A few videos of the post-game celebration in the streets have made their way to YouTube already. Here’s a small selection. (Warning: this may be NSFW if your office doesn’t like ear-piercing, celebratory screams or car horns.) Continue reading »
I think this is a good time of year to be out in the waterfront parks. Big, leafy greens might be all well and good for the landscaped Olmstead masterpieces like Prospect Park, but out here, the bare trees make it easier to see the harbor, the bridge, and the borough beyond both.
I am pleased to announce that BK Southie, the website that I’ve published for over two years to cover news and events from around southern Brooklyn, is being renamed and relaunched as Bay Ridge Odyssey. This ends the “soft” re-launch phase of the site that began in November when its six-month hiatus came to an end. The Odyssey will have the same mission of bringing you news, events, and photos relevant to the community, and do so specifically for Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights.
A small part of the reason for the name change, as I’ve said previously, was that including the word “Southie” in a Brooklyn-focused website fell out of favor with me quite some time ago (to the point that I played off the New York-Boston rivalry in the week leading up to the Super Bowl and promised to change the name if the Giants won). I don’t know how everyone else felt about it – through the grapevine, I’ve heard some nice things said about it and heard some not-so-nice things – but just speaking for myself, I’ve had a hard time calling it by it’s right and proper name for a while now.
A much bigger reason is the site’s change of focus from southern Brooklyn as a whole to specifically Bay Ridge. The name BK Southie, once you could get past the whole Boston thing, was much better suited to its old focus. After the hiatus was over, I’ve written mostly about Bay Ridge. And if books are getting judged by their covers, BK Southie just wasn’t going to work anymore. I settled on the name Bay Ridge Odyssey a few months ago – at the end of the hiatus – I just wasn’t certain of the right time to make the switch.
2001 Odyssey, of course, was the name of a local disco club made famous across the United States by the John Travolta movie Saturday Night Fever. So, definitely a lot more Brooklyn now than that Boston name. Odyssey also has a much more personal meaning to me as a writer. It pays homage to a children’s science and space exploration magazine that served as my inspiration to publish – at the age of 10 – a monthly “newspaper” using an MS-DOS word processor and a dot-matrix printer. My first blog, perhaps?
Of course, the name Odyssey has been in vogue for a very long time, initially finding favor with a Greek poet who shares a name with a popular, yellow cartoon character. Maybe.
I’m fairly happy with what BK Southie has done to date, and I am very optimistic about the future with Bay Ridge Odyssey.
The publisher of this web site grew up in Western New York. Be nice to him about this play.
Henry Hynoski 28, New England Patriots 0.
I just thought I’d lead off with my prediction for the game. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’m almost certain that’s how the game will unfold.
Where do you want to watch the game this year? I’m keeping it simple for myself – will just be my son and I at home. I hosted an apartment party last year, but can’t really be bothered with the hassle this year. Pizza from DaVinci’s, and I’ll probably fry my own Buffalo wings. Thinking I’ll go with red wine over beer. Yeah, man: pizza, Buffalo wings, wine, and football. Life is grand.
Of course, if it weren’t for children who are too young to go out to bars*, I’d probably be going out Sunday night. It’s fun to see the Super Bowl in a bar already frequented by one of the participating teams’ fans, i.e. watching last year’s game in a Steelers bar. For this year’s game, I don’t think Giants bars are going to be so hard to find. They’ll be in the yellow pages under “bars.”
*I’ve been going out to watch sports in bars since I was 16. My dad thought it would be nice if I could watch him shoot pool. I just wanted to be in a place that got the channel that was carrying the hockey game.
In fact, I might think about going to one of these places.
Where will you be watching?
If the name invokes the wrong city, then at least the baseball script used in the site’s standard wordmark plays up to a tired stereotype of our own making. (Sort of.)
On Wednesday, the publisher of BK Southie – a little-known local-interest web site covering Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, and southern Brooklyn as a whole, and NOT South Boston – announced that he would rename the site to remove the reference to “Southie” if the New York Giants defeat the New England Patriots in Superbowl XLVI this Sunday evening.
The publisher is not from Boston and has never lived in Boston. He’s not entirely sure what he was thinking when he named the site in the first place. Maybe he had just Netflicked The Departed at the time. He doesn’t remember; we may never know. He regretted his decision after an e-mail interaction with a South Boston cab company and has since apologized. (Apologized to Brooklyn, that is. Not to Boston.)
He doesn’t want to put down Boston (too much) as he appreciates the positive contribution that Boston and its surrounding towns have made in his life, including, but not limited to, (1) his first wife, (2) Denis Leary, and (3) a cool band called Splashdown that never made it big, but gave its keyboard player to Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
The publisher has visited the Boston area a few times, and particularly enjoyed the neighborhood surrounding Harvard, in spite of the fact that it surrounds Harvard. But as far as referencing a Boston neighborhood in the name of a Brooklyn-bound web site, he knows he should have kept the chocolate out of the peanut butter.
If the New York Giants defeat the New England Patriots this Sunday, he’ll take that as the cue to choose a Brooklyn-y and not Boston-y name for the site.
If not, he’ll be looking for some other cue.
