by shaftbean, from the BushwickBK.com flickr pool

Can’t we catch a break? Once again, Bushwick takes a number one on the shit list, this time for bedbug complaints. Again, I emphasize that this is bedbug complaints, not actual bedbug infestations. I was under the impression that Greenpoint is actually the epicenter of the bedbug “epidemic” (everything bad these days is an epidemic, right?). But since Greenpoint is heavy on the homeownership and Bushwick is decidedly not, Bushwick tops the complaints. Just a theory — if anyone has some harder facts, please post below.

Not to say Bushwick isn’t known lately for its bedbug problem. If I were to take a word association test right now, “McKibben” would have me blurting out “bedbugs!” in a half-second. There are apparently buildings being scarlet lettered to warn prospective tenants and shame landlords.

I can’t figure out from research whether or not the DDT ban really is to blame for the reemergence of bedbugs, but until someone comes up with a silver bullet, we’ll have to keep washing everything in hot water and rejecting cool curbside furniture finds.

by shaftbean from the BushwickBK flickr pool

Good, Bad, Then Good Again: Block magazine profiles Tony’s Pizza on Knickerbocker, whose owner bought the place in 1976. Gulp. They’ve seen a lot.

That’s Rather Done to Death: Bushwick tops Curbed’s list of hideous homes for 2007. Our hood also takes the #5 spot.

Observing the Wildlife: A Londoner wants to know where to eat and take photos of the natives in Bushwick. How condescending, you goddamn racist. amirite?

Let My Postal Go: Like Ridgewood in 1979 parting zip codes with Bushwick, Glendale now wants to break up with Ridgewood for civic pride’s sake. Those goddamn racists. amirite?

You Gonna Finish That?: Freegans create mountain of future rat food at a local community center to highlight the city’s food waste and demonstrate their non-participation in the market economy — ignoring that all the food is generated by the market economy.

Earth to developers: if high-priced nice condos didn’t sell in Bushwick at the tail end of the real estate boom, crappy condos are not going to sell for even higher prices in a relative real estate bust. Sure, they did a decent job on this previously rickety frame building, adding another floor so it made financial sense and even preserving (if painting rather hideously) the original front doors. Oh, are we letting the faux-saltillo tile — yes, they were so cheap that they used thin ceramic tile colored red-orange — slide? I don’t think we should, it’s nasty, and they paved the whole front area and the stoop with it.

All this could be forgiven if the apartments at 76 Jefferson Street were $200,000 one-bedrooms. But instead we got a “luxury penthouse duplex” with 2 bedrooms, two baths, and an office. Admitted pluses are the awesome city view and huge roof terrace.

“The apartment features a kitchen with granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances and classically designed cabinets. The apartment has 2 bathrooms which features, top of the line marble, granite counter tops, wall to wall mirrors, and a Jacuzzi bathtub in the master bathroom. The condominium has select oak floors with mahogany borders and a fire place. The apartment has its own stack washer and dryer.”

It’s not just marble — it’s top of the line marble! And you can’t build “luxury” without hurling a chunk of the cheapest granite into the kitchen, right? Wall-to-wall mirrors!? Wow. People were already removing tacky junk like that 15 years ago.

It would have been easy to make this building appealing to someone who is in the market for a three-quarter of a million-dollar apartment, but the problem with low-end developers who reach for the high end is that they have no taste. Even if they spent the money, it would be misspent, on stuff like gold-plated faucets. Might go down well in Brighton Beach but not in the “it’s close to Manhattan” market.

This shit shack will not sell for this price or any price they will drop it to in the near future.

It was 3am on the morning of Christmas Eve, when I woke up to the screech of a car speeding away. Normally I would have just gone back to sleep, but I had a weird, delirious feeling that it wasn’t the screeching that had actually waken me. I peeked out the window and saw no evidence of the crash my subconscious was swearing to me it heard. I called myself an idiot and got back into bed.

That morning at a normal hour, a housemate and I met my next-door neighbor out front to go to brunch. It was then that I realized that the screeching car jumped the curb near the corner, took out a street tree and a metal street sign, shedding pieces of itself as it went. It continued down the sidewalk, past my house — damaging nothing of mine — then curved back toward the street, running over my neighbor’s tree pit and nicking his tree, and then running over the final street tree on the block before presumably running the light and hurtling down Central.

