The cheapest and most accessible form of time travel we know is biking past Boardwalk Empire shoots on your way into work. — SR, S360
This weekend marks the start of the beach season, but for surfers in the New York City area it’s always beach time. Michael Miller has been surfing the waters off the Rockaways for years, and after Sandy, he was back riding the waves a mere 5 weeks after the storm. —Jennifer Hsu
Brooklyn is showing some gratitude to the late Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, known as MCA, by renaming the Brooklyn Heights playground that he visited as kid after the rapper who died of cancer last year.
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“If the General wants to see what real war is, I would like to give him an opportunity to see some Brooklyn fans rooting for their team.”
Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia takes General Eisenhower to the ballgame, and Major League Baseball executive Branch Rickey makes some special accommodations for the pair. Listen to the full audio here.
Jewish politician does blackface, gets into trouble.
Dov Hikind, a state assemblyman from Brooklyn, was celebrating the Jewish festival of Purim, and decided to wear an afro, sunglasses and orange jersey to a party he was throwing. Oh, and dark makeup.
“Someone gave me a uniform, someone gave me the hair of the actual, you know, sort of a black basketball player.”
Hikind is now catching heat from other New York politicos but says the reaction is overblown and that it was all in “good fun.”
“This is political correctness to the absurd,” he wrote on his blog, even going so far as to say, “I would do it again in a minute.”
Two weeks before Sandy, engineers placed man-made dunes along the coast of Brooklyn. “If Sandy had happened three weeks before when it did, we would have lost the Belt Parkway.” READ MORE
The dramatically dilapidated Loews King Theatre, on Flatbush Avenue, is set for a resurrection.
The place was built in 1929. A young Barbra Streisand once worked here. So did Sylvester Stallone.
It’s been closed since 1977, but it’s still the largest indoor theater in Brooklyn, with 3,200 seats. I got to walk around inside yesterday, and despite all the dust and decay, it’s pretty spectacular.
The plan is to restore its former grandeur, and turn it into a major performing arts center. Opening set for 2015.
As a former Brooklynite, I should confess: I’m a little envious.
Brooklyn wins, yet again.
Six out of every 10 people who buy Edwin Class’s I❤NY subway maps buy the one that says “Brooklyn” inside the big red heart. About three of every 10, he figured, buy the general, non-borough-specific map. And the rest is divvied up between Queens and the Bronx. Once in a very long, long while, someone asks him for a Staten Island edition.
—Union Square station
The Veledos have waited at a Hess station in Gowanus, Brooklyn, every morning since Sandy walloped the region. On some days, that can mean waiting in line more than four hours. “We need to drive to help our family,” said Nelida, 42, of Bushwick. Two members of her family lost their homes during Hurricane Sandy. http://wny.cc/PXf7J3
What do you think of the Barclays Center? Brian Lehrer talks with the architects behind the arena this morning, who like calling it the “angry clam” (instead of our favorite - “Boba Fet” and “George Foreman grill”). Take a listen.
NYC Street Workout Goes Global
Like rap, the street workout, aka “street calisthenics,” aka the “thug workout,” is Made in NYC, but has taken off in Russia, Israel, Spain and other countries. All thanks to the eye-popping moves and physical rigor of New Yorkers like Hannibal for King, the Bartendaz, Barstarzz and other local workout crews.
Me and my co-worker Walyce Almeida spent a lot of time at Wingate Park, in Brooklyn, and elsewhere, exploring the appeal of street calisthenics, along with the debate over whether this emerged from the streets of New York, or the prison system.
We also explored the question of why street workouts are getting international attention but are largely ignored here in New York. For all those answers and much, much more, listen to WNYC!
