Tag: Crown Heights
June 10, 2009 / / Politics

Police Commissioner Answers Questions at Medal Day Ceremony

The morning after residents of Crown Heights took the Police Commissioner to task for drug dealing, prostitution and quality of life issues in the neighborhood, Ray Kelly was awarding the Deputy Inspector of their local 77th precinct a unit citation at Medal Day ceremonies.

The same precinct where, according to department statistics, crime has plummeted 18%.

“If you look at statistics at this precinct, they are very, very impressive,” Commissioner Kelly had told the crowded basement of Berean Baptist Church. “If you’re the victim of a crime, you don’t want to hear about statistics, I understand that, one crime is one crime too many – but the numbers here are really an indication of the work that’s being done.”

With all the talk about statistics, it sounded like the crowd was watching The Wire.

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June 9, 2009 / / LGBTQ

Police Commish Mum On Anti-Gay Allegations Against Cops

There was an elephant in the basement of Berean Baptist Church in Crown Heights on Monday, when Police Commissioner Ray Kelly spent an hour addressing the questions of residents concerned with violence, drugs and quality of life issues on the streets of the 77th precinct in Brooklyn.

That elephant came in the form of allegations that officers from the 77th assaulted two lesbian women outside of a local nightclub while spewing anti-gay remarks. The question never came up during the meeting and the commissioner gave a terse “no comment” when confronted with it on his way out the door.

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May 12, 2009 / / Housing

Will Proximity To ‘Art’ Still Sell Condos?

April 21, 2009 / / Nightlife

Tracy Westmoreland Toasts Franklin Park’s Matt Roff in Crown Heights

September 23, 2008 / / Housing

Wall Street Views From Another Bank

As a chillier wind sliced through Brooklyn’s popular corridors last Saturday night, it was hard to imagine by the looks of things that anything was wrong with the economy. On North Sixth Street in Williamsburg, young women with Louis Vuitton bags teetered in Manolo Blahniks on the arms of their white-collared dates. Booze coursed through veins as the music at Sea shook passersby with stentorian beats.

But the next day at the sleepy Brooklyn Inn, the 138-year-old Boerum Hill bar frequented by local financial types, The Times’ Sunday business section sat menacingly on the oak bar as Leonard Cohen’s “So Long Marianne” wafted through the air. Two 30-ish JP Morgan employees sat quietly at the bar contemplating the future of the financial industry, fretting a bit about their own jobs.

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May 23, 2008 / / Observer Original

A Case of Gentrification

“I was born in the South Slope on 11th Street off Sixth Avenue,” said Matthew Roff, 33, owner of the new Crown Heights beer garden Franklin Park. “Bar Toto was my bodega.”

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March 14, 2008 / / Housing

The Two-Bedroom Studio

It isn’t often that New Yorkers get an intimate peek behind their neighbors’ closed doors. Even more unusual is a peek inside the intimate life of our state’s chief executive. But I digress.

As a child growing up in a 25-story filing cabinet for families and young professionals on West 53rd Street, I lived in apartment 10E. When trick-or-treating or selling my annual Christmas raffle tickets for school, I would get an intimate window into how my neighbors lived. We all have our domains, and regardless of how small they might be, they are ours. But what are we all doing behind those doors?

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