Searching for Chinese Dumplings in Sunset Park

When my favorite dumpling place closed a couple of years ago in Sunset Park I had to go and find a replacement for it. Restaurants that specialize in dumplings are few and far between in the nabe and borough. Fortunately I did not have to search far and found two places to replace them. The first place to recommend is Family Dumpling on the corner of 7th Avenue and 56th street. This small place caters mostly to the Chinese population of the nabe as do most Chinese restaurants in the neighborhood. It seems to be a common price for dumpling places to charge $1 for 5 dumplings. I usually have $2 at a serving. They have been written up by the Village Voice and they have those reviews on the windows but haven't been able to find them online. You can always find seating at Family Dumpling as it isn't always that overwhelmingly busy. I like my dumplings with soy sauce and if you want it you will have to ask for it on the side. The bottles they have at the tables are filled with vinegar and someone thinking they are soy sauce will get a surprise when they pour it on. All n all their dumplings are far less greasy than most and they use a flat square pan skillet to fry them in. I highly recommend them if you are in the area for a quick cheap meal. Their address is 5602 Seventh Avenue.

Family Dumpling at 7th ave. and 56th street

A friend of mine always told me that if you want to know good places to eat look out for where the local cops eat. That is the case with Kai Feng Fu Dumpling House. You can almost miss it as it is off the beaten path off the corner of 8th Avenue on 48th street. This place is always busy and is frequented by the guys from the 68 and 72 precincts. Their dumplings are a little greasier than the ones at Family Dumpling. Seating during lunchtime or dinner time is on a first come first served basis. You need to grab any chair available, though most people do takeout and yes the bottles on the tables have soy sauce in them. They also have a variety of noodles and soups on their menu and are open every day until 9 PM but they are usually out of stuff by 8:30. Neither place is designed to cater to fine dining. I think the Chinese invented fast food, which means get it fast, eat it fast and get out fast. Kai Feng Fu's address is 4801 8th Ave. but as I said they are about 60 feet off the avenue on 48th street just off the corner.

Kai Feng Fu Dumpling on 48th street and 8th Avenue.

I am still on the lookout for more dumpling places to try out in the area. We'll report on how our search progresses.

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Cultural Happenings in Sunset Park

2nd Sunset Park Neighborhood Summit

What: Neighborhood Summit, All are invited..
When: Sunday January 20 at 1 to 4 PM
Cost: Free
Where: Trinity Lutheran Chruch
46th street and 4th Avenue Sunset Park.

Thanks to Sunset Park Autonomous Zone


Diocesean Mass

What: Mass in celebration of Our Lady of Altagracia (Patron Saint of the Dominican Republic)
When: Monday January 21 7PM
Cost: Free
Where: Saint Agatha Catholic Church
702 48th street Sunset Park


FASTELAVN (DANISH MARDI GRASS)

What: Danish Mardi Grass, dress in custome, eat Danish food, be part of the tradition.
When: Sunday January 27th 3PM to 6PM
Cost: All inclusive $25 for adults, $15 ages 7-17, $10 for under 7
Where: Danish Athletic Club
735 65th street Sunset Park (border of Bay Ridge)
For reservation call Victoria @ 718-748-5950 or Reidun @ 718-748-7844


Chinese New Year Celebration Music

What: Chinese Harmonica virtuoso Jia Yi He
When: February 7th @ 4 PM
Cost: Free
Where: Brooklyn Public Library Sunset Park
5108 4th Avenue at 51st street

Have a cultural happening in the area you would like listed?
Email me at webmaster at sunset-park dot com


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Keeping Our Castle Keep

One of our perennial Sunset Park landmarks was covered recently by the Lost City Blog. It appears that it is in danger of extinction due to neglect. The building at one time used to house the original 68th precinct house. Reminiscent of a medieval castle one would find in southern Europe complete with what looks like a castle keep. Some people have complained that it looks like an eyesore. I have always liked the fact that it sticks out like an archaic sore thumb compared to the surrounding buildings. According to the blog the building which has been designated a Historic Landmark by the city has been bought by the Brooklyn Chinese American Association. One wonders what they intend to do with it. Just recently they also took over the old VFW Post that stood on the corner of 39th street and 8th Avenue. Rather than use that building for any useful purpose they have turned to using the front yard as a parking garage for their buses. Let us hope that they don't do the same with the old precinct house and leave it to be used as a warehouse. The building should be used for some community purpose such as a museum or community center. Perhaps our councilwoman can get off her butt and see if we can get some funding to do just that. In any case, the blog offers a brief history of the building.

