Another Brooklyn Food Miracle: Whole Foods to Open in Dumbo

A little while ago, Curbed reported (well, Gowanus Lounge wearing our Curbed mask) that Whole Foods is planning to open a big store in Dumbo. Still our hearts! You can almost envision a time, a few long years from now, when the formerly desperate Brooklynite stands by the fridge wondering if he or she should go to the Dumbo Whole Foods or the one in Gowanus or to the Fairway in Red Hook or to (who knows) the Trader Joe’s in Williamsburg.

What we know is this: An inside source at the big food retailer let slip that a Dumbo store is in the works. We don’t know an opening date or a location, but process of elimination on the latter leads us to cast an eye in the direction of 20 Jay Street. That is the 40,000 square foot space formerly occupied by ABC Carpet Warehouse. (Another potential space, the Empire Stores, the wonderful Civil War era warehouse is supposed to be a Leviev Boymelgreen retail complex. Unless the J Condo has a vast interior retail space.)

Whole Foods’ interest in Dumbo isn’t new. The retailer is said to have been looking at the nabe for years, but had previously dismissed the idea because Dumbo was too remote and presented logistical issues. (Not that any of the logistical issue–truck access, parking–will be much easier now.)

Who knows? It could be that Whole Foods is feeling the heat from the new Fairway in Red Hook (remote, but has parking) or that someone counted how big a captive audience will soon exist in Dumbo and Vinegar Hill as big new residential buildings open.

In any case, a Dumbo store would be the second Brooklyn location for Whole Foods, which is also waiting for the toxic muck and ooze to be removed from their site in Gowanus. (Sometime in 2008 or thereabout.) The Dumbo Whole Foods was mentioned in the context of “several” new stores in Brooklyn, so others might also be in the mix. GL’s money is on a significant Williamsburg outpost too in a few years, given that all those waterfront towers starting to rise will include hundreds of thousands of square feet of space for retail.

Food shopping! We’re going to have more food shopping in Brooklyn.

Park Slope Mommy Rage Hops the Pond to the UK

Don’t look now, but the Cult of Momma Bean, the raging Park Slope mommy who tossed a can of beans and cracked the back windshield of a car that turned in front of her, is making news across the Atlantic in the UK. So, now, a whole lot of people who’ve never heard of the hills above Gowanus know that the territory is inhabited by some very angry moms. (We would expect that this weekend’s story about the 12-year-old Prospect Park mommy and stroller baby muggers will also make their way to Europe as an emblematic urban tale.) The UK story, which appeared in the Sunday Times, headlined “Angry Moms Tell the World,” calls our Bean Tossing Mommy “an unlikely new superhero.”

Here goes:

An unlikely new superhero is stalking the streets of New York. She does not wear a costume, unless you count the pushchair she wheels from the supermarket to her Brooklyn home. And although she possesses no superhuman powers, she is deadly accurate with her weapon of choice — a tin of beans from her grocery bag.

The mothers of New York were last week agog at the reported exploits of a housewife who succumbed to a bout of “mommy rage”, an incendiary moment when the pains and pressures of motherhood erupt in a torrent of grief, frustration and flying tins of beans.

According to witness accounts that have ignited an internet frenzy this month, the Brooklyn mother in question was wheeling her toddler across a road in the trendy Park Slope neighbourhood when a car shot past her, narrowly missing the pushchair as it braked for traffic lights at the end of the road.

The mother reached into her bag and hurled a tin of beans at the car. When it missed, she threw another, and earned cheers and applause from passers-by when it struck the car’s back window, causing a thick crack.

The incident has sparked angry exchanges on the internet, with many mothers rallying to the bean-thrower’s cause in a discussion entitled “Park Slope Pedestrian Mommy Rage”.

Reaction also surfaced on a website that is attracting international attention for its insights into the lives of mothers who feel trapped by their husbands, their children and their working or stay-at-home lives. There is a lot of mommy rage at UrbanBaby.com….

The story goes on to deal with the subject of mommy rage in general and also deals with the Stay at Home Mom (SAHM) issue.

Glad to know Brooklyn bloggers are having an impact on our cousins across the way.

Happy 70th Birthday McCarren Pool

Today is the 70th anniversary of the dedication of McCarren Pool on July 31, 1936. McCarren Pool, which ceased operating as a pool in 1984, was the eighth of eleven giant pools built by Robert Moses and the Works Progress Administration that opened during the summer of 1936, which in and of itself is hard to imagine after generations of public disinvestment in amenities like parks and public swimming pools.

Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia cut the ribbon at McCarren pool on July 31, saying “no pool anywhere has been as much appreciated as this one.” It was built to handle 6,800 swimmers–by 1930s standards, in any case–and cost $1 million to build. The Mayor and Moses opened one city pool a week during the summer of 1936, an interesting factoid in and of itself, given that it would never happen today without a major corporation footing the bill, because city and state government don’t invest in facilities like these–or in parks, for that matter, unless they have a “funding mechanism”– anymore.)

The Parks Department website says “the pool served as the summertime social hub for Greenpoint and Williamsburg” and that “the building’s vast scale and dramatic arches, designed by Aymar Embury II, typify the generous and heroic spirit of New Deal architecture.”

The sad fate of McCarren pool–all the years of abandonment and rot–are another matter. A 2003 article in Free Williamsburg provides a look at the hows and whys of McCarren Pool’s closure in the first place:

In 1979, the city approved $100 million to restore the entire network of pools (many of which had fallen into a state of disrepair and neglect due to the fiscal crisis of the 70’s that had forced major cutbacks in upkeep and security) so they would all be ready for the 50th anniversary celebration in 1986.

The pool was closed in 1983 to begin repairs and then the community said no. A blockade of residents protested fixing the pool up, citing the petty crime and undesirables it attracted. (I was sitting in The Charleston one afternoon at happy hour last year, talking to a long-time resident who was near me at the bar. The pool came up in conversation and he claimed [proudly] he was part of the effort to close it down back then “one way or the other, to keep the coloreds out.” Officials and other people I talked with for the article admitted times were different back then.)

Enter politics. A task force was set up to determine how to overcome the community divide. A recommendation was issued to shrink the size of the pool and demolish the bathhouses that issued out of the sides of the arch.

“That was a stupid idea. The archway and the bathhouses are world-renowned pieces of architecture. The highness of the arch to the long, low-slung bathhouses creates a unique silhouette. Besides, it was illegal to tear it down if there were no plans for its future,” explained Phyllis Yampolsky, head of the McCarren Park Conservancy, a private advocacy group.

There were no plans for its future. The demolition was put on hold, and Yampolsky began her fight to restore the arch and renovate the property. Community Board 1 had other ideas, and division ruled again.

Of the subsequent decay, Francis Morrone wrote that it was New York’s “most poignant ruin” and “a monument to shame.” The pool was finally revived last year and is hosting a full summer of programming this year, some of it not without controversy.

While McCarren Pool escaped the wrecking ball and being filled in, it’s fate is still in the balance. Returning it to use as a pool will cost tens of millions of dollars, money the Parks Department insists it doesn’t have. Unless, of course, a corporate angel wants to step up and return one of the grandest of the New Deal era NYC swimming pools to public use as a pool for Brooklynites.

Brooklinks: Monday Hey, It’s a New Week Edition

Brooklinks is a selection of Brooklyn-related news stories, blog entries and images, like the one above, of tourists stalking the sunset at the Fulton Ferry Landing.

• Brooklyn is a Destination for Tourists [AP/Newsday]
• Heat is on Con Ed [NYPost]
• Sunset Park Street Eats [NYDN]
• Best Pizza Contender: DiFara’s [A Brooklyn Life]
• Fire Causes Problems at Astroland in Coney [NYT]
• Yassky Un-Endorsement: Extortion Coverup? [NYPost]
• How Big “Miss Bklyn”? Look Across the River [AYR]
• City Comptroller Thompson Backs Atlantic Yards [No Land Grab]
• Luxe Housing Rising in East New York [NYPost]
• Clinton Hill Hooker Hotel to Return as Legit Hotel [NYDN]
• New Brooklyn anti-AIDS Campaign [NYDN]

Weird Visions of Red Hook’s Future

Red Hook is being “reinvented” by Yale School of Architecture students, and all we can say is, well, they are only conceptual drawings. Very, very conceptual. So, we present them for those that enjoy flights of fancy, a few of which are pictured above. Otherwise, here’s a little sampling of the vision:

A naturalistic recreation park with camping, an animal preserve, a golf course, a grand canal, water sports and fishing, to selling off park space and promoting large-scale private development. One radical view unveils a “CarPark” that provides Red Hook with some additional 31,021 parking spaces and doubles as a large regional public park. Perhaps less radical, another project contemplates an “Historic Red Hook”, side-by-side with a “Street Car Suburb”, public housing, beach, entertainment and a farm. And what about those big box stores? Controversy is not avoided here. One model advocates that big box stores and the like should be not be resisted but viewed as assets with the aim of dispersing them throughout Red Hook as “smart growth.”

