The Downtown Brooklyn Thread

it won't last, none of those places do

(xpost)

http://ny.eater.com/uploads/2011_02_prime6.bmp

probably last about as long as that joint that is now Dao Palate. the Well Lounge or something? closed in under a year.

rip shouldve featured indie music

Her thing about "indie music of ALL races" kind of reminds me of that line in Blues Brothers: "What kind of music do you usually have here?" "Oh we got both kinds -- country AND western."

yeah i really didn't understand that part of the rant - isn't one southpaw enough?

no you also need a barbes

there is no Park Slope thread bcuz none of us can afford to live there (anymore)

When the weather warms up in a little bit it might just be time to reconvene The Ale & Quail Club, pile into Mr. Atoz's Bookmobile and head on over to Sh4rlene's for the pub quiz.

The Sharlene's movie round is now done on crap like John Hughes's.

C'wealth is doing one now, but my team won the Presidents Day debut in a landslide and I don't know if we have any open slots.

Would Quiz! Actually that's super convenient to the Q train at 7th Ave which suits me perfectly.

Well if there are no open spots maybe we can field another team

Tried Strong Place on Court St. tonight. Food was really, really good and they have an excellent beer list. The menu is sort of a mish-mosh of all the going trends -- classic american, local market fresh, gastropub style, etc., but the food was just very well done. We had an excellent salad of radish, cucumber, jerusalem artichoke, hazelnut, cabbage and some other stuff, and then I had a short rib burger with maytag blue and the lady had diver scallops. The chef likes strong, striking flavors, which I like too. I also drank an Allagash Black and a Lagunitas Brown Shuggah. And we had some lentils, which were the most delicious lentils I've ever had.

I'm thinking Brooklyn Navy Yard area should be the next neighborhood to take off. Or has that already happened?

distance from the subway is prob holding it back - there are a few things over there tho

damn this thread is long.

doing a big walking/busing tour of brooklyn tomorrow. any suggestions aside from the obvious?

wellll... you could walk from greenpt ave g train to metropolitain/lorimer g train and see all of greenpt/williamsburg, catch g to clinton washington and walk down dekalb ave to brooklyn heights... that's a LOT of walking on that second leg tho...

This probably is obvious, but I would definitely recommend walking the brooklyn bridge, and from there either walk around brooklyn heights and walk the promenade or walk to the new brooklyn bridge park and DUMBO, or preferably both. They're in opposite directions of course, but maybe you could, e.g. come off the bridge onto washington st. (which is where the stairs lead you), walk down into dumbo, walk around dumbo, then head over to old fulton st. (where the ferry landing, grimaldis, the river cafe, the ice cream place are), then head into the park, then up to the promenade (this is mildly tricky -- if you stay on the path from the park you'll be UNDER the promenade -- you need to go over one block and walk up Columbia), and then when you get to the end at remsen st, just zigzag around the brooklyn heights side streets for some incredible old new york homes, some with plaques (I think there's one on Montague for where Auden lived). The Brooklyn Historic Society is on Clinton St. but I've never been -- I imagine they must have some kind of brochures or something about the neighborhood and other neighborhoods.

You may already be doing DUMBO because it seems to be a big tour bus hub.

From Brooklyn Heights if you really want you could hit up a middle eastern place on Atlantic (Damascus Bakery for takeout spinach pies and pastries, or maybe Waterfalls for a meal), or you could take Court St. into Carroll Gardens for what old Italian stuff is left or Smith for the hipper nu-Carroll Gardens stuff (boutiques and market table restaurants and such). I'd consider all that more optional than the first part though.

BTW I realized today that the beginning of the old Sierra Gold Rush animated adventure game is in Brooklyn Heights, and that there's even an approximation of the promenade. Haven't checked to see if the layout matches up.

damascus for the junk food. it's awesome (everything is labeled as "delicious")

i think clinton hill is a sort of underrated area for walking around.

yeah, clinton hill is a great walk if you like old houses. tons of different styles, everything is beautiful, barely anything new.

this house is so rad

http://grab.by/9tBa

carroll gardens -> the gowanus culver viaduct area -> prospect park is probably my favorite brooklyn walk

but I really like viaducts

who doesn't

why a duck?

not taking an official bus tour, just expect to take some city buses to get around, in addition to walking.

Some good buses for you: B61 -- Downtown Brooklyn to Windsor Terrace via Red Hook and Gowanus and B62 -- Queens Plaza to Greenpoint thru Williamsburg to Downtown Brooklyn (this bus runs all the time so if you are staying in Greenpoint you can hop on and off). Also, go to Peter Pan Donuts: http://www.yelp.com/biz/peter-pan-bakery-brooklyn The B62 goes right by it.

I'm kind of obsessed with this (closed) bar: http://evgrieve.com/2010/11/at-navy-yard-cocktail-lounge-aka-rip.html that I often bike by.

Let us know how it goes am.

Another fun thing you can do: walk over the Pulaski Bridge from Greenpoint to Long Island City (beware of the bicyclists). Nice views from Newtown Creek of the Manhattan skyline. In LIC, you could walk to PS1 and 5 Pointz and/or walk to Vernon Boulevard (lots of shops, restaurants, etc,) and Gantry Pier (East River views; Pepsi-Cola sign). If you're in LIC, the Sculpture Center is kind of a cool place as well: http://www.sculpture-center.org/home.htm

gantry is super great

Also: in Greepoint, Franklin Street has a record store, book store, coffee shops, and lots of girly boutiques (if you're into that sort of thing). Manhattan Avenue has some Polish restaurants like Lomzynianka. Another nice part of Greenpoint you could walk to is the area by McGolrick Park. And in Williamsburg there is a newish park at Kent and 8th St along the East River. And none of this has anything to do with "Downtown Brooklyn." Have fun!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/nyregion/17yards.html?

yr new skyline

oh yeah were gonna get frank gehry its gonna be a new era in bk soaring etc vision lol, naw actually lets just stack up some shipping containers nbd

middle-class projects

Personally I get excited about both pre-fab and specifically shipping container housing. Too down on the entire stupid development to feel any positivity about THIS, though.

ha yeah i feel the same way

i wouldn't want to live in a shipping container!

i kind of want to live in a shipping container!

or rather a series of shipping containers

or like a shipping container attached to a building

http://zerocabin.com/images/saltlake.jpg

its sort of my dream to purchase a garage and transform it into a house via stacking shipping containers on top of it

Meh, I kind of don't like Frank Gehry anymore anyway -- not into that wavery new Manhattan apartment tower he did, and generally kind of tired of the approach of planting a giant overly creative-looking identity building in the middle of nothing to put an area "on the map"

i love the approach of planting a giant overly creative-looking identity building anywhere really, it amuses me w/a childlike sense of whimsy, and anyway its like 1mx better than yr standard generic corporate architecture - too bad it has to be a symptom of late boom thinking - i mean people should start building these things in early boom years then wed have more crazy buildings around

Maybe I've been living in kinda crappy New York apartments for too long but an entire shipping container or two, all finished inside and all to myself? That's like a dream come true.

plus then you can ship yrself anywhere u want

I don't necessarily hate the boxy shipping container aesthetic but this prob won't even look like that it'll just look cheap and crappy. those super modern shipping container buildings are made by artsy Europeans, this is made by a guy trying to make the cheapest building he can possibly make.

yep