pot with some chile flakes for heat and let it simmer for just a minute. Then I brushed it on chicken legs that I had brined for a couple hours in some salted tamarind water, just to make sure it got the flavor inside the meat. I just broiled them for about 30 minutes, until the skin was dark brown and crispy, and served with rice. (The photos got corrupted or I’d post them.)

Tamarind has a distinct flavor, so I wouldn’t use it to replace any old syrup. But it’s great with meat like chicken or pork, which take well to sweet sauces.

BushwickBK regular Armstrong sends us a shot of María Hernández Park in the foggy late fall gloom.

Hrag Vartanian forwarded me a press release from Arts in Bushwick. It looks like a mini-Open Studios. I hardly understand what art has to do with “fighting development-driven displacement and working towards an integrated, sustainable community” but I guess it’s PC to give some kind of lip-service, even if you’re the harbinger of gentrification. Maybe that’s just how much I don’t get art.

“Open Spaces” a free, one day festival of group shows in alternative spaces and art galleries, takes place December 2nd in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The purpose of Open Spaces is to foster connections within the Bushwick arts community, create forums for artists to show their work, and to cultivate curatorial opportunities for individuals in the neighborhood. Over thirty galleries, private residences and local businesses will be hosting curated group shows of local artists. These spaces will be open to the public from 12 to 8 PM. The creative energy and diversity of the Bushwick art community will be presented through an impressive variety of media: performance, visual art, installation, dance, poetry, music and more. In addition to the myriad forms of art and entertainment, a panel discussion featuring representatives of Bushwick’s diverse stakeholders will open a dialogue regarding gentrification and sustainable development. Open Spaces will continue into the night with live music, sketch comedy, and a dance party.

This past June, Arts in Bushwick organized Bushwick Open Studios, a three day long arts festival. BOS 07 proved to be a great success featuring an estimated 400 artists and performers. As an aspect of BOS 07, several artists turned their lofts into temporary gallery spaces for and hosted group shows. This generous gesture provided opportunities for numerous artists to collaborate, network, and show their work in various exciting alternative spaces. Out of this exercise, the concept for Open Spaces was born. Inspired by the success of BOS 07, Arts in Bushwick has invited neighbors to put together interdisciplinary group art shows as part of the Open Spaces event.

Centered around the Morgan and Jefferson stops on the L train, Open Spaces will be easily accessible by foot within the one day period. More than 30 separate locations are hosting shows, featuring over 200 artists. Open Spaces is a unique opportunity to see incredible art in the neighborhood where it is created.

Arts in Bushwick is an all-volunteer organization whose mission is to promote and support local artists, serve the community at large through arts education and creative accessibility, and to help organize all residents and stakeholders in Bushwick in fighting development-driven displacement and working towards an integrated, sustainable community.

Here’s a map of the venues involved.

Arts in Bushwick — Sunday, December 2, 12-8pm

Someone actually left the keys in their car, parked on Morgan and Flushing. And it got stolen! Aren’t you shocked? I hate the phrase “asked for it” but… man, it’s hard to defend this kind of slip. Nobody deserves to get anything stolen and in a perfect world nobody would but until then, at least lock your damn doors.

I’m used to living in a city that’s #1 in a lot of stuff: my hometown of Miami was simultaneously the poorest city in the United States (and that’s averaging in multi-million-dollar mansions and penthouses) and that with the highest proportion of HIV diagnoses. Also, I think South Florida is the most likely region that you will get your car stolen, since the Port of Miami is the main way they leave the country, disguised in cereal containers on their way to a Haitian chop shop. Oh, don’t forget that Miami has always been the drug capital of the US.

So no surprise from me this morning when Hrag Vartanian sent me a link to a map on which the New York Times plotted the top 200 most violation-laden buildings in the city, and Bushwick shows up (with Bed-Stuy as a close second) as a pretty much solid sea of red. Almost as many violations plague Bushwick as all of the Bronx combined. Crown Heights and East New York are pretty bad, too.

You’d think those areas experienced some kind of riots or arson or decades of general neglect and purposeful destruction by landlords and tenants, and that now since there’s zero profit to be made on the worst buildings, there’s zero reason to fix them. You know, if you thought about it rationally. But I know it can be so fun, and probably quite satisfying, to just declare certain people to be saints and others to be evil, and stomp your feet in righteous indignation and wave big stuffed rats in the air and declare that you have the right to force someone else to house you.

Since I love cooking and am familiar with most of the Spanish Caribbean’s cuisine, particularly Cuba, I figured I’d start a “segment” about cooking with what you can find in your local bodegas. Convenient, huh? It won’t always be Caribbean, but you’ll be able to make it with locally available — and dirt cheap — ingredients.

Plátanos maduros — fried ripe plantains — is a comfort food that also satisfies your sweet tooth. Nothing transports me back to Miami in this cold season like a plate piled high with those gooshy, greasy yellow blobs. Plantains look like gigantic bananas and are available year-round at literally any store that sells food in Bushwick. Sometimes if you luck out you can find them almost ripe at the store, but usually they are mostly green. You’ll have to buy them and then wait for them to ripen, usually a week or more, though you can speed the process up by putting them in a basket over your radiator, or inside a gas oven (don’t forget to take them out if you use the oven for something else!) They’re extremely cheap; you can buy several for a buck sometimes.

Your plantain should be black. Not yellow, that’s still unripe. Totally black. When you squeeze it, it should feel like it’s full of pudding. If it’s still firm, let it ripen more. If they’re too starchy they will come out crunchy instead of chewy, and those are tostones, something we’ll go into another time. more »

They’ve been cleaning the remains of this house out for about 6 months now. Not sure what the deal is with the delays. In that time they have totally renovated the burned-out house next door.