October 31, 2007 by Justine
Happy Halloween!
Here’s a video I spied on YouTube and it turns out to be the house of a family I knew growing up on my old block. This cool Halloween decorated crib is on Humboldt Street between Nassau and Driggs if you want to visit it yourself tonight.
Category Community, Culture, Events | Tags: Greenpoint,Humboldt Street,Videos | 3 Comments
October 30, 2007 by Justine
According to Brownstoner, the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District has been created and approved unanimously at today’s LPC Meeting. This is fantastic news!
If there is one thing I absolutely support it’s the preservation of the past. I’ve collected and worn vintage clothing since I was twelve, I’ve worked in the architectural field ever since I’ve had a ‘real adult job’ and even though there are a million issues and drama surround the Astral building, I have wanted to live in it since the first time I saw it. I love everything vintage, antique or just plain old.
So the creation of the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District as a landmark makes me pleased as punch. Finally, a score for Greenpoint.
Category Community, News | Tags: Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory,Greenpoint,Greenpoint Avenue,History | No Comments
October 29, 2007 by Justine
Received an email from a reader with this heads-up:
PUBLIC MEETING ITEM No. 4
LP-2264
Staff: D. Presa
Time: 12:10-1:30 PMThe Landmark Preservation Commission is holding one of its biennial blockbuster meetings on Tuesday. On the agenda [pdf] are votes or hearings for over a dozen significant buildings or districts.
Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District (Greenpoint, Brooklyn): Eberhard Faber is credited with bringing German lead-pencil-making techniques to the United States transforming his business into one of the largest employers in Brooklyn. A largely female work force of several hundred made huge numbers of low-cost pencils. Faber opened his first factory on the East River at the foot of 42nd Street in 1961, but moved to Kent and West Streets in Greenpoint after a fire in May 1872. The company kept adding buildings to its complex until 1924, and eventually left New York for Wilkes-Barre, Pa. in 1956.
Category Community | Tags: Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory,Greenpoint,Greenpoint Avenue | No Comments
October 24, 2007 by Justine
Came across this new blog today, a tongue-in-cheek about the elusive G Train.
“…the mythical and legendary G train that purportedly runs between the Smith/Ninth Street station in Brooklyn and the 71st Street/Continental Ave. station in Queens. I say purportedly because very few have ever seen this elusive train. Many people who have used the subway for their entire lives never encountered this train. Though the line shows up on New York City subway maps and is listed on signs as stopping in various stations, the reality of this train is in question, and there is a growing segment of the straphanging population of New York that believes this train does not exist.”
Stay tuned…
Category News | Tags: G Train,Websites | No Comments
by Justine
The New York Post reports a follow up.
I feel for the guy. I really do. He’s blaming a panic attack and while I don’t know for sure if it was done for the publicity of it or from a real mental breakdown of sorts, I’m giving the guy the benefit of the doubt.
“Wearing jeans, an olive poplin shirt, and a Boston Red Sox cap, Drimmer clutched the hand of his lady, who wore a big grin, Jackie-O sunglasses and black nail polish.”
Apparently, he’s not just a hipster, he’s part of a hipster couple.
Category News | Tags: Hipsters | No Comments
October 22, 2007 by Justine
Something has been pissing me off since I’ve moved in. I feel horrible even complaining about it considering other residents are dealing with bedbugs and toxic molds, but it just drives me nuts.
The people who live upstairs from me – the same people who allow a bathroom leak to get so bad that it caves my bathroom ceiling in – throw stuff out the window. Actually they pour stuff out the window. I have no idea what it is, but it pisses me off to no end. Why would you need to throw any liquid out of a window is beyond me, but they do so at least twice a day. I hope and pray that it’s water.
Yesterday it sounded as if they were moving furniture, actually a lot of the last week it’s sounded like that. The Super had mentioned he thought they were moving out. Then last night in the courtyard there was a ruckus, people down there doing God knows what. Drilling going on upstairs at midnight. Then it all started up again at 6am.
Then this morning I left for work only to see a dozen people and a breakfast buffet outside my front door. They’re filming something. This happens a lot around here. At least once a month there’s some sort of crew right on my block. And more often than that I see some sort of movie, television or student production going on somewhere in the hood.
I’ve yet to see anyone famous but I also don’t look too hard. I’m sure if I hung around these locales, I’d be able to spot a celeb or two. But ya know, as a New Yorker you gotta be cool and act like you can’t be bothered.