A similar fate befell the tree in front of my house just days before we moved in. No wonder so many of the trees on this side of Bushwick are so small — they keep getting run over. Needless to say, the splintered trees and sign lay where they fell. I assume it will be years before someone decides to have new trees planted.

They popped the facade on these Jefferson Street houses almost overnight, so it was a surprise when I passed them on my way to the Myrtle J that they were in the process of taking down the scaffolding. I’m pleased to say that they are not hideous. Neither will they win an architectural award but they are not anything near the ugliest “Fedders Specials” in Bushwick, or even this very block. It may be difficult to tell from the photo, but the houses are built right up to the property line, even around the corner on Evergreen, eliminating a main aesthetic problem associated with this kind of new construction. The verdict is still out on whether they will put those stupid cartoon-roof shaped overhangs over the doors — I’m betting yes.

They are of course billed as “luxury 2-family homes,” but I am sure they will be the same 7-foot-wide bedroom dorms as the rest of their ilk. Add the fact that the paper warehouse across the street is the view and it’s safe to say the word “luxury” is officially meaningless in the real estate industry.

Broadway, marking the border of Bed-Stuy and Bushwick, is home to several restaurants specializing in the cuisine of ethnic communities on both sides of the boulevard. One of them is Le Conakry, named for the peninsular capital city of Guinea, in West Africa. Guinea having been formerly ruled by the French, I expected more colonial influence, but was (pleasantly) surprised to have no other cuisine to compare it to — perhaps North African. Apparently, Guinean food is not well-regarded among West Africans — that’s probably the reason for the Senegalese menu items and couscous side.

I met Petra from the Bed-Stuy Blog at Myrtle and Broadway and we walked down together. At the counter, we asked for a few suggestions, but the demure, smiley lady, Fatou, couldn’t recommend anything in particular, and simply listed all the things they had.

We started off with the jollof rice, which is fried and nutty and even a bit sticky. It was well-spiced and satisfying, though the fish and yuca-like root vegetable served with it were both rather dry and hard. Not to mention full of bones.

Then we were served what I consider the star of the show: mafe, a Senegalese peanut sauce — served here with chicken, carrot, and potato simmered in — ladled over white rice. It was heavy and satisfying, though Petra said she didn’t think it was peanutty enough. The sweetened pineapple-ginger water (like an agua fresca) was perfect for cutting through the fat of the peanuts.

I ordered the grilled lamb with couscous — a mistake. It was lamb shoulder, overcooked, and completely gamy. The couscous was fine, but that’s hard to screw up. It was spiced up with some (presumably) Guinean pepper and tomato sauce served alongside.

Except for the mafe, the dishes could easily feed two people — at around $8 a plate, it’s a bargain.

Genius that I am, I forgot my camera at home, so all the photos were taken by Petra. Genius that SHE is, she didn’t take any photos of the food. At the very least you know what the place looks like.

Recommended: chicken mafe, jollof rice, pineapple-ginger water
Not recommended: fish, grilled lamb

Le Conakry | 1136 Broadway | 718-453-0747 | Vegetarian options

Check out Petra’s (significantly longer) review (also note the confusing difference in the names of what we ate… not sure how to explain that), and the Village Voice’s.

María Hernández/Knickerbocker Park, by mtmont — from the BushwickBK flickr pool

Yeah Das My Dog, So?: Jen is shocked to discover that the pink stuffed animal in a pile of trash is actually someone’s dog — someone who is perfectly on top of where her pet is, thank you very much.

Feral Cats and Tourist Crap: Jimmy Legs reports the miraculous reappearance of a disgustingly fat feral cat he thought dead, getting his house into shape for a holiday visitor, and thinking of touristy things to do with said visitor.

Go Back to Nebraska! Making fun of hipsters, blah blah et cetera: Bushwick has an American Apparel? Or is the store’s name now just used interchangeably for hipsterdom?

