Blog Buzz: Supersized Edition

It’s been a really busy week and I’m finally getting a chance to catch up. There is SO much stuff that I’m imagining this is gonna be a long one. But hey, who don’t like long ones?

City Room does a story behind the story on the infamous Heath Ledger restaurant Five Leaves. It’s kind of nice to read that they were just friends who wanted to do this, and one happened to be Heath. – City Room

The sign above 916 Manhattan Avenue seems to indicate that a Turks & Frogs is coming soon. Whether it’ll be a wine bar like their West Village location or a Turkish Restaurant like their Tribeca outpost remains to be seen. How about both?

Australians even find Williamsburg hipsters a joke.

This week I am writing to you from the world headquarters of hipsterdom, the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Williamsburg. This slice of New York is the Haight-Ashbury of ironic self-loathing. In Verb Cafe on Bedford Avenue, a sign reads “Missing: brown felt fedora”. Only four guys in the cafe are not wearing fedoras. Young men with messy hair, forearm tattoos and full beards abound. Around the corner at egg, an uncapitalised cafe, the beardage rate tops 50 per cent.

There was what seems to have been a pretty bad fire at Paloma on Election Night. Thankfully no one was hurt and it was technically in the office upstairs but it seems ex-Top Cheftestant Camille Becerra is unsure when they’ll be re-opening. “According to Becerra, executive chef and owner of the restaurant, the fire started in the building’s second floor office after electrical wiring between the ceiling and the roof began to spark. The restaurant sustained significant water damage and lost electricity.” It’s a real shame because I like Paloma. The food was always good and the staff friendly, which is pretty rare. Here’s hoping she opens even bigger & better. – Eater and New York Press

And Election Night also brought drama and riot gear to Bedford Avenue. Now in my own opinion I’m sure the cops probably did use a little excessive force, but honestly, unless the cops use some kind of force, mobs of people can get out of hand really quickly. From the pictures and videos there were A LOT of people crowding the streets. Granted all of them were more than likely of the granola and peace vibe, but there are still some locals around that I think those revelers were probably better off with the cops in riot gear than if some pissed off people who had to go to work the next morning might’ve gotten a hold of one or two of them.

Personally I think Gawker got it right with their post. “This is a perfect example of hipster overreach—you see, they deserve to block traffic in one of the densest cities on earth! We’re all for reclaiming the streets—punk rock!—but the shock and indignation over some arrests only adds to the stereotype of the massive self-entitlement these relatively privileged young transplants possess.” Exactly! – Gothamist & Gawker

However, what ‘locals’ call Bedford Avenue the ‘runway’? That’s seriously absurd. And maybe those people do need a beatdown from the po-po. – New York Times

But Brooklyn has worse problems with a rapist on the loose preying on people walking on Bedford Ave at 4am. It doesn’t say exactly where on Bedford Ave and since it is the longest street in Brooklyn, it could kinda mean any-fucking-where, but be careful anyway ladies. – NY1

The Brooklyn Eagle always has interesting little history facts about the area. Read about the “father of Williamsburgh”, when they lost that extra ‘h’ and notice the last names who became street names. – The Brooklyn Daily Eagle

The Brooklyn Paper mentions the finger biting incident a few weeks ago that happened at Red Star. Seems like that was all everyone was talking about. I heard so many different versions around town that it made my head spin. In a nutshell, it was locals fighting with locals and it was an accident. The funniest part of this to me is that back in the day this would never have even made the paper. Now the shit is on Gothamist. lol – The Brooklyn Paper & Gothamist

A fancy new beer store is coming to Greenpoint Avenue. They’ve applied for a wholesalers NYSLA license which pretty much means they’ll be selling beer, not necessarily serving it. Sounds like a sort of high end beer distributer. I love me some high end beer being distributed two blocks from my house! – Beer Advocate

Is the Greenpoint Terminal Market setting out to be a film studio? Well, anything to sell it, right? – Curbed

I am a huge fan of Sixpoint Ales and it’s very cool to see brewing come back to Williamsburg again. “It’s the first time that big batches of beer will not only be made in Brooklyn, but put into regular-sized bottles that you can buy at your local bodega or food coop, since the 1970s.” Ah, I’m so happy. – The Brooklyn Paper

Some moron broke into a cop’s apartment on Graham Avenue. And guess what? He got shot. Idiot. I had friends who lived there growing up but I think they all migrated to Queens by now. I can remember it was right next door to Al’s Pizzeria. “Police said Alex Mora broke into Jonathan Bradlin’s Greenpoint home shortly after 1:30 p.m. Friday. Bradlin confronted Mora, who was armed with a tire iron.” – NY1 & NYDN

McCain wins! The kiddie vote at St. Stan’s, anyway. – The Brooklyn Paper

Since I didn’t vote, I figured I’d pass on Green Air blogger Rich Awn’s Voting in Greenpoint account. Complete with slideshow! – Green Air

And finally, I ran into a fellow blogger this week while on my way to work. Jarred lives just two blocks away and that’s the first time I’ve ever run into him that I know of. It was one of those encounters where we both immediately knew exactly who the other one was,, yet we’d never met. Ah, the power of the interwebs. – Ripping Apart