Of note also is comments by a frequent contributor to this blog Escape From Sunset Park adding a bit more to the history;

• The day the police moved out, my teenage friends and I busted the lock and put our own lock on the door. We recognized the value of the building and wanted to show the community how important it was to preserve it.
  
  Over the course of a few weeks, we fixed it up well-enough to stage a three day health fair. We attracted 1,776 people to the event. (we "rented" the building to the movie company shooting "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight" to raise money to make the place useable for the health fair. Also, the telephone company "switchboard" for the area, now mounted outdoors on a pole was inside the building on a wall - it provided us with free phone service so we could call doctors from a medical directory that we "found" and have them volunteer to fill in blocks of time for the health fair. Our biggest moment came the night before the fair, when we had to lock the police out because they were harrassing us - in "our" building...lol)
  
  After the health fair we held a public meeting to turn the building over to any group that wanted to use it - no one stepped forward.
  
  A year or so later an anti-drug program - (3rd avenue based, primarily heroin, run by a man named Santana - it was a Christ based program) took over the building and they are the ones that painted over the brick & began putting white paint in the mortar lines before they abandoned the building.
  
  The biggest mistake of the building was when the school of music had it listed as a nyc landmark - it made any future repairs unaffordable due to the level of "historic preservation" that had to be met.
  
  For awhile it was in the hands of a group that wanted to put a for profit health spa in the building.
  
  I absolutely love the building and it is a part of my past. There is an old horse stable on the south side of the building (Neighborhood Youth Corps used it for a summer or two - I smashed a chair against a wall in a dispute at one time and almost got my butt kicked by a couple of dozen guys) and a gang - I forget their name - bald headed, darkskinned guys occupied it for awhile - I stepped into their "lair" once with members of the Brooklyn Saints to squash an imminent gang fight - once again I was lucky to escape without a beating...lol. During this episode the police, now in the new 72nd precinct building hung the colors (a gang member's leather jacket on the precinct flagpole to show their contempt for the gang)..
  
  To the west of the building is the morgue that was part of the police operation at the time of its construction.
  I hope that the Chinese American group can save the building.

Check out the post. It makes for interesting reading and we recommend the blog as well.

Earlier this morning as I was passing by I snapped these shots of the building in question.



Let's hope that some of us in the community can band together and save this landmark. Besides giving the neighborhood character it is a bit of our history from a bygone era when New York City and Sunset Park were a different place.

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Home Cooking Slovak Food at Milan's

One of the things I like about running the website for Sunset Park is that I get to explore the neighborhood in all it's corners. After having done so for the last ten years I am amazed how every day there is a new discovery. Since Sunset Park has had an explosion of eateries and restaurants it's only fair that we should write about them as well. This will be the first of many, I hope.

Milan's owner Milan Franko

I first stumbled on Milan's Restaurant a year ago when I included their page on my website. By all accounts it is the only Slovak Restaurant in the borough of Brooklyn. Yesterday I finally got a chance to try some of their food. Milan's is owned and operated by Milan Franko and his wife Miloslava who is also a professional chef who runs the kitchen and as Milan claims is the real boss. Milan and his wife emigrated to the US from Slovakia in 1991. His story is what is typical of hard working immigrants to this country who work hard at achieving their dreams. Coming from a family of chefs and restaurateurs it was always Milan's dream to open a restaurant of his own. Milan's opened it's doors 11 years ago. It wasn't long before they got rave reviews by the New York Times food critics. The restaurant is very functional and spartan. Their menu is eclectic and features dishes from Slovakia, Czech and Poland. Like most of the region one can find the same dishes across borders with some variations in the recipes.