Council Member David Greenfield. (Photo: New York City Council)
City Council Member David Greenfield reacted to criticism by The Brooklyn Daily columnist Lou Powsner regarding Greenfield’s attentiveness – or lack thereof – to his Bensonhurst constituents. Powsner’s article, which was covered by BK Southie as part of a larger critique of the gerrymandering of political districts, addressed at a high level the challenges a neighborhood like Bensonhurst faces when all four of its Council districts are anchored by other communities (i.e. Greenfield’s Borough Park, Vincent Gentile’s Bay Ridge). But Powsner cited Greenfield specifically for being a no-show at community events.
Greenfield replied with a letter to the editor, published on BrooklynDaily.com. It reads in part:
Please allow me to set the record straight regarding Lou Powsner’s recent inaccurate claims that I have ignored the Bensonhurst portion of my district. The fact is that nothing could be further from the truth. No matter how you measure it — meetings attended, constituent cases handled, local group funded or services provided — I have worked hard each and every day to deliver for every corner of the 44th District, including the portion of Bensonhurst that I am privileged to represent.
In the less than two years I have held office, I have allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars to numerous Bensonhurst civic, community, cultural, educational and athletic organizations which play a vital role in making it a great place to live. Either a representative or I have attended countless important civic meetings in the community, including every single community board meeting since I was elected to office. In addition, I have fought on behalf of Bensonhurst residents on issues such as keeping our senior centers open and maintaining our quality of life. In fact, I am currently leading the fight to increase the parking spaces in the development of a nine-story medical office on 61st Street and Bay Parkway. Finally, my office has resolved hundreds of constituent complaints, ranging from potholes that need to be filled to government agencies that are not responsive. One such complaint is the one that was filed by Lou Powsner.
Photo: Gounardes campaign Flickr
This past Saturday outside of Fort Hamailton High School, Democrat Andrew Gounardes officially launched his campaign to unseat incumbent Republican Marty Golden in the State Senate. A 26-year-old attorney, Gounardes works for Citizens Community of New York City, and has previously worked as an aide to Council Member Vincent Gentile and US Senator Robert Menendez.
Sheepshead Bites and Bensonhurst Bean publisher Ned Berke caught up with Gounardes recently and asked a few questions about his run for office.
It’s a lovely building in it’s own right. Something about it, though, compels me to play around with sepia filters in online photo labs.
The director of a Bay Ridge-based Arab-American organization has called on Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to step down over his role in appearing in an anti-Muslim film, having it screened during mandatory counter-terrorism training sessions, and for the program of surveillance aimed at Arab and Muslim communities in New York.
When initially challenged by the Village Voice a year ago, the NYPD first denied that any officer had seen The Third Jihad, a film produced by The Clarion Fund (itself an offshoot of Aish Hatorah, described by Atlantic Monthly columnist Jeffrey Goldberg as “just about the most fundamentalist movement in Judaism today”). The Department eventually admitted that “some” officers had seen it, but it wasn’t until a Freedom Of Information Act request by The Brennan Center For Justice came to fruition did the full impact become known – the film was screened on “continuous loop” to 68 lieutenants, 159 sergeants, 31 detectives and 1,231 patrol officers. Continue reading »
Mark Murphy will run against Congressman Michael Grimm in November 2012. (Photo source: Mark Murphy For Congress)
Last week, Mark Murphy – son of former Congressman John Murphy and a former aide to Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio – announced his candidacy for the 13th Congressional District, currently held by Michael Grimm. The move generated considerable interest on Staten Island – including strong support from the Richmond County party chairman and some notably less-strong encouragement from elected officials, including Staten Island/Brooklyn State Senator Diane Savino. Reaction from Bay Ridge – roughly one-third of Grimm’s district – was notably absent.
BK Southie reached out to Justin Brannan, the President of the Bay Ridge Democrats political club, to get a sense of the feeling among party activists on the Brooklyn side. Brannan told us:
“We need someone who understands and will fight for local values and put our interests first before the party’s agenda. The current Congressman is simply not in tune with the district he represents. He spends too much time on TV and too little time listening to the concerns of the people. If you’re a leader your #1 job should be to listen; Mark Murphy listens. I’m glad he stepped up.”
Proposed district boundaries for the Assembly and State Senate were released yesterday. At the time of our publishing deadline, there is still no word on the new Congressional districts, which must reduce the number of New York State representatives from 29 to 27. With that reduction in mind, it stands to reason that the new District 13 will need to reach further into Brooklyn than it already does – potentially into areas that have a Democratic registration edge. That prospect, along with the general competitiveness of district and a new poll suggesting Democrats have a chance to take majority control of the House this election, may have the effect of boosting Murphy’s campaign. Working against Murphy is the fundraising head start that Grimm holds over him ($1 million dollars to zero as of the last FEC filing), and the fact that the elder Congressman Murphy left politics in disgrace, marred by an indictment in the Abscam scandal that led to the bribery conviction of five of his House collegues.
The impact of Murphy’s Hollywood career, including roles in my college-era favorite show, Pacific Blue, remains to be seen.
Grimm is currently leading a controversial effort to weaken federal whistleblower protection by directing complaints to in-house reporting mechanisms before federal regulators.