• UPDATE (June 1, 2011) – Bensonhurst Bean. – the new Bensonhurst news blog that I will be contributing to from time to time.
• Sheepshead Bites. – my favorite South Brooklyn blog.
• Amusing The Zillion and Kinetic Carnival, two great sites carrying the Coney Island banner.
• GerritsenBeach.net is either one of the 25 best blogs in New York, or it’s run by a guy with a teenage hooligan fetish. (I’m in the “Top 25″ camp.)
• Beehive Hairdresser and The Bay Ridge Journal for Bay Ridge and beyond. The Bay Ridge Blog posts very sporadically now, but it’s April Fool’s joke was a hoot. (And sadly, completely plausible.)
• In the political space, newcomer The Brooklyn Politics Blog has been fantastic. If you like hardcore political slants, check out left-leaning Bay Ridge Interpol and right-leaning Atals Shrugs In Brooklyn (fun fact: they both despise Marty Golden).
• ConeyRocks is the blog of MUSCLE13, better known as That Guy On The Coney Island Message Boards That Everyone Hates. I disagree with his analysis a great deal of the time as well, but he’s driven by a deep concern for the welfare of the neighborhood as a whole, which I absolutely respect. And sometimes when everyone really is full of B.S., he’s there to call it.
• It should be worth pointing out that Gothamist – a New York City blog with a five-borough and regional mission – does a far better job of covering South Brooklyn stories than certain blogs and newspapers that supposedly have a Brooklyn-only focus.

Video of last week’s meeting of the Gerritsen Beach Property Owners Association meeting taken by Sheepshead Bites. In case you were wondering, taking video during the public segment of these meetings is totally OK. That was covered at a shitshow earlier in the year.

It was, ahem, a busy and interesting week in South Blogistan.

• Please remember we’re starting our Facebook page over from scratch. It’s emotionally needy and perceives its self-worth when other people Like it. Which sums up Facebook, in a nutshell.
• So, Gerritsen Beach, what did you do on Halloween? Have a little wholesome fun? Go out in large, family-friendly packs of fun and deplete the New Section of its candy stores? Or did you throw eggs and rocks at the B31 and brag about it on Facebook? Of course, anyone who has followed two or more meetings of the Gerritsen Beach Property Owners Association knows that there’s nothing they hate more than self-outing teenage punk-ass thugs bloggers who publish photos of self-outing teenage punk-ass thugs on the Web (which, as pointed out, is World Wide). Because if he’s taking pictures of children in public spaces committing crimes, he must be a pedophile. Obviously! (GerritsenBeach.net, Sheepshead Bites, Gothamist)
• This past Saturday was the rally at Ruby’s Bar & Grill – very likely its last day ever – to save itself and eight other Boardwalk businesses from eviction at the hands of Luna Park operator Central Amusements International (Zamperla). It sure was a dick move on CAI’s part early this year to encourage the Boardwalk 11 to invest serious cash into their business – Ruby’s dropped $40,000 just by themselves – without giving them lease guarantees. But I warned a few weeks ago against obsessing over battles with Thor Equities that had already been lost by amusement advocates, and specifically cited the threat of wholesale change on the Boardwalk by companies not named Thor Equities. Glad to see everybody listened to me! (Amusing The Zillion, Gothamist)
• There was a Marathon in New York yesterday, didn’tcha hear? There was a Chilean miner and everything. One or two people got some pretty good pictures. (Bay Ridge Blog, Beehive Hairdresser, Bay Ridge Journal)
• Speaking of the Marathon, the race director seems to think “that Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge was catching up with First Avenue in Manhattan for crowd support,” as if it is some sort of surprise. (NY Times)

• Our brand new Facebook page is feeling needy and wants you to Like it. P.S. The old Facebook account no longer exists.
• Q: What do you get when you stick a perfectly good Brooklyn neighborhood in the same Congressional district as trashy Staten Island? A: Jersey Shore political theater. Representative Michael McMahon gets front-row seats for his opponent’s ex-wife at a debate. (Gothamist and the Bay Ridge Journal)
• Here’s a last-minute voter guide. (Gotham Gazette)
• Yesterday was the last day of the season for a number of Coney Island Boardwalk establishments, and there’s still no word which ones will be invited back next year. (Amusing The Zillion)
• Speaking of the Boardwalk, it is going concrete. The Borough President says “Boo.” (Sheepshead Bites, ConeyRocks)
• In the meantime, the demolition of the Coney Island Bank building continues. (Amusing The Zillion)
• 0.2% of Bloomberg’s Million Trees gets planted in Gerritsen Beach in one weekend. (GerritsenBeach.net)
• Plumb Beach erosion to continue unabated (unless you count the current Band-Aid in place as abatement) until 2012. At least. (Sheepshead Bites)
• The president of the Bay Ridge Conservancy muses about the neighborhood’s awesome 100-year-old houses. (Bay Ridge Journal)
• Voorhies Avenue mosque: Community Board 15 considers, declines, a vote opposing the project during the 45-day public comment period. (Sheepshead Bites)