Hungarian Goulash

The dish I had was Hungarian Goulash and potato pancakes. The Goulash was excellent to my taste buds. Now I am not a connoisseur of food, I just know what tastes good and if I like something. Milan's also serves Czech Pilsner beers on tap such as Staropramen, Urquel and Krusovice. All of them put Budweiser to shame and make it seem bland by comparison. I also had a taste of Slovak pasta with sheep cottage cheese topped of with some bacon. All in all I enjoyed the meal and liked hearing Milan's story of trying to make it in Sunset Park. The place has a homey atmosphere and the dishes seem more like home cooking than some cookie cutter kind of fare one gets in fast food places. The menu is reasonably priced and if you like East European food it's the place to go. Much of Sunset park is undiscovered territory by Sunset Parkers, not to mention our neighbors to the north and south. You should give Milan's a visit and try the food. After all, how often do you get to eat some Slovak home cooking?

Slovak pasta with sheep's cheese.

Incidentally, it's located at 710 5th Avenue off of 22nd street.

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The Cream Cake Machine of Sunset Park

Over at New York Magazine's Website they had an article about a recently unveiled cream cake machine in Chinatown. The article noted that there are only three of these machines in existence and one of them was in Sunset Park at 60th and 8th (the actual location). Being the adventurous type and being near there I decided to investigate. Hey I figured at $2 for 8 cakes, why not?

The article seemed intriguing as follows;

• A Chinatown eatery has put something on the sidewalk that’s much more exciting than the usual bag of fish: the cream-cake machine! Unveiled for a test run yesterday outside of Quickly, a trendy bubble-tea and shabu shabu spot, the Korean contraption is just one of three in the city, said manager Patrick Chu. (The other two are at Quickly's Flushing and Sunset Park locations.) The thumb-size cream cakes cost $2 for eight and $5 for 24. Considering the machine churns out two dozen cakes every five minutes, we wonder if this means the end for the humble griddle man.

So off we went with camera in hand and $2 to try them out. Frankly I had seen the griddle carts along 8th avenue but had never tried cream cakes before. Quickly is situated around the corner off of 8th on 60th street. The machine looked just like the one in the article. I ordered 8 cakes and tried them out. The cakes taste rather a bit sweet and in some ways reminded me of Twinkies without the cream and heavy sugar. They weren't bad at all and at $2 were rather reasonably priced and a relatively cheap snack for when you have the munchies. Now that I know these guys are there I think I will occasionally stop there and get some cream cakes. I will also have to stop by one of those griddle carts and see what the competition tastes like as well.



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Housing Project on 39th and 6th on again!

Earlier this morning I was passing by the construction site on the corner of 39th street and 6th Avenue. The site had been inactive for the last two months and it seemed that they had possibly run out of money or were taking a break. But this morning there was activity at the site. Being the curious sort I went there and asked the workers when the completion date was going to be. Nobody spoke English so that answer was not forthcoming. However, I did get a peek at what the ground floor would look like and having my camera with me I snapped a few shots.

The ground floor seems to be gated and fenced and there appear to be apartments that are located slightly below ground level. That explains why I kept seeing the tops of doors above the wooden fence level. Now that the project appears to be ongoing again, several questions come to mind. When the project was first proposed on the site of the old Getty service station that stood there. There were environmental issues and it had caused a controversy at the local community board as to what type of housing would be built at the site with most preferring affordable middle income housing to be put there. It was never clear to me if they were going to be condos or rentals. There is no indication of that in any of the postings on the outside. There is the issue why the site seemed to be inactive for the last two months. Did these guys run out of money? Are they selling apartments or the entire project? Were they foreclosed? Is Century 21 representing a bank? Questions, questions. I suppose we will eventually find out.

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Our Assemblyman Ortiz wants you to pay more for beer!

 

 

Our esteemed assemblyman representing Sunset Park in the state assembly Felix Ortiz has come out with an idea to raise more revenue according to our local paper the Sunset News. Supposedly the money would go to fund programs for Junior highschoolers and preventing from turning to a life of alcohol. He expects the bill to raise at least $200 million.

 

Our assemblyman has been a very busy boy. Last year he sponsored a bill that would have effectively banned the sale of vitamins and supplements without FDA approval and a doctor's prescription. While I find the supposed goal compelling I find it interesting that he did not also go after wine and hard liquor as well, the drink of choice of the upper classes. Instead he has targeted beer which is the drink of choice of most of his constituents. Especially Hispanics from the Caribbean and blue collar workers which make up the bulk of the voters in our district. Should this bill pass, which seems unlikely at this time with the Governor pushing for lower taxes. I wonder if many of us will like the fact that we will have to pay 25 cents a can more and $1.50 per six pack. Will the voters target their angst at Ortiz? I somehow doubt it. But, if we want to stop the consumption of alcohol, why not ban it altogether? Somehow I don't think that will happen either. The problem with raising taxes is that in the end the ones who pay are the working class and the middle class. The rich have lawyers and loopholes.

