Store of the Day: Baba's Deli and Coffee Shop

 

Baba's Deli is located right over the border from the Greenwood Heights section of Sunset Park in Park Slope on 5th Avenue and Prospect Avenue.  The store was started 25 years ago by Stephen the owner who is an immigrant from Guyana. The original name was Baba's Indo/Pak West Indian Grocery. As the neighborhood changed it went through several makeovers becoming Baba's Convenience Store in 1974 and as the neighborhood underwent a wave of gentrification it materialized to it's current version Baba's Deli and Coffee shop 9 years ago. It's one of those immigrant success stories that hear quite often in New York City. He started the business borrowing money from his mother in-law whose nickname is Baba, hence the name of the store. Stephen also has a degree in architecture and also runs a small construction company and owns EZ Laundromat on 4th Avenue and 14th street. He has been on our website for some years now and just added a new Menu to his Deli. Yes he delivers check out his Menu and give him a call if he's within delivery distance.

Weir-McGovern Greenhouse Finally Getting a Makeover

 

The Weir-Mc Govern Greenhouse which has been a landmark in the neighborhood since it was built in 1879. Owned by the Mc Govern  family until they could no longer make a profit, they sold it to the Green Wood Cemetery in 2011 and it is finally seeing it's renovation phase. Located in the Greenwood section of Sunset Park on 25th street the location is today covered in tarp and fenced in for renovations. The signs indicate that the construction and renovations will be completed by December 2015 and will become a visitors center for Green Wood Cemetery. 

 

 

 

Sunset Park is now "Trendy" accoding to RE marketing..

 

I get notices in my mailbox when when there are rentals posted in Sunset Park to keep an eye on the local Real Estate market so I can see what's developing around me. lately I have been seeing an all too familiar pattern that I saw before in the gentrification of our northern neck of the neighborhood when the section towards 17th street from 30th street was slowly transformed into Greenwood Heights. Some realtors in the small print on their pages will note that it's a subdivision or subset of Sunset Park. But unless you ask them they will never volunteer that information, until now.. Well, they can't rename the core of Sunset Park something else. So, the next available option is to give it an adjective like "trendy", "up and coming", "upcoming", "gentrifying", "fashionable", "popular" etc.. So when I got this latest listing in my mailbox as "Live in Trendy Sunset Park Brooklyn"  I knew that we have arrived as the next target of the hipsterization wave in Brooklyn. Gone are the days when the neighborhood was know as "Gunset Park", "Needle Park, "grimy", "working class", "ethnic enclave", "industrial", "crime ridden", "blue collar neighborhood", "working class" etc.. No, those days appear to be gone, we are now trendy and fashionable. I wonder how many hipsters are stupid enough to fall for that marketing ploy. Well, judging by the accelerated changes around us and the fact that the realtors are managing to get the rents they are asking for, quite a few.  And so goes the process of gentrification. The neighborhood I moved into some 45 years ago has changed and continues to change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not so.. The only constant in life is change and that is true in Sunset Park as it is anywhere else...

 

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Hipsteria and Gentrification in Sunset Park

Hipsteria takes over Industry city at Mister Sunday dance parties.

They used to be known as Yuppies at one time, but how do you name a disease after yuppies? No, hipster is more fitting a word to invent hipsteria. A disease that invades sleepy neighborhoods of the old fashioned Brooklyn type and turn them into high priced rental spaces with restaurants that sell birdfood sized servings on a plate priced accordingly for the well heeled anorexic and bolemic, always on a diet over paid urban professionals whose idea of work is pushing a sheet of paper around the desk a few times. These are the invaders who are the vanguard of a well orchestrated plot by developers to turn or Sunset Park into yet another version of village like downtown Manhattan. At the website Fast Company writer Erica Berger has an excellent essay explaining the tactics being employed with Jamestown developers in the lead to gentrify Sunset Park. It makes for sober reading and reveals a bit of the underlying process that is changing our neighborhood.   Meanwhile, over at Gawker is another article timely in it's appearance, since it names another culprit spreading the disease.. Also, Caesar Zuniga has an open letter against gentrification in the Brooklyn spectator, Mr. Zuniga wants to be our assemblyman. My take on the subject is that opposing these waves of gentrification have always proved fruitless as history has tended to show. It's like trying to drain the ocean with a thimble. 

Sunset Park on the Web, Chinatown, Soccer Tavern etc. 8-14-14

Today we have a piece from what appears to be a Chinese based publication on the Chinese in Sunset park's Chinatown. Nice to get a perspective from their homeland. 

A photo and essay collection by a soon to be ex Brooklyn resident Chris Arnade focuses on the Soccer Tavern on 8th Avenue and things he will be missing when he leaves..

