Cheer on our hometown semi-prof. soccer team today! More celebrities bid adieu and so did cabs on Clinton St.

Hey Neighbors - 

Happy Saturday. I took a mini-vaca out west with my partner last week. Nothing like the Grand Canyon to put everything into perspective. Amen.

To welcome me back to Brooklyn–the Red Hook Football Club’s season opener is TODAY at 4:00 PM! Come join me as I check out my first semi-professional soccer game.

Post #29: Henry Public v. LI Bar; local dad tours the empty Pre-K facility; Peter (Shelsky) in Paris; no cabs on Clinton St.; Strong Pl. says goodbye to Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz; good time to be rich; should Amazon drivers be employees of the e-commerce company? custom-sneakers come to C. Gardens. BK news round-up and mark your calendar.

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HP. No question. Perhaps it’s because HP opened first, and I’ve never found a reason to switch. 

In the NYT Food section earlier this week, Luke Fortney writes “It’s a shame more people don’t talk about Henry Public” in his article “Every Great Restaurant has a Substitute.”  I guess LI Bar is his usual go-to, except for one recent night when the line was too long, and Fortney walked across the street to HP.

Personally, I’d rather people don’t talk about HP and risk even longer lines. Other than the price of the food, which isn’t unique to HP, it’s a perfect place to eat, especially on a Friday night.  My other half prefers a more diverse menu, but I’m fine just the way it is.

What do you think? HP or LI Bar? Email me: [email protected] or follow me.

Last Friday, at Council Member Shanana Hanif’s request, the Department of Education agreed to give a tour of the newly renovated, but unused Pre-K facility on Columbia and President St. Along with Hanif’s staff (Hanif was ill), Zach Hetrick, father of two, professional photographer and Columbia St. Waterfront resident was selected to take the tour, but unfortunately he was not allowed to takes pictures.

You might remember Zach’s clever social post from a few weeks ago about the facility?  Well, he did it again with this post. 

As Zack points out, taxpayers are paying $144,000 (!) a month to lease the facility, on top of $14 million in completed renovation cost (which I independently verified). According to Zach’s research, 690 seats are available for our school district and 1811 kids need seats. 

Check out Zach’s site for more info, including a petition that parent Jessica Seton set up.

I can’t remember (story of my life) when I first heard that Peter Shelsky of Shelsky’s Bagels lived in Paris, of all places. Then I tried to order some matzo ball soup for a sick friend, and I got a text from Peter himself making sure I got my soup. No such luck but… BINGO! 

“Is it true you live in Paris?” I asked.

“I do indeed live in Paris!” Peter texted back. “ Spent my morning in Montmartre today at a sausage and Beaujolais breakfast.”

So what is Peter doing in Paris?

It turns out it’s a combo of COVID, political anxiety, and finances. Oh yeah, his wife is also French.  They made the move in July 2021 with two less-than-happy daughters, 10 and 14 at the time. But as we know, kids are resilient, and once they found their people, that was that. 

The idea to open Shelky’s, with its original location on Smith St., came to Peter while in line at Russ and Daughters around the Christmas holiday, his yearly ritual to pick up bagels and lox for Christmas Day brunch. 

“I didn’t grow up religiously Jewish. I stopped after my bar mitzvah. I’m a culinary Jew, not even culturally Jewish.” His wife is not Jewish.

In line, with ample time to ponder, “Why doesn’t this exist in Brownstone Brooklyn?” Peter remembered asking himself. As he often did during Christmas Jewish brunch, Peter crowdsourced his various business ideas with friends and family. “They said no to every other idea,” Peter said, but a bagel store, “great idea!” 

Peter had plenty of food experience having worked at Eleven Madison Ave, Cafe Sabarsky and Wallse where he met his now-French wife. 

In 2014, the store moved to its current Court St. location.and six years later, Peter’s family left Brooklyn for Paris’ Eleventh, a five-minute walk from Jim Morrison’s gravesite. 

“People here want bagels!” Peter said of FaceTime. Really? In a city with some of the best bread in the world?  “There are an enormous number of Americans here. Parisians are big travelers. And slap the word Brooklyn on anything here, and you are golden god!”

Peter and his business partner are still looking for a location and will most likely not open until next year. The idea is one large store and four smaller ones, eventually expanding throughout Europe. 

While I had Peter on the phone, I had to ask about his bagels versus Court St. bagels. “We have the more traditional bagel, a three-day fermented sourdough bagel. We no longer handroll or boil.  Instead, we have a steam-injected rack over. Steams for four minutes, then bakes at 480 degrees for 15 minutes, and then a second blast of steam for 30 seconds, which gives it a nice shiny, burnished finish.” 

And life in Paris? “The pace of life is different. People work so they can live, and not the other way around. Healthcare is good.” The main difference, he says, “Stress, a lot less stress.”

Ripped from HellGate’s headlines this week: RIP (almost) to the green cab: "TLC data shows there were just 539 working green cab drivers in February—a nearly 93 percent collapse from May 2015, when 7,521 operators were picking up street hails in the boroughs and Upper Manhattan."

