Cortelyou Road: Vintage Stores and More
Cortelyou Road has been getting some attention over the past year for its improving retail mix. One of the recent additions is Cortelyou Vintage at 1118 Cortelyou Road which opened last summer. The owner explained its raison d’etre to a NY Times reporter at the time: “I’m looking to capture the young hipsters who want…
Cortelyou Road has been getting some attention over the past year for its improving retail mix. One of the recent additions is Cortelyou Vintage at 1118 Cortelyou Road which opened last summer. The owner explained its raison d’etre to a NY Times reporter at the time:
“I’m looking to capture the young hipsters who want unique furniture and who are not going to go to Levitz and buy new,” said the owner, Nicole Francis, who works as a financial planner and lives in a 10-room Victorian house nearby. “The key market is couples with young children.”
We thought the store was cute and a welcome addition to the strip but, frankly, the stash of chandeliers at the Thrift Shop around the corner was a greater find. Seriously. There must have been a hundred of them–some of them quite nice.
Commercial Strip Gaining in Charm [NY Times]
wow….seems like alot of people with not much to do with their lives but to get into highschool persnickety debates…yikes.
PICKET FENCES IS one of the worst restaurants Ive ever eaten in. The food is always too salty and I agree with the guy PPSwhatever….I also got a piece of a metal brillo pad in my meal last time. Its the type of place you go to more than once if your desperate and have kids…hope it changes soon. It cant possibly have repeat business, unless like I said people are desperate.
No such luck, YAWN Anonymous. I did like the emperor’s new clothes analogy and wish I’d come up with it, but I didn’t. Why all the hostility over a basic disagreement? What’s your vested interest in all of this?
you yawn often and give yourself away…wake up and smell the roses….
Yawn…now i understand why the picket fence guy doesn’t remember you. Btw, nice job posting anonymously and then backing it up an hour later, LOSER.
I’m sorry, but to Anonymous at March 10, 2006 11:20 PM, you’ve contradicted yourself. You cannot live in Ditmas Park and love your house and community while simultaneously having anything objective, much less critical, to say about your neighborhood and its commercial ventures. Shame on you!
I live in DP, I love my house and the community, and also am of the opinion that: (1) Picket Fence has mediocre food that is too expensive; (2) Vox Pop has terrible service; and (3) the Food Coop is really expensive, even for members!! I feel like we’re in the “Emperor’s New Clothes,” not allowed to state our view of things, because it’s somehow not supportive of the community.
Oh, please. It was meant to be a moment of levity, people. Lighten up. Of course I value diversity…and I eat at Cinqo de Mayo frequently! But I don’t value crimes against architecture. And I don’t care who commits them. If it was my own mother I’d still be up in arms. For this reason some people, who wish to have total autonomy over their propery and do as they please with it, have branded me as such. Maybe I’m just overly sensitive. It isn’t an easy crusade. I was simply mocking that stereotype. Perhaps I didn’t do it very well, but that was the idea. I value the sense of community we have here, and the diverse mix of people. However, I still feel that anyone who buys an historic home should have some sense of appreciation for that home – and not be allowed to destroy it outright. Does that make me a haughty, over-educated, elitist aesthete? I don’t think so, but that doesn’t stop some people from thinking that’s the case.
Hey 3:09
I agree 12:48 used a poor choice of words, or is perhaps indeed mixedup… hoping for haughty people is certainly nothing most people would want, whatever side of the preservationsist fence you fall on. But I don’t understand why it is utopian to hope to preserve and restore the homes of Victorian Flatbush. Or why one needs to be an aesthete to appreciate them… obviously you have the eye to discern “shitty renos” from good ones… why is the person that does a shitty reno more interesting than a person that does a historicallyl correct one? Now if you had a crazy art welder wanting to build a turret out of old auto parts… then I might be with you.. but these are mostly just developers that are either totally ignorant of architectural styles or more likely just in it for short term profits.
Let me quote a post from someone else in another thread today on Brownstoner which I think is possibly germaine here:
“Where is a sense of civic pride. Of beauty. Of adding to the neighborhood, not robbing it of its humanity. Landmarks is the imposition of civic responsibility in the name of the greater good. Without it our city would be a very different place. Landmarking is not anti-people. Compared to France and England we get away easy. There they understand history and context are assets greater than any single entity’s right to make a profit.”
I guess I agree with their comment and wonder if people who do “shitty renos” aren’t just selfish.
re: 12:48
God help us if you’re on the BSW landmarking committee because that means you live in our midst. Your vision for an increasingly haughty neighbourhood flies in the face of every valuable ideal of NYC. Diversity and disagreement is the crux of city living. Without it, we would live in a homogenous, planned, fucking gated community that keep out Cinco De Mayo, crazy lady that sells the great chandeliers on E 12th street, the Flatbush Food Co-op and everything else of that ilk while populating the area with many, many Lemongrass Cafes, Bed Bath and Beyonds, Chipotles and other crap that passes for authenticity. The most amazing part of 11218 and the other zip codes around it is the shear diversity of viewpoints. Some people who live in the area value community, tranquility and economic normality, not billion dollar housing stock and front yards stocked with the entire contents of the Smith and Hawken catalogue. Not everyone shares your utopian viewpoint of aesthetically pleasing and “historically accurate” furbishments/renovations and while I don’t wish that anyone would have to look at the shitty renos that I have to look at on my DPW block, I’d rather look at them than live in an area filled with “haughty” aesthetes. I dare say the source of bad feelings among neighbours may start on your front porch.