Parades, NYC Half, Veselka, Franklin Avenue, Sewage Tanks, PLG Landmarking, and more

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Brooklyn's celebratory parade will be this Sunday at 12:30 pm, starting by the Bartel-Pritchard square (Park Slope/Windsor Terrace). The NYC Half Marathon will take over until 4 pm on the other side of the park.

Politics & Crime

• Retired officer Kruythoff Forrester was accused of menacing three teenagers (12, 13, and 14 years old) with a gun in 2021. His arrest was voided about an hour after two top cops showed up at the Precinct 73 house in Brownsville. THE CITY went over the videos and recordings to reconstruct the timeline.
• Former state Supreme Court judge Laura Lee Jacobson is accusing Frank Carone, Martin Edelman, and Steven Finkelstein, prominent lawyers affiliated with the Brooklyn Democratic Party, of committing professional misconduct in a successful campaign to oust her from the bench in retaliation over her decisions while on it.

• Politicians are demanding to close Rikers on time – by 2027 – even though local jails, including the one under construction in Downtown Brooklyn, will not be completed on time, NYDN reports. "Because something is not completely finished does not mean that you cannot [house] inmates," Adams told reporters. Downtown Brooklyn jail is now expected to be completed in 2029. Regardless, the number of detainees is twice the capacity of the new jails to house them.
• The Brooklyn Democratic Party is getting sued by its landlord, which says the party tried to break its lease on office space without permission, and now owes $82,000 in back rent.

Prospect Park – East Drive in Prospect Park is being repaved for the first time in over a decade to bring about improvements in sharing the road among pedestrians, runners, bicyclists, and parks department vehicles. The work will be completed in sections overnight to minimize disruptions for users and starts at Park Circle in Kensington, continuing along the east side of the park to Grand Army Plaza.

Free Trees – New York Restoration Project is giving away native trees to anyone willing to plant them within the five boroughs for free throughout April and May. While the trees are free, the choices vary among locations, and registration is required.

Prospect Lefferts Gardens Historic District and a church in Cypress Hills have been nominated by the New York State Board for Historic Preservation to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Prospect Lefferts Gardens Historic District's boundaries are Sterling Street to the north, Lincoln Road and Rutland Road to the south, and Flatbush Avenue to the west. They extend eastward to be ween Nostrand Avenue and New York Avenue from Rutland Road to Lefferts Avenue. "The Prospect Lefferts Gardens Historic District, as delineated herein, overlaps with and extends east and west of the existing Prospect Lefferts Gardens Historic District, designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1979."

Greenlight Bookstore will close its Flatbush location after seven years in PLG to stay in business. The sales are down across the board, and Flatbush has seen a large drop-off, the owner says. The store will close on May 14.

Chelsea Piers Field House Brooklyn is opening a state-of-the-art indoor facility at 595 Dean Street, including an Olympic-level gymnastics center, two boarded soccer fields, a dedicated ninja + parkour center, and a warm water learn-to-swim pool in June.  

Express Ferry – has started operating during weekday mornings from 6:15 am to 10:15 am and takes passengers from Bay Ridge to Atlantic Avenue in 14 minutes and from Atlantic Avenue to Wall Street in seven minutes.

Moving: From Red Hook to Bushwick – Cruise ships are expected to start arriving soon, so the city will move about 1,000 migrant men from the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal location to 220 West 42nd Street in Manhattan and 455 Jefferson Street, corner of Cypress Avenue in Bushwick, at the end of March. Busses will be provided.

Mental Health: Extended Care Unit for patients with severe mental illness has opened at H+H Kings County, with the capacity to serve 25. The new unit rehabilitates and reintegrates patients into the community, allowing longer in-patient stays at the hospital.

Gowanus Canal – The city finally broke ground yesterday on the first of two underground storage tanks that will help prevent up to 12 million gallons of sewage from spilling into the Gowanus Canal, a Superfund site in the community that is also seeing a lot of new development as the result of rezoning.

The first tank is located at the north end of the canal, bounded by Nevins Street, Butler Street, and Degraw Street, and once the project is complete, it will have a waterfront public open space on top of the tank.

