Blatant Racism Alert: Three Muslims Who Suck, And Other Stories Similar To “Muslim Cab Drivers Save Bialys Shop”

 Posted by Brian Hedden at 7:00 am  Featured story, Kvetch, Sheepshead Bay
Nov 102011
 

Yesterday, BrooklynDaily.com (the online outlet for the Bay Ridge Courier, Bay News, and other assorted papers in News Corporation’s Community Newspaper Group) reported on the rescue of Coney Island Bialys and Bagels by two Muslim-American businessmen. Here’s the link to their story, though you should probably read the story at The Jewish Daily Forward, too, since they broke the news over a week ago.

That the Community Newspaper Group is a week late to a story doesn’t shock me, of course. What did shock me was the Daily’s list of “similar stories” to what was otherwise a feel-good story about people reaching across ethnic lines to bake sweet, delicious bread:

Image from BrooklynDaily.com as of November 9, 2011.

Not that this is anything other than News Corp doing what they do best- conflating any positive news about Muslims and Arabs in our community with terrorism and dictators – but their idea of stories similar to “Muslim-American businessmen to rescue Jewish bakery” are a story about a local terrorist moneyman and three of Shavana Abruzzo’s “Muslims who suck” editorials. Yes, the similarities to bakery ownership are striking. I can totally see it. Can’t you?

No? Maybe that’s because the stories aren’t similar at all, and the effort to make the connection is blatantly racist.

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For the record: Boston sucks

 Posted by Brian Hedden at 12:30 pm  Kvetch, Not Brooklyn
Apr 252011
 

I have something I’d like to get off my chest. I stopped liking the name of this website over a year ago, when I got this e-mail from the operator of a South Boston cab company:

To: Brian Hedden

From: (redacted)

Date: Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 5:41 AM

Subject: Can I get you to..

 

make an effort not to put the words taxi or cab in the title of any post? Perhaps remove those words from the titles of existing posts?

I dont get the use of the word Southie in your domain name and I especially don’t get how a page you have about a water taxi is competing on the same page as me but can I get you to stop?

How about with a 212 area code phone number? I have a few I dont need… youc an feel like a real New Yorker..

On my first glance, I took it the wrong way. I thought he was worried that web surfers looking for a South Boston cab company would get confused by my stories about the NYC Water Taxi. But after a second read, I finally realized: he was just annoyed that bksouthie.com was higher in the Google rankings for “southie taxi” than his web site, and felt like I was unfairly “competing” with him. And therefore wanted me to never use the word “taxi” or “cab” in the title of a story again. And remove such offending words from stories already written.

To help his Google rankings.

On the other hand, I had to admit, he had a point. Why did I use the word “Southie” in the domain name of a Brooklyn-themed web site? Not only does it unnecessarily pay homage to a Boston neighborhood – it does so to the place that, more than any other neighborhood, gives Boston its reputation for dumbassery (Exhibit A: see above e-mail).

So, Brooklyn, I’m sorry about that. My bad.

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Why Bike Lane Activists Are Their Own Worst Enemies

 Posted by Arturo Tedesco at 11:10 am  Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights, Kvetch, News, Politics
Apr 132011
 

“What a f—ing scumbag.” That was what one pro-bike lane blogger had to say about Councilman Domenic Rechia stopping a proposed bike lane on Bay Ridge Parkway in its tracks. The headline from The L Magazine called Recchia a “lunatic local pol.” Meanwhile The New York Post, which was described by The L as writing with the “tinge of delight”, was pretty straight forward in their short article on the matter. The Post called the bike lane controversial, which is accurate. While I’m not sure there was “strong opposition” as the News Corp. owned newspaper described it, there doesn’t exactly seem to be strong support for bike lanes in South Brooklyn either.

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

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Coney Island’s BK Festival Raises Questions About Just What A Flea Should Be

 Posted by Arturo Tedesco at 11:02 am  Coney Island, General Interest, General News, Kvetch
Apr 052011
 

Antiquing in Brooklyn? Fughetaboutit!