• The proposed mosque on Voorhies Avenue gets its final-final permit approvals. For reals this time. (Sheepshead Bites)
• What’s a Governor to do when his pro-fossil fuel policy runs counter to protection of clean drinking water? Gut the Department of Environmental Conservation and sack its Commissioner. (Bay Ridge Journal)
• If you’re looking for a place to take the kids this Saturday, consider the GBCares Halloween Festival. (GerritsenBeach.net)
• Demolition is underway at the Coney Island Bank building. (Kinetic Carnival)
• Some legal tips if your rent is too damn high. (Sheepshead Bites)
• Tatoo parlor Wyld Chyld intends to expand their Gerritsen Beach location to include a music lounge and skateboard shop. (GerritsenBeach.net)
• A Coney Island Halloween – at the Luna Park Nights Of Horror and the Freak Show Creep Show. (Amuzing The Zillion)
• Regarding the Internet haves and have-nots among children in the Brooklyn Pakistani community. (Ditmas Park Blog)
• A new TJ Maxx on Kings Highway near the Q-train station. (ConeyRocks)
• A home-based library for Japanese kids in Bay Ridge. (Bay Ridge Blog)
• I’m hungry. I would like a hero from Big Rob. (GerritsenBeach.net)
• But I will never be hungry enough to go to a restaurant that racks up triple-digit violation points. (Sheepshead Bites)

• Sheepshead Bites pours over recently published editorials regarding the Voorhies Avenue mosque. (Sheepshead Bites)
• The Bensonhurst cop that spent two months in the hospital after getting run down in the pursuit of stolen car suspects was able to visit his precinct. (Gothamist)
• Senator Marty Golden challenges, then unchallenges, the ballot petitions of his Democratic opponent. (Bay Ridge Journal)
• BID fail. On the plus side, those planters look like trash cans, so at least the dying trees don’t have far to go. (Beehive Hairdresser)
• ConeyRocks attempts to get some answers about the beachside water park. Apparently the Parks Department was standing in the way of this for a while, which I find curious, since it was just a year ago they told us they wanted to bring the “biggest, baddest, inflatable rides” we’ve ever seen to Coney Island. (ConeyRocks)
• BBQ at Luna Park. (ConeyRocks)
• First possums in Bensonhurst, now racoons in Gerritsen Beach. It’s only a matter of time before the undead rise in Kings Plaza. (GerritsenBeach.net)
• Not your father’s Grossman’s: the Mill Basin Lowe’s is now open. (Sheepshead Bites)
• This story is supposedly about a contestant for the Mister Cyclone pageant, but I was really just looking for an excuse to link to the picture featuring Miss Cyclone. (Sheephead Bites)
• A six-foot sand castle won a Long Island resident the 20th Annual Sand Sculpting Contest on Coney Island. (Gothamist)
• The Left In Bay Ridge blog signs off. (Left In Bay Ridge)

Around South Blogistan is a weekly summary of stories about happenings in southern Brooklyn.

“You’re not American, this is a Jewish neighborhood!” Thanks for the tip, Mack. Waaaay to keep it classy. Video by Sheepshead Bites

More Peace Walk and mosque opposition analysis. This video shows the supposedly not bigoted opposition but they seem disproportionately angry about traffic and zoning to me. And then there’s this:

Fifteen-year-old Kamela Elbassiony stood to the side of the construction site. Born in the United States, and living on Batchelder Street, the only hint to her Muslim background was the color of her skin. Before the walk, she didn’t know of the mosque. But as she walked over and saw the crowd, she asked what was going on. A woman against the mosque cursed at her, telling her Muslims weren’t welcome. Elbassiony stayed, and got a flag from the Peace Walkers, and stood in support of its establishment. (Sheepshead Bites)