Red Hook Library will close today, March 17, 2023, for a comprehensive interior and exterior renovation that will cost around $17.5 million and is expected to reopen in 2025—more on plans here.

NYC Half Marathon starts in Crown Heights before looping through Prospect Park and heading down Flatbush Avenue across Manhattan Bridge. Many associated street closures on Sunday, March 19, will last from early in the morning till 4 pm along the route—closures at the link.

Buses

The final update on the southern Brooklyn meetings the MTA held to present its draft Brooklyn Bus Redesign plan, along with community feedback. Should you need three buses to get from Boro Park to Crown Heights? Does it make sense to eliminate sparsely used bus stops to make seniors walk further when buses only stop if there is a passenger waiting? Is a 2% increase in bus speeds worth it? That and more here.

Why should you care? Because so many subway stops are inaccessible to those unable to navigate stairs – you may break a leg one day, too, and you will almost definitely get old – and you will need to be able to get around. All Brooklyn trains lead to Manhattan, G being an exception. Starting in middle school, students get a metro card and often navigate train-to-bus or bus-to-bus transfers to get to and from school. Want to go from Flatbush to Williamsburg or Gravesend? You need the bus.

Food

Street vendors rallied yesterday in front of City Hall, demanding legalizing their business. Legal street vending is currently very limited, and a tiny fraction of the estimated 20,000 vendors operate legally, whether it's churros or sunglasses they are selling in Atlantic Avenue subway tunnels or the boardwalk in Coney Island.

Tastes of Franklin Avenue Festival is part of a series of neighborhood food crawls supporting local schools and communities that are organized by and support Seeds in the Middle, a charity that has worked for 12 years with students, schools, and their communities in Central Brooklyn to create affordable, nearby access to farm-fresh food.

See the Franklin Avenue Festival map of establishments here, and explore one new-to-you – Arden, Cent'anni, Gueros, Memphis Seoul, Screamers, and more.

Veselka, the legendary Ukrainian comfort food restaurant, is expanding to Williamsburg, planning on opening a 5,000-square-foot restaurant before the year is out, New York Post reports.

It's the season to sign up for a CSA share, and BK Reader lists 15, but by no means all available options. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, where you pre-pay a farm for your share of the crop at planting time and then pick up a weekly share as produce becomes available – starting midsummer and ending in the fall. Locations and prices vary.

On Saturday, March 18, T-Swirl Crepe, the Queens-based purveyor of sweet and savory Japanese crepes, unveils a new location at 77 Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, offering all of the brand's 28 unique flavors, as well as seasonal and limited-edition varieties. Crepes are made to order with naturally gluten-free rice flour and are rolled in a hand-held cone shape that is ideal for eating on the go.

Eater checks out Red Pavilion at 1241 Flushing Avenue, at Ingraham Street, in Bushwick: "a Chinese teahouse by day and a club at night, Red Pavilion serves TCM-infused dishes and drinks like lotus leaf-wrapped sticky rice, chicken bone broth, and sesame cocktails against a lush red Wong Kar-Wai-inspired backdrop."

Atti, a new Korean BBQ restaurant from the owners of MS. OHHO cafe in Greenpoint and Kuun in Downtown Brooklyn, has opened at 294 Livingston Street (near Hanover Place) and is solid. Lights are dim, and it feels slightly industrial and cool, "like a place you would find in a hip neighborhood in a second-tier city," one diner remarked, yet cozy and intimate at the same time. "Extra bonus is we could hear one another talk!" Snowflake bingsoo - shaved ice with beans - is fantastic for finishing a meal and is included in their Atti Han Sang.

"An asbestos abatement notice, shuttered doors, and heaps of debris – this is what is left of Gowanus’ famous BBQ restaurant Pig Beach, one of the first businesses that closed its doors due to the rezoning outlined in the Gowanus Neighborhood Plan," reports the Red Hook Star Revue.

"The restaurant, a sprawling indoor-outdoor facility that has served as a community meeting spot for eight years, closed December 30 because the development group Tankhouse is beginning the process of building along the Gowanus canal. Shane McBride, co-owner of Pig Beach, said he will miss the original location, and hopes to be able to move the restaurant back into the area in a couple of years."

Extra!