
- Di Fara's pizza still isn't open, a week after it closed by health inspectors. Maybe all the mouse droppings have something to do with that?
- And to top off a very bad week for the De Marco clan, their other pizzaria, recently the scene of the Greenwich Village shooting, announced that it will be closing for good.
- Still no answer on the cause of the mysterious, high-pitched ringing noise in Brooklyn Heights. Our theory is that it's the sound of the deflating real estate market.
- The city is trying to put the kibosh on a federal probe into 9/11 health issues-- city officials are scared it could lead to more lawsuits.
- OTBKB continues to cover the controversy around PS282 in Park Slope, where parents are trying to prevent the Khalil Ghibran International Academy from taking space.
- Huge surprise: costs for the new Second Avenue subway are already starting to rise well past projections. The current culprit: $54 million extra to buy buildings that will have to be torn down adjacent to the line.
- OMG! Jonathan Taylor Thomas has been spotted at Columbia. Wait, he's not that kid from 7th Heaven! Total let down.
- The action at Uncivil Servants, the site that tracks bureaucratic parking abuse, has turned downright uncivil.
Forty-Second Street, by Joe Holmes.




i'm sick of the spoiled parents of park slope
I don't know what's funnier - Jake's take on the B'lyn Heights phantom sound (bravo!) or that someone created a blog to document it.
I'm pretty sensitive to noise, but it would have to be chronic and pretty fucking annoying for me to call the police multiple times.
The 'victim' should try recording it. I'd love to know what it sounds like.
"OTBKB?"
Did the woman pictured pose for that photograph? It seems a bit rude of you to post it, if not.
I totally work near columbia. Come into my coffee shop.
I love you, Jonathan.
I can't believe I just said that.
great photo!
FYI Kalil Gibran was a Catholic, and his most famoud work, “The Prophet”, was about Abdul Baha, who founded The Bahai Faith…and who was persecuted by Muslims.
If Arabs are who these people who oppose this school fear, then remember the quote from Sun Tzu (The Art of War): “Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles…”
I would prefer we teach our children about Arabic culture and teach them Arabic language so they may be better prepared for the future**. Didn’t many of our problems that resulted in 9/11 come from the fact that our U.S. Intelligence Agencies and our government had too few Arabic language speakers working for them and no one to translate the information they were getting? Not enough Arabic speakers for other intelligence positions? Maybe this is a really smart move on the part of our school system.
Who said this school would be only for Arabic and/or Muslim children. Truthfully, with a name like "Kalil Gibran International Academy", I don't know that any hard core Muslim families would send their kids to the school. Baha was not well liked nor well treated in his native Persia or by The Muslims, and the school is not called "Mohammed The Prophet International Academy". Mohammed is not 'The Prophet' Kalil Gibran was writing about.
** And maybe if we have a future generation with a little more knowledge of The Middle East than the present one, then perhaps in the future, our government won't have such a terribly screwed up foreign policy.