Brooklyn dog owners have been at a loss about where to bring their furry friends in the borough, and some new signs reminding them they're not welcome in Prospect Park have locals in an uproar. The Brooklyn Paper reports that the new signs, which states "Dogs are permitted only on the paths around the ballfields," have locals thinking "park officials are arbitrarily enforcing regulations and unfairly targeting their four-legged friends." If your pup is found......

The Associated Press is responsible for the latest skeptical report on the future of developer Bruce Ratner's embattled $4 billion plan to build a Nets arena, office towers and thousands of apartments in Brooklyn. The article paints a bleak picture of the project, noting that in addition to the two ongoing lawsuits Ratner has been fighting off for years, the Wall Street bust has made investors just a wee bit apprehensive. The arena's groundbreaking was......

Yesterday, hundreds gathered at a church in Whitestone, Queens to say good-bye to George Dillman, the 26-year-old Con Ed worker who was killed on the job last week. Dillman had been splicing cables in a manhole in Brooklyn and was trapped when an explosion occurred. Newsday reports that Dillman was "dressed in denim bearing the utility logo" that he "proudly wore." His fiancee (who he planned to marry next year), sisters, and the Hicksville fire......

Ella Taliercio moved into her Park Slope two-bedroom in 1958, raised three kids there (burying two of them in Green-Wood Cemetery), and still works in the neighborhood. But now she and her husband have got to go because the fancy Berkeley Carroll School, which owns her building, wants to turn it into classrooms. The apartment is rent-stabilized—Taliercio paid $33 a month in '58 and $147.08 today—but Berkeley Carroll has non-profit status, enabling the school to......

Hey South Williamsburg residents, a heads up courtesy of The NY Post today: the gangs are still around, even if you haven't spotted a machete lately. The paper reports that the neighborhood has got its own "offshoot of the notorious Bloods gang" and they're going up against the machete-wielding Trinitarios. The Pretty Boy Goonies (aka the PBGs) are about a dozen strong, and allegedly have a continuous turf war going on with the Trinitarios in......

Retired school principal Elizabeth Mulvihill moved from Long Island to South Williamsburg a couple years ago because she's old and doesn't want to drive anymore. So she dropped $1,040,000 on a two-bedroom apartment in Schaefer Landing, a development on the East River that opened in 2006. At first life was grand, with the New York Water Taxi whisking her away to Manhattan for doctor appointments in 15 minutes. But then the boats stopped running in......

Photo courtesy Seg Fault. Artist Olafur Eliasson's ambitious and controversial waterfall installation ends today after a 15-week run, leaving sick trees, irritated residents, and a collective 'meh,' in its wake. Last week tests conducted by Cornell University concluded that the soil at the River Café, just downwind from the Brooklyn Bridge waterfall, had salt levels almost 10 times higher than normal. “Those levels are amazingly high, and if that level of salt was in......

Fire officials say a smoke detector had been unplugged and its battery removed in the Brooklyn apartment where a fire left a 33-year-old man and his 12-year-old nephew dead early yesterday morning. It was second fatal fire from the weekend, after a fire in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood claimed the lives of five family members. Guyanese immigrants Shawn Monderson and nephew Ceimon Fraser had just moved into the apartment last week, because it was closer to......

WNBC reports that the NYPD shut down a drug operation in a Brooklyn meat market--Sikorski Meat Market on Manhattan Avenue. The police had caught the drug dealers on wiretaps referring to "hot kielbasa," and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly explained, "the ‘kielbasa’ was really cocaine, and thanks to outstanding police work it’s no longer available at the meat market." More details: Livery cabs were used for delivering the shipments and "Polish and Dominican crews teamed up......

Yesterday, a routine Con Ed visit to a manhole at Euclid and Sutter Avenues in Brooklyn turned deadly when an explosion occurred with one worker trapped inside. George Dillman, 26, was killed as he was splicing cables. A witness, Craig Fullmore, told the NY Times that black smoke "started pouring out of the manhole and a buzzing could be heard." Dillman's partner, Craig Penney, was above ground and tried to help Dillman by lowering a......

