McCarren Park "Yankee Stadium Lights" Turned Off

This is McCarren Park, as seen from Union Street at Bayard on Tuesday night in a photo sent to us by blogger Bad Advice. The lights were being tested and were left on all night and into yesterday afternoon, but we can report they were turned off at some point last night, possible after a lot of calls to 311 and their appearance on Curbed. Regardless, they promise some bright, bright nights around the park. They were installed recently around the running track and soccer field across Bayard Street from the expensive condos on Karl Fischer Row. Here is an email we got about them yesterday, from a neighbor, but not someone living in the new Karl Fischer Row condos:

The McCarren Park Flood Lights around the field are finally installed and were turned on last night. All six of them (looks like Yankee stadium). But quite interestingly they have been on all night and all day today. What is the cut off time is my question?

Last night I couldn’t get a wink in because the lights flooded our apt. Indeed. incredibly bright…At 5 am, I called 311 to complain to find no number that we could call to get them turned off. Just a women saying that they have to resolve the situation in 10 days. 10 days of this and I will be going nuts. Curtains just don’t cut it.

They are still on now. A waste of electricity!!! Last night it was pelting with ice at 3am. If any of those bulbs busted, that’s precious tax payers money. I guess it would have been good for us residents if the lights busted anyway.

The lighting plan has apparently been in place for years, long before the condos of Karl Fischer Row were ever built. We wonder how many buyers were told they’d be lighting up the night outside.

McCarren Park Set to Be 10,000% Brighter at Night

The lighting project in McCarren Park has made major progress! The floodlights around the soccer field in McCarren Park, which will light up the night sky outside the expensive condos of Karl Fischer Row on Bayard Street, have been put up. We don’t know if they’ve been turned on yet, but they should be easy to spot from a great distance, just like the ones around the baseball fields in the more western part of the park. Blackout curtains, anyone?

Gowanus Lounge Photo Du Jour: Brooklyn Change

Union Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

GL Photo Du Jour: Karl Fischer Row

Bayard Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The Ugliest Karl Fischer: Now on Full View

There are a number of buildings in Brooklyn that could contend for the title of being the Ugliest Karl Fischer, yet there’s only one that is not only the most vile Fischer but one of the most wretched big new structures in Williamsburg: 525 Union Avenue. The building that has delighted us with it weekly work on Sundays is not ugly in an offensive way (the way some find the nearby buildings on Karl Fischer Row, for instance). No, this one kills the senses with its creamy brick nothingness. It is so pedestrian and bland that the tagging applied to the side of the building over the summer serves to brighten it up in an odd way. Perhaps it was intended for Fourth Avenue between Park Slope and Gowanus, but shifted over to Williamsburg?

GL Development Update: Karl Fischer Row from Behind

We figured that this summer Friday is as good a day as any to bring an updated view of Karl Fischer Row (aka Bayard Street) from a different angle. That would be Ikon in the foreground, with the Thing on Top (of which we are not admirers) making slow progress. (Is it just us or has construction been painfully slow?)

More Williamsburg Marketing Fun: Is 20 Bayard Radical?

Oh, how we love Williamsburg marketing efforts. This is about a new one for 20 Bayard, which is one of the Karl Fischer Row buildings overlooking McCarren Park. We guess we’ve grown so used to 20 Bayard that we don’t react to it with the same revulsion as some onlookers, who do not like it one bit. (We’re not saying we like it, mind you.) In any case, the new ad campaign is related by the Maud Newton website:

Choosing just one winner for the Greatest McCarren Park Eyesore Award is 20 Bayard…is a strong contender.

Work there has proceeded through a partial stop-work order, and now the subway ad campaign has begun.

Dana reports (in email):

Today on the 7 train (man, I wish I’d taken a photo) I saw a poster for a new Wbgh development called 20 Bayard. Ever seen it? It has four portraits, vaguely Warholesque, of a Hasid, a hipster, a white couple… I can’t remember it exactly. But the tagline! The tagline was: Williamsburg: Radically Chic, Chicly Radical.

Dear God. Say it ain’t so.

Beginning to See the Light in McCarren Park

Those fences you might have noticed sprouting around the soccer field in McCarren Park? They have nothing to do with the Roebling Oil Field, as one GL reader asked. They’re part of the installation of night lighting for the fields. Now, there’s nothing unique about lighting athletic fields for night play. What makes this endeavor especially interesting, though, is that the lights are going directly across the street from the pricey buildings along Bayard Street, aka Karl Fischer Row. Which will, at the very least, make for some very interesting night views out the windows.