The Tech website tecnical.ly  realates how a company start up called Suneris found it's new digs in northern Sunset Park on Craigslist. The biomedical company is responsible for a product called Veti-Gel that is used as an application to heal open wounds faster. If anyone recognizes the building below give me a heads up so I can pay them a visit to find out more..

Image technical.ly

Street Theater comes to Sunset Park August 23

 

Image Brooklyn Daily photo by Elizabeth Graham

Both the Brooklyn Paper and the Brooklyndaily websites are carrying a piece by Mathew Perlman about a street theater troupe that  is making the rounds in Brooklyn and will arrive at our nabe on August 23. The troupe is giving free performances (or at least we the public aren't paying for it) at various locations and Sunset Park has been picked as one of them. As if we needed more proof of the hipsterization that with gentrification this is one of them. The fact that this event is taking place here is an indication that Sunset Park has arrived as far as hipsterism is concerned. Such performances a mere couple of years ago would have been more likely targeted at our northern neighbor Park Slope or at least the already gentrified section of our neighborhood that real estate marketers have dubbed Greenwood Heights. But, there is no need to go into an emotional state of hipsteria about it. We are bound to see more of this stuff with more art galleries, cafes and art troupes making it into our nabe. We aren't sure yet if hipsteria is an airborne disease or you simply catch it by osmosis or like bed bugs is carried into neighborhoods by new residents who move in. In any case, it appears that hipsteria is here to stay.. Coney Island Brooklynites will catch a preview of what we can expect on August 16.  Catch all the details of where and when by clicking here and scrolling down to the bottom. Tentatively, we've been informed it will occur at 44th street between fifth and sixth Avenues at around 2 PM. Bring sanitizer with you, just in case you don't want to catch any hipsteria...

Brief Media Rundown 8-2-14 Sunset Park on the Web

Today's brief scour of the web only produces two stories on our nabe.

NY1 has footage and a short writeup on the demonstration at the library we wrote about yesterday.

Crime in the Hood: PIX11 has a story on the robbery on 8th Avenue while NY1 and the NY Daily News covers a man arrested for rape and impersonating a cop..

Brief Media Rundown, Sunset Park on the Web Today 8-1-14

Another day around the web and there's too much stuff to write about but no time.

The Brooklyn Eagle has a story on a new cleanup initiative that is being launched on 8th Avenue. Brooklyn Brief does a followup on the story as well.. Let's hope it succeeds..

Yet another post on the city spending $100 million at Brooklyn Army Terminal.. Will we benefit or become victims of the gentrification to follow? Something to think about..

Crime in the Hood. Three guys steal a safe and beat up a worker.. Covered here as well..

The Brokelyn blog does both food and gentrification. How cool is that? 

Waterfront Park in Sunset Park Nearing Completion

Stretching along the shore from 43rd Street to 51st street a new park, part of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway Initiative will finally see the light of day as the city has announced plans to open The Bush terminal Pier and the park being constructed on it to the public. It appears that construction will finally be completed sometime in August or at the very latest in September according to a piece on the DNAINFO webstite which got it's information from the city's NYCEDC's blog logging developments and construction progress. The park named the Bush Terminal Piers Park will comprise of roughly 22 acres of space. Almost the same size as Sunset Park which is 24.5 acres. Sunset Parkers will have a new place to go and hangout. That is provided of course they make a trek across 3rd Avenue under the Gowanus Expressway which has always been an invisible border dividing the western part of the neighborhood from it's eastern sister.. Lots of stuff happening in the nabe at an accelerated pace....Stay tuned..

From the NYCEDC blog announcing pavement of the road towards the park entrance..

 

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A Perspective on Genrtification in Brooklyn

In my meanderings on the web regarding gentrification I stumbled on an article by Daniel Hertz at his Blog. Aside from his take on income disparities I found the above map on his site rather interesting. Showing changes in real estate prices in Brooklyn over a two year span from 2012 to 2014. As you can see prices in the Sunset Park area have shown a rise of between 21% and 16% respectively. While northern Bay Ridge showed a rise of 10% Southern Bay Ridge shows a decline of 19%. There is of course a positive in the numbers for long time residents seeing their houses rise in value. On the downside is the fact that since valuations are the peg the city uses for Real Estate Taxes maintaining a property has become more expensive in that regard. The article also points out that average income throughout the borough has declined slightly. Obviously there is a correlation between the pink areas and the process of gentrification where people are moving to. Of interest are also the comments left at the blog, in particular the ones regarding Sunset Park. Basically it confirms what many residents have deduced from casual observation about what is going on in our neighborhood.

Sunset Parker Fights Losing Battle with Gentrification..

