Council Member David Greenfield. (Photo: New York City Council)

City Council Member David Greenfield reacted to criticism by The Brooklyn Daily columnist Lou Powsner regarding Greenfield’s attentiveness – or lack thereof – to his Bensonhurst constituents. Powsner’s article, which was covered by BK Southie as part of a larger critique of the gerrymandering of political districts, addressed at a high level the challenges a neighborhood like Bensonhurst faces when all four of its Council districts are anchored by other communities (i.e. Greenfield’s Borough Park, Vincent Gentile’s Bay Ridge). But Powsner cited Greenfield specifically for being a no-show at community events.

Greenfield replied with a letter to the editor, published on BrooklynDaily.com. It reads in part:

Please allow me to set the record straight regarding Lou Powsner’s recent inaccurate claims that I have ignored the Bensonhurst portion of my district. The fact is that nothing could be further from the truth. No matter how you measure it — meetings attended, constituent cases handled, local group funded or services provided — I have worked hard each and every day to deliver for every corner of the 44th District, including the portion of Bensonhurst that I am privileged to represent.

In the less than two years I have held office, I have allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars to numerous Bensonhurst civic, community, cultural, educational and athletic organizations which play a vital role in making it a great place to live. Either a representative or I have attended countless important civic meetings in the community, including every single community board meeting since I was elected to office. In addition, I have fought on behalf of Bensonhurst residents on issues such as keeping our senior centers open and maintaining our quality of life. In fact, I am currently leading the fight to increase the parking spaces in the development of a nine-story medical office on 61st Street and Bay Parkway. Finally, my office has resolved hundreds of constituent complaints, ranging from potholes that need to be filled to government agencies that are not responsive. One such complaint is the one that was filed by Lou Powsner.

If you think State Senator Marty Golden's district is whack, you should see the departed Mr. Kruger's.

The NY Daily News and Brooklyn Daily have recently published separate-yet-similar editorials regarding one of the pressing issues of the 2012 election cycle – redistricting. The Daily News leads off with horse-trading – the political game that both shapes gerrymandered districts and is caused by it. But they eventually get to the point that Lou Powsner made for Brooklyn Daily – gerrymandering carves up communities.

Powsner focuses on the City Council, and more so on Bensonhurst, where the problem is acute. None of the four Councilmen who serve Bensonhurst residents – David Greenfield (Borough Park), James Oddo (Staten Island), Vincent Gentile (Bay Ridge), or Dominic Recchia (Gravesend/Coney Island) have enough of the neighborhood to consider Bensonhurst part of their core constituency. Powsner sites Greenfield especially for being a no-show at Bensonhurst community events.

The Bensonhurst problem is hardly limited to City Hall… and for that matter, it isn’t really limited to Bensonhurst. Some parts of Bensonhurst are represented in Congress by Upper West Sider Jerold Nadler. Others are represented by Staten Islander Michael Grimm… same as Bay Ridge, incidently. The Daily News article pushed the redistricting plan put forward by Common Cause New York. It wouldn’t help our chances of getting Brooklyn representation, but it wouldn’t carve up our neighborhoods, either.

For that reason alone, given the jokers responsible for implementing it, it probably won’t succeed. But here’s to hoping!

Related: Gerrymandering A Problem For Neighborhood Unity (Bensonhurst Bean)

BK Southie Eats – it was always supposed to be a regular feature, but it never worked out that way. In two years, we profiled a grand total of two restaurants. Today, we’re bringing it back, and we’re going back to the restaurant that started the series for us: Europa.

• Who: Europa Restaurant
• Where: 6421 20th Avenue
• Personal Favorites: Bruschetta Con Pomodoro, Gnocchi Bella Napoli, Chicken Marsala
• Entree prices: mostly $12-$20

Europa is an Italian restaurant on the corner of 65th Street and 20th Avenue. The space has a pizzeria half on one side (great for taking the fam out for dinner), and a classier, “restaurant” half on the other (perfect for date night). The difference is mainly in decor, as the same menu is used on both sides. The restaurant side was described to me as “what northern Italy looks like” – a high compliment from the source.

Entrees run in the $12-$20 range, though some dishes – especially seafood – cost more. Of course, the appetizers and desserts are excellent as well, and I almost always partake in a glass of house red when I come here. Generally, I consider a night here as a treat – I tend to get more food and drink, and come here less often, than I might at a restaurant where I typically stick with just a main course.

Dessert heads-up: I love the cappuccinos after a meal here, which is saying a lot, because I’m not generally a fan of cappuccinos.

A Montessori-style education organization with roots in Bensonhurst

The Village-centric community blog had this to say about the Montessori approach to education:

Instead of stacks of spiral notebooks and file cabinets lined up against the walls, wooden boxes of counting cubes and alphabet letter cutouts are used for a tactile approach to learning. A plastic tray filled with turquoise sand is provided to let the children trace their letters. Wooden boards with sandpaper stencils of every consonant and vowel also aid in helping the children become familiar with the contours of each character. Containers of blue, red, green, and yellow wooden blocks in a variety of shapes are used to introduce size and order concepts.

