I recognize the Con Ed tower in that mountain so I'm guessing squaredrive is correct...

Posted by: Beau Guest at November 3, 2009 9:53 AM in response to Pelli Tower Proposed for Greenpoint Waterfront

@ BrooklynGreene I did a quick search and found this:

http://tinyurl.com/yb4mn2h

This is a link to the Brooklyn Public Library's historic photo collection, showing the pylon that used to mark the Brooklyn entrance to the Manhattan Bridge

Posted by: Beau Guest at October 7, 2009 4:27 PM in response to Giddyup! Best Western Preps for New Downtown Location

@ BrooklynGreene. From what I understand, there used to be such an arch or some kind of gateway. The seated statues that are on the corners of the Brooklyn Museum facade are remnants of that entryway that was demolished at some point to make way for the BQE interchange.

Posted by: Beau Guest at October 7, 2009 4:20 PM in response to Giddyup! Best Western Preps for New Downtown Location

@CarrollGardens. You'll know him when you hear him! And certainly when you feel him. Mirrored sunglasses, biker shorts, crash helmet. I've been elbowed by him once and one time witnessed him come up behind an extremely startled female jogger and physically grab her by the shoulders, and push her over to the pedestrian side of the walkway. He clearly seems to relish the confrontation because he skates like he's trying to set some kind of record in spite of all the tourist traffic. He invariably leaves a bunch of people yelling at him in his wake--but he comes up on you so fast and is by you so fast that he never gets the beating he deserves. A real hit-and-run kind of guy. I just have to wonder what he's so angry about!

Posted by: Beau Guest at September 29, 2009 3:10 PM in response to Bikes and Bodies on the Brooklyn Bridge

My two cents...the Brooklyn Bridge walkway is a hazard as long as the pedestrians have to share the walkway with bike traffic. There is no way to convince tourists not to dart suddenly or block the pathway trying to get photographs. To them, it's just an observation deck the same as on the Empire State Building or 30 Rock. Try convincing someone from Kansas who takes their car to the end of their drive to pick up the mail that people actually walk--or actually bike to get to work or home. It just doesn't occur to them. You can't convince happy families to NOT hold hands all the way across the pathway or push double-wide strollers either. To them it's a pleasure stroll on their vacation. The fact that they are impeding legitimate commuter traffic does not cross their minds. Mind you, they'd all lay on their horns big time if you were trying to take a picture in the middle of their way home at rush hour. But we can't help it that our way home is their once-in-a-lifetime vacation so it is best to deal with it. We are lucky our commute has such a breathtaking view. If you want to not be impeded, take the Manhattan Bridge--otherwise, get used to pedestrians in your way, whether you are a biker, jogger or fast walker. Even if they make a dedicated bike lane, what will they do about that crazy roller blade guy who seems to WANT to hit tourists and pedestrians? He is always skating at top speed and screaming at and shouldering everybody who is one inch into the bike (nowhere does it say rollerblade path, buddy) lane. I openly long for the day I see that guy have a major leg-breaking wipeout.

Posted by: Beau Guest at September 29, 2009 2:29 PM in response to Bikes and Bodies on the Brooklyn Bridge

BellTel is SO not in DUMBO...

Posted by: Beau Guest at September 17, 2009 9:45 AM in response to Parking at the BellTel

havelc, if you will go back and read my post you will notice how I used the word "particular" when I commented. In fact, a few posts down there is a different rendering where the arena looks quite different and more striking. I'm not attacking the architecture, just the rendering. As for the architecture, I prefer the original but this is WAY better than the shed that they proposed initially to replace the first design.

Posted by: Beau Guest at September 15, 2009 10:12 AM in response to Atlantic Yards Arena: Subject to Change

For some reason, that particular rendering makes the arena look like a structure that should be at some midwestern airport. Either that or a thatched-roof tiki-themed souvenir stand from Disneyland.

Posted by: Beau Guest at September 15, 2009 9:18 AM in response to Atlantic Yards Arena: Subject to Change

Not digging it. Looks like a giant Close 'N' Play.

Posted by: Beau Guest at September 9, 2009 11:54 AM in response to New Barclay's Center Design Revealed

Pier 6? So they're going to run the Governor's Island ferry from the end of the park farthest from public transportation options? Sounds like typically excellent Brooklyn planning! Maybe the One Brooklyn Bridge Park shuttle won't mind giving us a lift from the subway...

Posted by: Beau Guest at July 22, 2009 12:51 PM in response to New Ferry Service Between Brooklyn and Guvs Island!

This place was owned by Boar's Head yet prices for deli meats and sandwiches were no cheaper, and often more expensive than at every other deli that sells Boar's Head products in the neighborhood. If you don't use your competitive advantage, you're going to fail.

