Rendering of proposed garage garden courtesy Joralemon Realty. After stalling their landlord’s attempt to build a parking garage in their courtyard next to the BQE two years ago, tenants and other community activists are still fighting the proposal. Built in 1890, the Riverside Apartments at Columbia Place and Joralemon Street in Brooklyn Heights were regarded as a great advancement in tenement living. Located near the Columbia Place docks, the nine buildings were unique for their......

Yesterday afternoon, a fire broke out at the Gristedes at Henry and Clark Streets in Brooklyn Heights. All shoppers and employees were evacuated and there were no reported injuries. According to Brooklyn Heights Blog, there was an electrical malfunction in the deli section. McBrooklyn found out from a police officer, "what the fire didn't get, the water from the Fire Department did" (the basement is flooded). There's also a large apartment building attached to the......

Last month The Brooklyn Eagle had a report on how Brooklyn has been sucking the creative lifeblood right out of Manhattan. In recent years Brooklyn has experienced a 33.2 percent increase in the number of self-employed creatives, while Manhattan’s growth during the same period was a mere 6.5 percent. On Wednesday the Center for an Urban Future held a forum addressing the impact of Brooklyn’s growing cluster of self-employed creative freelancers on the borough’s economy.......

Gorilla, by jenna bascom at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: A construction accident at 32 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, shots fired over the air at Meeker Ave & Frost St in Brooklyn, and an evidence search at 50-30 Broadway and 50 St in Queens Brooklyn Heights Blog has a great picture of the front entrance The Moxie Spot, a still-to-be-opened establishment on Atlantic Ave. The door comes in three sizes: adult, child, and pet.......

Brooklyn Heights residents may have thought their neighborhood had earned a respite from anti-Semitic graffiti after the arrest and confession of Ivaylo Ivanov, who committed and then confessed to a string of vandalism incidents last year that left Brooklyn Heights peppered with swastikas in spray paint. But last week another wall was defaced with a symbol of hate. The incident involved a a brick apartment building at 22 Remsen St. The swastika was first spotted......

Map from The Brooklyn Paper The Brooklyn Paper has an interesting map showing how Brooklyn's donations to Clinton and Obama have changed over the past year. Gersh Kuntzman writes, "Just-released campaign finance filings that cover the second half of 2007 show that Obama made strong inroads into 'Hillary Country,' specifically turning Brooklyn Heights, Bay Ridge, Bushwick, Canarsie and Greenpoint from Hillary red to Barack blue." In total for Brooklyn, Obama has raised almost $600,000,......

When you're found to be making pipe bombs amidst an apartment arsenal of weapons and then confess to painting swastikas in your Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, expect the book to be thrown at you repeatedly. Ivaylo Ivanov was charged with over 100 criminal counts for his activities. Found in the Remsen Street apartment he shared with AIDS researcher Dr. Michael Clatts (they had their own living spaces in the duplex) were a "sniper rifle, machine gun,......

The story of Ivaylo Ivanov just gets more and more strange. First, he calls the cops saying that he was shot in the hand only to admit that he shot himself. Next, the police investigate the situation only to find a cache of assorted weapons and pipe bombs at Ivanov's residence. Now the 31-year-old ex-con admits to defacing Brooklyn Heights with swastikas last year. Ivanov, who his lawyer says is Jewish, claims that the pipe......

Above right image from WNBC, below photograph of 58 Remsen Street from the Daily News Yesterday we mentioned that a cache of weapons - including a number of pipe bombs - were found in a Remsen Street apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Now it turns out the apartment was shared by an ex-con and a professor at Columbia University! Ivaylo Ivanov got the attention of police around 1AM yesterday morning, claiming he was shot in......

Photograph of form the Brooklyn Heights Promenade by wallyg on flickr After a man arrived at a Brooklyn hospital with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gun shot wound to his hand, police investigating the incident discovered a cache of weapons, including multiple pipe bombs, in his Brooklyn Heights apartment. Police could not rule out terrorism as they confiscated weapons and possibly explosive devices from the man's apartment on Remsen St. And they weren't......