It’s All Relative: Good thing Rachael decided to walk through the “Eastern” part of Bushwick, or she never would have come upon the street art exhibit at Ad Hoc, which no matter who you ask is at least in the North or West part of Bushwick — or not in Bushwick at all, if you’re a stickler for political borders.

Niko warms up in front of the makeshift heater.

My whole heating system is messed up: the boiler leaks and the house is freezing in the back and hot in the front. Last year when the thermostat broke for a few days and we had no heat at all, I turned the oven on and worked at the kitchen table to try and stay warm. I remembered that the other day as I was washing dishes and shivering — it must have been 55 in the kitchen. So I cranked the oven on and opened the door, then went into the warm office to do some work. 20 minutes later I came back and the kitchen was warmer than the office! I looked at the thermostat, set at 68 — it read 71.

I have a whole house-wide central heating system and the thing that heats my apartment up the quickest is my oven. Lame.

Anyone else have ghetto rig stories and photos they want to share from their Bushwick apartment? Email me from the contact link on the left.

Cops valiantly protecting Brooklynites from the Idiotarod. (from the defunct Brooklyn Record).

I was at a Christmas party next door last night, and started talking with a cluster of guests near the food table. Turns out one of the group was a guy who grew up in Bed-Stuy, talking about how Brooklyn is cleaner, safer, more fun, and cooler all the time. “Look at Bushwick — this neighborhood is so much better!” We shared stories about how it used to be — he particularly liked my story from my dad about fishtailing at 50mph to keep thieves in late-’70s Bed-Stuy from breaking into his delivery truck. His stories about random crime were, of course, first-hand; mine were passed down from my father and others.

“Yeah, everything gets better here every year except the cops.” I perked up, of course. We then began sharing stories and complaints; one of his was that a cop lured him off his mother’s stoop with a beer in his hand, and when he stepped on the sidewalk he was issued an open container ticket. We also talked about people ticketed for walking their bikes across the sidewalk from their stoops to the street. “Don’t ride your bike at the end of the month” was advice we shared on avoiding being a victim of citation quotas.

He said a friend of his was stabbed four times on the Metropolitan G platform, though the station houses a police precinct. A cop stumbled upon the guy laying in a pool of blood and asked him if he was okay. “I’m fuckin’ bleeding!” his friend responded, and was reprimanded by the cop for his attitude!

To hear native Brooklynites tell it (to the deep chagrin of those who like it how it used to be just because that’s how it used to be), the borough is better than ever. So why do the cops still act like it’s 1977 up in here?

#1 — $1200 — 2br rr: Oh my Gee-dash-dee. Ready for this? Cuz it’s begun. A railroad apartment facing the park is available in the first building to be renovated on this block of Starr. I will bet you quite a few bucks that it’s stabilized, too, so you better have your paperwork in order, because the competition will be fierce. The renovation is meh, but your rent will not be going up significantly for many, many years, if you choose to stay, so sink a few bucks in, right? Views of the park, proximity to anything even remotely cool and interesting and fun and tasty in Bushwick. Get on this.
CATS OK Starr and Irving Jefferson L

#2 — $1400 — loft: I’m really liking this place. Wood floors, bedroom loft space, some exposed brick, new, if not terribly exciting kitchen. Location is pretty okay.
PETS OK Central and Suydam Central M/Morgan L

#3 — $1050 — 1br rr: It’s possible this is a two bedroom railroad, I can’t quit tell. Either way, it’s a total steal. Great location, though it is carpeted — yuck. I can’t tell much from the photo, so as always, proceed with caution.
CATS OK DeKalb and Wilson DeKalb L

#4 — $1250 — 1br: This looks like a pretty spacious apartment, though there are no photos of the kitchen or bathroom. Wood floors, some exposed brick, “dinette space.” I like it. Says Jefferson L stop but it’s Morgan, unless you’re going to Canarsie. And you’re not.
Jefferson and Wilson Morgan L

#5 — $1930 — 2br loft: Pretty fabulous windows and ceilings in this loft right near Bushwick proper’s new epicenter of cool. A bit expensive, yes, but for those with a space habit and the means to support it, it works. Caps off our all-North Bushwick roundup!
Wyckoff and Suydam Jefferson L

from the wtf file: What the hell is this thing, a spaceship? Nasty.