The lights are up and the posters are up: the 33rd Feast of Santa Rosalia, the annual 11-day festival through the heart of Bensonhurst (18th Avenue, from 68th Street to 75th Street), begins on Thursday, August 26, and runs every night from 6pm to 10pm until Sunday, September 5.

Coincidentally, my diet will be starting on Monday, September 6.

Judging by the light placement, I think this year’s Feast may have been trimmed a block, from 67th Street to 68th Street. After all, the Bloomberg Administraion did say earlier in the year that they would be trimming all parades and street festivals to save a few lira in police overtime. I haven’t had a chance to confirm this, but if this observation is correct, then I think our Feast got off the hook lightly. Going from eight blocks to seven is nothing when compared to completely owning the street for four hours, eleven days straight.

Bring on the zeppole!

Photo collage: Brian Hedden

This Capital One Bank at 18th Avenue and 67th Street has been in the works for over a year now. It finally opened recently. I’m not sure when. Was it last week? Maybe the week before?

I’m not sure, because I didn’t get a free hot dog for it.

It opened across the street from the no-longer-new TD Bank, which set the high bar for truly grand openings for bank branches last year with free hot dogs, animal balloons, and live music. All without even setting foot inside of the bank.

I’m not sayin’ TD is a better bank than Capital… I’m just sayin’ TD puts on a better show.

Photo credit: Brian Hedden

The perfect shave – passing N-trains keep the branches trimmed in the exact shape of the top of a subway car. Photos and video: Brian Hedden

A battle is being fought between nature and the trains of NYC Transit’s N-line. Branches from some sort of vegetation – I hesitate to give it a name – have been hanging off the wall over the Coney Island-bound platform of the 18th Avenue Station, to the point where they are making physical contact with every train that goes past. For the most part, this isn’t really posing any problem – the passing trains keep the branches trimmed at the point of contact.

This bad boy, however, has made it through the blockade. It snakes it way around the passing trains, and directly over the platform. And…

…I kinda wonder how many more whacks it can take before it breaks off and smacks somebody across the face.

Photos I’m not sure I want to take credit for, but oh wells. All photos: Brian Hedden

A new building on 65th Street near the corner of 18th Avenue is putting up condos for sale. I have not yet taken advantage of the Sunday open house, but I’m somewhat underwhelmed by the exterior aesthetic. It isn’t the worst thing I’ve seen, but it’s still kinda fug.

The text in the red burst is Mandarin Chinese for “kinda fug.”

The Kings family department store on 18th Avenue is no more. Photo credit: Brian Hedden

This week, I noticed that the Kings department store on 18th Avenue (between 65th and 66th Streets) had closed up. I asked one of the guys at DaVinci’s about it, and he said it has been closed for at least a couple of weeks. It’s a little embarrassing, since I’m in DaVinci’s more times a week than I care to admit, and I hadn’t noticed that the largest store across the street – one of the largest on 18th Avenue – had closed.

While I have mixed feelings about this, I’m not going to miss this place to be perfectly honest with you. It’s always a little unsettling when one of the larger places close up shop – no telling when this empty storefront will reopen, and no telling what it will be. And of course, there are jobs at stake – again, no telling when they will come back, if ever. That’s too bad.

But I shopped there a few times earlier in my Bensonhurst residency, and I was never really happy with the experience. I could never find what I was looking for – which was usually an assortment of clothing for toddlers, so it shouldn’t have been that difficult. For department store type stuff, I always found Telco – two blocks down the street – much more useful.

Photo credit: Brian Hedden

A square from DaVinci’s. All photos: Brian Hedden

When they’re fresh out of the oven, the squares from DaVinci’s Pizzeria on 18th Avenue are a must-have. But it has recently been brought to my attention that not everyone knows how to order one of these. So I have prepared this handy, step-by-step guide.

1. Ask for a square.

2. Better yet, ask for two.

DON’T ask for a Sicilian slice. Don’t ask for a slice of anything. If you ask for a slice, you are asking for this:

DaVinci’s slices are also very good, but Sicilian pizza doesn’t come in slices. It comes in squares. A Sicilian slice is what English teachers refer to as an oxymoron, like working vacation or Central Intelligence. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Important tip for parties: slices come from round pies. Squares come from square pies.

Two pi aren’t always square, but they could be. Just ask.

A young child was viciously mauled by his family’s pit bull in their home on Sunday afternoon. At the time that I’m writing this (Sunday night), there is conflicting information on some of the details (i.e. age of the boy is either 3-years-old or 20-months-old, location is either in Bensonhurst or Gravesend) – hopefully, these will get cleared up by the time you see this in the morning. (NY Daily News, 1010WINS)

The day is almost here – the special election to fill the City Council seat vacated by Simcha Felder is tomorrow, March 23. Polls are open from 6am to 9pm. The candidates on the official ballot – which keep changing every single time I look – will be David Greenfield (D), Joe Lazar (D), and Ken Rice (R).

Not sure if you live in the 44th District? Check out this hyper-detailed district map. Better yet, you can enter your information using a search form provided by the state Board of Elections (Council Districts are the same thing as “wards” on the voter information page). You can also use the state web site to find your polling place.

I will chime in with my final thoughts on this race tomorrow at 6am – when polls open 2pm. See you then!

Contrary to popular misconception, Orthodox Jews are not the only voting bloc in Council District 44. This one seems to be breaking toward for the Republican.

I guess they weren’t won over by the Joe Lazar Jingle (mp3).

This did not stop State Supreme Court from tossing Judge’s name of the ballot for the March 23 special election. As reported by YourNabe.com, the Board of Elections had ruled 786 of Judge’s 1,221 petitioning signatures to be valid – just above the 765 threshold for a spot on the ballot. But the David Greenfield campaign took the matter to court, which threw out another 36 signatures. Judge is the second candidate thrown from the ballot, following the removal of Avraham Shlomo Tischler.

BK Southie awaits word from the Judge team regarding the next steps for the campaign.

Photo: Brian Hedden