Trash cans on Bedford?

A reader tells us:

I have been living in PLG for about 2 years now and walk my dog up and down Bedford from Lincoln to Winthrop and there are absolutely no trash cans to dispose of his potty bags. There is one that sometimes appears on the corner of Winthrop and Bedford but sometimes it's nowhere to be found. I would walk him on Flatbush if it weren't for all the broken glass on the ground... There is also a growing amount of people who don't pick up after their dog's and I'm wondering if the lack of trash cans has an influence on the matter.

Ah, the disappearing municipal trash can... I wish we had an answer for why the trash cans on city corners go missing. The trash can on the corner of Hawthorne & Flatbush similarly disappeared a couple of weeks ago—not that that stopped people from dumping their junk in its place. One genius even left a couple of boxes of apartment trash that had his name and address on them. I snapped this photo last week.

If a trash can on a corner goes missing, call 311 and request that the Department of Sanitation replace it. I did last week and the trash can on Flatbush & Hawthorne is back. You could request trash cans on Bedford as well.

Tonight: Adult Education

Carrie and I are hosting another session of our lecture series Adult Education tonight in Park Slope at Union Hall. Tonight's lecture, Trash and the City, has some great topics and actual bona fide experts!

I will be hosting the following lectures:

| Gertrude Berg: "Experiments in autonomous trash collection"
| Benjamin Miller: "Your Waste From Space: Looking Down at New York's Garbage Footprint"
| Michael Mandiberg: "10 Things I've Learned About Staten Island"
| Robin Nagle: "Lost at Sea: The Quiet Terrors of Trash, Then & Now"

You can read their bios after the jump.

Adult Education: Trash and the City
Union Hall
April 8, 2008
702 Union St. @ 5th Avenue (Park Slope)
$5
Doors open at 7:30

Photo by Boston Bill

Audubon rep calls Lincoln tower bad for birds

Brownstoner reports that Prospect Park Audubon Center senior naturalist Gabriel Willow fears that the glass design for the Lincoln Road tower risks killing scores of birds. Architect Tom Gilman hasn't responded to say whether he took the bird issue in consideration when designing the building.

I don't know enough about this issue to comment, but hope developer Henry Herbst was serious when he told the Brooklyn Eagle that he's considering holding a neighborhood meeting to discuss the project.

Brooklyn Paper story on Lincoln Road tower

Nothing new here, but I suppose it's worth mentioning: Prospect Lefferts Gardens Gets Big.

Moving sale this weekend

Our neighbor at 56 Hawthorne Street is moving after 40 years in our lovely nabe and she wishes to invite you to take some stuff off her hands. Furniture, vintage glassware, household items, records, books, vintage bottles, and many other "collectibles" will be available for purchase this Saturday and Sunday (April 5 & 6) from 10 am to 4 pm.  Enter up the stoop, at 56 Hawthorne, between Flatbush and Bedford.

Lefferts Manor to Go Gated

Artist's rendering

As first reported in The Echo, the Lefferts Manor Association has elected to go the final step in forging the identity of the deed-restricted enclave and will formally become a gated community.

While various versions of the plan have been floated over the years, the recent "speed hump controversy" proved to be the catalyst for change. While some residents were opposed to all forms of traffic calming, others were concerned about speed humps' impact on parking spaces, the potential for pollution and noise, the unattractiveness of additional road signs, and a possible invasion of bears. It was agreed that preventing all through-traffic in Lefferts Manor addressed these concerns.

"We've seen some beautiful ornamentation and ironwork in places like Sea Gate," said Lefferts Manor Association President Ben Edwards, "and we think we can put up similar, if smaller, versions around the Manor."

Another resident added that the gates would go a long way to "maintaining the country feel of the neighborhood against encroachment from developers."

Probably the most controversial part of the plan is the decision to exclude the North side of Fenimore Street and the South side of Lincoln Road. "We can't very well fence in the non-Manor residents living opposite those houses," claimed Echo editor Bob Marvin, "and it is equally impractical to run fence down the middle of the street. And the truth is, it will be a lot easier to explain the boundaries of Lefferts Manor now. If you had to type them twice a day in the Brownstoner comments section, you'd understand."

Reaction from outside of Lefferts Manor was mixed. Neighborhood coffee shop K-Dog and Dunebuggy announced a plan to begin deliveries into Lefferts Manor, while a doctor at Kings County Hospital said "I don't care; I drive down Winthrop."