Snowy Brooklyn

Some images from Friday's snow storm.

Merry Christmas, Rat Squirrel House!

Your bricks are red. Your shed is green. You aren't what you used to be.

You're just like Christmas!

Will Santa bring Rat-Squirrel-House Lady (I know you're in there, Arlene!) what she's asked for—a new roof, a third-story window that closes, rat traps, for the DOB to get off her back? Will he brave that chimney, the most unstable flue this side of Chumley's? Or is she on his naughty list?

A new spate of complaints were issued against the address and Dec. 5, but, still, not much has changed at 149 Kane Street in Brooklyn since last winter, when a flurry of activity and news stories resulted in several visits from the DOB and the installation of a protective shed. Nothing's been fixed or mended on the landmarked building. And the owner, while obeying a vacate order for a short bit, moved back into the haunted wreck shortly after. The vacate notice on the front door was ripped down months ago. Rat, squirrels and pigeons, meanwhile, have made themselves pretty scarce. Maybe the dump is even too run down for them.

I'm almost tempted to hang a wreath on her door.

Community Garden Christmas Tree

Saw this fir inside a small community garden on Columbia Street. Nice bit of semi-public cheer. I think that did a good job with it.

Revere Sugar Refinery Remembered in Oil

The House of Pizza and Calzone has made some additional changes since they revamped their home a few months back. Some changes are lamentable: two flat-screen TVs that are always on. Others are kind of nice, including some crude oil painting depicting local Brooklyn scenes.

The biggest canvas is in the back room. It capture a section of the Red Hook waterfront, including the now vanished, conical Revere Sugar Refinery. Nice to see that structure live on in art.

Does That Mean New York Is Heaven?

One of my all-time favorite mangled New York signs. Eternal life in New York? Doesn't sound to bad.

On a lonely span of 37th Avenue in Woodside, Queens.

The Orange Hut

If I ever became a filmmaker and decided to shoot a movie in New York, one of the locations I'd exploit would be the Orange Hut in Woodside, Queens. There's something so ineffably Gothamish about this odd, squat little hamburger joint, hunkered down near the V subway station at the the corner of Broadway and Northern Blvd. It is an island of worn whimsy in a sea of ugly auto dealerships and big box stores.


It's a breakfast and lunch place only; shuts up tighter than a drum after 2 PM. Prices are rock-bottom cheap, though the plastic menu boards on the wall above the counter— patchworks of erasures and masking tape—betray the truth that costs have inched up a bit in recent years. Still, you can get a Coke, cheeseburger and fries for five bucks flat.


An L-shaped row of stools, plus some scattered stools near the window, constitute the only seating. The curvature of the windows and a string of yellow plastic signs, advertising what can be had inside, make for interesting viewing for the passerby. Of course, if the place only had that big orange block on top of the roof, it would still be worth looking at. I'm not sure why the owners settled on the color of orange. Certainly, oranges don't play a big culinary role inside.


The Orange Hut's previous life as a White Tower restaurant has been documented. I'd be curious as to whether the old White Tower signage lurks under the current orange awning. As it is, only a walk around to the white, castle-like back of the eatery provides a hint of what the place must have looked like in the old days.

Big Cup, Big Cone

In Chinatown, above, and Borough Park, below. These guys should get together.

Not Quite Crapitecture

This almost-complete apartment building on Columbia and Summit Streets in Brooklyn ain't gonna win the architect the Pritzker Prize, but it's not wholly hateful, either, at least by today's standards. (I'm sure Queens Crap will disagree with me.) Why? It's partly the rough-hewn quality of the dark brown brick work, partly the arched windows. But mainly it's that clock.

Can anyone recall a piece of recent crapitecture that featured an ornamental public clock such as that? There's absolutely no reason why, in these selfish times, a developer should want or need to add a detail like that to any building. Such touches are of another, more civic-minded century, when builders cared about the thing they built and what the people thought of them. Putting a clock up there doesn't pay the builder a single penny extra. It's a wholly altruistic gesture. Or, looking at it more cynically (I can't help myself), a convincing attempt at appearing altruistic.

Either way, I don't care. I can now walk down Columbia without a watch and know the time of day.

Degraw Delight Back Then

A reader asked for me to post a photo of how the building at the corner of Degraw and Henry in Cobble Hill used to look. Here it is in 1927. Compare and contrast to the renovation.

A Good Sign: Joseph Gutman Associates

In Chelsea. A good place to find sewing machine parts and supplies. And maybe the Maltese Falcon.