Greenpoint
Lorven Pharmacy
Culture on the Cheap
REMINDER: The Ramen-Off Cometh
Basically this post is an excuse to feature what has to be one of the most diabolically clever party invitations I have ever seen! Those of you who want to learn about this event (which is slated for 7:00 p.m. tomorrow at the “backroom” of Union Poll) can get the scoop by clicking here.
Miss Heather
TODAY: Adoption Event At P.S. 9
Although this is incredibly last minute I want to pass along this adoption event Empty Cages Collective will be throwing today, November 8, 2008 starting at 1:00 p.m. Why not drop by P.S. 9 and make a new friend or two (like Hodgepodge, the lovely lady who graces the above flier)?
Kitten & Cat Adoption Day
November 8, 2008 ,1:00 – 5:00 p.m.
P.S. 9
169 North 9 Street
Brooklyn, New York 11211
Miss Heather
Greenpoint Photo du Jour: More A$$
Filed under: Greenpoint Magic
From Manhattan Avenue.
Miss Heather
Inexcusable
I am certain a number of you have seen these videos by now. I would strongly advise those of you who have witnessed acts of excessive force by New York’s Finest on Bedford Avenue Tuesday night to attend their next monthly community meeting and share your experiences with the 94th Precinct’s C.O. Fulton. Here are the deets:
N.Y.P.D. Monthly Community Meeting For November
November 17, 2008, 7:30 p.m. (they’re held the third Monday of every month)
Capital One Bank (better known as the Greenpoint Savings Bank)
807 Manhattan Avenue (be sure to use the side entrance on Calyer)
Brooklyn, New York 11222
In addition, any of you who got badge numbers can also file a complaint at the Civil Complaint Review Board.
Miss Heather
Anniversary Present, Mr. Heather Style
Filed under: Greenpoint Magic
My husband espouses a very interesting approach to gift-giving. I learned this very early on when I received my first Christmas present from him:
a Hello Kitty jewelry box which plays “Everything Is Beautiful”. I did my best to conceal my disappointment. I failed miserably.
Mister Heather:
You’re always misplacing your jewelry, I thought this would be helpful.
I tried out of sheer guilt, dear readers, to use this item. It didn’t work out for two reasons:
- The Tupperware bowl I keep my cache of paste in works just fine.
- The aforementioned Tupperware bowl does not play an insipid song by Ray Stevens every fucking time I open it.
I really dislike Ray Stevens, folks. So you can imagine my dismay after willfully and deliberating leaving this jewelry box open (so as to run down the hand cranked music box) only to hear THAT RAGE-INDUCING SONG every damned time I opened it. I finally broke down and asked the Mister about it. Here’s his reply:
I noticed it was not playing music (when you open it) so I have been winding it up for you.
I took a deep breath, explained to him that I had let the music box on this item run down on purpose and requested that he please refrain from winding it. I felt like an ungrateful shitheel for doing this but I really couldn’t handle listening to that syrupy sweet song. It would have been like me giving him a humidor that cranks AC/DC whenever he opens it.
Nonetheless the Mister learned a very valuable lesson that year: trying to organize me is futile. All it does is confuse me and piss me off. Best to leave well enough alone. Ever since then he has endeavored to redeem himself. And this wedding anniversary he did.
Aside from asking for a cookbook I didn’t expect anything in the way of a present. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised and a little nervous when I was told:
You’ll be getting something else too. It’ll come in the mail. You’ll really like it.
It arrived in the mail yesterday. He was so eager for me to see it he grabbed a pair of scissors, voraciously tore away the packaging and showed it to me.
He immediately misconstrued my dumbstruck expression as being one of disappointment:
I looked very hard to find this. It has scenes in it that were excised from the American release like when she has sex with the statue and when Grandier gets disemboweled.
I told the Mister I very much appreciated his present and his gift-picking ability has greatly improved. I assured him the expression on my face was one of shock, not disappointment. I then proceeded to explain to him that a restored copy of Ken Russell’s The Devils struck me as being the weirdest damned thing to give one’s wife on a wedding anniversary imaginable. He couldn’t understand why I felt this way.
Needless to say I can hardly wait to see what he gets me next year. Thanks Mister Heather!
Miss Heather
From The New York Shitty Photo Pool: Mousetraps
The details are scant regarding this great photograph but then again it pretty much speaks for itself. It was taken by Victoria Belanger in one of Greenpoint’s numerous 99 Cent stores sometime this fall. Great shot!
Miss Heather
THIS WEEKEND: Films At 3rd Ward
One of the things I cannot wrap my head around is the fact so many people are under the (greatly mistaken) that razing great swathes of (formerly industrial) land and erecting condominiums on them somehow creates jobs. Just take the area around Union Avenue and Roebling Street, for example. There used to be a number of businesses there (including a chocolate factory!). Now there is area is little more than a bunch of vacant lots interspersed with luxury residential properties. Somehow I do not see much job creation coming out of this.
