BK news is even bigger news in Maine

Hey Neighbors -

Happy Saturday Sunday!  Ward 6 will be back on its Saturday schedule next week. I just returned to Brooklyn after spending time with family in Maine. Who knew BK news would follow me on vacation (see hint below)?! More on this in a sec.

Even though it feels like forever ago now, I want to share some pics from two book events I went to before my trip featuring Cobble Hill novelists, Teddy Wayne and Anne Hellman.

Do you have a local event you’d like me to cover? Email: [email protected] or ward6_brooklyn.

Did you miss WARD 6 while I was gone, and want to UPGRADE asap to keep me, and hyperlocal news in business? Yes!

Post #43: Car-owners beware; the BK news that followed me to Maine; update about our waterfront coming this week; a tipster’s tip about Mahjong; another reason to brag about living in our corner of Brooklyn

I distinctly remember arriving in NYC from the West Coast, absolutely bewildered by the alternate-side parking ritual of drivers sitting inside their vehicles, double-parked, waiting for the street-cleaner to pass, only to return to their original parking spot. If you needed to step away from your car, you left a nice note for your neighbors with a phone number.

Maybe this is why, decades later, I’m once again bewildered, but this time by a breakdown in this uniquely New York ritual! Why now have large numbers of people in our area decided alternate-side-parking rules don’t apply to them? 

Are people richer? Busier? More selfish that in the mid-90’s when I moved here?

Anyhoo, a long-winded way of sharing that in addition to the $65 fine–way too low to deter drivers, says the Department of Sanitation–car owners will now have to deal with the return of “shame stickers,” once used to motivate car owners.

I, for one, look forward to cleaner streets and less debris blocking our sewage drains, which is critical as freak storms are now the norm.

If you play Mahjong or want to learn, a reader asked me to share “Mahjong 101” at Ziggy’s Roman Cafe at 15 Main Street in DUMBO.  I’ve tried to play a few times, but I’m not sure I have the patience, though I like the idea of channeling my late, Bronx grandmother.

You may have read about Cobble Hill’s Logan Lane, 21, when, in 2022, the NYT featured her and a handful of her friends at Edward R. Murrow High School, who started one of the first, if not the only, modern version of a Luddite Club in the U.S.

Logan, along with a crew of 30 others were behind last week’s Summer of Ludd, the eight-day citywide celebration of life offline. 500 or so participated, says Lane, mostly at festival’s main stage at Tompkins Square Park, from Luddite Clubs from around the U.S.

A documentary about their movement is in the works and Lane’s memoir-manifesto is scheduled for publication next fall. The book will include an epilogue about the Summer of Ludd.

I don’t have the evidence to back this up, but I’m going to say it any way: What was once viewed by many onlookers as an act of teenage Brooklyn rebellion to go low-tech/no-tech, on the heels of the pandemic, in favor of healthier minds and lives is now embraced by the mainstream. I thank Lane and the movement she helped start for leading the way for the rest of us.  Together with scholars and parent groups and some, but not nearly enough, lawmakers, what germinated here in Brooklyn, is now a nationwide conversation about the risks and harms to our mental health, and so much, much more.

Five Acre Farms is hiring! 10-30 hours per week. Perfect for someone looking to re-enter the workforce. General business admin, operations and marketing.

[email protected]. Five Acre Farms is committed to keeping farmers farming, and bringing the best local food to more people. 

Yes, Graham Platner was/is all-consuming, but Maine suffered another massive blow this past week. 

One of the two historical schooners that mysteriously sank in Red Hook while docked near the scary-looking old grain building covered in black soot or mold- I’m not sure which, lived some of its best sailing years in Maine. The three-masted Victory Chimes is a HUGE deal in coastal Maine and the maritime community throughout the U.S.

She’s both a National Historic Landmark and, in 2003, was chosen by the state to appear on a commemorative quarter. That’s how big a deal she is. 