I wonder if they’re filming in the courtyard or maybe doing something in the apartment upstairs. Doubtful, but as long as they don’t throw liquid out the window, they’re ok with me.
Category News | Tags: Filming,Greenpoint,The Astral | 1 Comment
October 19, 2007 by Justine
Care of The Brooklyn Daily Egret, er, Eagle.
Did you know that if you are in Greenpoint and you walk south on Manhattan Ave. the names of the streets run in alphabetical order, i.e. Box, Clay, Dupont, Eagle, Freeman, Grand, Huron, etc.?
Category News | Tags: Greenpoint,History | 3 Comments
October 16, 2007 by Justine
Alright, I hate to dwell on Naked Guy but I was reading this which brought me to his blog which I then noticed his MySpace page and the “people he’d like to meet” section.
Playwrights, actors, directors, anyone who has a clue what’s going on in this business of art. God only knows I don’t. People who are unusual but not, y’know, actually crazy. And Rickey Henderson. Who actually might be.
Oh the irony.
Category News | Tags: Hipsters | No Comments
by Justine
When I started this blog just a few months ago it was 1) because I had just moved back to the neighborhood after spending my twenties in Staten Island between not one, but two, asshole ex-boyfriends and 2) it was a joint venture with my sister (hence the ‘s’ in Greenpointers).
Well, me and my sister had a falling out that as much as I would like to publicly decimate her for, I won’t. So it’s just down to me since pretty much a week after ‘we’ started.
A lot of the point behind this blog is the fact that I was born and raised here. My father was born and raised here and my Grandfather. I come from a long line of Greenpointers and yes, I am very proud to call myself a native among what is becoming less and less the norm in the nabe.
I feel that I have a different view to offer since I notice that a large majority (read: I didn’t say ALL) bloggers are transplants of some sort. Many of the blogs all around Brooklyn are of people who are new to their surroundings. Quite a few are based on “look at me in the big city” type of formats. Which is all well and good. Write what you know, more power to ya.
I do admit that I give shit to the ‘hipsters’ in some of my posts. To me, the word ‘hipster’ pretty much applies to most of the twenty and thirtysomethings that are simply not from here and in all likelihood will leave when the next new nabe shows up on the cover of some magazine. A lot of them are just doing the New York thing right now. In a couple of years they may find themselves out in Santa Fe or trying out Austin.
Then there’s the others who have been here five or ten years and feel that this is their neighborhood. And it is. But just as much as the people who’ve been here five or ten years want the acknowledgment and respect as being here before the newest influx, the people like me who’ve not just lived here but actually went to the schools here, grew up on the streets here and can usually name at least one person on virtually every block in the entire neighborhood that they know, we want it even more. Heck, we deserve it.
It’s not an elitist attitude, it’s just common pride. We’re losing a lot more than you. We’re losing friends and entire families that had been here for generations. All because someone, somewhere decided Greenpoint was the next big thing. So now our simple row houses are being torn down for new condos and everything about the neighborhood is being either changed or examined for change.
Greenpoint was never a hotbed of culture unless you wanted to see a Little Warsaw. If we wanted culture, we’d go to Manhattan. Everyone’s looking to ‘improve’ us. Nothing’s wrong with us. We like to walk up The Avenue, we like to sit on the stoop, we like to complain about the Poles. And now we’ve taken to complaining about the hipsters.
Greenpoint was pretty much one of the last white neighborhoods in Brooklyn that was untouched y gentrification. If Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst weren’t so far from the city those wouldn’t be the microcosms of Italian old school neighborhoods they are, either. But I imagine even their days are numbered as well.
And the new influx of people have the nerve to complain about us? That’s just fucking rude.
There are some natives who are on a kick to hate all the hipsters. I am not one of them. I’m not going to judge a specific person based on whether they were born here or not. But as a whole, yes, I guess I have to say I’d rather they were not here. Rents have gone up so much and so quickly that it’s just so fucked up that the blue collar folks who have lived here for so long have to get up and get out. In just the last three months I’ve had one friend move to North Carolina and two friends move to Virginia. There is nowhere left to live for the lower middle class in New York.
And it sucks.
Category Community | Tags: Greenpoint,Hipsters,History | 5 Comments
October 15, 2007 by Justine
Oh man. The Astrals are taking a beating in the blogosphere. And the Super is getting some extra press for his “sidejob”. Gawker has an especially tasty post.
What’s next? Perhaps that new Brooklyn Daily Herald newspaper will do an exposé?
Category Community, News | Tags: Greenpoint,The Astral | No Comments
