At a B61 bus stop on Van Brunt Street in Red Hook, the one near Baked and not too far from Fairway, there's a dusty old storefront that says it belongs to a contractor, but never seems to be very alive with trade. Anyway, recently someone or other erected a street clock outside the building, composed of random metal and junk. It's pretty attractive in its way. And it works! Very useful in checking to see if the B61 is as late as you think it is.
You can look all over New York and you won't find a sign exactly like this one. Jewels by Satnick was founded in 1912. It currently lives in a small storefront on State Street in downtown Brooklyn.
If Amy Ruth's ever does move into the old Gage & Tollner space on Fulton, their first job should be to repaint that planting pot outside the building. It remains decked in TGI Friday's red-and-white stripes—the last horrifying reminder of a horrible chapter in the building's history.
The IKEA truck parked in front of the future site of Brooklyn's first Trader Joe's. Could any other picture express as succinctly what is happening in the County of Kings these days?
What I love about New York is that, whatever piece of global business crap they throw at us, we make it all local somehow. The monolithic IKEA in Red Hook—with its mile-high letters, bold blues and yellows and giant building-block structure—doesn't stop the driver of this Mister Softee truck from parking right outside the entrance and letting the tinkling music of its tape loop perfume the corporate air. Sure, they've got your dining room set inside. But slow down. Have a Lick-a-Color!
See the unsightly edifice above. Hard to look at, isn't it? What ghastly colors. And that charmless sign.
This was once a center of old world Red Hook activity. This building, at the corner of Pioneer and Richards Streets, was, from 1921 (Jazz Age! Woo-hoo!) to 1955 (Dodgers win the Series! Yes!) the Pioneer Theatre, a 600-seat first-run movie house. Longshoremen and their families gathered here nightly for a little fun. Facing Coffey Park and just down the street from the Visitation of Our Lady Roman Catholic Church, it's hard to imagine a place of recreation more central. Wonder why, when they converted it, they felt compelled to erase every bit of evidence that it was ever a movie theatre.
I have discovered a few things about the theatre from reading a rather fascinating website called the South Brooklyn Network, in which former Red Hook born-and-breds reminisce in the most sentimental and unguarded way possible about the old days in the Hook. You learn a lot of history that wasn't in the papers from these folks. And you meet a lot guys named Natz and Joey Big Head.
Apparently there was a man who worked at the Pioneer who had a missing finger named Mr. Nichols. There was a tall lady matron named Mary who caused the kids to jump whenever she spoke. And one poster offered up a yarn as to why the Pioneer closed. I don't believe it, but I like the story, so I'm going to repeat it here. The tale is that the owner's wife ran off with a married man named Eddie. (It would be a guy named Eddie, wouldn't it?) He was so distraught, he closed the Pioneer and spent his life saving chasing after his wife to bring her back home. 
If you're a skinflint developer, you can express your cheapness in many ways.
Here are three brick buildings on Hicks Street near Kane. The two on either side are plain old tenements that have stood there for 100-years plus. The one in the middle has been brushed up and converted into condos. Notice the new windows and repointed bricks and the absence of an unsightly metal fire-escape. Also notice the absolutely substandard, stubby, cheap-ass cornice.
I guess I should be grateful the developer put on a new cornice at all. But I'm not. It's just so lousy. It's looks like a large Lego piece that was snapped into place. I'm guessing it's one of those inexpensive fiberglass jobbies they've got these days. Look at the shadows it casts on the building! It doesn't even sit flush with the brickface. And it's smaller than the cornices on either side because, God forbid you spend more money than you have to on the amount of fiberglass used. I wouldn't put it on a doghouse.
Oh, and the lintels and windows suck, too. There, I'm done.
Who will win the battle of Hicks Street east between Warren Street and Congress—the age-old English Plane trees in the middle of the sidewalk or the pedestrians of Cobble Hill?!
Actually, it's no contest. The trees won a long time ago. Some nature-loving citizen or official, when laying out the sidewalk in front of the former-church-now-condo-complex on that block decided the beautiful trees would stay, even if that meant that, at three points in the block, there is barely enough room for a person to pass without toppling into Hicks Street. And forget about two people walking abreast. And absolutely forget about rolling a stroller down this block.
Coulda sworn I did a "Good Sign" item about the Fifth Avenue Pizzeria sign in Park Slope some time ago, but damned if I can locate it. But the moment's passed. 'Tis gone. 'Tis dead. I guess this happened a few months back, but it's the first I noticed it. Nice local place. Not great pie, but surpassing local-ness, if you know what I mean. And the sign! The sign! I'd like to put it on my living room wall.
A couple months back I was doing some healthy rumor-mongering about a line of brick buildings on Smith Street that were being offered by the ever-agressive Massey Knakal real estate firm as a solid block. 252, 254 and 260 Smith Street could be picked up as a package for $3.5 mil and done with what the buyer would.
As Brownstoner already reported this morning, and I just noticed the same AM, said grouping is "in contract." Indy shops Refinery, Area and Flirt have given up their spaces. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that when the buildings come tumbling down—which they will—the strip will come back as one big building on community-irking dimensions.
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