Around 12:30 p.m., a manhole in East New York exploded with a Con Ed worker inside. The incident occurred at Euclid and Sutter Avenues, and there was heavy smoke at the scene. The Fire Department put out the fire quickly. NY1 reports that one worker were removed while the other is still trapped and "there is no word on the extent of the injuries." Additionally Con Ed crews are at the scene (the manhole needs......

You know those sad little plastic cups of loose change at the supermarket checkout you never drop money into because, what, now you have to tip grocery baggers too? For some baggers, that's their only source of income. Yesterday two executives at an Associated supermarket in Bushwick—which workplace justice activists have been protesting against for years—were arrested on charges that they've cheated workers out of more than $300,000 and falsified business records to cover their......

Early yesterday morning, an off-duty sanitation worker was killed outside of his Crown Heights apartment building. Edward Hunt, 32, was fatally shot around 5:30 a.m. on Lincoln Place. He was headed to work, as his shift at the Department of Sanitation was between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m., and was killed when he got out of his car to close the driveway gate. The Daily News reports that police are trying to determine why Hunt......

Are the evicted squatters of Orient Avenue lashing out? One local wrote in to FreeWilliamsburg to describe their terrifying experience on the street (where parts of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were filmed, and where Michel Gondry himself just moved). She reports back: "On Thursday evening at 7:30 pm I was walking home along Orient Ave., listening to my iPod, when I was approached by a guy with a steak knife in his hand.......

Yesterday we got a rare opportunity to take a look inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard, during the annual Brooklyn Navy Yard Arts Open Studios day. Dozens of artists opened their workspaces to the public, and in between visits, we got to snap some pictures of the southern three-quarters of the yard. With over 300 acres, many streets, and a huge number of buildings of all shapes and sizes, it's hard to get a handle on......

Aging hipsters, have you been wondering what your next move will be when you outgrow your skinny jeans and youthful neighborhood? The Brooklyn Paper gathers you'll probably still be "too cool" for the Brownstone set, but point you over to the micro-neighborhood of Greenwood Heights, "tucked between overpriced Park Slope and undervisited Sunset Park." Located just below the future hipster resting place hotspot of Green-Wood Cemetery, it's currently a growing community of "creatives, freelancers and......

Roadside tacos have become a common Williamsburg fixture, with Endless Summer parked on Bedford, El Diablo behind Union Pool, and the Authentic Mexican taco truck on the southern edge of McCarren Park. Now La Superior gives Mexican road food a stationary kitchen, dishing out teeny tacos high on flavor, homemade salsas, gorditas and flautas—both staples of the street—and much more. Portions are tapas-sized, so order extra, and start with the ezquietes: roasted corn kernels cooked......

Ah DUMBO, the little neighborhood that could. The NY Post takes its turn at looking at "the priciest Brooklyn neighborhood," and the pioneers who purchased real estate there before anyone else. In 1998, before the average price per sq-ft was $917, Craig Burd bought a place when there was "no grocery store, no drugstore, no dry cleaners, nothing" (now there's like one of each of those things!). First Burd spent $260,000 on a 1,260-sq-ft abode......

The police arrested Tiana Browne, 15, in connection with the murder of her 16-year-old cousin. On Tuesday afternoon, Browne's aunt Marva Braithwaite returned to her home in Crown Heights to find her daughter Shannon stabbed to death. Browne was found in her cousin's clothes and sneakers, apparently taken after she stabbed her 18 times. Browne also took Shannon's MP3 player, cell phone, and camera. The Daily News reports that "As a good Christian woman, Marva......

Getting inspiration from the Ghost Bikes around town, a 26-year-old female artist has hung a handmade sign on the corner of Meserole and Humboldt in Brooklyn. This is her first piece of street art, and it reads: "A woman was raped by a stranger on this block. Please protect your friends, lover, sister, daughter, mother, grandmother, niece, cousin, neighbor, the woman you hear call for help late one night. 1 in 6 women in......