 

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Keeping the Gowanus Part 2!

It seems that some people over at Curbed.com objected to my criticism of the Gowanus Expressway plans in my last post. I would have ignored them, but I feel I must comment. The condescending attitude of some of the holier than thou posters that reek of elitist smarminess simply cannot be ignored. They could have chosen to debate my points in a civil manner and refuted some of my arguments. Apparently they have no comeback so they chose what people who have no clue usually do. They decided to ridicule my post and hurl epithets. It seems to me that all these "urban renewal" types would be the type that would level the acropolis to build condos or destroy the pyramids of Egypt to make way for parking lots. How dare us peasants in Sunset Park criticize their plans for our neighborhood? Don't we know that such highly intelligent creatures that hide under rocks know more that we do? Their attitudes and posts are more reflective of who they are than they are of me and reflect on who they really are. I have learned since starting this blog that there will be those high and mighty condescending pseudo intellectuals hiding behind their anonymity. Their limited vocabulary is reflective of the poor upbringing that these people have had and the lack of manners that is permeating this society.

My views of course reflect only what I personally feel. However, I know from conversations with the folks here that I reflect the thinking of the majority here.

It is perhaps that sad case that those who live here often have no say in what happens here. The decisions made by anally retentive elites who think they know what is best for us. Frankly, it matters not a twit what they think. I won't debase myself by throwing epithets back at infantile people who still haven't grown up. We will reflect what we think on this blog and if you want to be un-civil about it, it reflects more on you than it does on us.

We are open to being educated and influenced to change our minds. We are open to being corrected on occasion. Approach us with civility and we will return the favor. Otherwise you will be ignored as you justly deserve.

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Keeping the Gowanus Expressway!

It seems there is a lot of buzz about the $12.8 billion proposal by the American Institute of Architects to tear down our beloved Gowanus Expressway and replace it with a greenway. There is an abundance of comment on Curbed.com, Brownstoner, The Gothamist and the Gowanus Lounge.

A few comments from someone who lives here where they want to pull this off. I am willing to bet that not one of the architects that dreamed this whole thing up lives in the neighborhood. Are they going to move into the neighborhood to supervise construction for the ten or fifteen years it will take to build? How long will it take to build? This in a city that gets fleeced by corrupt contractors who milk a job for all it's worth and take ten years to fix a pothole. Will it really cost 12.8 billion or will it go severely over budget as all things do when the taxpayer is footing the bill? Where will the money come from? Do you think taxpayers in flyover country are going to like financing a bottomless pit in Sunset Park? And what about us residents who will be displaced from here to make this dream come true? And what about the factories and warehouses that provide New Yorkers with Jobs? Will they all leave for places like New Jersey or South Carolina? Why don't they let decisions like this in the hands of the people who live here instead? Why do we have to be the victims of pipedreams and greedy contractors who see manna from heaven in government contracts and the blank checks of taxpayers.

And when we tear it down, where will all the scrap steel go? Will it be sold to the Chinese so they can build aircraft carriers to bomb us with? Heck, why not? The Japanese built their aircraft carriers with surplus US steel too.

I say give the Gowanus a paint job, fix the potholes and leave it and us the heck alone.

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Will Starbucks ever arrive in Sunset Park?

With Starbucks planning a major expansion in the borough of Brooklyn we ask ourselves the question if at least one location will land in Sunset Park. While both Bay Ridge and Park Slope, our northern and southern neighbors boast several Starbucks Sunset Park has none. I am not so much concerned with their coffee as I am with the fact that most T-Mobile Hot Spots tend to be located at Starbucks. As a T-Mobile subscriber to their Hot Spot service I find it inconvenient to not have any Hot Spots for their Wi-Fi service in our neighborhood.

The only Wi-Fi access in the neighborhood is currently at the Brooklyn Public Library located on 51st street and 4th Avenue. It would be better if there were more spread out locations in the neighborhood that provided such access if you happen to have your laptop with you.

