Results tagged “easternparkway”

Today is the 42nd annual West Indian American Day Carnival in Brooklyn, celebrating the cultures of the Caribbean. The colorful parade, estimated to be the city's largest with 3 million revelers, heads down Eastern Parkway, from Utica Avenue to Flatbush Avenue, and features costume bands, masqueraders, moko jumbies (stilt walkers!), floats and many more sights. The parade started at 8 a.m. and will go until 6 p.m., so you'll have plenty of opportunity to check it out.

            

Tens of thousands of colorfully costumed revelers partied down on Eastern Parkway from Crown Heights to Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn yesterday for the annual West Indian American Day Parade with millions of people lining the street.

       

Tomorrow is the annual West Indian American Day Carnival and Parade, which goes from Eastern Parkway and Utica Ave. to Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. The parade, which attracts millions of people, features floats, dancers and bands that celebrate the cultures of the Caribbean. The festivities are all day--here's a little history about the parade--and expect to see politicians there (last year, Mayor Bloomberg joked he could be considered West Indian because he spends so much time in Bermuda).

The family of Carol Simon is grieving after she was killed while walking on Eastern Parkway near Bedford around 5:30PM on Saturday. Simon, a 35-year-old nurse's assistant, had been on her way to take her son to swimming lessons when an argument between two men became violent and one pulled out a gun.

The pedestrian, bicyclist and sensible transportation advocacy group Transportation Alternatives has just launched a new website, Crash Maps: CrashStat 2.0, which maps intersections and streets where pedestrians and bicyclists have been hit by vehicles. It's an updated version of their previous map, and when the information is presented different depending on how closely you zoom into the map. For instance, at one level, it shows crashes (those with injuries as well as the fatal...

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian struck on 11th Ave. and West 43rd St. in Manhattan, a shooting on 21st St. in Queens, and a shooting on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. Veteran political reporter Gabe Pressman weighs in on the wave of mortgage foreclosures sweeping New York and finds overwhelming evidence of racism. A privately funded program to encourage lower income and minority students to take Advanced Placement courses will pay cash for...

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: there was a falling bricks collapse at East 128th St. and Madison Ave. in Manhattan, a stabbing on East 180th St. in the Bronx, and a homicide on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn.
• An interview with the creators of a multimedia presentation that represents a post-Atlantic Yards development Brooklyn.
• Visit upper Manhattan's Ft. Tryon Park tomorrow to go old school at the 2007 Medieval Festival around The Cloisters. Jesters, jousters, jugglers and others will be performing for all ages.
• Streetsblog notes that the Yankee Stadium scoreboard is encouraging mass transit as games sell out and Bronx parking is totally disrupted by the new stadium's construction.
• Visitors to Coney Island Creek in Brooklyn saw a rare sight yesterday: a wayward dolphin surfacing in the harbor. The sleek mammal hung out for a few hours before swimming safely back out to sea.
• Suffolk County police are reporting that they found an NYPD officer dead in her home with a gunshot wound to her chest. Her fiancé called in the incident.
• Passengers flying out of JFK may experience a decrease in delays with the FAA's plan to offer fewer flights out of the airport and charge people more money for them.
• Parents are upset that no one noticed that a Chinatown brothel near Pace HS was trying to engage their kids' healthy interest in sexual development with hookers.

Millions of people flocked to Eastern Parkway to celebrate the West Indian American Day Parade yesterday. This was the 40th year of the parade, which had floats, dancers, and bands interacting with the crowds. Many of the spectators wore or waved flags of native countries and enjoying delicious food.

One of the city's biggest parades of the year, if not the largest, is tomorrow: The annual West Indian American Day Carnival. With millions in attendance and colorful sights, the parade is a Brooklyn highlight.

September 3: West Indian–American Day Carnival

MOVIE: The new Hairspray has set up special Sing-A-Long screenings! They begin nationwide today, and there will be three right here in New York. If you don't like rowdy theaters, skip this one!