The family of the disturbed man who fell to his death after being Tasered by police will likely sue the city, surprising no one. Famous civil rights lawyer Ron Kuby is now representing relatives of Iman Morales, whose funeral service was held yesterday in Greenwich Village. Kuby tells the Daily News, "The first thing the family is focused on is burying their son. But the city has already acknowledged what any idiot on Earth could......

A woman returned to her Crown Heights home and made a devastating discovery: Her 16-year-old daughter was lying in a pool of blood, stabbed in the face and neck. Shannon Braithwaite was pronounced dead at the scene yesterday afternoon. WCBS 2 reports the teen, who had the day off for the Rosh Hashanah holiday, was waiting for her mother to return home, "so they could cash her final paycheck from her summer job at the......

Last night, Shariffe (also known as Lamont) Peebles was shot in the back and left arm. The 13-year-old had been walking home with friends near P.S. 298 when someone in another group opened fire on Glenmore Avenue in Brownsville--as many as five shots were heard. His mother told the Daily News her son didn't know his attackers and aunt Pam Harris said, "They shot him without a motive." Harris also told the Post that her......

Funeral services will be held Thursday for the disturbed man who fell to his death last week after being Tasered by police. The NYPD's entire Emergency Service Unit was retrained today on proper Taser procedures, although police Commissioner Ray Kelly says the man's death was a mistake in judgment, not a product of poor training. He tells Newsday, "We think the training they receive is sound. We're human beings. Sometimes we make mistakes. Reporters make......

Has the saga of the Eternal Sunshine crackhouse ended? The abandoned residence, used in the Michel Gondry film and located at 59 Orient Avenue in Williamsburg, had recently turned into a squatter's paradise--something neighbors were not too keen on. The Brooklyn Paper is reporting that the druggies and prostitutes residing in the house and lurking in neighbor's yards, have departed. The paper is patting themselves on the back, saying that once their "reporter questioned building......

The police released a sketch of a man claiming to be a Department of Environmental Protection inspector as he shakes down elderly people in Brooklyn. The suspect has apparently struck six times since August, telling victims that he will shut off their water if they do not pay. He is described by NY1 as a "dark-skinned man in his 40s or 50s," 5'6"-6' tall who wears a button-down shirt, tie, dress pants and a black......

Marina Gavrielova's husband makes about $98,000 a year as a limo driver and owns a nice house in Jamaica, Queens, where the couple resides with their three children. But according to prosecutors, Gavrielova duped various city, state and federal agencies into believing she was single mom living in Brooklyn, earning just $200 a week at a nail salon. With her husband posing as her landlord, Gavrielova, a licensed cosmetologist, allegedly bilked the system out of......

Our sources are telling us that Apple has purchased the building that currently houses the Salvation Army located at 176 Bedford Avenue (on the corner of Bedford and North 7th) in Williamsburg. Rumors have been floating around for a year as to where the company may set up shop in Brooklyn (with most guessing it would be Downtown), and more recently it's been rumored that it would be in the new Edge complex. In the......

Police have arrested a homeless man for allegedly raping a woman in her Bay Ridge apartment last week. The suspect is identified as Ralph DiMassi, 39, who, according to the Post, is on parole for robbery. The Post adds, DiMassi "was ratted out by a pal arrested on Staten Island for shoplifting." The friend said DiMassi "did something bad to a woman in Bay Ridge last week." The victim had been hit with a screwdriver......

The police released a statement saying that the Tasering of a Brooklyn man who then fatally fell from a ledge seemed to have broken NYPD guidelines. Chief department spokesman Paul J. Browne said an airbag had been called to catch the victim, Inman Morales, but the lieutenant who issued the order for another officer to stun the man did not wait. Morales, 35, who was apparently distraught as he stood naked on his fire escape......