8th Avenue is already saturated with combination coffee shop/bakeries which are frequented by the local Chinese and I am not sure that Starbucks would be frequented by them should one open up on 8th Avenue. Thus I would be surprised to see one open up there. 5th Avenue would also prove somewhat problematic below 39th street since the Hispanic population there is lower scale and may not go for the overpriced, over-roasted fare the Starbucks provides. We will have to see. Barring that alternative perhaps it would be nice if enough T-Mobile subscribers in the neighborhood raised hell with T-mobile and got them to locate Hot Spots in the many alternate locations that abound in our neighborhood.


If a Starbucks does open in Sunset Park expect the first location to be somewhere north of 25th street in the northern part of the nabe that is being gentrified as we speak. In any case, I am sure that most of us could do with the Hot Spots without the coffee since the Mexican Coffee houses on 5th Avenue and the Chinese ones on 8th offer better fare at better prices. Maybe someone at T-Mobile is reading this blog and will get a hint?

Related Link: 2014

Store of the Day: The Mug Cafe, it's not Starbucks, it's better..

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Chinese New Year is on it's way, Get Ready!

February 7th is Chinese New Year and it seems that some of the stores along 8th Avenue are already getting ready. Displaying their wares on the windows and hanging fireworks streams.


The following shots I took at last year's celebration. Chinese New Year is a very colorful all day celebration worth watching. Expect this year's to be even bigger than the celebrations last year and weather permitting to encompass the entire length of 8th Avenue. Bring your cameras boys and girls.


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New Building on 48th and 8th proceeding on schedule.

It seems that the building under construction on 8th Avenue and 48th street seems to be proceeding along in it's construction. From the looks of things the building seems to be another art deco version condo much like the ones we have seen on 7th avenue.
The artist's rendering below purports to show what the finished building will look like. The rendering can be seen posted on one of the billboards at the construction site. One has to wonder if the same architect is involved in all these buildings or are they simply copying each other's work.


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White People Move In, The World Ends

Yesterday as I was getting out of the house I saw a white couple walking down the block. What struck me about them was that they seemed out of place. They were somewhere possibly in their mid to late twenties. So white, they looked anemic. They looked like they belonged somewhere in Ohio rather than New York City. White New Yorkers just look different than other white people. You can tell who they are for the most part. So it wasn't hard not to notice these two as they were gallivanting down the block. All of a sudden they turned and started to go up the stairs of one of the brownstones down the block. Must be visiting, I thought to myself. But no wait, the guy had a key and he used it to enter the building. At that moment I realized that I just saw the first white people to move on the block in well over twenty years.

After several decades of white people abandoning the block for parts unknown, it got to the point of having just one family of white people left on the block and me (though I also classify as hispanic). What this change portends is hard to say at this point. Is it just the tip of the iceberg? I live in a kind of forgotten corner of Sunset Park on the border with Borough Park. Not the kind of section that would be at the forefront of gentrification. Yet here they were, two white people had somehow in a moment of insanity decided to move onto my block. What motivated them I wonder. Are they the vanguard of those dreaded hipsters I had heard so much about? Will Starbucks open a branch on 8th Avenue to cater to these people? What if this scene is being replicated on other blocks. Has the gentrification invasion begun? Or is it just a glitch in the system, an aberration from an alternate universe?

This is probably how gentrification begins. A sneak attack via moving van in the dead heat of night. The neighbors caught unawares until one morning there they are, two anemic looking Midwesterners strolling down the block. Oh well, the only thing certain about change is that it's certain.

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Another Sunset Parker killed crossing street

In a tragic repetition of the tragic accident just two days before merely two blocks away another resident of our neighborhood was struck down by a car. The Daily News covers the details of the accident. I think someone ought to look at statistics, but it seems to me that we have an awful lot of these accidents in this neighborhood. Pedestrian fatalities at the hands of careless and reckless drivers seem to be prevalent in our neighborhood. It's a sad way to end the year in the neighborhood with two unnecessary and wasteful fatalities. Our condolences to the families in these tragedies.



Police Sunday investigate a livery cab that struck and killed Barbara Tjornhom, 65, of Sunset Park, Brooklyn.





Barbara Tjornhom

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Sunset Parker Killed in Hit and Run

I happened to be walking by shortly after this occurred at around 3:30 PM. I had no clue at the time how serious it was. I saw the man laying on the ground as I passed by on my van and construction workers who were working on the nearby fire house were directing traffic. I parked the van a block away and went on about my business. I should have suspected something was up when police were still at the intersection hours later guarding the spot where it happened.