• I have a few questions about the black and Hispanic kids that were kicked out of Seba Avenue Park. Like, were they questioned by police, or just chased out of the park neighborhood? If they were trying to steal bikes, shouldn’t they have been arrested instead? At best, that sounds like horribly horrible police work. Don’t the police think the NFL’s policy of openness about officiating mistakes if better than FIFA’s “don’t ask, because we don’t care to tell you” policy? And why does Dan Cavanagh hate America? (GerritsenBeach.net)
• Free Friday night fireworks at the Coney Island Boardwalk started this past weekend and go on through Labor Day weekend. (“Friday Night Fireworks” is not code for “exploding car.”) (Amusing The Zillion, Sheepshead Bites)
• More on the bus cuts in Bay Ridge, which go into effect this weekend. (Bay Ridge Blog)
• Barack Obama plus the Indianapolis Colts equals Congressional District 13 challenger Mike Grimm. (Bay Ridge Interpol)
• The current NY-13 Representative thinks its OK that AT&T censored the delivery of anti-Bush political speech to its Internet customers, because he just declared his support for more of the same. (Bay Ridge Blog)
• Um, yeah, I was kinda wondering about this. The busiest piece of Boardwalk real estate, the most hyped summer in recent Coney history, and the Parks Department can’t get its repairs in before summer starts? WTF? (Kinetic Carnival)
• Snippet: The Neighborhood Cats organization is planning a trap-neuter-return project in Bath Beach. (Bay Ridge Blog)
• Breaking: Department of Buildings inspector is bribed! Oh noes! Oh, wait a minute… the bribing party gets hauled off to jail. Now that IS breaking news. (Sheepshead Bites)

Brooklyn Cyclones tickets:

• The NYC Transit service cuts go into effect two weeks from now – here’s a first look at the impact in Bay Ridge. (Bay Ridge Blog)
• Impact of the BP oil spill on New York, Part 1. (Sheepshead Bites)
• The Gerritsen Beach Volunteer Fire Department may be getting $50,000 in the form of an Assembly member item. (GerritsenBeach.net)
• Sheepshead Bay Road CVS does NOT, I repeat NOT, have a drive-through. (Sheepshead Bites)
• I got a little motion-sick just watching the YouTube video of the Luna Park Air Race. (Kinetic Carnival)
• Confession: I really cannot f*cking stand publications like New York Magazine or Time Out New York. I feel like the people who write for them fancy themselves as being part of the Carrie Bradshaw social circuit, and therefore think it’s perfectly acceptable “journalism” (gollum, gollum) to write about themselves and their friends as trendsetters and social leaders, when the truth is 99% of the people in this city couldn’t give a flying rat’s ass about them as either. So it is with some sense of skepticism I read about today’s generation of “Global Russians.” (Sheepshead Bites)
• Luna Park is holding a pageant this week to determine its representative in Saturday’s Mermaid Parade. “Please refrain from any talents or swimwear that is explicit and/or not appropriate for the viewership of all park guests.” Um, have they actually BEEN to a Mermaid Parade before (NSFW)? (Amusing The Zillion, Google)
• Why does the Parks Department hate things that grow weeds? (GerritsenBeach.net)

It feels good to be back in Brooklyn. Still getting caught up. Lot’s of MTA and Bay Ridge Fifth Avenue festival stuff coming up later this week. Some Brooklyn Cyclones awesomeness coming up later in the morning.

• The attendance of blogger Dan Cavanagh continues to be an issue at the meetings of the Gerritsen Beach Property Owners Association. No longer content with having public and private (i.e no video camera) sessions to each meeting, some members now want to change the organization’s by-laws to bar non-members entirely, including Cavanagh AND community newspaper Our News. The excuse du jour is that GerritsenBeach.net’s Internet circulation lets outsiders stick their nose into the neighborhood’s business. Here’s the thing: I thought the members of the GB community that had an axe to grind with Cavanagh were upset about stories like the mysteriously dumped wood chips and the even more mysteriously dumped rubble. Those stories would still exist without access to the GBPOA meetings, so what’s the point in banning him? Other than retribution, that is. (GerritsenBeach.net, Sheepshead Bites)

• Speaking of community newspapers, Bay News takes a few pot shots at blogs in its 65th-anniversary issue. Blogs respond by pointing out a couple of Inconvenient Truths. (Sheepshead Bites)

ConeyRocks, June 5, 2010

Sitt has 8 -10 year plans for Coney

As I have stated many times, this is all going into the next administration. Thor is not leaving Coney. All the other blogs got the whole scenario wrong.

Me, November 18, 2009

10. Joe Sitt’s plans, if they take place, will still take some time to get off the ground – the tanking economy and commercial credit markets will see to that. So while waiting for his hotel ducks to line up, will he allow the current game operators on the Bowery to stay? Or will he force them out and demolish the land? I have no idea. Recent history suggests the latter, but my inner optimist hopes for the former.

Of course, I am hedging most of my bet on the “no, he won’t” side of “if they take place,” which is the point CR is trying to make. But I totally called the it-will-take-a-while meme. Remember that, BK Southie readers. You read it here first.