I spent an hour one night reading through more than 300 comments on FB group a friend sent me.

It makes sense that food-obsessed NYC would dedicate a lot of coverage to the owners of Victory Chimes, Alex and Miles Pincus, who also own Pilot, the former floating oyster bar, docked at Pier 6 for years, which also sank. The Pincus brothers are well-known for their historic ships turned trendy floating food-and-drink establishments in Manhattan.

Before the latest news, the brothers received a ton of coverage, including in Ward 6, after buying the Atlantic Avenue building that houses the storied Montero’s Bar & Grill, which is now part of Crew, their hospitality company. 

Last year, I wrote about the Pilot when the floating oyster bar failed to open for the summer. I was told it needed massive repairs, and would most likely get towed away and never return.

I seem to remember that Victory Chimes offered the occasional public tour when it first relocated from Maine to Brooklyn. Other than that, the schooner floated behind the other two Pincus brothers’ historical boats at Pier 6, with a small, underwhelming sign for people walking by with some facts about her life, but nothing that captured its historical significance that I recently learned about in Maine and from the maritime community. 

Since I first wrote about the Pincus fleet and Montero’s changing hands, I noticed a vocal debate from people who disagree with the brothers’ use of historic ships for restaurants. The same people have also questioned whether their hospitality company invests enough to adequately maintain their growing armada.

I wasn’t able to do original reporting at the time, but I bring it up now because I’ve started to see similar criticism after what happened in Red Hook. Not to mention, Victory Chimes is an historical landmark and the two boats are now polluting the water where they sank.

I’m sure they’ll be plenty more of this as the appropriate city and state agencies determine the cause and solution for what happened in Red Hook.

First, watch this cool video from a local Red Hook organization about how goods move around NYC, and why the Blue Highway idea of relying more on our waterways and less on trucks is an idea we should all support. 

The NYC Economic Development Corporation, in charge of the Brooklyn Marine Terminal’s controversial “vision plan,” along with its contractor WXY Studio, recently scheduled three meetings to update the community, with barely a week advance notice, on the status of the massive proposed project. 

As with most things this quasi-NYC agency does, no one seemed to consider that, to get busy, hard-working local residents to attend a meeting, its much more effective to plan ahead and give ample advance notice, especially around our nation’s birthday, a popular time for vacations.

Luckily for us, our elected officials, informed the NYCEDC of their ill-informed decision, and got them to cancel the two last week, in favor of just one virtual meeting THIS TUESDAY. 

I encourage everyone to join, although, and this might be irresponsible of me, I don’t put much stock into these meetings. They’ve always been, and remain, community engagement theater, with no genuine dialogues about the future of our neighborhoods.

The same critical questions residents have been asking for more than a year, including the impact of this proposed project on transportation, sewage, the power grid, displacement of residents, traffic, the BQE renovations, and so on, still remain, more or less, unanswered. 

With that said, I WILL PARTICIPATE and share with you what I learn. This is a PROPOSED plan, and I firmly believe we can still make a difference. 

However, I do encourage you to join the Columbia Street Waterfront Association’s BMT Committee’s “ Zoom debrief and discussion after EDC's session, from 8:30 to 9:30 PM. Please join us if you have questions or thoughts to share.”  Voices of the Waterfront and PortsideNY are also participating.

Thursday, July 16th - August 29th, 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM | Sackett St. Open Streets (hosted by Street Labs, founded in Cobble Hill) with FREE public pop-up program “featuring cooling stations, bike repair, play, refreshments!”  (Th, Fridays and Saturdays, weather permitting, rest stop 1-6 PM)). Foot of Sackett, off Van Brunt St.

Sunday, July 19th, 2:00 PM - 6:00 PM | Brooklyn Public Library’s World Cup final watch party!

Sunday, July 19th,  1:00 PM - 6:00 PM | Governor’s Island hosts The People’s Final World Cup Watch Party!

Thanks for reading! Some final pics from Maine.