From The New York Shitty Inbox: Snow Woes On Vandervoort Avenue

January 3, 2011 by missheather
Filed under: 11222, Greenpoint, Greenpoint Brooklyn, Greenpoint Magic

(Or: The DOT Builds a Snow Fort!)

Tara on Beadel Street (who forwarded me the above photograph) writes:

Hi Miss Heather

I have been reading your blog for years and enjoy it. I live on beadel street and vandervoort ave. I don’t know if you have seen the huge pile of snow the city started dumping last Thursday on vandervoort which has caused a ton of honking and horrible traffic. It’s now Monday and the ave is still shut down. The city has been loading garbage trucks filled with snow and dumping them in front of key span on vandervoort – the actual street itself for more than 5 days now. Why would the city do this? Seems very unproductive. Thought you could solve this riddle.

Aside from basic municipal incompetence I honestly do not know what to say. But then again, it was on Vandervoort where I once saw this:

The above photograph was taken March 10, 2010. A month or so later the DOT saw fit to stick a street cone in it. I can assure you this was truly a vision.

My advice:

Call 311 and complain.
Get a complaint number.
Forward this number along with a general description of your complaint to your City Councilperson (in this case, Diana Reyna), your local Community Board and State Assemblyman Joe!

Update, 5:35 p.m.: unlike a lot of the Snowmageddon posts I have erected over the last week, I have some very good news to report! After receiving Tara’s email— but before I wrote this post— I advised her to contact a number of people. This list included Community Board 1’s Transportation Committee Chair, Karen Nieves. Tara writes:

I got in touch with Karen and she has been a great help today. We had called 311 on Thursday night as well… She came and took pictures of the snow pile.* I wish I had taken pictures on Thursday when it was a complete nightmare.

You rock, Karen!

Miss Heather

*Here are a couple!