The Aquaduct Fleamarket was once a local, unpretentious gathering of weekend entrepreneurs. For years vendors hawked everything from T shirts and CD’s to beauty products and, of course, the mainstay of any swap meet, flea market, garage, yard or stoop sale from California to Maine: antiques, Americana and miscellaneous bric-a-brac.

According to the NY Times, that’s exactly what the reincarnated version of the famous Ozone Park, Queens tradition will NOT be selling when it comes to the corner of Stillwell and Surf Avenues. According to organizers Tommy Brady and Tommy Walker, this one’s going to be strictly ‘upscale’ (aka characterless). Because, you know, when you’re looking for that really high end merchandise it’s either Lord & Taylor, Bloomies or a vendor stall in Coney Island. Something tells me that the ‘Two Toms’, along with local destroyer of historic buildings Joe Sitt’s version of ‘upscale’ is going to be a lot of overpriced, cheaply made plastic stuff from China and ‘beauty products’ that aren’t quite up to the level of Avon. After a couple of years of this, that Walmart over by Erskine’s not gonna sound like such a bad idea…

Local blogger Tricia Published writer and local blogger Tricia Vita over at Amusing the Zillion has done a great job providing extensive coverage of the Aquaduct Flea Market’s move to Coney. Her article, which we link to below, includes examples of previous attempts by Joe Sitt’s company Thor Equities to turn amusement space into vacant lots and depressing flea markets (check out the photos). The icing on the cake? Some words of wisdom in the comments section by BK Southie’s own Brian Hedden:

Amusing The Zillion: Thor’s Coney Island: Joe Sitt Scores Puff Piece In NY Times

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‘White Irish Drinkers’: Because Redundant Stereotyping Is What Hollywood Does

 Posted by Arturo Tedesco at 11:01 am  Bay Ridge, General Interest, Kvetch
Mar 252011
 

I haven’t actually seen White Irish Drinkers. It opens today at Landmark Sunshine Cinema on East Houston in money makin’ Manhattan, if anyone’s interested. It seems full of, well, Irish white people drinking. It’s a period movie that takes place in 1970′s Bay Ridge and promises to pack more Army surplus and brown leather than we’ve seen since Basketball Diaries.

One scene described in the Daily News features two decked out, disco-dancing strangers walking into a bar full of grizzled longshoremen and city workers.

“‘Go back to Bensonhurst!’ sneers the bartender as his customers — many of them civil servants and dockworkers — roar in approval. The outsiders slink away.” Continue reading »

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About that Nytimes.com paywall

 Posted by Brian Hedden at 2:29 pm  Kvetch, Not Brooklyn
Mar 232011
 

On Monday, March 28, the New York Times will begin charging readers of its online site a subscription charge to read articles online. We can read 25 stories a month for free, and then we pay after that. I say, good for them. I fully support the time-honored business model in the newspaper industry that collects revenue from customers to support their journalistic endeavors.

And as soon as The New York Times begins producing journalism worth paying for, I will pay for it.

Until then, I can do without the lies, and the coverups, and the stories about hipsters and their freaking beer guts.

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“That’s Brooklyn”: Starbucks CEO Dismisses Park Slope In Favor Of Bensonhurst

 Posted by Arturo Tedesco at 3:12 pm  Bensonhurst, Featured story, Kvetch, Northies
Mar 212011
 

Howard Schultz  knows South Brooklyn. He grew up in Canarsie’s Bayview Houses and like many of Brooklyn’s sons and daughters, was able to overcome humble beginnings to achieve success. As an international business leader and the person responsible for much of the growth and worldwide recognition Starbucks has attained, he was recently interviewed, over lunch at an Upper West Side Kosher Deli, by the U.K.-based Financial Times. At one point in the discussion, the topic turned to Brooklyn and all the changes it’s undergone in recent decades.

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!

Continue reading »

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‘Time Traveling’ AM New York Gets Lost

 Posted by Arturo Tedesco at 2:10 pm  Kvetch, Midwood
Feb 102011
 

AM New York, Cablevision’s free daily newspaper has a profile of Midwood in it’s latest issue. It’s titled ‘Travel Back in Time in Midwood.” While their hearts were in the right place, their geography could use some fact checking.