On waking up this morning and reading the papers I had a sick feeling more than I normally would. I suppose it was the fact that I had actually seen it. The stories are covered in the various New York papers and outlets. In the Daily News, Newsday and 7 Online. It is really a sad way to end the year.

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Investment Opportunities in Sunset Park?

Over at the recently launched nrv lowdown blog they have a short article on the Sunset Park real estate market. And while the article takes note of the dismal situation in Mortgages as it notes; The neighborhood is also being hit hard by the sub-prime mortgage crisis, so real estate values there are changing quickly with the economy.

While it makes passing note of the Gentrification that is encroaching the neighborhood from both sides, North and South it paints a rather flowery picture that I think at this point in time is too optimistic. While no doubt there are investment opportunities to be had. The adds it links to on the bottom show a number of properties that by any standard are clearly over priced.The first offering is the 3 family brownstone on the right at 56th street. 2700 square feet on a 2000 square foot lot. It gives scant information or other details. The asking price? $990,000 . Now you might have gotten away with that a year ago. In today's market I don't think so. I suspect that house will be on the market for a long time until and if the owner takes a more realistic stock and lowers the price by about 200k.


Another offering by the same real estate agent is the modest townhouse below a wood frame house on 49th street for which they are asking $715,000. I think the people selling these properties are overly optimistic. While I agree that Sunset Park is improving I do not see it as being immune to the economic downturn in the real estate industry and until that is resolved at these prices investment opportunities they are not.
Why buy something at a high price when you know that prices are falling? Most homes are not investment opportunities. Usually the home you live in is a non-performing asset. Especially one family homes. When you take into account inflation and amortization costs most people just about break even.

So, do you think the city will lower our real estate taxes when it does the next round of appraisals? No, I don't think so.




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Sunset Park Company's software helps deaf people

While scouring the Internet I came across this piece in the Daily News about a software company that has developed patented software to help deaf people communicate by turning spoken english into text and sign language. People may not think it, but there is a lot going on on the other side of the Gowanus Expressway in those warehouses and of course in the old Army terminal. Who would have thought that Sunset Park is on the cutting edge of technology.




Steve Bruner shows off the iCommunicator; Daniel Feldman (below) displays footcare products made by a sister company.

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Christmas day at Green-Wood

Every year on Christmas day when I can, I go to visit my parents resting place At Green-Wood Cemetery. This year it turned out to be a good day weather wise so I walked there. I had my camera with me so I took some shots. Green-Wood Cemetery is an important feature of Sunset Park and there are quite a few Sunset Parkers who find their final resting place there.

Out in the center of this shot is an obelisk gravestone with a Christmas wreath on it.

The Hillside Mausoleum. Some people call them condos for the deceased. However on bad weather days it makes paying respects to the departed bearable.

An oasis of green shrubbery amongst the barren tress of winter.

After the cemetery I took in Christmas mid day mass at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church. Located a mere four blocks from the cemetery on East 2nd street and Fort Hamilton Parkway. It is the first church I attended on arriving to The United States in 1962.

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The Borders of Sunset Park Part 2

Over at Curbed.com I seem to have opened up a hornet's nest by my publishing the map of Sunset Park. The blog having been picked up by NY Magazine for the same reason. It seems that some posters were umbraged at the mere notion that they might be in Sunset park instead of the fancier sounding Greenwood Heights or South Slope. Of course there are two sides to this. Some posters were obviously from the Slope proper and insist that it ends at 9th street, obviously these folks are newcomers who probably moved into their nabe two weeks ago. Then there is also another group that claims Sunset Park begins at 39th street. They also probably moved here two weeks ago. Both victims of some unscrupulous real estate agent who knew he could con the guys of an extra 30 or 5o grand if he could claim that their property were not were they were. Part of it also has to do with snobbishness and probably outright bigotry. It is really a shame.

