Well, we had a good run. Brooklyn commuters who've been enjoying a free ride on the IKEA Water Taxi that runs between Red Hook and Wall Street are going to have to make some adjustments: The Swedish retailer will be reducing hours on the service, which since June has been running every 20 minutes from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Starting October 1st, the boat will run every 40 minutes, from 1 p.m. to 9......

So that Red Hook IKEA seems to be doing quite well, thank you. McBrooklyn has an amusing account of check-out lines lasting well over an hour at the Swedish retailer this weekend: "We were so far back there was no way to even tell if we were in a cash only line or a credit and debit only line. People were getting pretty grumpy, let me tell you. A woman jumped ahead of us in......

The Times took Red Hook's temperature this weekend, almost two months after the dreaded IKEA -- the first in New York City -- reared its ugly blue head on the Brooklyn waterfront. And contrary to all the hand-wringing, the paper finds that the big box "turned out to be less annoying than people thought." A worker at the Van Brunt Street cafe Baked says, "Everyone was talking about it before. But now, no one......

Last week there was considerable ebullience voiced by Red Hook residents who were taking full advantage of the free shuttle buses and Water Taxi service provide by IKEA. This weekend many were looking forward to “hacking” free Water Taxi to get to the food vendors’ first weekend back at the Red Hook ball fields. An IKEA rep even told the Daily News, “We are thrilled that we are providing free transit options for the......

The free coach style shuttle buses that deliver riders from two Brooklyn subway stops to the new Red Hook IKEA are filling up with passengers who never set foot inside the Swedish retailer. "I'd say before one o'clock, about half the riders from Smith and Ninth Street don't even go into IKEA," one bus driver told the Daily News, adding that many riders are going to a local methodone clinic for treatment. And, as predicted,......

Red Hook seemed eerily quiet on Saturday, as we checked out the traffic flow on Columbia and Van Brunt Streets on the West Side of the neighborhood. Any prediction of overwhelming weekend gridlock seemed not to be panning out-- except for one Ikea bus ferrying people from Boro Hall, the scene seemed as quiet and bucolic as any summer weekend in years past. Indeed, maybe even quieter, as people who'd normally be out at......

Due to an unexpected increase in shipping through the Port of New York, the city now lacks the necessary number of dry-docks to service barges in need of maintenance, according to a recently released study by the SUNY Maritime College. The findings were announced by the city's Economic Development Corp. just as the new IKEA in Red Hook opened. The parking lot at IKEA was controversially built over one of the city’s last remaining “graving docks,” which can accommodate larger ships....

The exhaustive coverage of today's Red Hook Ikea opening here and elsewhere around the web was the inevitable climax of a perfect storm of storylines: Rough-edged neighborhood with a lot of history gets another turn in the spotlight – or are those cross hairs? Has Red Hook now sacrificed too much of the charm that made its sleepy waterfront streets so appealing to artists? Or is the arrival of big retail business just what the......

While shoppers' enthusiasm for the new Brooklyn Ikea has been well documented today, opinion was decidedly mixed among residents who skipped the festivities at the new 346,000 square foot store. Jennifer Cohen, a Red Hook resident for the last eight years, voiced the most common concern, that the neighborhood's streets and buses would be overly taxed by thousands of shoppers descending on the store, which is far from the subway. According to Cohen, the B61......

Six of the twenty-two acres of land that Ikea occupies in Red Hook have been turned into a park and waterfront esplanade, built by the big box retailer as a deal-sweetener for their wary neighbors. You don’t need to buy any Swedish meatballs to hang out by the water, and the free Water Taxi service arranged by Ikea might make it an appealing weekend destination in its own right. But shoppers should be aware that......

After nearly six years of controversy, construction, worry and anticipation, the first Ikea in New York City opened in Red Hook, Brooklyn this morning. By the time the doors opened at 9:00 a.m., hundreds of shoppers had gathered on line outside the popular Swedish retailer. A festive atmosphere prevailed without any of the community dissent that had threatened to stymie the project from the beginning. Instead of demonstrations from neighbors worried about the incoming wave......