…

When it comes to the type of education offered in the city’s public schools, Maksim and Varvara aren’t impressed.

“The teachers are used to observing children but not putting effort into the educational process,” Kondrukevich said. “People perceive a school education as a safe environment and nothing else.”

What do BK Southie readers think about the comparison to public schools? On one hand, I didn’t think it was entirely fair – Gold Material’s children are all under the age of students in elementary school, so it seems a bit like an apples-and-oranges comparison. On the other hand… I’d have a hard time proving them wrong. Any thoughts?

Household trash - ur doin' it wrong

Two weeks ago, the Home Reporter and Sunset News reported that seven-day trash pickup is to resume on the commercial avenues in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights – Fort Hamilton Parkway and 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 13th Avenues. The Department of Sanitation claims the move will not cost them any more money. The Community Board 10 District Manager, Josephine Beckmann, told the Home Reporter that the new DoS plan was promising.

Contrast that news from this bit from the Bensonhurst Bean yesterday – 18th Avenue from 65th Street to 75th Street (former Santa Rosalia country) remains trashcan-less, much to the dismay of merchants along the strip.

Habib Gazali, supervisor of the Stop One Mini Mart between 71th Street and 70th Street, is frustrated that he has to sweep for 30 to 40 minutes, three to four times a day just to keep up with the litterers.

“I mean, without the baskets, what do you think they’re gonna do?” he said.

The removal of 18th Avenue trash cans was made at the request of Community Board 11 in an effort to combat the use of the cans for household trash. CB10 has made the same argument for Bay Ridge before, which led to a short-lived can removal pilot on 4th Avenue earlier this year. But is household trash really the problem the Boards’ keep telling us that it is? The Bay Ridge Journal doesn’t seem to think so:

On Day 6 of my study of the trash bins at the intersection of 4th and Bay Ridge Avenues, I arrived there at around 8:30 AM.

Yup, the bin is fuller than it was yesterday morning or yesterday evening, but, as on every other day that I’ve taken photos, what’s inside it is street, not residential trash.

This wasn’t a recent observation by the Journal, nor was it right before or right after the can removal pilot. This observation is from April 2010.

Questions for the Department of Sanitation and Community Board 11: if five commercial strips in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights can get seven-day trash pickup for no extra cost, wouldn’t it be possible to do the same down a 10-block stretch of just one more commercial strip? And wouldn’t that be preferable to having no place to put trash at all?

This photo was not taken this past weekend, but could have been. MTA construction crews were working in roughly the same spot along the N-line in Bensonhurst.

This track renewal is pretty lightweight work compared to what the MTA has planned for this section of the line starting in 2012 and beyond. The entire Sea Beach Line – from 8th Avenue to 86th Street – is due for a complete overhaul that will see extensive construction work on the retaining wall and all nine stations. It is certainly important to maintain the subway system’s aging infrastructure – and this line’s stations are well past overdue for an overhaul – but I have to admit, I’m dreading being subjected to the kind of transit misery that B-/Q-train riders suffered through for years.

Maple Lanes, the 48-lane bowling center in Bensonhurst, is Brooklyn’s largest, and enjoys a popularity that is partly fed by the closure of other alleys in the surrounding area. But it too may be shut down and razed to make way for residential housing, according to a New York Times report published this past weekend.

The Times reports that while redevelopment is not imminent, an application to rezone the area to residential was submitted three years ago. The prelim plan is for brick apartment buildings and a synagogue, a nod to the growth of the Borough Park community. This would be consistent with an aim stated by City Councilperson David Greenfield during last year’s debate to rezone the industrial areas south of 60th Street for residential housing.

Not your Williamsburg friend’s drunken party hangout

If you want plush seating, waitstaff service, and earsplitting music, by all means shell out the $50 an hour for Williamsburg's "boutique" Brooklyn Bowl. If you just want to actually bowl, go to "less flashy" Maple Lanes.

The New York Times piece makes an observation about the Brooklyn bowling landscape that I find partly misleading, and completely depressing:

Beyond this familiar pattern of Brooklyn’s progress lies a truth about the state of bowling in the area: boutique alleys with bars and bands in popular locations are popping up, and the less flashy centers that feel like suburban oases are being phased out.

For clarity, the “boutique” alleys the Times refers to are The Gutter and Brooklyn Bowl – a pair of Hipster joints located around the corner from each other in Northside Williamsburg. Compared to these two new boutique centers, the “less flashy” alleys that have been closed number more than 15 by the article’s own admission.

I’ve been to Brooklyn Bowl a couple of times. I would describe it as a concert hall that also happens to have bowling, not a bowling alley that happens to have music. I had a good time listening to the bands, but I would never go there to bowl. For starters, am I the only one who thinks $50 an hour is a little steep? To say nothing of the venue cover charge, if a band is playing that night (which is often).

Brooklyn Bowl caters to the gentrified Williamsburg Hipster crowd of presumed adults that aren’t ready to grow up yet (on several occasions, I’ve referred to the neighborhood as the world’s largest concentration of seventh-year seniors). I’d compare the drunken party atmosphere inside to a college frat house, but that would be insulting to frat houses.