• Taconic Investments – Coney Island’s OTHER major landowner – outlined plans to NY1 for 2,500 new luxury condos within five years. (NY1 via ConeyRocks)
• Landscaping at Leif Ericson Park. Finally. (Bay Ridge Blog)
• Demolition for 93rd Street crack houses. (Beehive Hairdresser)
• Mill Basin children fell into Jamaica Bay when the deck underneath their family’s above-ground pool collapsed. A swimming pool built over water. I’m not the only one who’s seeing this, right?
• Memorial Day in Gerritsen Beach (parade | block party). (GerritsenBeach.net)

With five days to go to the scheduled opening, we’re kinda wondering… it’s gonna be ready on time, riiiiight? Photo credit: Brian Hedden

Site news: Stephanie11229 is the newest member of the BK Southie writing team. You can probably expect Stephanie to write about the swath of land from Sheepshead Bay to Coney Island. She joins myself and Nick Silver as the current regulars here. Be sure to check out her first post and say hi!

I have a hunch that Luna Park will be dominating the South Brooklyn headlines this week, and into the next.

• More on the hoisting of the Luna Park entrance sign. You know, it looks like it needs more than five days of work to me, but pretty much every we talk to that’s close to the situation says the park will be ready for this Saturday morning. I don’t seen any signs of doubt on the Coney Island Message Board (the usual prognosticator of doubt), and the company line is a Saturday opening, a brief closure next week for some extra finishing touches, and everything in place by mid-June. (Amusing The Zillion, Coney Island USA, Brooklyn Paper)
• More on the return of the John Strong sideshow – the first north-of-Surf amusement in six years – and the two competing sideshows. (Amusing The Zillion)
• The Mayor’s commitment to Coney Island has not diminished, even in the face of massive layoffs in other areas of City government, noticeably the Department of Education. Note – I’m not sure yet if the $130 million Coney budget cited in the article also includes the $64 million amphitheater planned at Asser-Levy Seaside Park, which may play host to heavy metal concerts. (NY Observer via Bay Ridge Journal, Brooklyn Paper)
• I don’t imagine one slips in a Yamaha percussion set through a chain link fence on the sly, meaning Coney Island squatlord Horace Bullard granted actual permission to Metric to film the last 30 seconds of their latest music video in front of the Playland building on the old Thunderbolt site. Bullard, who has held the land (and done nothing with it) since the 1980s, put the site on the real estate market last month. (YouTube, Brownstoner)

Not all of the news is happening in Coney this week:

• El Greco diner on Emmons Avenue gets some attention from ABC News in their latest entry into the reality TV genre – staging confrontations between waitstaff and gay customers to gauge the reaction of the diner’s actual clientele. (Story from Sheepshead Bites, video from ABC)
• TIM-MAY!!! We hardly knew you, or your donuts. If only Tina Fey had promised to sodomize your donuts instead of that Peter Pan guy, you’d have received the community support you needed. (GerritsenBeach.net, Greenpointers)
• In the future, 4th Avenue through Sunset Park and Bay Ridge will look like the first draft of a Pixar movie. (Sunset Parkour)
• Parks and wetlands activity at White Island, Seba Avenue Park, and the Back Weeds of Gerritsen Beach. (GerritsenBeach.net)
• How not to drive, rollover edition. (GerritsenBeach.net)

It’s Sunday night at the time I’m writing this, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg that has been my very hectic weekend. Right now, I’m trying to squeeze in some blogging in between the rock show I just got back from and some work for my “day” job that has to be done before the start of the Frankfurt workday, which means I have literally five minutes to write the rest of this blog post. So instead of my regular charm and wit, I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for a link dump this week.

• Sanitation Admits Our Streets Don’t Matter (Sheepshead Bites)
• Norwegian Day Parade (Photos – Bay Ridge Journal)
• Scoop: Deal to Rent Thor’s Coney Island Lots a No-Go for Fair Producer (Amusing The Zillion)
• E-mail From John Strong (ConeyRocks)
• Developer Stephen Jemal Loses in Court Owes 18.9 Million (GerritsenBeach.net)
• Corbin Place Home A “Tumor”, Blame The City (Sheepshead Bites)
• Awnings Cause Stop Work Order (GerritsenBeach.net)
• Food Cart Routed (Bay Ridge Journal)
• Pizzeria Del Corso, Papa Leone… What About Delmar? (Sheepshead Bites)
• 86th Street Century 21 Is Above The Law (Beehive Hairdresser)

I promise to be funnier next week when I’m not high as a kite on 11:30pm Dunkin Donuts coffee.