Unless of course one includes baristas who whip up the tenants’ double mocha lattes, bartenders sating the younger set’s thirst for intoxicating beverages or nannies tending after their rapidly increasingly brood of young ‘uns. While the previous are all indeed forms of employment I doubt they and their many service-related brethren have done much to make up for the jobs they have supplanted in terms of sheer numbers or wages. This is a travesty.
There are a great many factors which have led to the situation our fair city finds itself in now. I am currently reading a book entitled “Working Class New York” and it explains a fair number of them. Very well, I will add. Those of you who are interested in learning more about the white collarification of New York should give it a read. For the rest of you who lack the patience to read such a tome 3rd Ward will be screening a short film this weekend that might be of interest.
Per 3rd Ward’s press release:
…Daniel Ross and Tom Vigliotta examine the decline of NYC’s manufacturing industry in Uncertain Industry. Over the last 50 years manufacturing jobs in NYC have shrunk from 1 million to 100,000. The filmmakers explore what losing losing this vital source of jobs meant for New York City’s economy.
You can read more about this film (Uncertain Industry) by clicking here. Preceding it is an equally interesting feature which explores the so-called “swing states” and the people who live in them. This event is absolutely FREE and a discussion with the filmmakers will follow. Check it out!
3rd Ward Moviehouse
November 9, 2008, 8:00 p.m.
195 Morgan Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11237
Be advised that you have to RSVP for this event. You can do so via email at:
nbagli (at) 3rdward (dot) com
Miss Heather
Reader Question: Fire At Paloma?
Filed under: Greenpoint Magic
Lauren writes: Hi Heather, I am a lurker of your blog and love reading about local Greenpoint happenings! I was wondering if you had any insight on the fire that took place on the roof of Paloma last night? I was at the Pencil Factory and everyone filed out right after Obama won the election to watch the fire blaze instead of the tv. I haven’t been able to find anything out about it online — any ideas?
Speaking for myself I was home last night as was Mr. Heather (we both have been sick so we stayed home). Anyone out there have the 411? If so, do tell.
Miss Heather
P.S.: This item from Eater has been brought to my attention. Check it out.
A Great Moment In Product Safety Advisories
This is one of the 4-5 rat traps gracing the front of the ACME fish plant on Gem Street. Those of you who are in the know will attest that this establishment has its own very distinct —how shall we say —perfume. In fact unless one is a serious fish lover (or better yet: A CAT) this stretch of sidewalk does not strike me as being a place one would want to hang around…
much less while perched atop a rat trap. However, given how happy the young woman looks in the above photograph I may very well might give it a shot.
Miss Heather
A Very Greenpoint Blind Item: Bad Finger, Part II
A couple of weeks ago I struck up a conversation with a local bartender here in the Garden Spot. He, unlike yours truly, was Brooklyn born and bred. What can I say? Some are lucky enough to be born in Brooklyn. Others (like yours truly) are Brooklynites who have to find their way back home. But I digress.
He told me about when his father would bring to him to Greenpoint as a child:
Please dad, don’t make me go! They have chickens running in the streets there!
I assured him that on occasion chickens do, in fact, still wander our streets. He laughed and regaled me with some late night shenanigans he has had the pleasure of witnessing while “closing shop”. This includes but is not limited to:
- Finding a drunk woman asleep in a puddle of her own vomit under his car.
- Watching blitzed gents from another nightclub roll down the street knocking over garbage cans and generally (for wont of a better way of putting it) fucking shit up. REPEATEDLY.
Ah, progress— or would that be gentrification? In any case his tales made wandering chickens look downright quaint if I say so myself.
All the previous florid (if abject) rhetoric does indeed lead to today’s blind item. A very curious bit of Greenpoint gossip I overheard yesterday. Something so bizarre —yet oddly appropriate— that I feel compelled to pass it along to my fellow Garden Spotters.
It is RUMORED that a certain bar in our fair burgh had a brawl which culminated in a person biting off another person’s finger. Whether or not this is indeed true I do not know (and like the 94th Precinct would confirm it it anyway). Nonetheless it reminds me of a great story I dug up from the New York Times archives and posted just over a year ago. A tale this bad is good enough to run twice. Enjoy!
For those of you who are wondering 214 Franklin Street now houses Hanami Designs. Among other businesses.
Oh how times have changed! Or have they? I’m going to be tightfisted in my prognostication.
For obvious reasons.
Miss Heather
UPDATE, November 6, 2008: This rumor has been confirmed! An anonymous tipster writes:
As a loyal reader of your blog, I thought it my civic duty to confirm the rumor about which you spoke. Indeed, there was a fight in the Red Star bar, between an employee and a patron, the result of which was the patron’s finger being bitten off by the establishment’s employee. The bar held a luncheon after a funeral service for a local Greenpointer, 28-year-old Kevin Krol, who tragically fell at a construction site and after fighting for his life for about a week, succumbed to his head injuries. A fight broke out, a luncheon attendee tried to break it up, the bar employee got involved and the person’s finger was bitten off by the employee. Deliberately? I don’t know. I know the person who is now short by half a finger, and I can only confirm that this definitely happened. I enjoy your blog very much, and you may post this, I only ask that you leave my name and my username out of it. Thanks, and keep up the great work!
Photo Credit: ScareFX.blogspot.com
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