Sharp contrast to the Maple Lanes old-timers interviewed for The New York Times story – people who take part in the leagues year after year, people who’ve been bowling at “less flashy” alleys for decades. Sharp contrast to the melting pot I see every time I visit Maple Lanes – from Jewish families to Muslim teens, from drinking buddies on a Friday night to parents on an afternoon after school.

Glow-in-the-dark "Cosmic Bowling" at Maple Lanes.

Maple Lanes answer to the Hipster clubs’ music programming, as if a 50-year-old alley has to answer to the two-year-old upstart, is “Cosmic Bowling” on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s pretty cheesy. They have a DJ who plays some ’60s and ’70s songs off from a Macbook, and bring out some bowling balls that look kinda cool under a blacklight. I’m not gonna lie to you: it could use a little more polish to be taken seriously. But y’know – if I’m going out to bowl, I’ll take the glow-in-the-dark bowling balls and songs from the actual Bee Gees over some middle-aged dudes who have made a night-job career out of covering the Bee Gees.

What seemed to infuriate biked lane proponents most of all was what Recchia had to say on his blog about the matter:

I’m proud to announce that a controversial set of bike lanes proposed to run through Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst will not be moving forward.

The bike lanes, running up and down Bay Ridge Parkway, would have created a dangerous situation for pedestrians, motorists, truck drivers, buses and bike riders. It’s a narrow street with a high volume of traffic, congestion and reported accidents. Bike lanes have a place in New York City, but not on Bay Ridge Parkway. People would have been fighting to get around each other, and it would only be a matter of time before somebody got hurt.

Why is all this venom being spewed at Recchia? In the statement above the city councilman doesn’t even say he’s against bike lanes, only that the placement of one on this street wouldn’t be safe. Instead of trying to counter his argument, bike lane proponents are simply attacking him using incendiary language. This in turn alienates the very people bike lane activists should be trying to win over.  Personally, I hate having to defend The Post but it’s the attitude found in much of the current pro-bike lane rhetoric that compels me to. The bike lane crowd should stop being so obtuse. Immature tactics like name-calling are counterproductive and only serve to turn off moderates who might otherwise rally to their cause.

According to Yeshiva World News, Councilman David G. Greenfield has proposed having non-working hydrants painted green in order to signal that parking there is a go. Just how many parking spaces would this plan create?  Councilman Greenfield is quoted in the YWN article as saying, “DEP estimates that, at any give time, over 1,000 hydrants are non-operational. That means upwards of 3,000 parking spaces could be available on city streets.”

Aren’t all these broken hydrants a threat to, you know, public safety??? The rest of the quote reads, ” Not to mention that over 1,000 non-operational hydrants puts New Yorkers at risk. A quick coat of paint will keep New Yorkers and first-responders informed. Hopefully, it will also encourage DEP to keep up with hydrant repairs.” Hopefully, indeed. Now if they could just get around to painting all those broken hydrants…

Councilman Greenfield represents District 44, which includes much of Borough Park , as well as parts of Bensonhurst and Midwood.

Yeshiva World News: Councilman Greenfield Proposes Allowing Parking At Broken Fire Hydrants

This is the part where it gets good. Speaking of Brooklyn, reporter John Gapper mentioned that he lives in Park Slope. “That’s not really Brooklyn,” was Schultz’s reply. Grasping at straws, the interviewer rattled off the childhood home of another CEO, Bensonhurst. “That’s Brooklyn,” Schultz told the Financial Times.

This seemed to shock and offend many of brownstone Brooklyn’s more vocal residents. Their carefully cultivated idea of a “new” Brooklyn that’s sort of like Portland, or San Francisco, or hundreds of college towns all across the country, was under siege. To them, this may have been a sign of the Apocalypse. Fish from the docks of Sheepshead Bay would soon fall from the sky into Prospect Park’s lake. Proprietors in Fort Greene would start speaking in tongues of Haitian Creole and New Yorican. New brownstone owners would not be NYU grads from Wisconsin but Rhodes Scholars born in Ukraine. The sky was falling, dogs were sleeping with cats and, sick of Staten Island, their Archie Bunker landlords were moving back. Guidos and black people and stoop ball, oh my!

The thing that many of these critics, these supporters of a new narrative for Brooklyn are forgetting, is that history, even in an always-evolving New York City, is not forgotten that easily. A decade or two of gentrification in a handful of neighborhoods close to Manhattan does not a new borough make.

The dominant historical narrative of Brooklyn, that of a bedroom community of strivers and immigrants, proudly working and middle class, with pockets of the upper middle class and wealthy, also poor with a poverty that’s not hidden so much as it’s embraced, is over a hundred years old. It’s this Brooklyn that became world famous. It is also a Brooklyn far better represented by its relatively affordable southern half. A Brooklyn with artists, yes, but with far more families, both generations deep and straight off the boat. Young couples saving up for a down payment whose offspring  grow up to raise their children in the same houses they grew up in. The games those children will play: street hockey with a crushed beer can, wiffle ball bats stuffed with the Daily News, ‘Utah’ in basketball courts. A city of homes and churches, synagogues and mosques. That’s Brooklyn.

Financial Times: Lunch With FT: Howard Schultz