Posted by: Beau Guest at July 15, 2009 10:33 AM in response to F. Martinella Closes After Less Than Nine Months

OK. I'm starting to rue ever having made a plea for being understanding toward hipsterdom. Watch out for splinters, douchebags!

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 23, 2009 4:10 PM in response to Closing Bell: Quidditch in McCarren Park

How to design a building using a couple pieces of foam-cor and some popsicle sticks. I'm tempted to say the "architect" let his kid do the design while he slept off a monster hangover...

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 19, 2009 10:19 AM in response to LPC Signs Off on New BAM Performing Arts Building

I suspect that this was their intention all along. Hey, we didn't knock it down--time did. Now it's an imminent hazard so we have to knock the rest of it down. S.O.P. when you really want to get rid of something historic.

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 19, 2009 10:13 AM in response to Admirals Row House Collapses from Water Damage

Wow. Do they want to compete with the House of Detention for most architecturally depressing structure in Brooklyn? This is worse, in a way because they have planted that tumor on a historic base.

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 19, 2009 10:08 AM in response to LPC Signs Off on New BAM Performing Arts Building

Just think, in another 25 years, this can become the site for the Brooklyn Devils hockey arena. Somewhere, a future starchitect is scribbling on a napkin...

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 18, 2009 11:34 AM in response to Over the Fence at City Point née Albee Square

At least it's almost summer. It can be quite refreshing to be underwater when the weather's hot!

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 18, 2009 9:36 AM in response to Bank Predicts NYC Market to Fall Another 40 Percent

Perhaps the What will be so good as to answer how he's such an expert on hipster anal hygiene to begin with. I think that's the most troubling thing about this whole thread.

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 17, 2009 1:41 PM in response to Conservative Talk Show Host Beholds Williamsburg

Whatever, What. You sound like the happy idiots that used to rail against gentrification in the East Village. If you weren't an anarchist or squatter, you were somehow destroying the neighborhood. Like it was somehow "preserving" the neighborhood to smoke crack and live under tarps and packing crates in the park. I dutifully purchased purchased my clothes at Unique and Canal Jeans and was barely scraping by, but I was supposed to give the beggar punks on St. Marks money? Right. I don't remember those "artists" having steady jobs beyond begging and calling their parents back in Ohio to wire them some more cash. I'm pretty sure their Trash and Vaudeville bondage wear and dye jobs cost way more than my monthly rent. AI suggest to you that there is nothing different between then and now.

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 17, 2009 10:47 AM in response to Conservative Talk Show Host Beholds Williamsburg

It's just that it's in your neighborhood now, What. But gentrification and flux has been going on as long as NYC has been going on. New groups colonize a neighborhood and other groups move on. Too bad. And I wasn't making a value judgement on the worth of the so-called hipster versus the youthful archetypes of days gone by, just an observation that the hipster is very much tied to what passes for a "scene" these days. BTW, I was one those scenesters from the past--I was actually in CBGB's and the Peppermint Lounge when they mattered. My glory days started in the golden age of Danceteria and ended the day I left my last rave saying "God, I'm too old for this". I went home, hung up my Fozzie Bear backpack forever and joined the great asshat migration. All I'm saying is, that for those kids who are part of the Williamsburg scene now, all that is going on there DOES matter. That is what they will remember fondly in another couple decades and they will rail on blogs and in community board meetings against the destruction of Williamsburg as it was when they were there. I will tell you, no one in the 70s or 80s thought they were doing anything particularly important. They were just going out and getting trashed and having fun--same as kids today.

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 17, 2009 10:16 AM in response to Conservative Talk Show Host Beholds Williamsburg

Thank God for the Hipsters, What.

Just think, in 25 years when they are making movies that are set way back in the "Great Recession", they will have to do their location shots in Brooklyn. The hipsters, for good or ill are what "movie people" will remember about this time. Like the punks on St. Marks or the club kids at Studio 54 in the 70's and 80's. Maybe they'll even give one of these films the title "Asshats" in your honor. Williamsburg in the 00's and Hipsters in general will be a productive vein of humor and nostalgia for years to come. For that, we owe them our gratitude. But, since we are all fellow residents of Brooklyn, we should band together to give a guy like Jay Mundy a collective kick in the ass. In fact, a guy like Mundy is way more likely to be a future 'asshat' pushing a stroller around Ft. Greene than any would-be artist in skinny jeans and a funny hat living with five roommates in Williamsburg.

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 17, 2009 9:43 AM in response to Conservative Talk Show Host Beholds Williamsburg

Hey, What...

What kind of "spot-on" observations do you think a clown like Jay Mundy would make on the Fulton Mall or in Brownsville? I have a feeling you wouldn't be as forgiving to his broad generalizations at that point.

