News York

[newsyork]

Coney Island will get a Music Venue

In his last State Of The Borough speech, Marty "Not Marky" Markowitz will announce that the landmarked building that once housed Childs restaurant will be rehabbed and turned into a 5,000 seat music venue and theater. Coney Island seems like a no-brainer location for a sizable performance space, and Markowitz has been trying in vain to develop such a venue on Coney Island or in Brighton Beach for the better part of four decades. This will likely drive Brooklynites that depend on the D, F, and N trains up a wall. Whether or not it will be finished before the long-awaited Loew's Kings Theater in Flatbush finally opens is still anyone's guess.

[newsyork]

From this video of a fare-evading kid getting repeatedly body-slammed by a police office, we learn a valuable lesson: when a cop goes for the crotch while he's searching you, try your best not to flinch. [via bosefod]

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LOUD NOISES: Greenwood Park edition

Fucked In Park Slope has the story of Ted Nugent's son's new outdoor beer garden, Greenwood Park (which is not, as FIPS says, in Greenwood Heights, but South Slope; we'll sort that neighborhood out in a guide later this week), angering everyone that lives around it by getting people drunk, people who then pee all over the surrounding neighborhood, have sex in public, and walk around hammered. A few things, since I, until a few months ago, lived a block away from this place:

Anything to liven up that sinkhole of a neighborhood: great. Things more along the lines of Toby's would be better, of course, but beggars can't be choosers.

Brooklyn Public House, a block south, has plenty of loud patrons entering and leaving. Some of them probably even pee and have sex too!

The earth-shattering noise made by tractor-trailers on 20th Street—one of the streets bounding Greenwood Park—at all hours of the day and night tells me the complaining neighbors are more annoyed that the noise is coming from people enjoying themselves than that there's simply too much noise. A truck drives down that street, and it's like its ghost is barreling straight through your soul. I lived one block over from 20th, and it was still obnoxious.

Speaking of 21st Street, the clown-car apartment on the top floor of a building near 7th Avenue, where it seems at least half of the delivery guys in South Slope live, prides itself on its ability to play loud, repetitive Mexican music for hours and hours, any night of the week. And before you ask, I know they're Mexican because they stood on their fire escape last May 5th (right after midnight), screaming "Viva Mexico!" and cackling like Telemundo characters nonstop for six hours. So if they'renotMexican, they at least want to pass for Mexican, and I've done just what they wanted.

In summation, yeah, okay, a sleepy few blocks now sounds like Avenue A on a Saturday night. But maybe the bodegas will stay open later, or even 24-hours, maybe new business will get drawn in, maybe they'll restore late-night B69 service, maybe the dead will rise from Green-wood Cemetery and solve the problem entirely.

[newsyork]

McCarren Pool has a Fight Club. We know this because Tyler knows this.

The New York Post is reporting that flyers have appeared in Williamsburg (flyers are so vintage, guys) advertising a dateless "fight club" at 475 Leonard Street, for free, at 9:15pm on some unknown day. Billed as "the Battle Of Williamsburg" and named presumably after the Revolutionary War skirmish in which General Washington successfully defended the area against an encroaching army of British hipsters in the late 1700s, it's an "all ages & skill levels" fight, with an apparent title bout between champion "The Tanned Assassin" Roberto and "The Piranaha" Thomas. The Post says that the Parks Department "are not amused," which seems to indicate they'll be playing the British fops in this reenactment. 

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Just in case you were planning on sitting on any of the park furniture around IKEA: DON'T.

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Citi Bike Program Puts On The Brakes, Inspires Punny Headlines

New York City and Alta's upcoming bike-share program, Citi Bike, was slated to start in late July and roll out through the end of the summer, but according to city officials, the much-anticipated new transportation option is hitting the breaks until August. There's no word exactly when in August, but if the MTA is any indication, the program should roll out on August 89th.

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BREAKING: NYU is a pain-in-the-ass neighbor, New School actually kind of cool

The Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation (which is in no way associated with the Kinks) released a slightly lopsided comparison between New York University's massive expansion plans for the neighborhood and The New School's new University Center, currently under construction on Fifth Avenue between 14th and 13th Streets. Sure, both projects are wildly different (NYU's 2031 plan involves the university building, at last check, somewhere in the area of thirty-two billion new buildings, the pagoda from Bruce Lee'sGame Of Death, a subterranean cavern for students pursuing degrees in spelunking, and a life-sized replica of the lame Godzilla from the 1998 Matthew Broderick version), but the comparison points out that, unlike NYU, The New School took neighborhood complaints about the aesthetics and light-and-air problems surrounding the initial proposal to heart and worked out an entirely different building plan, which was able to go ahead without any approval from the community, since it didn't require any zoning variances. This is as opposed to NYU, who it seems will have to defeat the Village's ten best warriors in armed combat to get their 2031 proposal accepted.