Yesterday, a five people were injured on Queens Boulevard at 47th Street when a Jeep Cherokee slammed into a Honda. The Jeep, which witnesses describe as trying to beat a red light, lost control and hit the Honda. The Honda, which had been making a turn onto Queens Boulevard, was crushed from the impact and then "plowed up onto the crowded sidewalk, pinning a 16-year-old boy against a lamppost."

Google Maps has upped its considerable offering to include "Street View," which offers views of the certain locations at the street-level imagery. The areas where you can see images are noted by blue lines on the map (click the "Street View" button). Manhattan is pretty covered and downtown Brooklyn is covered, but the Bronx, Queens and State Island views are pretty much limited by major roads. Below is 1 Centre Street; you can't get an image of City Hall, because the blue line doesn't go into City Hall Park. Here's what Eastern Parkway at the Brooklyn Library looks like and this is the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: unstable scaffolding at Manhattan's 265 West 37th St., a police car multi-vehicle accident at Thomas S. Boyland St. and Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, and a suspicious package at East 161st St. and Grand Concourse in the Bronx.
• How could the McGreevey saga get any more strange? Maybe if Jim McGreevey decided to join the priesthood. He told WNBC that he is entering a seminary to become an Episcopal priest.
• Politics makes strange bedfellows: the lobbyist most responsible for killing Bloomberg's beloved West Side Stadium project is now a major backer of his beloved Congestion Tax proposal.
• The sister of the Brooklyn woman accused of killing her newborn child by dumping it with the trash on her family's back porch is claiming she didn't know there was a still-alive infant in the pile of bloody towels her sister gave her to throw away.
• The New York Times features a slideshow of the United Palace theater, the 1930s baroque movie palace turned evangelical church hall turned current music venue.
• The Bancroft family rebuffs Rupert Murdoch's bid to buy the Wall Street Journal and other properties, and Dow Jones employees all exhale in a giant sigh of relief.
• The Dolan family is taking Cablevision private in a move certain to attract even more of the blame if the Knicks' woes continue next season.
• Meet New York City's new generation of preservationists.

Anyone who has attempted to walk or bike from one side of Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza to another knows that it can be a difficult journey, through which a constantly swiveling head is required to keep an eye on traffic coming from seemingly every direction. The above overhead image shows just a portion of the plaza where five different roads converge in an inner traffic loop, including Eastern Parkway and Prospect Park West, and the entire site is bisected by Flatbush Ave. It's also a destination for pedestrians and cyclists. Aside from the plaza's Memorial Arch and Bailey Fountain, Grand Army Plaza is the northwest entrance to Prospect Park, hosts a weekend greenmarket, and is the location of the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

THEATER: We could try to describe Neal Medlyn's Coming In The Air Tonight, but why bother when there’s this: “The show features a variety of Phil Collins and Genesis music and is about how Neal is starting to slowly fall apart due to how he's all torn up inside from getting his heart broken into tiny pieces. It is also about how Neal steals a lot of stuff from people. Like their belongings and house wares but also their thoughts and ideas…Over the course of which Neal gets progressively covered in more and more blood. The end. As if that weren't enough, it features special guest appearances by Kenny Mellman (of Kiki & Herb), Bridgett Everett (At Least It's Pink), and Adrienne Truscott (of the Wau Wau Sisters).” Read ye olde timey 2004 Gothamist interview with Medlyn. - John Del Signore

Lower East Side, by Joe Holmes.

ART: Running through March 7th at Gavin Brown's enterprise at Passerby is "Radical Living Papers". Some of the passionate writers of forty years ago will have their words become a part of this exhibit, which serves as a snapshot of the Vietnam War era and a history of counter-culture and alt press. Publications (all from the 60s and 70s) include Rolling Stone, The Black Panther, Freep, The Seed and the Los Angeles Free Press.