“Controversy is not avoided here?” Really? As if a student suggesting parking for 31,021 cars will be embraced warmly? Or a golf course? What’s a Wal-Mart compared to those? Thank God these are only conceptual drawings and plans prepared by grad students.

Should you wish to sample the drawings and models for yourself, you can catch them at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artist’s Coalition Summer Show at the Beard Street Pier. On your way over, you could always stop at the Red Hook soccer fields for some papusas, assuming no one’s turned them into a parking lot.

Bloc Party Rules at McCarren Pool, but the Big Concerts Bite

A couple of songs into Bloc Party’s set at McCarren Pool on Saturday night lead singer Kele Okereke looked around the vastness of the pool-turned-concert venue and proclaimed, “So, I guess this is a pool party.”

Not quite.

The “pool parties,” those would be the community-spirited free events on Sunday afternoons. The Bloc Party concert, well, that would be the corporate-produced concert that a faction within the community bitterly opposes.

In any case, Okereke could be forgiven for not knowing anything about the history of the cool space in which the band was playing, except that he was clearly amused to be playing a former swimming pool.

Bloc Party was wonderful, tearing through a set built around their debut album, that also included some new material from their forthcoming release. (Check out some flickr photos here.) The real issue with the show, however, was the way in which it underscored what an inappropriate venue McCarren Pool is for big-ticket concerts. Five thousand tickets were sold for Saturday night’s show and while McCarren can hold that many people, it’s way too big a crowd for a general admission show with minimal security–with the wrong band and the wrong crowd it’s a recipe for serious nastiness, in fact. (By the way, we’re not advocating for meddlesome event security, just making a point about 5,000 people in a general admission setting.) Second, there’s the assault on quality of life in the surrounding community–5,000 people coming into the neighborhod and a sound system loud enough to be heard a quarter mile away. GL has always loved our outdoor summer shows, but we also recognize that they do have an impact on those around them who might not want to spend the night, say, feeling their apartment thump to Bloc Party or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

(Here’s our guess: We can huff and we can puff but what will blow the house down is that there’s a wall of million dollar condos going up along McCarren Park that are close enough to vibrate from the bass riffs at live shows at the pool. Ironically, there’s a story in today’s NY Times about all the people buying McCarren Park condos. We suspect McCarren Pool’s life as a mega-concert venue will be short lived, no matter how many skids corporate promoters manage to grease and how much the Parks Department wants to shrug and say it’s broke when the subject of turning the pool back into a pool comes up. Oh, and are the buyers really that dumb and oblivious?)

Of course, the other unsavory part to all of this is that the Parks Department has turned over a revenue generating machine like McCarren Pool to a private operator without trying to recapture any of the money for the pool itself. Live Nation, which is producing six shows, stands to gross more than $1 million (not counting service fees) from these shows. (Even after expenses, they’re going to make a significant profit from a public space.) Vendors like the Brooklyn Brewery stand to make tens of thousands more getting concert goers drunk. Is there a McCarren Park Trust to recapture some of this money for taxpayers? No. Profits from shows and sales at this public facility are going to line private pockets.

Brooklinks: Sunday Very Hot Edition

Brooklinks is a selection of Brooklyn-related articles, blog entries and images. The photo above was taken on February 12, when it wasn’t quite so hot as it is now.

Not Brooklyn, but Worthwhile Reading:

• A Rough Week for Preservationists [Gothamist]
• Into Our Town the NYPD Came [Streets Blog]
• 90 Years Ago, NY Harbor Blew Up [NYDN]

Brooklyn:

• Welcome to Luxury Condoville (aka Greenpoint/Williamsburg) [NYT]
• Honey, I Blew Up the Cond Market [justiNYC]
• $1M for Al Capone’s House on Garfield Place [NYT]
• Red Hook Jumps on Outdoor Movie Train [A Brooklyn Life]
• Batwatching III [Dope on the Slope]
• Selling Shortcakes in the Rain in Coney [Coney Island Shortcakes]
• The Little Green Building that Could [Across the Park]

Gowanus Lounge Photo Du Jour Part Deux: No Parking with Blue, Gray & Yellow

Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Gowanus Lounge Photo Du Jour: Yellow Building on Kent

Kent Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Video for a Blazing Summer Day: Sledding in Prospect Park During ‘06 Blizzard

It’s hot, so keeping with our theme of cool images today, heres a video that recalls winter, specifically sledding in Prospect Park. Click on the video below or on this link.