The Downtown Brooklyn Thread

when do you have to start worrying about daycare/preschool/schools (if not already)

already. That's one reason Forest Hills is on our list. I mean I haven't researched, but it seems more likely to have good options that Sunnyside or Astoria.

I mean we don't need full-time daycare yet, but we do want to live somewhere where in a year or two we have a good option for preschool.

man

In the same week, a break-in in our building and this:

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Cooper-Park-Mom-Water-Balloon-Attack-Girl--158960595.html

(worse than the headline makes it sound)

Kind of glad we're moving, given that H & K are home without me most of the day and don't have many places to go other than to that park or to get a $12 hipster waffle

Weirdly, the building just dropped the rent they were asking (in their listing) without telling us. I don't think we'd pay what they're currently asking anyway, but it still seems like a pretty shady practice, and also kind of dumb, since we're reliable, on-time-rent-paying-tenants and they're throwing away money on listing agents, prepping the apt after we move out, etc.

i finally ate at mr. fulton today.
my low expectations were met.

Surely one of you is going to a Jay-Z Barclays baptism show?

I wonder what my first event there will be. Leonard Cohen in December? (never seen Len)

cheapest Nets tix are $30 I read

I keep forgetting all the Brooklynites leave work to drink at 4 on Fridays.

I only left early to get a haircut! Think I know one person who has tix to the show and I can't help feeling she's being a bit traitorous even though she's never lived in Bk and doesn't have a personal stake in.

I heard the Barclays is ugly and leaky that true?

that's Marty Markowitz

haha

I might try to go see celtics v nets in december

i tagged along with the wife to see jay-z on Saturday, and it was alright for a big show with great seats I didn't have to pay for. Bummed that Friday's crowd got Big Daddy Kane in the encore while we got Memphis Bleek, though. Dunno who they had last night.

I haven't been in a pro sports arena since living in Central PA, so I can't tell you how this compares to others. Looks spiffy afaik, though, and it's funny how all the food sellers are like Calexico, Blue Marble, Fatty'cue, etc. Suppose that's great for tourists but personally i was like "ok I think I can wait a few hours and pay far less at the actual place."

favorite moment was hearing a guy in the bathroom yell "I might be the first shmuck in shorts to use this urinal!"

Looks spiffy afaik, though, and it's funny how all the food sellers are like Calexico, Blue Marble, Fatty'cue, etc. Suppose that's great for tourists but personally i was like "ok I think I can wait a few hours and pay far less at the actual place."

― da croupier, Monday, October 1, 2012 9:42 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's not like that wasn't true with the crappy hotdogs arenas used to sell.

again, i haven't been to a pro sports arenas in years (more than a decade for sports rather than music) so hell if i know what one should expect food-wise, price or quality.

I went to the cute liddle stadium where the Cyclones play and it was shocking to me how bad and unsatisfying the food was. No wonder it comes in huge portions, you can get through a whole order and feel as unsatisfied as if you hadn't eaten at all.

My basic plan is never to go to the Atlantic Yards stadium because fuck them, that's why. But I can appreciate that if you're going to pay extra to eat food in a self-contained place, it should at least be actual food you want.

i wasn't hating, to be clear. just noting why i didn't bother spending 10.50 to try calexico's "queso quesadilla."

Yeah, it's basically T/S: $10.50 for a $7 quesadilla or $5 for a $1.50 hot dog.

I am not down w/ Calexico. First time I went when the shop opened on Union it was awesome, but it's mostly let me down since, esp. the Greenpoint location, fwiw.

I haven't had it in a while. I ate at the one on Union a few times and I thought the meat was surprisingly good.

i order from the red hook one a lot but that's in part a matter of convenience.

while it is objectively A Bad Thing, I think the stadium looks pretty nice from the outside

feel like its going to age reallllyyy quickly

i passed by yesterday and the screen was already broken:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A4D4TlXCUAA798K.jpg

"queso quesadilla" << c'mon, guys, at least pretend to try?

now that it exists, in general it's better for the place to do well than not, right? or is there an argument for wanting an unsuccessful arena? i'm not planning to go much (though i may be back for Neil Young, depending if i get hooked up again) but i wasn't sure what the political sentiment was now that the issue has changed from "stadium or no stadium" or "boycott or not"

there is an argument for an unsuccessful arena if its failure would mean it was turned into apartment buildings

also do you really want to see thousands of people in ugly ass brooklyn nets gear, there is an argument on an aesthetic level

i am not having an aesthetic argument re: atlantic yards

I didn't follow the anti-AY campaign that closely but I did see the doc, which left me feeling a little less hardset against the arena than I thought it would. The thing does look monstruously ugly in photos though, like it looks more like something that would be a casino in the middle of a dystopic hell-hole. Not that it would be easy to design an arena that really suits downtown brooklyn, but blown opportunity there imo.

It needed to be a little more stately and dignified -- the Camden Yards of basketball arenas.

ugh

I don't know if faux-nostalgic is the answer either but I'm going to hate it anyway, whatever form it takes. Imo big stadiums need some kind of public space/parkland around them to ease the currently brutal transition to the streets but that would take even more room they don't have/didn't leave.

Alternately something like Toledo's baseball stadium - - - not great aesthetically, but there's at least an attempt to have it become part of the city rather than a big object in a parking lot which is the typical solution. I haven't been down to Barclay's yet, mostly been seething with jealousy at friends in Pasquarelli's studio who got opening night tickets, but from photos it looks like there's some attempt to provide street-level frontage on the sides...but the thing is just too out of scale to ever feel urbanistic? Is that more or less accurate? Alexandra Lange at the New Yorker is pretty brutal: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/09/what-comes-second-the-lesson-of-the-barclays-center.html

I think it's more 'don't have' in this case

xp

I went to the cute liddle stadium where the Cyclones play and it was shocking to me how bad and unsatisfying the food was.

Nathan's and nothing but

Trance event Sensation America is coming in October 2012.

bottom line is I'm priced out of all the nice parts of brooklyn that don't take an hour to get to my job and this is just another nail in the coffin. So wah.

Weren't there supposed to be all those Gehry-designed high-rises and public walks and stuff as part of the stadium complex? I haven't followed the saga that closely but it was going to be a lot more integrated iirc? Has all of that just not been done yet b/c it wasn't the driver for the schedule?

You know what else though? I hate that it's called the Barclays Center. Barclays. What a stupid-sounding word. Citifield has such a nicer ring to it for a bank-named sports complex.

gehry stuff went away w/ the recession

Barclays, leading Brit banking institution for generations, was a linchpin in the fight to impose meaningful sanctions on South Africa in the '80s. (they were eventually persuaded after many years of activism of course)

boom

I think stadium naming right deals are always stupid and dependent on make believe ROI numbers

first residential building now scheduled to break ground in December. It's going to be right next to the footprint of the arena, and the big plaza in front of it is where another of the towers is going to be.

i saw someone with a sign about Barclay's role in the slave trade on Friday night.