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 17, 2009 9:13 AM in response to Conservative Talk Show Host Beholds Williamsburg

I'm willing to bet this douche never actually set foot there.

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 17, 2009 9:08 AM in response to Conservative Talk Show Host Beholds Williamsburg

Does this mean they can keep the gates open in the evening? They gate off the State Park section way too early, especially during the summer when it's still light for hours after the park "closes".

Posted by: Beau Guest at June 11, 2009 10:13 AM in response to BBPDC To Assume Control of Fulton Ferry State Park

The Avalon Flatbush is also sporting the American flag as of last weekend, so it too must have topped off.

Posted by: Beau Guest at May 21, 2009 11:01 AM in response to 80 Dekalb Tops Out

Anyone hear from "the What" today? I would hate to think he tried to take on the Mutant Asset Bubble in a full-frontal assault. That's no way to win a war.

Posted by: Beau Guest at May 6, 2009 3:11 PM in response to Crunch Time at The Toren

Those Irish carpenters have to work, you know. Gotta pay off those fat American mortgages somehow. They'll pop in for a couple weeks during their summer breaks.

Posted by: Beau Guest at May 1, 2009 11:47 AM in response to On Prospect Park: Is Anybody Home?

Perhaps it's the tomb of Jimmy Hoffa. Someone call Geraldo!

Posted by: Beau Guest at May 1, 2009 10:15 AM in response to It Came From 4th Ave!

The ghost town is not just Downtown Brooklyn, but Brownstoner itself lately. If the only-slightly-miffed-sounding What is reduced to being the lone disinterested commenter on an uninteresting thread about an uninteresting corner of Brooklyn, then maybe its time to throw up something slightly race-baiting or edgy. Something to rile up Team Bear. Can't you find anything to ignite the renter/owner debate? C'mon. Kitten-eating pitbulls? Rent control abuse? Gentrification? No cars parking in the bike lanes these days? Anything?

Posted by: Beau Guest at May 1, 2009 10:11 AM in response to Contamination Found at 384 Bridge Street, Lawsuit Filed

You're absolutely right Benson--this is precisely why we have Eminent Domain! We have to save Mr. Sitt from himself--He's making a terrible mistake. If they go ahead with this, there will soon be the shell of a ravaged Bass Pro Shops store within a year. Right next to the spot where the Rainforest Cafe lasted for exactly 9 months before closing in the hail of negative publicity following the "regrettable incident with the rat". Right past the cavernous space that housed the world's only Toys R Us that you had to pass through metal detectors to enter...

Granted, this epic failure could restore some of the grit we used to love about Coney Island. OK--I've changed my mind. Build away, oh Mighty Thor!

Posted by: Beau Guest at April 30, 2009 2:20 PM in response to Thor's Big-Box Dreams for Coney Island

You're absolutely right Benson--this is precisely why we have Eminent Domain! We have to save Mr. Sitt from himself--He's making a terrible mistake. If they go ahead with this, there will soon be the shell of a ravaged Bass Pro Shops store within a year. Right next to the spot where the Rainforest Cafe lasted for exactly 9 months before closing in the hail of negative publicity following the "regrettable incident with the rat". Right past the cavernous space that housed the world's only Toys R Us that you had to pass through metal detectors to enter...

Granted, this epic failure could restore some of the grit we used to love about Coney Island. OK--I've changed my mind. Build away, oh Mighty Thor!

Posted by: Beau Guest at April 30, 2009 2:20 PM in response to Thor's Big-Box Dreams for Coney Island

For me, Coney Island used to be a destination. A place I would always take out-of-town visitors in the summer specifically because it was like absolutely nothing else in the country and like nothing they'd ever seen before. And even at its grittiest and shabbiest, my friends and I would invariably have a great time and they would want to go back when they visited again. Even the old Mad Max aesthetic where if a ride broke down, they would build a fence around it and leave it rust was funky and photogenic. I will miss that Coney Island, but it's clear its time had come. But big-box theme stores? Jeez--that is precisely what you can find every other place in this country. In all the city, they couldn't come up with ONE plan that made something new here but was so unique that it would draw visitors from all over the country specifically to see and experience it? Bass Pro Shops? Give me a break. Hard Rock Cafe? That stopped being remotely interesting about the time that they opened the 235th Hard Rock Cafe in Indianapolis (apologies to Indianapolis--but even Indy residents know what I'm getting at here). This represents a startling lack of vision. The are very few American cities that have oceanfront tracts like this. That alone should make this site special. Maybe I'm wrong--maybe tourists will flock to Brooklyn to see America's only oceanfront shopping mall--great views of the surf from the Food Court!

Posted by: Beau Guest at April 30, 2009 1:11 PM in response to Thor's Big-Box Dreams for Coney Island

This makes me sad--and angry. Once you start Coney Island down this path it will never again be a destination. Whatever happened to the Danish people that were going to an amusement area ala Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen? I'd rather see this turned into a family-friendly kiddie park than to see it become a strip mall hell.