Danish–Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson will work with the Public Art Fund – a nonprofit that brought Anish Kapoor's "Sky Mirror" and Jeff Koons's "Puppy," to Rockefeller Center – to bring freestanding waterfalls to the East River this spring. The project will be officially announced tomorrow, but a source tells the Sun that the waterfalls will rise 60 to 70 feet above the water, which is more than half as high as the Brooklyn Bridge roadway.......

Brooklyn bars and restaurants rejoice: you can once again put your sandwich board signs on the sidewalk without fear of tickets from the Department of Sanitation! Your free and effective method for seducing customers with daily specials and clever jokes about drinking the pain away is now perfectly legal. Of course, this does not give you permission to lose all restraint and play music or let people dance. Last fall a crackdown on the signs......

Today is a citywide "Day Out Against Hate." City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the Reverend Al Sharpton have spearheaded the event, which was prompted by a number of disturbing hate crime incidents, from swastikas in Brooklyn Heights to a noose found at the Columbia University campus. The Politicker was at one of the events this morning, where Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz "suggested, rather strongly, that city public school students be required to make......

ART: Tonight a group of artists take what one would normally put in the paper shredder, and look at it in a whole new light. The Dotted Line "presents work that assumes the form of official documents ubiquitous to everyday life. The participating artists seek to imbue these commonplace documents with new meaning and to consider the implications of those moments when we are asked to sign along a dotted line." Open through December 21st.......

The person who hung a noose on the doorknob of a professor at Columbia's Teachers College the other week seems to have been a catalyst for NY metro idiots, who have been been copy-cating or otherwise emulating public displays of hateful symbols. Most recently, Parks Dept. employees were appalled to find 10" nooses wrapped around the necks of their clothes when they opened their work lockers in Queens Saturday morning. Kenny Clark and Michelle Rouse-Williams......

The Reverend Al Sharpton, speaking out against the beating a black man in Staten Island, announced that he will organize a protest march in the next few weeks. He said, "New York is becoming worse than Louisiana. We're going to Staten Island, Jena, Washington - and we're going to bring out numbers like you've never seen before." On Tuesday, Skylar McCormack, who is black and had been with some white friends, was attacked by......

Yesterday we visited the New York Transit Museum’s new exhibit “Show Me the Money: From the Turnstile to the Bank" which details the fare cycle, from buying the fare instrument to the sorting of the money. If you haven’t been to the museum, it is located in a disused 1930s vintage IND subway station in Brooklyn Heights. The new exhibit was perfectly placed in the museum, next to the display of vintage turnstiles and......

The latest crowdsourcing project from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show asked people to find out prices for a quart of milk, a head of iceberg lettuce, and a 6-pack (bottles) of 12-ounce Budweiser. Listeners of his show found locations around the area, reported back with their results, and it's all put in a handy map. Most expensive milk: Pathmark in Gowanus and Garden of Eden in Brooklyn Heights at $2.99 Least expensive milk: Fine Fare......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a burn victim on East 3rd St. and Beverly Rd. in Brooklyn, a shooting on Francis Lewis Blvd. in Queens, and a burn victim on 103rd St. and Park Ave. in Manhattan. Reps for the New York Philharmonic are investigating a planned appearance of the symphony in North Korea. Those excited by news of a George Clooney sighting in Brooklyn Heights yesterday can just go ahead and get giddy......

While last week was definitely Long Island City week on Gossip Girl, this week's version of the "exclusive" Upper East Side dropped squarely in Brooklyn Heights. The opening scene, featuring some sort of perverted choir singing Fergie's "Glamorous," was shot on location at Packer Collegiate Institute's 3rd floor chapel. The gang revisited Packer later on at the contrived 'Ivy' reception, which went down in the school's backyard garden. From there, the gang didn't have to......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a confined space rescue at The Beverly Hotel on 50th St. in Manhattan, a pedestrian struck on West 145th St. and 7th Ave. in Manhattan, and a fall victim on West 24th St. in Manhattan. Former NY State chief judge Sol Wachtler got his law license back, 14 years after pleading guilty to being a stalker. Some Jewish leaders are angry that Mayor Bloomberg met with London mayor Ken......

