(All photos: Brian Hedden)

It’s probably about two hours after the snow turned to rain in this scene. I am standing on a patch of packed snow/ice/wintery mix, and I see that the property to my right has cleared off their sidewalk quite well. These people are my dry cleaners, and I’m sure they have shoveled the sidewalk because they are all-around nice guys. And maybe a little because $1.50 for a shirt isn’t going to pay for anyone’s accident claim or ambulance chaser trial lawyer fees.

Ditto to the Orthodox establishment to my left. Like I said, it’s only two hours after the snow stopped. Property owners have six hours, I believe, to get their sidewalks cleared. But these good folks are already on it. They met their “perception due-date,” so to speak (a corporate buzzword I could really have done without this week).

So who is this douchenozzle that wants the Bensonhurst and Borough Park masses to slip and fall on their tuchuses?

Yeah, I know. The “MTA” tag kinda gave it away. But you weren’t really surprised by this anyway, were you?

Oh, and watch that first step. It’s a doozy.

This N-train station at 18th Avenue is going to need a little more than a fresh coat of paint to cure what ails it.

Reminder: The Jewish Press is organizing a debate between the candidates for Council District 44 (Simcha Felder’s old seat) this Wednesday, February 24th. Those candidates are (at last count) David Greenfield, Joseph Lazar, and Jonathan Judge. The debate will start at 7pm, and will be held at the Borough Park YMHA, located at 4910 14th Avenue.

(8th Avenue before the 2010 Chinese New Year parade. Photo: Brian Hedden)

Reminder: you, too, can be a BK Southie blogger! Looking for writers from all neighborhoods across our half of the borough! Read all about the details here.

• The Brooklyn DA is rumored to be considering gang-assault charges against the firefighters involved in the drunken January 29 brawl at the Salty Dog that left four civilians pummeled. Meanwhile, Law & Order and Rescue Me are in a race to see who can rip this story from the headlines first. (Gothamist)
• The United Federation of Teachers has filed a lawsuit to stop the closure of 19 public schools like Sheepshead Bay High School. (Sheepshead Bites)
• How to handle the Belt Parkway entrance ramp closure at Coney Island Avenue and Guider Avenue (other than, you know, to avoid). (Sheepshead Bites)
• Raining on the Coney Island parade. The concern is that the long-term plan for the amusement park will be decided 10 years from now, presumably by the Mayor’s successor. Hey, a few more changes to the term limit laws ought to fix that. (Brooklyn Paper)
• Mapping the Walgreens-Duane Reade overlap in the Sheepshead Bay area in the wake of the drug store mega-buyout. (Sheepshead Bites)

A number of media outlets have reported on the daring subway rescue a week ago at the 8th Avenue station of the N-line. 18-year-old Parsons student Rosie Rittenberry passed out and tumbled out onto the tracks. Fellow Sunset Parker Lance McGraw “threw off his headphones and backpack, and jumped down to the roadbed — as the N train bore down on them.” The NY Post has the full story and an adorably adorable picture of the Sunset Park Lois & Clark, and Fox 5 has an interview on video.

I find this story really interesting, not just because of the heroics and the fact that they look super-cute together, but also because on any normal day, I would have been on the train that “bore down” on them. Alas, last Thursday I was running late to the office, much to the chagrin of my 9:30 conference call.

No such feel-good ending in Borough Park this week, when a 4-year-old boy was struck and killed by the rear tires of a yeshiva school bus after slipping on ice (NY Times).

I noticed the commenters at Gothamist immediately jumped on the case of Hasidic bus drivers. OK, I will admit that the guys that drive the yeshiva school buses in Williamsburg are The. Worst. Drivers. I have ever seen this side of Boston, but that hasn’t been my experience at all with the Borough Park buses. Unless there are charges or accusatory eyewitness accounts, can everyone please step off? Thank you.

BK Southie is looking for people interested in writing about their home neighborhoods!

There are so many great stories here in South Brooklyn (that’s “south” as defined by me, not Wikipedia). And I certainly enjoy writing about the ones I’m able to get to. But I’ll freely admit, I’m only scratching the surface of what’s happening here. Sometimes I think four articles a day would be the right number of daily posts for this joint, yet I usually struggle just to come up with four in any given week.

Here’s what I think would make for a really cool South Brooklyn blog: at least one person from each of the neighborhoods across South Brooklyn writing about news and events and other stories from their home barrio, once or twice every week. As blog readers, we’d read about more stories from a street-level perspective that’s difficult for a single person (with a kid and a day job) to accomplish. It also means more stories overall, without breaking the back of any one writer. Which I think are good things for both reader and writer alike.

If you’re interested in writing about a subject that reaches across neighborhoods, like South Brooklyn politics, let me know. And if you’d rather go in the direction of the ultra-niche – for instance, writing ONLY about the cover band scene in Bay Ridge – that would be cool, too.

