Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, New York | Blog for the Prospect Heights Neighborhood.
Brooklyn Chief of Staff Marty Maher is coming to a joint meeting of Friends of Dean Playground and Dean Street Block Association to share plans for improvements to the playground. A comfort station will be built this year and a little further into the future the seating area will be renovated.
Please join us to learn the details and see the plans!
DATE: February 6th @ 6 PM
LOCATION: Iglesia Evangelica Latina, 506 Bergen Street
Photo: Tracy Collins
The state redistricting proposal released yesterday has Prospect Heights’ District 20 drawn up with some interesting new lines. Sen. Eric Adams’ block is gerrymandered out, and–for unknown reasons–there’s a 26-block strip along Fourth Avenue, going down to Sunset Park. Amy Sara Clark writes: “District 20′s neat triangle shape now looks more like an ostrich, or a construction site digger, or, as one Brooklynite envisions it, a motorcycle.”
Read more: Spoof of the Day: Prospect Heights’ Gerrymandered Senate District – Prospect Heights, NY Patch.
Patch reports that a thieves hit 3 Vanderbilt Avenue businesses in less than 24 hours last week:
More info: String of Thefts on Vanderbilt Avenue – Prospect Heights, NY Patch; photo via Brooklyn Exposed.
This friendly, female cat, about 7-8 years old and missing a front tooth, was found hanging around outside a stoop on Prospect between Grand & Classon. “She’s way too used to people and sweet to be a pure street cat,” Nikonista writes on the Brooklynian message boards. “We think she may be lost (or may have been abandoned, in which case I wish hellfire on those who did it).” If you know anything about this cat, go here:
Found – Lost Cat, Prospect Place between Grand Ave and Classon, Brooklyn » Brooklynian.
Black Hasidic Jews are a minority of a minority of a minority in Crown Heights and elsewhere. In yeshivas, they are sometimes taunted as “monkeys,” according to the New York Times, and are greeted with blank stares at kosher restaurants and synagogues. In Crown Heights, Black Hasidic Jews tried to form a minyan–a quorum of 10 men required for group prayer–but they had a bit of a setback when Yoseph Robinson, a Jamaican, was killed when would-be robbers stormed the kosher liquor store where he worked, leaving only 9.
This is just one of the groups Oprah will talk to in Hasidic Jews of Brooklyn , which documents her visit back in October to the Hasidic Jewish communities of Borough Park and Crown Heights. She got “unprecedented access” to these tight-knit and “mysterious” cultures. The show will document the daily life in these communities, and their intense spiritual devotion, which means that (gasp) they raise their kids without most modern media — no TV, movies, internet or video games.
Highlights: Oprah sits down with a family of 12 for a traditional meal; she interviews Hasidic mothers and wives (a “no holds barred” interview, no less); she gets a tour of a Mikvah; and she meets with what they say is “one of the few black Hasidic Jewish families in the country” (and they are pretty much right, it seems).
Tivo it. It will be broadcast in two parts: Sunday, February 12, from 9:00 – 10:00 p.m., and Monday, February 13, from 10:00 – 11:00 p.m. - via Oprah’s Next Chapter Is EXPANDING! | PerezHilton.com. Photo: COLLive.com – Oprah Seen in Crown Heights (from back in October when they were filming).
Alert! fjordz just reported that IDT Energy scammers were just on St. Marks and Nostrand, just a few hours ago: “A young girl came to the door and told me she was “Officer Jones” and asked me to please get a copy of my gas & electric bill…”
I told her, ”No thanks, and what you’re doing is a scam.”
Her “manager” came along and things got pretty tense: IDT energy scam « Brooklynian | Brooklyn Blog and Message Boards.
Lizell writes: ”A friend of mine was in the area looking for an apartment. He was mugged at gunpoint for his iPhone at Park Place and Franklin Avenue around 7:30pm. He was waiting for the broker to show and as she called the guy showed up and mugged him.”
“The avenue is busy that time of night – I got home only minute ago. I passed 6 cops on my way from eastern to park place as well. Brazen stuff.”
via Local muggings! Look out! « Brooklynian | Brooklyn Blog and Message Boards.
After years of writing about gentrification, Nick Juravich posted about the term on Huffington Post:
“… From my admittedly limited perspective, I’ve come to feel the term fails to explain some key trends in Crown Heights, and that understanding the neighborhood means taking other long-term forces like (im)migration and community organizing seriously as agents of change and continuity. It’s no revelation, but I do feel it’s been missing from some of the more recent reports on the area.).”
(artwork by Robert Toyokazu Troxell and Grace Sachi Troxell, on display at Five Myles Gallery on St. Johns’s Place)
The faded advertisements (“Hot Bird: No Frying, No Fat, No Oil, New York’s Best BarBQ Four Blocks Back”) are still arresting and spark the imagination, as noted in this account of Hot Bird from a visitor who wasn’t aware that the original Hot Bird is long closed: “I couldn’t find any Hot Bird, and the vegetarian sitting in the bucket seat next to me got impatient …”
via Stephen P Williams: food – Hot Bird.
Winter has been here a month, and Prospect Heights (and all Brooklyn) just got a real snowfall. These folks were trying to sled in Grand Army Plaza. More photos at the link below.
via PHOTOS: Snow Hits Prospect Heights – Prospect Heights, NY Patch.