First, the article describes Midwood as being “wedged between Flatbush and Coney Island.” The Flatbush part is correct (unfortunately, I credit the film Sophie’s Choice more than the reporter for that) but in an act of main stream journalism-as-usual, deeper, arguably lesser known South Brooklyn neighborhoods like Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay are grafted onto Coney Island like some sort of Frankenstein experiment gone horribly wrong.

At the end of the article, there is a roundup of neighborhood businesses. Included in the list is Jomart Chocolates at 2917 Avenue R. Having grown up not far from there, I’ll admit that Avenue R and Nostrand Avenue is in a sort of gray area between two neighborhoods. Unfortunately, those two neighborhoods are Marine Park and Madison.

I wonder what would happen if we told AM New York, whose parent company Cablevision is  based out of Bethpage in Nassau County, that Brooklyn is geographically part of Long Island? It might blow their minds.

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An open letter to the Community Newspaper Group

 Posted by Brian Hedden at 7:00 am  Kvetch
Feb 042011
 

Our finest contribution to News Corp's Brooklyn Paper.

Dear Community Newspaper Group,

Thank you for reading.

I genuinely mean that. I’m not bitter at all about the story and feature ideas you’ve taken from this site without credit. In fact, I really think that it’s fantastic that a mere amateur writer such as myself can make such a meaningful contribution to a cog in the News Corp engine.

So that time that the Brooklyn Cyclones announced that the stadium naming rights partnership with Keyspan Energy was ending? It warms my heart to know that you were so inspired by my top five suggested names for the nameless ballpark that you came out with ten (!) of your own just eight hours later.

And when I announced that the Weekend Subway Alert would be a weekly feature, and you came out with one of your own just two weeks later? Remember that? I’m especially proud of that, since others – notably Second Avenue Sagas and the MTA itself – have been doing that sort of thing for years. I deeply appreciate the fact that you lifted the idea not from them, but waited and waited and waited, so you could lift the idea from me.

And of course, by the time I wrote my mid-season review of the New York Aviators hockey team, I was practically fishing for a compliment in flattery’s most sincere form. And it only took eight days!

(As far as that business regarding your about-face on the Italianess of Bensonhurst, well, I’ll give the Census Bureau the benefit of the doubt, no sense in hogging all of the credit for myself.)

I am somewhat concerned, though, that your attention may have wandered as of late. Or maybe your Brooklyn Paper people aren’t talking to the Courier people anymore? It’s been brought to my attention that the Bay News picked up a NY Post story containing false information regarding a cut to the B36 – that there are cuts to weekday service – and contains interviews from weekday travelers who are led to believe they are affected. I think I was quite clear the other day that I’m tired of the repeated and glaring errors in transit-related articles, and I don’t care much for sensationalized interviews with people aren’t part of the real story.

Moreover, I thought I cleared up the confusion on the B36 cut and explained, in no uncertain terms, that it applied to Saturday service only. It should have been easy for Bay News to make the correction before its press date.

Unless… you stopped reading?

Does this mean the romance is gone between us, Community Newspaper Group?

With flower petals and honey bees,

Brian

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Brooklyn Paper: Bensonhurst Has Chinese People

 Posted by Arturo Tedesco at 10:33 am  Bensonhurst, Kvetch
Dec 222010
 

In a shocking turn of events the Brooklyn Paper has admitted that there have been changes in Bensonhurst since the 1950′s after all. The new article cites statistics published in the 2010 Census. The publication has apparently given up on its previous sources; namely reruns of the Honeymooners and sequel to Saturday Night Fever ‘Staying Alive’ (It was on FX).

BK Southie’s Brian Hedden first brought this to readers attention on December 1. Why? To shed some light on the wilds of South Brooklyn for the hardworking  interns reporters of a Newscorp cookie cutter franchise Brooklyn community newspaper. Because here at BK Southie we don’t look down on you, even if you do ride the short bus. You’re welcome, Brooklyn Paper.

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