[newsyork]

Payphones to become WiFi hotspots; Superman baffled

As if taking away the old school phone booths wasn't bad enough, the city now has plans to turn payphones in the five boroughs into wifi hotspots, where citizens and tourists alike will be able to pick up some free internet, as opposed to the age-old tradition of simply picking up various cold germs and other viral favors. No word yet whether the phones will still do double duty as urinals or trashcans. [via DNAinfo]

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Teen Brutally Beaten In McCarren Park

This is becoming some sort of Williamsburg sports and recreation violence blog, but whatever: a 16-year-old kid was attacked by kids claiming he and his brother were on their gang's turf, and, according to various accounts, was at the very least beaten and at the most smashed with a brick and stabbed with a broken bottle. Three kids are in custody in connection with the incident. If one more violent thing happens anywhere near the McCarren Pool, you can be certain the Postwill run a front page with the headline "POOL OF BLOOD." [via Gothamist]

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As we say in the Parks Department, 'It's not the heat; it's the stupidity.'

Park Department commissioner Adrian Benepe on the Leonard Lopate show today, discussing the recent donnybrooks at the McCarren Pool.

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Speaking of pools, Gothamist has an annoyingly tilt-shifted picture of Brooklyn Bridge Park's new pool on Pier 2. It's a dinky, three-and-a-half-foot deep thing, but that's still no excuse for using rinky dink Instagram effects.

[newsyork]

McCarren Pool already too mainstream for Williamsburg

First, a joke: Why did the hipster have second-degree burns covering his entire body? He went to McCarren Pool before it was cool.

Second, last friday: an "unruly crowd" attacked two lifeguards, possibly pulling one into the pool. The place was closed down for the day.

Now, yesterday: two police officers were sent to the hospital after "more than ten squad cars" arrived to quell another unruly group of pool-goers who were reportedly running around and doing backflips. Four people were arrested, and at least one cop was apparently punched in the face.

Let's do the math here: that's two incidents of violence since the pool re-opened five days ago; the first time, by the way, the pool has been open for almost three decades after it fell into disrepair and became a hotbed for fights. And people say this city has gotten soft! With a major holiday weekend approaching, more fights are probably in the cards for hipster Brooklyn's coolest spot.

[newsyork]

Alamo Drafthouse also coming to Yonkers

This is great news for New Yorkers: the Alamo Drafthouse has announced it will open up a second New York location, in an old furniture store in Yonkers. This is good because it will act a cut-off man for the people in the Bronx and Westchester who want to enjoy the glory of the first location, which will be in the old Metro Theater on the Upper West Side. If they could just open one in Staten Island, Hoboken, and East New York, then Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens could keep the UWS location all to ourselves.

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Gay, Gay, Gay

In the fashion that has become typical of CNN and its anchors, Anderson Cooper has announced that he isgay longer after the entire world seemed to be pretty certain he was. To boot: CNN couldn't even get an exclusive on their own employee's sexuality.

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O'Connors closes for renovation

81-year-old bar O'Connor's has closed for renovations, according to Here's Park Slope. Given its proximity to Barclays Center and the strangely modern addition plunked onto the top of the building recently, it is this reporter's decided opinion that we have likely seen (or squinted to see) the last of this dimly lit bar as we once knew it.

Update: for those who would like the chance to mourn O'Connor's, two of their bartenders will be working the taps at Freddy's Bar & Backroom in South Slope on July 11th.

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Jay-Z's 40/40 Club has a 50/50 chance of serving alcohol at Barclays Center

Those figures aren't accurate, necessarily, but they do make for a good headline. Last week, the Barclays Center announced that Nets part-owner Jay-Z would be bringing an outpost of his popular 40/40 Club—currently only available in Atlantic City and original Manhattan flavors—and by Friday, Community Board 8 chimed in and said they would petition the State Liquor Authority, who has the final say in licensing of bars and nightclubs, to have earlier cut-off times for serving alcohol at the arena, which may included bottle service at 40/40 and may allow patrons to drink for up to an hour after events conclude. Get a full run-down of the mash-up over at the Atlantic Yards Report.

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2nd Avenue Subway: Mo' Money, Mo'... Wait, What?

Hell with it: the FTA just doled out the last of the T line's cash bonaza for the first phrase of New York's newest subway line. By the way, the T line was first envisioned in nineteen-friggin'-twenty-nine. It is projected to finish construction in 2016, just shy of the one-century mark. [via Curbed]