The Daily News has a story on local resident Imani Henry and his project to try to stem the tide of gentrification in our borough. It is not the first nor wilt be the last. When I came to Sunset park in 1970  the neighborhood was a mere 6 years old. Modern Sunset Park having been created by taking northern Bay Ridge and southern Park Slope to cobble together the areas that were in decline and separate them from the  other two neighborhoods to preserve their real estate values which the city uses to raise revenue via real estate values.  The place has changed radically in all that time. It is now the largest Chinatown in New York City. Most of the predominantly Puerto Rican population has left. The Norwegians, Finns, Irish and Italians who once dominated the southern part of the nabe have mostly moved on though a few are left. There are still strong pockets of Dominicans left but most of the Hispanics in the nabe are now Mexican or Central Americans. On my block gone are the Puerto Rican and Italian neighbors replaced by Chinese on either side who rent to Mexicans and Hipsters that have started to move in due to the cheaper rents. The northern part of the neighborhood has become a subset named Greenwood Heights since realtors have renamed the area in a marketing ploy to get higher prices for rentals and houses. The irony is that they have to revert back to naming it Sunset Park if the gentrification wave continues though old timers still living there will tell you it's still Sunset Park. If there is one constant in this neighborhood it's change and the only recourse is to be able to adapt to the new conditions. If there were no change the neighborhood would have remained the depressed, drug infested, crime ridden area that it had been in the late 60's and 70's. I am not at all nostalgic for those days when the Park Itself had become known citywide as "Needle Park". Some residents will remain behind like myself. Others will be newcomers. The Chinese will stay here for some time since they tend to settle long term in an area for generations. But even there change has occurred with the original Cantonese settlers being quickly replaced by Fujianese .  The only constant is change and like it or not our neighborhood is gentrifying. We may not even recognize the place in ten years..

Read the piece in the Daily News Here..

 

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B37 Bus on third Avenue restored after a three year absence.

The Brooklyn Daily eagle has an article announcing the restoration of the B37 Bus line which had been eradicated when the MTA went through budget cuts a few years ago. Community pressure and organized pressured the MTA and pressure from local politicos to find the funds necessary to put the bus back online. You can read the entire article at the Eagle here...

More signs of Gentrification in Sunset Park

THE BUYERS 
Jeff Bobula and Caitlin Mennen-Bobula with their son, Ellis, and the family cat.CreditÁngel Franco/The New York Times

The New York Times recently published an article that typified the ongoing gentrification of Sunset Park proper. I think we can all mostly agree that the Greenwood Heights (so named by realtors) section of the neighborhood has already pretty much reached the peak of it's gentrification stage and is now well saturated with Hipsters and yuppies. The story is interesting in two respects. As rents and property values in the northern part of the neighborhood continue to inch up the pressure is to move further south in search for more reasonable rents and values. The second interesting part of the story is that there is a wave that is moving into the Chinatown section of the nabe providing a competitive pressure for housing and competition with the Chinese population. Nevertheless, despite a rather stagnant economy those who have well paying jobs and the cash to spend are moving ever southward into the neighborhood and the only result can be an upward pressure on rents and property values. For homeowners this necessarily means higher real estate taxes because those taxes are based on valuations. For poorer families it means that affordable rents at their income levels will be harder and harder to find.  You can read the entire article here on the New York Times site..

Art in the Hood: Sunset Park Artists and the SOHO of Brooklyn's Short Lived Life

     It was hoped that when Bush Terminal was bought by some developers and renamed Industry City a few years back that Sunset Park would evolve into a center of the arts for Brooklyn and New York City. But starting late last year some disturbing stories began to appear in the news. In particular some articles in the New York Times. As someone who walks every corner of the neighborhood and what I call the PASUBA (Park Slope, Sunset Park, Bay Ridge) corridor on either side of 4th Avenue, I have seen the slow wave of gentrification creeping along southward towards Bay Ridge that began when Real Estate agents renamed the norther part of the neighborhood south of 17th street Greenwood Heights so they could rent apartments and sell houses at a higher price. As this wave of hipsters begins to move south with it come higher real estate prices and higher rents driving out long time local residents that now find it difficult to survive  in the gentrified areas.  There are two aspects to this encroachment. On the one hand one is seeing more upscale restaurants and bars appearing along 4th and 5th Avenues. On the other hand, artists who settled here because of the cheaper rents are now finding themselves priced out of the market. The moving in of the Brooklyn Nets as a tenant at Industry City certainly didn't help matters. The result is that a diaspora of artists has begun and is accelerating out of the neighborhood. The most recent article published last week in the Times confirrms this. As does this piece on another blog..

    There were high hopes that with all the artists moving into Sunset Park we would become a center of creativity and a magnet for other aspects of the arts, such as music etc.. All is not lost however, as there are still some artists remaining. At least those who can afford the higher rents. There are other warehouses on the other side of third avenue that could well become artists spaces. perhaps someone with an inventive mind could perhaps firgure out a way to get some city money to subsidize rents for artists spaces. Why not? We waste money on a lot of useless stuff in this country and city and putting it into art has at least some long term gain. If there is one constant in Sunset Park as most residents know, it is change. And more often than not, it's not for the better.