So – who is interested in writing about their neighborhood? Let me know at bksouthie@gmail.com.

P.S. Just for clarity, the neighborhoods BK Southie mostly focuses on are, from west to east: Bay Ridge/Fort Hamilton, Sunset Park, Borough Park, Dyker Heights, Bath Beach, Bensonhurst/Mapleton, Midwood, Gravesend, Coney Island/Sea Gate, Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Sheepshead Bay/Homecrest, Gerritsen Beach, Marine Park, Mill Basin, and Bergen Beach. That’s the South Brooklyn I know and love.

P.P.S. Also for clarity, there isn’t any compensation for writing here. Sorry – I know that would be really cool, but speaking for myself, I’m doing this pretty much for “the love of the game.”

Saturday, May 29 – circle it on your calendars, write a note in your day planner, create a new all day event in your BlackBerry. It’s the start of Memorial Day Weekend 2010, which is shaping up to be Coney Island’s biggest opening day since Fred Trump demoed Steeplechase.

Yesterday, the Mayor’s office officially announced that the Italian ride manufacturer Zamperla – or more accurately, its park-operating affiliate, Central Amusements International – will bring 19 new rides to “Luna Park at Coney Island” this summer, with four more “Scream Zone” rides in 2011. The first 19 will include the international debut of the Air Race, and the Final Four will include two custom rollercoasters and a human slingshot.

Zamperla and CAI are known for giving their rides at Central Park’s Victorian Gardens a Victorian look. Judging by the renderings released yesterday, it looks like they plan to hold true to the original Luna Park.

Coney Island USA founder Dick Zigun reported back to CIUSA’s message board that Zamperla will also “rehab and reopen the AstroTower,” and the Coney Island History Project’s Tricia reveals that the Wonder Wheel is being fitted with solar panels to power a recreation of the 1920s lighting scheme on the swinging cars.

Unless you’re Gene Kelly, please kindly refrain from any rain dances between now and then.

Not quite lost in the big amusement park story out of Coney Island was the heartbreaking news of an 11-year boy killed in an apartment fire on West 24th Street:

An autistic 11-year-old boy who can barely speak died in a fire that he set Tuesday when his grandmother left him alone in her Brooklyn apartment, officials and witnesses said.

Tavon Turpin used matches or a lighter to ignite the blaze in a hallway closet while his grandmother, Melinda McLain, 59, had gone to a deli near the Coney Island apartment, police said. (NY Daily News)

McLain was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child. I don’t know about that one. I’m going to take the unpopular stand here and say that leaving an 11-year-old – a middle-schooler, not a toddler – unattended for such a short trip is not criminally negligent (though please note, none of the news stories were able to say exactly how long she had been gone). It was poor judgment, given Turpin’s autism and prior history with fire – he had previously started a small blaze when he put a cell phone in a microwave. It’s a decision that will weigh down on the grandmother for the rest of her years, but under the circumstances, I think the NYPD was unnecessarily piling on by taking her into custody.

Here’s a great story I was told from a mother who grew up in Queens in a Brazilian household, and is now raising a family in the Maryland suburbs.

	We would like your daughter to take ESL again this year.
	Why?
	(nervously) Well, it’s because of her Portuguese.
	That’s stupid.
	I’m sorry?
	I speak Portuguese.
	Yes.
	My daughter doesn’t speak Portuguese.
	Ah…
	You made her take ESL last year, but she hardly spoke any Portuguese then, either.
	Yes, but…
	She doesn’t speak any Portuguese at all anymore.
	Yes, I understand. Uh, I’m not quite sure how to put this.
	Put what?
	The thing with your daughter… is… well, your daughter…
	What is it about my daughter?
	The problem with your daughter, you see, is that she talks, …
	She talks what?
	She talks with a Brooklyn accent.
	…!

In one of the blogwraps a few months ago, I had commented on a YourNabe.com story about Dyker Heights community organizations pleading their case to the DOT in order to get a traffic study. The problem the neighborhood has been facing has been traffic staying one step ahead of the DOT’s efforts to control it – every time they would put in a light, say, at 10th Avenue and 74th Street, traffic would find an alternate side street sans lights to use.

DHCA President Fran Vella-Marrone said traffic problems have been escalating in Dyker Heights – running roughly from 7th Avenue to 14th Avenue and from 65th Street to 86th Street – since the DOT have implemented solutions to certain intersections while ignoring overall traffic patterns.

“They (DOT) operate in a vacuum when they study only one intersection,” she said, adding that installing a traffic light at one intersection willy-nilly often results in the speeding up of traffic as motorists try to make the light before it turns red.

YourNabe.com now reports that the DOT will conduct a traffic study of the Dyker Heights, in increments of 10-block grids.