Opening tomorrow as a counterpoint to the Red Hook Ikea kick-off is a photography exhibit at the Brooklyn Public Library that chronicles the disappearing industrial sites along Brooklyn's waterfront. Called "Twilight on the Waterfront: Brooklyn's Vanishing Industrial Heritage," the photographs are the work of Nathan Kensinger, who has compiled an impressive body of work over the last five years by sneaking into dilapidated properties around Brooklyn. The series vividly documents the accidental beauty of decaying......

Full map here. As the world waits in hushed anticipation for tomorrow morning’s grand opening of the Red Hook Ikea, many eager shoppers are agonizing over the best route in and out of the relatively inaccessible neighborhood. So Ikea has been making a big effort to lure customers and appease locals fretting about the traffic with some complimentary transportation alternatives:New York Water Taxi is operating free ferry service from Pier 11 in Manhattan directly to......

With the 346,000 square foot Ikea poised to open in Red Hook Wednesday morning, the Times fans out into the neighborhood to measure public opinion about the big Swedish store, which has come into being after vocal opposition from some local residents. The most commonly-voiced concern is about the traffic that will clog Red Hook’s streets; estimates vary from a few thousand visitors on weekdays to more than 14,000 cars a day on weekends. Some......

Starting Monday morning at 9 a.m., excited consumers will begin camping out in the parking lot under the Red Hook IKEA in anticipation of the new store’s ribbon cutting – or rather, log cutting, which is how Swedes open something according to Curbed. Now why would anyone be crazy enough to camp out for days just to shop at a store that anyone will be able visit to whenever they want? Besides walking away......

Blogger Flatbush Pigeon recently noted the curious case of Pomegranate, the enormous new supermarket currently in its final stages of construction in Flatbush/Midwood. The food store takes the place of a kosher bakery, another store, and an auto repair shop. Giant pomegranates loom over Coney Island Avenue and Avenue L. The picture here belies the sheer size of the place—just take a look at Flatbush Pigeon’s photos. The blogger notes that “this isn't going to......

Red Hook residents who used to party at Lillie’s bar on Beard Street may be surprised to discover that right next door to the decadent nightspot was an elegant restaurant waiting to be born. What was previously storage space has been thoroughly overhauled into a French bistro called La Bouillabaisse, which owner Neil Ganic (Petite Crevette) hopes to have running in time for the June 18th grand opening of IKEA, conveniently located across the street.......

D.W. Young's A Hole in a Fence, the documentary which focuses on Red Hook, has been floating around for a while and is coming back to town this week -- just before the new IKEA opens its doors in the 'nabe. In 46 minutes Young explores the hurdles the neighborhood is facing and "the complicated issues of development, class and identity facing the city's most populous borough." Young urban farmers and graffiti writers are followed......

Roughly six years have passed since the controversial Red Hook IKEA was first proposed, further dividing an already fragmented community. Next month the 346,000-square-foot store, the first IKEA in New York City, will finally open on Beard Street, and, you guessed it, the community is still divided. John McGettrick, co-chair of the Red Hook Civic Alliance, insists IKEA is a waste of 22 acres of prime waterfront property and will create a traffic nightmare on......

In June of 2007, Mark Malkoff made news with his attempt, documented in a funny video, to patronize each of Manhattan’s 171 Starbucks in a single day. Now the Comedy Central staffer is back in the press with his latest quirky idea; he spent last week living in the Paramus, New Jersey IKEA to avoid his fumigated apartment. The strange experiment has been humorously documented on his website; we got him on the phone in......

The guy who spent $369.14 in a quixotic attempt to patronize each of Manhattan’s 171 Starbucks in a single day is back in the news, and this time it’s the corporate giant that’s helping him out. Comic Mark Malkoff will be living at the Paramus, NJ IKEA for the next week while his apartment is fumigated. And of course, he’ll be documenting every waking moment. Here’s the first installment: We seem to recall entire weeks......