Track crime in Sunset Park or any other neighborhood.

There is a nifty website where you can track reported crime in your neighborhood and not just the major ones that don't make the news. It is interesting to see the patterns of reported crime in the neighborhood. My only objection is that they track the crimes in the Greenwood Heights section as a separate neighborhood even though it is technically still part of Sunset Park. To check out the latest crime statistics for the neighborhood simply click on the link to the SPOTCRIME.COM website. 

 

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Art in The Hood: UPROSE mural 25th street and 4th Avenue

This mural on the corner of 25th street and 4th Avenue done last year by the same crew from Groundswell that did the mural on 7th Avenue takes the whole side of the C Town supermarket located on the same corner. It's on the section of Sunset Park which real estate agents for marketing reasons have dubbed Greenwood Heights. It's a rather impressive mural to see and rather than being done by a professional crew it is even more impressive for the fact that it was done by volunteer students..

Openings: Tin Cup Cafe

With the closest Starbucks to Sunset Park being the one in Bay Ridge at 75th street and 3rd Avenue. It's always good news when an alternative opens in the neighborhood. A few years back Starbucks was going to open a location in our neighborhood but due to financial problems it instead closed a few Brooklyn locations and plans to expand here were scrapped. So when I stumbled on the Tin Cup Cafe and the fact they offered free Wi Fi it was rather welcome. On the downside is the fact they close rather early around 7 whereas most Starbucks are open till 10 or thereabouts. That being said the price is right and the location convenient if you need a spot to sit down with your laptop and you need to do some work. They have been open a relatively short time. Part of a wave of new cafes in the Greenwood Heights neck of the Sunset Park woods. They are located at 719 4th Avenue near 24th street. Go check them out and tell them I sent you.

I will be posting on some of the other cafes in the area as well.

Photo of of the Day: Greenwood Cemetery Entrance

The entrance gate to Sunset Park's Greenwood Cemetery on 5th Avenue and 25th street. Built in 1861 and a City Landmark it is described in Wikipedia's article on it as:

 "The gates were designed by Richard Upjohn in Gothic Revival style. The main entrance to the cemetery was built in 1861 of Belleville brownstone. The sculptured groups depicting biblical scenes from the New Testament including Lazarus, The Widow's Son, and Jesus' Resurrection over the gateways are the work of John M. Moffitt. A Designated Landmarks of New York plaque was erected on it in 1958 by the New York Community Trust."

Photo of the Day: Minerva

The Statue of Minerva waves to her sister the Statue of Liberty from the highest natural point in Brooklyn in Sunset Park's Greenwood Cemetery. An important engagement in the Battle of Brooklyn took place here. Troops from Delaware fought a holding action and suffered heavy casualties. They were buried where they fell. The statue commemorates the event. About 50 yards from this spot on what is appropriately named Battle Hill is the grave of celebrated American composer Leonard Bernstein. There is also a monument dedicated to the Civil War near this spot.

Mark your calendars, commemoration of the Battle of Brooklyn Aug. 29, 2010

As some of you may know the Battle of Brooklyn otherwise known in other circles as the Battle of Long Island (some people forget Brooklyn is part of Long Island), or at least some important parts of it took place nearby in what is now Greenwood Cemetery. Although the Brits won that engagement the holding actions of our patriots in those early days of the revolution allowed our General George Washington to escape and survive to continue on the fight. Had he been captured we would instead be celebrating the holidays our British masters would have imposed on us.

You can catch all the details at the Green-wood Cemetery website: they are reproduced below in case their site goes down.

Battle of Brooklyn Commemoration Ceremonies

In memory of the brave patriots who fought for our country’s independence in this first battle after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Part of Brooklyn Battle Week
.
FREE EVENTS:

12:30 PM - Revolutionary War Re-Enactors will relive a portion of the Battle of Brooklyn in Green-Wood’s Meadow and the surrounding area near Green- Wood’s main entrance.
1:30 PM - The Green-Wood Historic Fund and United States Merchant Marine Academy sponsor the Annual Battle of Brooklyn Parade. Meet at the main gate for a parade to Battle Hill led by George M. Cohan’s own, The Regimental Band of the United States Merchant Marine Academy.
2:00 PM - Battle of Brooklyn Commemorative Ceremony honoring the Patriots who fought the first battle of our new nation on this sacred ground 234 years ago.

This is a FREE event. Reservations are not necessary.
Sunday, August 29, 2010 at 10:00 AM Location: The Green-Wood Cemetery

08/29/2010, 10:00 AM

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