If you live anywhere near Clinton St., than you know it used to be where you want to hail a cab–green and yellow–any time day or night. What happened?Have work habits changed so much that people no longer need a morning cab? What about those folks who love a cab to NYC? Such an odd phenom post-COVID. 

I never saw the celebrity couple, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, not once! I’ve jogged up and down Strong Place a million times, visited the street on Halloween, and even know people who live on their block. The closest I got to seeing Craig is his picture hanging on the wall at Fish Tales.

If you are one of the 17,500 new New York millionaires, now is your chance to give back and help pay for childcare for all and protect health care for New Yorkers, says our  Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon. The Invest in Our New York Campaign, says Simon, will make “make our income taxes more progressive, raise corporate taxes on the most profitable corporations, implement a capital gains tax, and create an heirs tax.”

Also from AM Simon: After a lawsuit revealed that too many children were being sent to hospitals or institutions because community-based care was unavailable, the state reached a historic settlement requiring it to expand and improve mental health services for children and families. Instead of leaving families with no options until a crisis hits, the settlement pushes the State to make real, accessible mental health care available. This means more support for children in their communities, so they can get help earlier and closer to home. Read more about this lawsuit.

I wrote a few months ago that the Mayor’s office began targeting what it called “subscription traps” at city gyms like PureGym on Boerum Place that make it challenging to cancel your membership.  

Now, the city is broadening its enforcement to other businesses  that also make canceling subscription or membership difficult by enforcing existing consumer protection laws and imposing fines.

It’s not always obvious from Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens but our neighborhoods, including Red Hook and Col. St Waterfront are in, what’s called last-mile delivery zones for Amazon.

As I’ve written before, a 2025 study by then Comptroller Brad Lander showed accidents have increased in the last-mile areas.

You might already know that Amazon uses subcontractors, non-Amazon employees, for your delivery. If you look closely at the back of the E-bike drivers’ vest, you’ll see the name of the third party that pays their checks. 

Mayor Mamdani and Brooklyn Borough President, Anthony Reynoso, is supporting Intro 518, or the Delivery Protection Act. This bill would require stricter licensing, including safety training and enforcement options for City workers.

The bill is not without controversy. Opponents says it will put third-party companies out of business, and their workers out of jobs. 

The Red Hook Star-Review with another great article, Danny Lee Opens NVRSTK, a story I somehow missed about a new custom sneaker studio. Curious to learn more about Danny’s origin story and his studio’s name, I briefly spoke with him yesterday. 

NVRSTK is short for Never Stock, as if “we’re always changing product or never being an off the shelf kind of product,” says Danny, 35, the designer/entreprenuer behind the studio. The name is an extension of his business partner’s Never Ride Stock, a custom car company on Staten Island where Danny opened his first studio. 

Lack of foot traffic in Staten Island got him thinking about Brooklyn, where a friend offered him space at Art of Tint on Smith St. Danny has roots in Carroll Gardens. His Sicilian mom grew up on Court and Sackett before moving the family to Staten Island. 

Danny was always drawn to hands-on creativity. He started with music as a teenager,  experimented with jewelry design, before earning a degree in graphic design at City Tech in Brooklyn. He spent the next six years at Apple, starting as a technician, but it wasn’t for him. On a whim, Danny signed up for a sneaker-making class, which turned out to be the shoe that fit (I couldn’t help myself).

After a job offer at the Italian sneaker and clothing company Golden Goose, Danny spent four months in a company training program in Milan, before he returned to the U.S. and the company’s SOHO operation.

“I went from working at Apple to working in Milan in a short amount of time; it’s surreal,” Danny said. “I want to inspire the next generation, as so many doors opened for me.” 

NVRSTK offers both youth and adult sneaker design classes. The goal is to some day offer an entrepreneurship class for kids where he can teach not just sneaker design but also skills necessary for opening a business. While he’d love to offer summer camp this year, parents will probably have to wait until next summer.

Grand opening soon!  Follow NVRSTK for more info. 423 Smith St.

Court St. Journal: “The Caputos of Caputo’s Fine Foods.”

Today and every day until Dec! BK Flea is open again in the Dumbo Archway. 

Monday, April 13th, 6:15 - 7:45 PM BRIC | Thinking of planning an event for 1000s of New Yorkers? Learn how at this event and hear from those who do it regularly.  

Saturday, April 18, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM: Col. St. Waterfront Association’s Community Clean-up Day and Scavenger Hunt, celebrating Earth Day. Human Compass Garden, corner of Sackett St and Columbia St. Please register here. (rain date Sunday, April 19. 

Sunday, April 19th at 1:00 PM | Know Your Rights training with the Churches United for Fair Housing (CUFFH), Council Member Shahana Hanif, and Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon. Learn how you can work with neighbors to keep our community safe. Please RSVP to receive the address.

Thanks for reading! Stay in touch: [email protected] or follow me.