In an email announcing a telephone town hall meeting, Rep. Yvette Clarke describes her district as
Borough Park, Brownsville, Brooklyn Heights, Caroll Gardens, Clinton Hill, Crown Heights, South Crown Heights, Cobble Hill, East Flatbush, Flatbush, Fort Greene, Gowanus, Kensington, Midwood, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Red Hook, Sunset Park, Weeksville, Windsor Terrace & Wingate
Are we "Flatbush" again? Or are have we become part of "South Crown Heights"?
In all seriousness, the telephone Town Hall Meeting is on Wednesday, December 12 at 6:30PM 7:30PM (thanks, anon). Call in to 1-866-447-5149, PIN# 13319 if you have any questions, concerns or suggestions.
The email says that she is focusing on "federal issues," so this may not be the time to ask about speed humps (though one could argue that it is never the wrong time...). Topics that she specifically refers to are Iraq, the environment, ENDA (a proposed federal law to outlaw sexual orientation discrimination), No Child Left Behind, immigration and gun violence.
As you may know, it's now illegal for advertisers to leave fliers and grocery store circulars on your stoop if you have a NO FLIERS sign posted. The trick is finding a cheap way to post the sign that isn't too unsightly. I can't promise that I've succeeded on that count, but the signs I made for a couple of neighbors and I have worked wonders in cutting down the circulars we receive.
If you'd like one yourself, all you need to do is print this pdf out, cut out the signs, and get them laminated (I went to the Staples on Flatbush at Tilden). Next, poke a couple of holes in the top with a hole punch, put some picture wire through, wrap it around an iron gate and you're done.
I made a bunch of signs and it was only a few bucks. You can use the extra signs to give away or to replace the old ones after they succumb to the weather.
Park Slope's yellow umbrella experiment—where customers along select 7th Ave. stores are invited to borrow free yellow umbrellas as long as they return them—seems doomed to fail. While I'm usually the last one to knock socialistic experiments, the market actually does a good job in delivering umbrellas to people when they need one. In New York, a $5-10 umbrella is seldom more than a block away.
In my fantasy, businesses would adopt the "rain solution" offered in Edward Bellamy's classic Looking Backward. In the 19th century utopian novel, local businesses rolled out motorized, retractable awnings whenever it rained and these awning covered the entire sidewalk. This solution, one of Bellamy's characters explained, was far better than umbrellas, which break easily, make it hard to see, and are rather anti-social (since they poke and drip water on others). Of course, this plan doesn't make much economic sense, but, hey, it's just a novel.
(Via The New York Times)
When discussing the potential of Flatbush Avenue to become Brooklyn's destination for the arts, I made a offhand comment slagging business clustering but never bothered to explain myself. Which brings me to the point of this post.
By "clustering" I'm referring to the tendency of businesses to open up near the competition, ultimately creating the Diamond District; stretches of 6th Street and Park Ave. as go-to spots for Indian food; 8th Street for shoes; MacDonald Ave. for kitchen and bath supplies; etc. Chain stores do this as well: Home Depot and Lowe's are practically next door in the Gowanus, as they are in other parts of the country.
The problem with clustering is that it makes people have to travel farther they they'd otherwise need to patronize that type of business. To borrow an example from A Pattern Language : imagine a strip of beach that has an ice cream on the north end. If someone else wants to open an ice cream shop on the beach, they could insure do one of two things: open at the opposite end of the beach, which would likely split the customer base in two by drawing in people at the south end. Or open right next door to the other shop. Either option has the potential of splitting the customer base in half, but the first benefits customers at the south end by requiring less travel.
The classic architecture book refers to this as Hotelling's Law and Wikipedia explains it in greater detail—and why businesses usually choose to cluster.
My point is simply that, given the choice of having, say, Indian restaurants spread relatively evenly throughout the city or concentrated in a single block, I'd vote for the former. Sure, with some businesses—like tile stores—it can be handy to have plenty of choice in one locale. When you care enough, you've always got the option to travel. But often you're not looking for destination pizza; you just want to grab something on the way home from work.
Good news for brownstone residents: Brooklyn Housing Court has begun a pilot program for handling small-building disputes. If you are a homeowner who relies on rental income to make your mortgage, or are a tenant living in a crumbling building with no super, it will be a huge relief not to have to wait in line behind the thousands of big-building cases, which usually involve management companies or corporate ownership that can better withstand the lost income during the delay.
PLG isn't covered by this court yet—the current jurisdiction is limited to parts of East Flatbush, Midwood, Canarsie and Sheepshead Bay/Marine Park—but, according to the article, "officials hope to add cases from across the borough in the next six months or so."
The official position of Hawthorne Street is that this is a very good thing.
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In an email announcing a telephone town hall meeting, Rep. Yvette Clarke describes her district as 
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