The intersection of Smith Street and President Street in Carrol Gardens, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
MTA Cost Cuts: $93M Down, $307M To Go
NYT: The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted 11 to 2 on Wednesday afternoon to implement a package of severe cuts to transit service, including the elimination of two subway lines and dozens of bus routes.
The service reductions, to be phased in starting in June, will save $93 million a year, part of an effort by the strapped authority to dig itself out of a $400 million budget shortfall.
Plus, NYT: The city’s official unemployment rate was 10.2 percent last month, down from 10.4 percent in January, the state Labor Department reported on Thursday. That was still significantly higher than the national unemployment rate, which was 9.7 percent in February.
The number of private-sector jobs in the city rose by 8,100 last month...
Monday, March 22, 2010
Report Roundup
BP: ...the city unveiled plans for a bike-friendly facelift for Smith Street, turning the much-used approach to the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges much less harrowing.
The improvements will work as a complement to the bike lane on the parallel, one-way southbound Hoyt Street.
“The bike lanes on Smith and Hoyt streets will work as a pair,” said Preston Johnson, an official with the Department of Transportation. “They’ll enhance access to the bridges and also to destinations on Smith Street.”
BP: Marc Elliot just took over the kitchen of the Irish pub Ceol on Smith — and created a menu so exquisite that his customers have no reason to move on for dinner after a few drinks.
“All we used to have was shepherd’s pie and bangers — but we had about three customers coming in for those,” Elliot said. “So I took note of that and all the items on other Smith Street menus, and put none of them on mine. Everyone has fried f—king calamari. I don’t.”
BP: An effort to preserve the history of Carroll Gardens is being criticized for actually hastening the neighborhood’s gentrification, said opponents of a controversial city initiative to widen the area’s historic district.
“They just want to re-gentrify and force out whatever elements from the past are left,” said lifelong area resident and businessman John Esposito, who helped form Citizens Against Landmarks to thwart the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s nascent effort to extend historic protections to a larger segment of the brownstone neighborhood.
BP: On Monday, Brooklyn finally gets a chance to park it on the stoop.
...the first phase of Brooklyn Bridge Park — featuring a vast green lawn and a granite front-stoop sitting area located on Pier 1 — will open to the public.
The improvements will work as a complement to the bike lane on the parallel, one-way southbound Hoyt Street.
“The bike lanes on Smith and Hoyt streets will work as a pair,” said Preston Johnson, an official with the Department of Transportation. “They’ll enhance access to the bridges and also to destinations on Smith Street.”
BP: Marc Elliot just took over the kitchen of the Irish pub Ceol on Smith — and created a menu so exquisite that his customers have no reason to move on for dinner after a few drinks.
“All we used to have was shepherd’s pie and bangers — but we had about three customers coming in for those,” Elliot said. “So I took note of that and all the items on other Smith Street menus, and put none of them on mine. Everyone has fried f—king calamari. I don’t.”
BP: An effort to preserve the history of Carroll Gardens is being criticized for actually hastening the neighborhood’s gentrification, said opponents of a controversial city initiative to widen the area’s historic district.
“They just want to re-gentrify and force out whatever elements from the past are left,” said lifelong area resident and businessman John Esposito, who helped form Citizens Against Landmarks to thwart the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s nascent effort to extend historic protections to a larger segment of the brownstone neighborhood.
BP: On Monday, Brooklyn finally gets a chance to park it on the stoop.
...the first phase of Brooklyn Bridge Park — featuring a vast green lawn and a granite front-stoop sitting area located on Pier 1 — will open to the public.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
High: 68 Degrees
Fast forward to Saturday, March 22, 2010:
Rewind to Thursday, November 24, 2009: 178 Smith Street: Burned
Rewind to Thursday, November 24, 2009: 178 Smith Street: Burned
Friday, March 12, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Mar. 9, '09-Mar. 9, '10: Now What?
AP via Yahoo: Stocks have lost some of the momentum that propelled the Dow Jones industrial average up 61.4 percent from its close of 6,547 on March 9, 2009... investors are waiting for signs that the economy is ready to put up some solid, sustainable growth numbers.
The most likely trigger: job growth. Investors need to see a Labor Department report that says employers are creating more jobs than they're cutting.
NPR: Walker, the CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, is the author of Comeback America, a book detailing his belief that if significant fiscal reforms aren't immediately enacted in the United States, interest rates on the national debt will rise, and federal taxes could easily double from current levels by 2030...
"Structural deficits represent a fundamental imbalance between projected revenues and projected expenditures even when the economy is growing, even when the wars are over, even when unemployment is down. And in that circumstance, we face — because of known demographic trends — the retirement of the baby-boom generation primarily and rising health care cost — large, known and growing structural deficits that could swamp our ship of state."
Walker says that unless spending is controlled, the country will enter an "economic abyss."
I.O.U.S.A.: I.O.U.S.A.: Byte-Sized - The 30 Minute Version
NPR: Cost Of Medical School Rises
NPR: States Weigh Four-Day School Week To Cut Costs
WNYC: Harry Markopolos talks about his years spent investigating Bernie Madoff and his $65 billion Ponzi scheme:
Monday, March 8, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
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