Curbed Best Hood: Let The Voting Begin

We say we're the best. Nate Silver says we're the best. Now it's time to confirm this shit on Curbed NY too.

Vote for Park Slope! (if only b/c loosing to Roosevelt Island would be P-A-T-H-E-T-I-C).

Round One: Park Slope vs. Roosevelt Island. Just so you know, we are not the underdogs. In fact, we're the top seed, which will undoubtedly come back to bite us because even I like a scrappy underdog...

Not only does Brooklyn's Park Slope head in as the people's choice (it received double the reader nods of the next most popular Curbed Cup nominee), but this year it was scientifically proven to be NYC's most "livable" neighborhoodand got the city's most controversial new bike lane. Quite the achievements, and so the Slope is our top seed. Did the economic downturn ever make it down here? The retail and restaurant scenes continue to expand, starchitects are showing up, wealthy Googlers are renovating $8.5 mansions and $18,000/month rentals are on the market. But every giant has weaknesses. The neighborhood's outskirts still leave something to be desired, and even some Slopers loathe the place. But as one reader put it, "If it's good enough for New York magazine and the American Planning Association, it should be good enough for Curbed."

And in the other corner, the Curbed Cup's scrappy underdog, Roosevelt Island. It's been a banner year for the forgotten isle, headlined by the stunning/font-plagued newRoosevelt Island tram. A makeover of the depressing retail drag looks imminent, and the under-the-radar Four Freedoms Park shook off decades of controversy and funding troubles to finally break ground. Roosevelt Island, everyone: A place that actually exists!

I just voted ten times. Not sure it counted. Very scientific, though.

Top 10 Brooklyn News Stories Of The Year?

image: The L MagazineSo the L mag published their list of the Top 10 BK stories of the year and Park Slope had a pretty decent showing: our asses sorta kinda showed up in 50% of the stories:

#1 - Atlantic yards. The bad, rich ppl finally won and we all lost. [not Park Slope, but up the friggin street, ppl].

#6 - BIKE WARS! Fighting over the PPW bike lane is almost as common as Food Coop jokes around here now [partly in Park Slope and partly in other parts of BK, but most of the loudest btchz with things to say about the bike lane all live here].

#7 - The Tornado! Never forget! [All Park Slope, all the time].

#8 - The Goose Gas Chamber at Prospect Park [Those geese might have been Canadian, but they were living here in Park Slope].

#10 - Gorilla Coffee shenanigans [All Park Slope, all the time].

Nice work, guys! Let's shoot for a list SWEEP next year....10 outta 10. YES WE CAN!

(via The L Mag)

Cleaning up Brooklyn

I'm kind of in love with The Daily Clean.

The basic premise is this: blogger picks out a disgustingly dirty spot in Brooklyn, sets aside an hour, and cleans that shit up. That's it.

It's mind numbingly simple, and yet they're making a significant, measurable, noticeable contribution to their neighborhood every single day. Bravo.

"The idea is to take an hour or two out of your day and apply it to something useful. The majority of the areas will be rather small, in order to fully clean them within an hour or so. I will try to post the updates daily, in hopes of inspiring others."

The shot above was from Day 3 at Hope St. & Havemeyer, and took the blogger 45 mins.

(via PSFK)

This Week In Global Warming: Cherry Blossoms Are Blooming

Katherine Hepburn in Stage Door:

"The calla lillies cherry blossoms are in bloom again; such a strange flower. I carried them on my wedding day and now I carry them again for something that has died..."

... Yeah, winter as we know it!

Per the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens blog, this kind of December bloom is a wee "bit irregular" for the old Prunus 'Hally Jolivette.'

But, up with weird weather, head out the the BBG to take in the blossoms before they're gone.

There Are Red Bees in Red Hook

Bees normally freak my shit out. But these red ones are kinda cute, right?

Apparently there's a whole gigantic mess of em flying around Red Hook. An amateur Bee Keeper named (rather ironically) Cerise Mayo, couldn't figure out wtf was going on with her bees that were making him look so fiery. Then she figured it out: they were getting drunk on cherry juice!

No, this isn't the the new Four Loko kids, so no need to google. Mayo's hives are not too far away from Dell’s Maraschino Cherries factory on Dikeman Street. And apparently the bees have been ducking out at all hours of the day and night to go get lit on all that sugary, red, delcious syrup used to make maraschino cherries. And now their honey is all red too!

Which sounds cute, but only it's not. Cause that shit was loaded up with more Red Dye No. 40 than a red M&M in 1972. Oopsie.

(via Daily Intel and Y'all Hungary)