THEATER: Survey: Do women actually, um, enjoy Playgirl magazine? It’s a timeless question, and one that - according to former editor Ronnie Koenig - even haunted the boss herself. Her multimedia play Dirty Girl, now in previews, is about her “quest to find a woman who actually likes the beefcakes in the magazine.” The cast has been blogging and a book deal is in the works. (Brace yourself for The Devil Wears Nothing.) - John Del Signore

There is an incredible feature about British author Will Self visiting NYC in the NY Times Arts section. Why a feature and why so incredible? Well, Self decided to walk from JFK Airport to Manhattan - all 20 miles - and Times writer at large Charles McGrath and Times photographer Casey Kelbaugh went along for the journey, too. So it's incredibly brilliant and incredibly nuts at the same time.

The amNewYork cover story is about dangerous intersections in the city. Queens Boulevard, aka the "Boulevard of Death," has only had four fatalities in the past three years, but there have been a number of pedestrian injuries on Grand Concourse in the Bronx and at Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. Grand Concourse has had 35 pedestrian injuries during the same period, while Eastern Parkway had seven pedestrian deaths in 1999 and 2005, not including many pedestrian injuries.

Annie Leibovitz photographs will be traveling the world soon, and are on view at the Brooklyn Museum starting this week.

On the messageboards of Brooklynian, there's a crazy account of foiling a mugger. Rhodamime, a self-described "large guy" who "people rarely fuck with me (knock on wood)," was at Eastern Parkway and Bedford on Sunday (yes, taking pictures for a blog) when he got jumped:

The guy got me in a headlock from behind, pressed a screwdriver against the back of my neck and repeatedly demanded "Lemme get that camera, motherfucker, lemme get that camera" as I kept walking, struggling a bit to push away from him and get out of the shadows and into the sunnier part of the sidewalk right across Bedford from that giant bustling carwash where someone was bound to see us, in case things got more serious.

Continue reading "Sunday Spent Fighting Off a Mugger"

"Bootyful Day" on Eastern Parkway, by Jack Cracker. Lots more great Carib Day shots at Flickr. Also good ones at 423 Smith.

It looks like a gorgeous day for the West Indian Day Carnival's parade today. The Brooklyn parade is apparently the city's largest parade, with 2 million spectators, but what's especially awesome about it is that the spectators really feel like they are part of the parade. The parade starts at Eastern Parkway and Utica, and then goes west on Eastern Parkway to Grand Army Plaza, so expect lots of street closures and celebrating! And take pictures - the costumes are amazing.

-- According to NY1, the owners of the cars that got crushed in Inwood will get paid for them-- including the removal.

That putrid smell coming from Eastern Parkway and Prospect Park? It might just be the Amorphophallus titanum blooming at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The titan arum, aka the "corpse flower," is one of the world's largest flowers, and the BBG has been carefully cultivating its own for the past ten years. The plant, named "Baby," is set to bloom sometime this week - it seems that the flowery part (the "spathe") will unfurl for two days.

MUSIC: Propect Park. TV on the Radio. Matt Pond PA. Voxtrot. Free. Need we say more? Bring a blanket.

Yesterday, there was a press conference to herald the formation of the Grand Army Plaza Coalition, which will help improve Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza for pedestrians. According to Transportation Alternatives, is coalition is "made up of civic associations such as the Park Slope Civic Council, the Prospect Heights Parents Association and the Eastern Parkway Cultural Row Association...cultural institutions such as the Prospect Park Alliance, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Heart of Brooklyn Cultural Partnership...advocacy organizations such as the Project for Public Spaces, Transportation Alternatives, and the Open Planning Project." Jan Gehl, an urban quality consultant from Denmark, will be "re-envisioning" the plaza, told NY1, "These great opportunities have completely been cut off in little islands where people, like Eskimos, have to jump from one ice floe to another. The middle here where you have fountains and other nice things, there are no one."

Yes, we are aware of widespread reports of a line of 56 Mitzvah Tanks driving slowly through Manhattan. At first, we thought the Hasidim had decided to topple the godless Bloomberg administration in a bloody coup, but then we got this press release from Lubavitcher World Headquarters: