In the wake of a series of sexual assaults on women around South Brooklyn, a variety of community-led defenses have sprung up: volunteers on foot and bike have offered to escort women home, and self-defense classes are a hot commodity. So it's only natural that dogs should be the next level of protection, even if they're not exactly Cujo material. more ›

The continuing hell that is F and G train service around Brownstone Brooklyn continues, starting this weekend lasting into, basically, eternity. So if you've ever wanted to explore Windsor Terrace with the magic public transportation, do it now, while you still can. more ›

The Heartland Brewery bartender who was arrested and accused of being one of the suspects terrorizing and sexually assaulting Brooklyn woman—only for a witness to recant identifying him in a lineup—tells the Post, "This was torture... I don’t know how to deal with the situation, I’m just trying to clear my name. I’m 100 percent innocent." more ›

The guy arrested for allegedly grabbing a woman's breasts, exposing himself and masturbating in Park Slope's 7th Avenue subway station has gotten off. On Monday morning Joshua Flecha, a bartender at the Heartland Brewery in midtown, was arrested because police believed he matched one of the many sketches of deviants believed to be behind a series of sexual assaults in South Brooklyn. But now the sexual assault charges have been dropped. more ›

Police announced they arrested a second suspect in the series of Brooklyn sex attacks that have distressed residents. Joshua Flecha, 32, was arrested yesterday morning—the Daily News reports that he "was spotted early Monday skulking along a dark Windsor Terrace street. Cops thought he was trying to break into cars and nabbed him. They found his pants were unzipped and a porn video was playing on his cell phone, police said." more ›

Oh for crying out loud, ANOTHER groping in Brooklyn? Yes, sadly, last night some deviant p.o.s. sexually assaulted a woman walking her dog in Windsor Terrace on 17th Street near Seventh Avenue, around 10 p.m. Police say the sick puppy sneaked up behind his victim, told her he had a knife, and felt her crotch. She screamed, he ran away, and the unidentified female joined the growing roster (13 or 14?) of victims—though investigators say it's too early to tell if this assault fits the pattern. more ›

Police say they've arrested the man who groped a woman in Sunset Park Monday night, but it's unclear if the man is responsible for any of the other sexual assaults that have terrorized parts of Brooklyn over the past several months. Adolfo Martinez, 26, faces charges of sex abuse in the 3rd degree, CBS 2 reports. Martinez allegedly sneaked up behind his 18-year-old victim as she left a subway station at 36th Street and Fifth Avenue around 8 p.m., groped her buttocks, and ran away. more ›

Though initial reports about a sexual assault in Windsor Terrace last night indicated that the attack was unrelated to other incidents in the area, police now say that it fits the pattern. An unidentified woman was walking to her mother's home just before midnight when she "felt like she was being followed," one police source tells the Daily News. "She turned around and saw a man." She told investigators that after she looked at him, the man put his hand on a car, presumably to pretend that he was a driver getting in his vehicle. more ›

Police are investigating three sexual assaults that took place in Brooklyn and Queens in the span of 24 hours this weekend. The first reported incident occurred around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, when a woman grabbed at knifepoint in Springfield Gardens, Queens, on 145th Road near the Belt Parkway. The unidentified woman was walking home when she was tackled from behind by a man who tried to sexually assault her. Police sources tell NY1 that her assailant ran off when she screamed for help. more ›

A Windsor Terrace woman is the latest to blast Brooklyn cops working the 72nd and 78th precincts for not taking a sexual assault seriously enough, the Brooklyn Paper reports. Around 11:30 p.m. on September 24th, the unidentified 28-year-old student was assaulted in the entrance to her building on East 4th Street, by a man who shoved her up against the door and tried to grope her. The man fled after she screamed, and although police searched the area after the attack, he got away. more ›

As the huddled masses brave the cold to line up for access to the temporary Smith/9th Street F/G platform, other Brooklyn residents have been far more inconvenienced by the rehabilitation of the nearby Culver Viaduct, which has completely shut down Manhattan-bound service from the 15th Street/ Prospect Park West station in Park Slope and the adjacent Fort Hamilton station in Windsor Terrace until May. Councilman Brad Lander has come up with a fix, though: just extend the B68 bus route! more ›

The MTA is entering the next phase of its highly dreaded renovation of the Culver Viaduct, which the F and G trains use as they ascend to the highest subway stop in NYC, at Smith-9th Street in Carroll Gardens. The necessary rehabilitation work will seriously inconvenience residents in this part of Brooklyn for months if not years, starting next Monday with the discontinuation of Manhattan-bound F and G service at Smith-9th Street, 15th Street Prospect Park, and Ft. Hamilton Parkway stations. This phase will last until May (or so they say!), and people are pissed. What follows is an excerpt from one of the many irate e-mails we've received in the past couple of days: more ›

Windsor Terrace parents are throwing a tantrum at the Oak & the Iris Café, claiming that they have no right to cancel their weekly sing-a-longs just because their precious kids were breaking property. One miffed mom even threatened to burn the place down, writing, "To set yourself up as kid-friendly and then be appalled by a normal range of kid behavior seems bizarre to me." But owner Aleksandra Kameneva says if what she witnessed was "normal range," things sure have changed since when she was a kid. more ›

Last month John Huntington at Control Geek noticed mourning doves in one of his Windsor Terrace planters. He set up his camera to take a time lapse every day, and in it he even catches babies hatching! more ›

It's a shame to see a perfectly pristine bike lane go to waste without anybody parking in it, so kudos to the NYPD for setting a fine example in Windsor Terrace, where the DOT recently added a green bike lane to the rotary at the Southwest corner of Prospect Park. The tipster who took this photo tells us "the trucks have been there about a month, since before the 1st big snow storm." Of course, this isn't the first time the NYPD's turned bike lanes into parking lots, and we suspect it won't be the last. The familiar sight goes a long way toward explaining why civilian motorists throughout the city routinely block bike lanes without fear of punishment. "With one hand the City giveth, with the other, it taketh away," says Wiley Norvell, spokesman for Transportation Alternatives. "This brazen illegal parking throws cyclists into moving traffic lanes, to say nothing of undercutting the City's efforts to make Park Circle safer." more ›

Are baby bans seeping over the Park Slope line and into Windsor Terrace? According to Courier-Life, Double Windsor owner Jeff Switzer says their policy of no babies after 5 p.m. has been in effect for a few months now, and was instituted after some feedback from patrons. He says, “It’s more of an issue between people that live in the neighborhood than it is with us. Most people who come to the bar would prefer not to have babies in the bar.” And the debate rages on! more ›

A new front has opened up in the never-ending war to decide how much road space should be allotted for cyclists. After tearing South Williamsburg and Soho apart—pitting brother against brother, Hasid against Goy, Councilman against...DOT—the conflict has spilled over to Windsor Terrace, where a community is bitterly divided over recent changes to the traffic circle at the southwest corner. And in this latest skirmish, a new combatant has entered the fray: horse riders! more ›

The ex-con who robbed and then strangled the owner of a Windsor Terrace dry cleaner in 2008 received the maximum sentence today: 25 years to life in prison. Jamal Winter, who killed beloved Eden Dry Cleaning owner Kyong-Sook Woo while on parole for another robbery nearby, still denies guilt, telling judge Guy Mangano, "I was set up. I was set up and that's what happened ... sometimes you have to pay the consequences." Huh? more ›

After being a renter his whole life, Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz bought his first home in Windsor Terrace for $1.45MM. The two-story, three-bedroom brick house boasts a driveway, fireplace, a covered porch, and is just one block from Prospect Park. And no, the money didn't come from taxpayers. more ›

A Windsor Terrace grocery store manager came under fire from customers for installing and promptly removing a menorah and a Christmas tree he had placed in front of his store. For the second year in a row, Key Food manager Mike Jordings allowed Rabbi Moshe Hecht to put a 10-foot tall menorah in front of his Prospect Avenue store during Hanukkah. But by the third night of the Festival of Lights, complaints about the Jewish icon were getting intense. "I was trying to be festive, but my everyday customers didn't feel that way," he told the Daily News. "They felt uncomfortable." more ›

Terrifying! There are reportedly tiny, pink, hairless rodents falling out of their nests and, lucky for them, into the hands of rescuers. The Daily News reports that the number of baby squirrels in town has grown, and Sean Casey at Animal Rescue in Windsor Terrace says it's because "The warmer climate is allowing squirrels to breed later into the season, and so they have more babies. That's probably what's been causing the influx." more ›

A jury found Jamal Winter guilty of second-degree murder for the murder of Kyong-Sook Woo, a dry cleaner in Windsor Terrace. Winter, who was out on parole, was accused of strangling Woo and then using ammonia to burn off his fingerprints. He now faces up to 25 years in prison. The jury did not convict him of first-degree murder; a juror told the Daily News, "We were all over the map. But it was not a compromise." more ›

Prosecutors say the man accused of killing a Windsor Terrace dry cleaning owner last year poured ammonia on his victim's neck after he strangled her to burn off fingerprints and DNA. But he left the bottle of ammonia behind in the store, providing investigators with a crucial fingerprint. Yesterday Supreme Court jurors began hearing evidence against Jamal Winter, who's charged with murdering beloved shop owner Kyong-Sook Woo, a 62-year-old grandmother, on May 15, 2008. Winter was in violation of parole at the time of the murder, but was on the streets because of a justice system failure. more ›

Around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, Lenny Speregen awoke to the sound of rocks and eggs being thrown at his house in Windsor Terrace; witnesses say the thugs, who escaped, where shouting anti-Semitic slurs. Speregen is a professional diver who recently shared stories about all the weird stuff he's seen in the city's rivers. He tells the Daily News, "This came out of left field. I feel 40% anger and 60% fear. My family lives here." Seriously, WTF, Brooklyn? more ›

Eurotrash: In the old days, eurotrash did key bumps at Kokie's; now Eurotrash serves meatballs by the Levee (which replaced Williamsburg's aforementioned cocaine bar). Eurotrash isn't a restaurant, but when you're getting your drink on—either at the Levee or Radegast Hall across the street—a starchy bargain food truck in a parking lot sure beats a fussy restaurant, with all their RULES about keeping your voice down and calculating gratuities. Opened about a week ago in a lot next door to the Levee, Eurotrash serves Belgian fries ($3 or $4), Swedish Meatballs ($5) over rotini with gravy and cranberry preserves, Fish and Chips ($5) consisting of 4 oz. Corona-battered cod and Belgian fries, and Bangers and Mash (Irish sausages served over mashed potatoes with gravy). North Third Street and Berry, Williamsburg more ›

Some Windsor Terrace residents say they're fed up with the NYPD's failure to do anything about the late night cacophony from skateboarders in Bartel-Pritchard Square, at the intersection of Prospect Park West and Prospect Park Southwest. So they reached out to City Councilmember Bill de Blasio, who held a community meeting last night in an attempt to resolve the age old problem of skateboarding, adolescence, and rowdiness. Local resident Jim Rallis tells YourNabe that on the night of June 13th, the teens were so obstreperous that he called the police. When they didn’t respond quickly enough, he says, "I went down there to tell them to be quiet and one of them pulled a box−cutter out and put it against my body." more ›

Good news for anyone sick of getting off the G at Smith and 9th Street and waiting for an F train just to go a couple more stops: Starting July 5th, the G train will continue on for five more stops into Brooklyn. The additional service is being added because of the massive Culver Viaduct Rehabiliation project, which, according to the Post, will prevent the G train from reversing itself at the next stop (Fourth Avenue). Come summer it will stop at Fourth Avenue-Ninth Street, Seventh Avenue, 15th Street-Prospect Park and Fort Hamilton Parkway before finally reversing course after the Church Avenue stop. This may be the best silver lining to the rehab work being done at Smith and 9th Street; last we heard the MTA plans to close the station entirely for at least nine months next year, and the entire project is expected to take 4 years. A spokesman for NYC Transit tells us, "We have said that we would look to make the [G train] terminal change permanent, as it makes sense both from a customer and operational perspective." more ›

Authorities say that three men are responsible for at least six armed robberies in Brooklyn since April. Their M.O. appears to be two men entering and robbing a store while a third awaits in a black Ford Expedition. WABC 7 reports, "The robbers hit the Sarubia Grocery at 1266 East 37th twice, on April 6 and April 22"—getting money in the 4/22 robbery (a customer was also injured). They also robbed a grocery store at 6106 3rd Avenue in late April, and a man was shot in the shoulder. Most recently, on May 9, they robbed Blondie's Deli in Windsor Terrace. According to WCBS 2, "Two young men...jumped up on the counter and tried to open the cash register...The latest attempted robbery was thwarted however when the owner chased the suspects with a bat and a scuffle ensued. Investigators say one of the suspects returned with a gun but the men ran away without any cash." Police are asking people to contact CrimeStoppers (website or call 800-577-TIPS) with any information. more ›

Changes intended to control motor vehicle traffic in Prospect Park have infuriated some members of Brooklyn's Community Board 7, which includes the neighborhood of Windsor Terrace, bordering the south end of the park. The DOT is planning to close the entrance and exit to the park at Third Street in Park Slope, and also eliminate the exit-only roadway at 16th Street. For years now, locals have been divided over the issue, with some pushing for a completely car-free park, and others predicting a traffic nightmare should vehicles be pushed out into the surrounding neighborhoods. CB7 District Manager Jeremy Laufer is particularly peeved because, he says, the board was not consulted in this recent decision to reduce motor vehicle access. Laufer tells the Brooklyn Paper, "No one was contacted on this before it was a done deal." A DOT spokesperson declined to address the planning process, but says, "The changes to Prospect Park will reduce conflict between motor vehicles and neighborhood residents crossing to and from the park." As it stands now, traffic is only permitted in Prospect Park on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. more ›