Yesterday, Police Comissioner Ray Kelly visited the synagogues and other buildings to denounce the numerous swastikas and other anti-Semitic messages found covering the Brooklyn Heights last week. And on Saturday, swastikas were found painted outside a synagogue in Bensonhurst. The Sun reports that apparently a Holocaust survivor found swastikas outside a Bensonhurst synagogue; Rabbi Baruch Krupnik said, "He's really shaken. We can't tell you that it's unexpected after the Brooklyn Heights incident." So far, Kelly......

The NYPD's Hate Crime Unit is investigating numerous instances of anti-Semitic vandalism in Brooklyn Heights. Monday evening, swastikas were found painted on two synagogues, three buildings, and two cars, but by yesterday afternoon, over a dozen other markings were discovered (one brownstone also had an SS logo painted on it), as well as flyers with swastikas and slurs on cars' windshields. Remsen, Columbia, and Joralemon Streets, the Palmetto Playground and Sidney Place were vandalized. The......

Last night, two synagogues, three buildings, and a two cars in Brooklyn Heights were found with swastikas painted on them. The NYPD is investigating the incidents as bias crimes, and this comes after last Friday's discovery of swastikas and other graffiti on a Williamsburg yeshiva's bus. The Brooklyn Heights Synagogue and Chabad, both on Remsen Street, had swastikas on their staircases, while the apartment building at 45 Columbia Place had a four-foot swastika with "Kill......

According to the Post, the Parks Department has confirmed that the "Floating Pool Lady" will be towed to another borough next summer. About 70,000 swimmers will have enjoyed the barge-borne pool on the Brooklyn Heights waterfront by the time it closes on Labor Day. Having opened during the rainstorms of July 4, it became a popular attraction reminiscent of the Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City. Its creator also sees it as a revival......

Last night Barack Obama came to Brooklyn to join supporters and community members at The Marriott Hotel on Adams Street. The event was set to begin at 7pm, and for hours prior to that (even after doors opened at 5:30) crowds filled the streets around the hotel - many waiting to get a glimpse of the candidate and many just waiting to get in! It turns out the event was oversold, a reader tells us......

Maybe there is good reason to try to stay off Forbes' list of 400 wealthiest people. The Manhattan DA's office charged a 24-year-old Russian national with an elaborate identity ring that targeted rich Americans. Igor Klopov recruited people in the U.S., via sites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com, to help him and he managed to steal $1.5 million from four people. But Klopov was nabbed during an attempt to take $10.7 million from Anthony Pritzker, of......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a police-involved shooting at 149th St. and 3rd Ave. in the Bronx, an attempted sexual assault on 55th St. in Brooklyn, and a bank robbery on West 52nd St. between 7th and 8th Aves. Kenneth Eng, noted earlier this year for his controversial essay "Why I Hate Blacks", was arrested again by the Feds shortly after pleading guilty to harrassing his neighbors and threatening them with a hammer. The......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a vessel in distress off Rikers Island in the East River, a dead body found in the East River off Roosevelt Island and Queens, and an industrial accident on 52nd Ave. in Queens. Confirming recent speculation, The New York Times is cancelling its TimesSelect initiative, in which people subscribed to read a number of columnists and other special online content. Mayor Bloomberg signed autographs, greeted courtroom personnel, and posed......

Yesterday we got a tip that Polytechnic University posted an emergency message on their site. Later it became clear in an update to the tipster that "NYU is taking over Polytechnic, which will become Polytechnic Institute of New York University." Apparently NYU's President Sexton has been wanting an engineering program for a while. In October 2004 The NY Times published an article about the possible alliance, mentioning the closure of the engineering program at NYU......