THOR: the Worse God of Blunder

Posted by: Beau Guest at April 30, 2009 11:08 AM in response to Thor's Big-Box Dreams for Coney Island

What a fiasco. Scour the world and MAYBE you'll find one or two people who came to the city especially to take part in the "Great Leaky Construction Scaffolding Festival 2008". Those tourists that stumbled on these things by mistake mostly found themselves with a sudden need to go pee, coupled with inexplicable respiratory infections days later. Nothing like breathing in atomized East River water to keep you healthy and chipper. Art so bad it kills--you can't make this stuff up.

Posted by: Beau Guest at April 30, 2009 8:12 AM in response to Closing Bell: Evidence of Damaged Trees by the Waterfalls

This line-up typical of what you get when your choices are limited to movies with minimal cursing, no nudity and won't go over the head of your average six-year-old. Hey, it could be worse.

Posted by: Beau Guest at April 29, 2009 11:17 AM in response to Brooklyn Bridge Park Movie Schedule Announced

This line-up typical of what you get when your choices are limited to movies with minimal cursing, no nudity and won't go over the head of your average six-year-old. Hey, it could be worse.

Posted by: Beau Guest at April 29, 2009 11:17 AM in response to Brooklyn Bridge Park Movie Schedule Announced

Any hints about the food? Any of the Red Hook vendors making the trip to Dumbo?

Posted by: Beau Guest at April 28, 2009 4:00 PM in response to Brooklyn Flea Expanding to Brooklyn Bridge Park!

It looks good on paper, but let me throw a couple things out there 1) What will this do to the view from the Promenade? maybe nothing, but it does project pretty far. 2) to they think they will be able to keep French Spidermen and drunken tourists from climbing out onto that from the Promenade? So suddenly they'll have to line the Promenade with razor wire?

Posted by: Beau Guest at April 8, 2009 10:41 AM in response to Futuristic Enclosure Thingy Proposed for the BQE

Forget about the stores on the Fulton Mall--they're fine. But can we please bulldoze those awful blue "gateways" at either end of the mall? Those have to be among the fugliest things in the whole borough.

Posted by: Beau Guest at March 11, 2009 12:45 PM in response to Big Plans for Fulton Mall Makeover

I can't see it being Cracker Barrel on the Fulton Mall. Sure, the food would be a hit, but I recall the chain having problems in the past with properly serving some of our darker Americans. Perhaps they've sorted all that out....

Posted by: Beau Guest at March 6, 2009 4:59 PM in response to Another Rumor: Fast Food for Gage & Tollner Space

Hmmm. Based on the landmarked decor, it could be an Uno's pizzeria. Something like that would probably be successful in this location.

Posted by: Beau Guest at March 6, 2009 10:58 AM in response to Another Rumor: Fast Food for Gage & Tollner Space

Hmmm. Based on the landmarked decor, it could be an Uno's pizzeria. Something like that would probably be successful in this location.

Posted by: Beau Guest at March 6, 2009 10:58 AM in response to Another Rumor: Fast Food for Gage & Tollner Space

Whatever happened with the "Underground Railroad" house? Is it still going to be a museum?

Posted by: Beau Guest at January 29, 2009 11:51 AM in response to City Secures Rest of Willoughby Square Park Properties

Has anyone pointed out that this project is too tall?

Posted by: Beau Guest at January 15, 2009 9:22 AM in response to CB2 Gives Thumbs Up to Dock Street

Bartel and Pritchard would be unhappy to know their circular "square" is being mistaken for Grand Army Plaza...

Posted by: Beau Guest at January 15, 2009 9:20 AM in response to Down and Out on the Roundabout

According to the NYTimes, this thread will very shortly veer into a mean-spirited discussion on class and race. Try not to disappoint them!

Posted by: Beau Guest at January 12, 2009 9:11 AM in response to Murders, Binge Drinking Up in Park Slope Last Year

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict the What's war is finally going to end. i'd say in October. On a Tuesday. Sometime before noon.

Posted by: Beau Guest at December 31, 2008 12:05 PM in response to 2009 Predictions and Resolutions?

I only care that this is one f-in ugly building. I don't care who they put in it as long as they fix it up so it doesn't look a soiled and discarded old mattress.

Posted by: Beau Guest at October 1, 2008 2:24 PM in response to Plans for HOD Go Forward

Just this once, I'm going to take a new Real Estate office opening as a positive sign! This is a sign of "Spring" as surely as the first robin. Or is it just the first mushroom after a rainstorm?

Posted by: Beau Guest at October 1, 2008 2:13 PM in response to Streetlevel: New Realty Office on 7th Avenue?