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.

Photo courtesy Office of Domenic Recchia

The City Council paid a visit to the Masbia soup kitchen on Coney Island Avenue in Flatbush yesterday, including local Council members Mike Nelson (right), Domenic Recchia (second from right), and David Greenfield (second from left). They are joined in this photo by Jumaane Williams (third from… either direction I guess) and Speaker Christine Quinn (left).

As a brief aside: I don’t really put myself in positions where I’m going to meet a lot of politicians, yet I’ve met three of the people in this picture – Recchia, Greenfield, and Quinn. As you can probably tell from the picture, Recchia is kinda a tall dude. But Greenfield? Also pretty tall. And it doesn’t strike me as obvious in this picture. I think he must be standing in some sort of depression in the floor. But, I digress.

I haven’t checked with Masbia to see if the info is still current, but they have a call for volunteers posted on their web site. The dates are this Wednesday and Thursday. For more info, click here.

Anyone have plans to volunteer anywhere in South Brooklyn this Thanksgiving?

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.

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

John Hathaway (left) and Andrew Aspromonte from the 1st Avenue (Sunset Park) Sanitation garage. Photo by Liz Ligon. Used with permission. The “CHASING SANITATION: Falling In Love With New York’s Strongest” project is raising funds for a fall photo exhibit through Friday – details below the fold.

In the debate last February for Simcha Felder’s open Council seat, eventual winner David Greenfield made a comment in response to a comment about affordable housing regarding the Sanitation garage on 19th Avenue. Greenfield said he wanted to force the City to give up that land so affordable apartments could be built there – because it’s a great piece of property and because “we can store garbage trucks anywhere in New York City, they don’t have to be in Borough Park.” (You can see Greenfield’s comment in video #7 of our debate roundup, starting at the 7:45 mark.)

I’m a little annoyed by that line of thought on two fronts. One, I think its misguided to think our neighborhoods can benefit from the City’s services without sometimes playing host to some of the City’s infrastructure. Yes, please keep picking up our garbage, yes, please keep plowing our streets. No, you can’t stay here.

And second, while the response played well with the YMHA crowd, I don’t think Greenfield asked the people who are actually employed at the 19th Avenue garage how they felt about the proposal to move their jobs elsewhere. (Actually, I did, about a month later.) (You’re welcome.) In both instances, this speaks to the people’s perception that Sanitation is at the bottom of the City’s totem pole.

It’s this poor perception about this critical service – and the men and women who are responsible for it – that I disagree with, and I’m happy to find that there are others who feel the same way. Namely Sunset Park writer Lisa Dowda and photographer Liz Ligon, the creative team behind the photo exhibit “Chasing Sanitation: Falling In Love With New York’s Strongest.”

Mark (left) and Johnny Doz from the 19th Avenue (Borough Park) Sanitation garage. Photo by Liz Ligon. Used with permission.

Jasmine Molina, Sanitation worker from Sunset Park. Photo by Liz Ligon. Used with permission.

Lisa and Liz have been chasing New York’s Strongest with camera in hand for about two years. Lisa explained to me in an e-mail exchange, “it [started] with one SanMan making sure I was safe walking home from Park Slope to Sunset Park – which is a long walk at midnight!  Then that’s when I started noticing all of them moving around the City.  I thought about how visually stunning they were to watch, how people, kids, old men stopped to watch them work.”

“Then right before Liz and I went out on our first shoot to try it, I stopped to talk to Steve, who was standing on the corner of 45th and 4th reading the paper. I told him I was thinking of doing this photo project on the Sanitation Workers of New York, and his response, without thinking, without a breath, was, ‘Why? Nobody cares about us.’  And that sorta clinched it for me.  I told him, ‘I do.’”

Their first day started off at the Sunset Park garage, and it also brought them in contact with Johnny Doz. “Doz [is] from Borough Park’s garage,” Lisa explains. “He’s my official unofficial Sanitation Consultant.  Since the first day I met him, he’s returned all of my phonecalls, answered all of my questions, given me tours of Bensonhurst, Little Italy, Staten Island.   He’s got a good record and a great sense of humor and a pretty good attitude about life.   And this garbageman’s house is cleaner than your mother’s, I’d be willing to bet.  He’s never been quite sure what I was doing with all of this until we launched the website.  So he had faith in us, you know?  That’s amazing to me, in this day and age.”

CHASING SANITATION writer and Sunset Park resident Lisa Dowda (left) and photographer Liz Ligon. Photo by Claudio Papapietro. Used with permission.

Lisa and Liz are raising funds for a fall photo exhibit in Manhattan – they want a top-rate exhibit for the Strongest, the kind that’s usually reserved for the Finest or the Bravest of the uniformed services. They hope to get a book publisher to pick up the project as a coffee table book. Lisa describes their vision, “We are committed to an upscale, classy presentation and event…  We want the Mayor to come, we want art dealers to come, we want Sanitation Workers to come.   And the prints, we want richly and lushly framed. We’ve submitted our application to Chashama, who finds these cheap spaces all over the City and have some leads on other options, but we don’t just want to put up a show somewhere, anywhere.  We need folks to SEE THESE PEOPLE.”

“This is the World’s Best Sanitation Dept. This is a political football in economic-challenged times. These are 7,000 people keeping the City’s streets safe for the NYPD and FDNY to do their job. This is historically the people that set the standards for workers rights.   We have to get public, we have to garner support, comments, press and reviews – maybe it’s not a book, maybe it’s something else.”