Let us go back in time to circa 1960. Those were different times then. You could buy a decent one family for 20k in Bay Ridge and around 15k in what is now Sunset Park. Of course in those days, money was real money. Robert F. Wagner, Jr. was the mayor of New York. The are we now know as Sunset Park was by that time becoming heavily Hispanic from the area South of the Prospect Expressway to around 65th street. In those days it was mostly Puerto Ricans and Dominicans moving into the nabe. It became so saturated that by that time around 70% of the hood was Hispanic. Well, this did not sit well with the folks in the rest of Bay Ridge and Park Slope. Bay Ridge at that time ran North to approximately 45th street and Park Slope ran South to approximately 25th street. The area in between was generally know as South Brooklyn. Sunset Park? Well, it was just a park then. It was also a time were people were pushing for a charter revision to reapportion powers in the city and redraw the borders of neighborhoods. The people in Bay Ridge at that time south of 65th street, mostly white, Scandinavian, Italian, Irish etc. did not want to be associated with "those People" north of 65th street. Part of the reason was bigotry, mixed in with the fact that crime was going up north of 65th street and it was also reflecting on real estate values south of 65th street. After all people in other areas did not distinguish North Ridge from South. The same was true in Park Slope were people wanted a divorce south of 9th street. In any case, the powers that be, mostly local politicians who had pull redrew the borders and created Sunset Park as part of the charter revision of 1964. The new nabe was to be called Sunset Park after the park and would comprise the area south of Prospect Expressway till 65th street and east to 9th avenue south of the cemetery and east to 7th avenue in the north. This pissed off a lot of non Hispanics in the new nabe as they felt betrayed and some never got over it. Things deteriorated after that with many old residents beginning to move out of the nabe in droves. This also created opportunities as housing got ever so cheaper in the nabe. Things were not doing well until about the early 1980's. Sunset Park had a severe crime problem, gangs were everywhere. The DEA was always on 4th avenue making arrests and raiding places. And people south of the Expressway knew they were in Sunset Park.

The first Chinese families started to move into the neighborhood in around 1980. Nobody really took notice then. Hong Kong was soon to be turned over to back to Mainland China and our relations with the People's Republic were increasingly getting better. Although emmigration was just a trickle by the mid 90's it became a flood. The demographics were also changing. Second generation Puerto Ricans were moving out of the hood. Replaced by Mexicans, Dominicans and Salvadorians and others. A different type of Hispanic with an entrepreneurial spirit and outlook. Crime began to plummet as policing in the nabe got serious in the 68th, 66th and 72 precincts beginning with the Giulianni years in office.
One could write a dissertation on this subject. But fast forward to the present and the change is startling. To this day some of the negative history and reputation of Sunset Park still lingers on in the subconscious of many. To many newcomers who moved into the neighborhood from either Manhattan or the Midwest the horrid stories they had heard embellished by shady real estate agents looking to make a buck led to an old marketing technique. They began renaming areas on the fringe something else so they could spike up prices.
Having been here for almost 40 years I have seen things come and go and was around to hear people's stories of what the nabe was before I got here. I kind of resent the snobbishness and in some cases the outright bigotry expressed by some people who refer to others as "those people" whether they be Hispanics or Chinese and somehow don't want to be associated with the nabe. I have a solution for those folks. You van always move out, don't rename the nabe and pretend it's somewhere else. Wishing it were so, does not make it so. And for those apprehensive about the future, I can tell you that having neighbors who are Hispanic, Chinese, Italian and Scandinavian will teach you that people come in all varieties. You will find nice people in all shades as well as pricks. So I think it's time to get over yourselves if you want to live in Beverly Hills. Otherwise, pull up a chair and enjoy the show. Sunset Park at this point has nowhere else to go but up and it will be interesting to watch.

[where: 11232]
[where: 11220]

Art Deco Condos of Sunset Park

It seems that the Chinese architects building new condos on 7th avenue prefer the art deco/bauhaus style of design. The buildings seems to take one back to the thirties in look and design. I have always had a liking for art deco since I came to New York. Preferring the Chrysler building to the Empire State. In any case, at least these buildings are not the drab soviet style buildings that one would find in old Beijing or North Korea or even the square drab buildings that they built in the 40's and 50's which are typical of many of the co ops one finds in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge.

This example can be found on the corner of 50th and 7th avenues.

This one can be seen on the corner of 55th and 7th across the street from the Bay Ridge Post Office.

This one on 58th and 7th is nearing completion and is only missing the usual stainless steel balcony accoutrement.

[where: 11232]

[where: 11220]