You know what I want? I don’t just want the Mayor to come. I’d want it to be politically impossible for the Mayor NOT to come. And I’d like the Mayor to bring Councilperson David Greenfield along with him. With any luck, Greenfield will get to see Johnny Doz and the others from the 19th Avenue garage, and get to see them as a part of the community he represents instead of a political football to be punted to someone else’s backyard.

CHASING SANITATION is raising funds for their photo exhibit through Kickstarter.com. The total cost of the exhibit is $21,000 – Lisa and Liz are looking to raise $7,500 from individual contributors. All funds raised through Kickstarter are matched by the United Sanitationmen’s Association, so how awesome is that? (I’ll tell you how awesome – totally awesome) They have three days left in their fundraising drive – if you want to help out, you can check it out here.

David Greenfield, the City’s new Councilmember hailing from Borough Park, got into it with Administration for Children’s Services commish John Mattingly yesterday during a Council hearing. Greenfield, who led a Brooklyn delegation last week in condemning the elimination of Priority 7 childcare vouchers and the closure of 16 ACS daycare centers, prefaced his remarks by saying “if this was the cartoon, you would see steam literally coming out of my ears.”

By the end of the hearing, we didn’t have to use our imaginations. After complaining that the cuts are “disproportionately impacting racial and religious minorities,” Greenfield went out firing at the commish with raised voice:

Do you have any idea how many kids in my district are going to be displaced? 1,330 children. That’s more than all these children [affected by the other ACS closures] combined. And so for me, it’s an outrage. And I can’t come to the City Council and have a nice, polite conversation when you’re coming into my district and you’re telling 1,330 children, “Tough Luck, The Economy Is Bad.” That’s simply unacceptable. And so I will reiterate, the obligation is on the agency, the obligation is on the Mayor, the obligation is on the City to do what they can to fund these kids because you cannot tell 1,330 kids in my district, which is a larger number than all other childcare centers in New York combined, go to heck.

The money rant starts at the 9:30 mark. More at Yeshiva World and the NY Daily News.

Sanitation Depot, 19th Avenue. Photo credit: Brian Hedden

This Sanitation garage is part of a complex that straddles both sides of 19th Avenue, between Gravesend Park on one side, and Washington Cemetery and FDR High School on the other. Newly-elected City Councilmember David Greenfield expressed an interest in moving this depot – presumably out of the district – to make way for more (and affordable) residential housing. The Sanitation employee I talked to didn’t seem to mind, assuming another suitable location is found for the complex. I didn’t think to ask him how long it already took him to get into work.

David Greenfield will become the newest member of the City Council after winning the 44th district by a 2,200 vote margin, out of over 12,000 votes cast. From the victory speech:

This sound that [the people of Brooklyn are] hearing is a fight for the good of the community as a whole, instead of fighting for the personal gain of a select few individuals. It’s the sound of people rejecting politics as usual, rejecting the threats, rejecting the intimidation, it’s the sound of taking political leadership from the status quo, and we’re bringing it back to the people, where it belongs.

The NY Times reported this as a surprisingly easy win for such an intense race, with Joe Lazar having the backing of established Hasidic organizations (as has been widely reported elsewhere) and Greenfield having the support of younger Jewish voters (with the lack of reliable polling data, this appears to be reported mainly by Greenfield himself). (Vos Iz Neias, NY Times)

Hmm. 12,225 votes cast, out of a district that should have roughly 150,000 residents. I think speculative reports of a high turnout “for a special election” may have been premature!

It’s basically a race between two machine candidates. The names might say “Joe Lazar” and “David Greenfield,” but it really comes down to “Dov Hikind” versus “Vito Lopez.” Ah, Vito Lopez, the man who makes me embarrased to be a Brooklyn Democrat. (Well – him, and Carl Kruger… who is ALSO supporting Greenfield.)

The fact that I’m considering voting for the Lopez-machine candidate speaks volumes for how little regard I have for Lazar.

I finally figured out what it is I don’t like about him. He’s too damn smug. After hearing all these press accounts about how arrogant David Greenfield is supposed to be, I’ve realized that Greenfield ain’t got nothin’ on Joe Lazar in terms of conceit.

This pretty much sums up Lazar. After telling a debate audience that he thinks that constituents should always be able to get in touch with their Councilman… after telling them that they should vette all statements made by all candidates, including himself, he demonstrates his commitment to openess and availability to the New York Times, the largest (by circulation) daily in the City he wants to represent:

Mr. Lazar declined several interview requests.

Oh, and I don’t mind taking extra steps to reach out to ethnic and religious leaders in the community, but Lazar’s overt ethnic pandering really turned me off as well. If the Grand Rebbe collector cards weren’t enough, there was systematically going out to the Chinese business on 18th Avenue that had posters supporting Jonathan Judge (who was removed from the ballot) with posters printed in Chinese, with a photo of Lazar shaking hands with Comptroller John Liu. Gee, I wonder what his campaign platform is?

And then there’s Greenfield. It never bothered me that his former boss, Dov Hikind, hated his guts. It bothered me a lot more that Michael Bloomberg, Joe Lieberman, Carl Kruger, and Vito Lopez love the guy. That’s the company he wants to keep?

Oh, and Ken Rice (R) is on the ballot as well. When I checked at the time of the debate (which Rice did not attend), it appeared that the entirety of his campaign was a Facebook page. Now, I know he had people handing out brochures last weekend, but it’s a little late to try to get my attention. I’m sorry – but if you’re running for a Council seat, you have to try harder than that.

I’m more inclined to write in Judge – the other Republican in the race – than vote for Rice.

Hell. At this point, I’m inclined to write in myself.

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!