The McCarren Park hawk, image via McCarren Hawk’s Instagram, photo by keenkenzie
If you’re like many of us, you’ve probably seen a hip-looking hawk roaming about McCarren Park. Whether he’s sunbathing on a Pendleton blanket with a Turkey’s Nest Margarita or simply strutting around the farmers’ market sporting his newest pair of Raybans, this hawk is LIT. And how he has an Instagram account. Check it.
Looks like Greenpoint could be getting another park! The Open Space Alliance and the Department of Transportation are holding a meeting on June 28 to offer the community the chance to give input on possible open space usage underneath the Kosciuszko Bridge. They’ll also be hosting a tour of the proposed park site on June 24th, but the tour is capped at 25 people and currently full.
What: Kosciuszko Bridge Park Community Planning Meeting When: Wednesday, June 28, 6:30 – 8:30 pm Where: The Park House at Bushwick Inlet Park, 86 Kent Avenue (at N. 9th Street) RSVP here
Dobbin St’s gorgeous rooftop at sunset, via Dobbin St
Ok, so we’ve been stuck in the weather purgatory that is Spring (it’s hot/it’s cold/it’s rainy/it sucks), but it’s already time to start planning out our summer outdoor activities—because before we know it we’ll be stuck in blizzard land. In North Brooklyn we’re lucky to have three awesome options for watching movies outdoors this summer! Because who doesn’t love a good excuse to sit amongst the fireflies and watch the sun set on a blanket next to their honey (or doggie) with a pre-hot-mess Lindsey Lohan snarling on the big screen? (See Mean Girls at SummerScreen in McCarren, Wednesday July 5th).
THE SUNSET SCREENINGS — ROOFTOP MOVIES AT DOBBIN STREET
A new free monthly rooftop film series, The Sunset Screenings, kicks off May 24th and runs through September. The free movies will screen at local event space Dobbin St (64 Dobbin Street) on their 3,000 sq ft rooftop terrace. Just as the sun sets over the Manhattan skyline, the films will begin. To complement the view, the series is“city” themed, representing the world’s most iconic cities from New York to Tokyo with a carefully curated list of films. Here’s the schedule:
PS 132 is holding their 13th annual Kite Festival at East River State Park, on Sunday May 21, from 12-5pm. Bring the family for an afternoon of fun, food, frolicking and kites! Continue reading →
McCarren Park site images, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle – May 5, 1901
We take the green space that today is McCarren Park for granted, but it was not always a park. Once the ground that the park now occupies had its own streets and factories. A May 5, 1901 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle showed the buildings that were to be condemned to create the park, but it was not just buildings that needed to be condemned. The whole street pattern of the neighborhood had to be changed. Some streets like Jane Street were forever wiped off the map. Others like North 12th, N.13th, N. 14th and Dobbin and Guernsey were cut. Continue reading →
This weekend, on Saturday December 3rd from 10am–1pm, you can help beautify the existing park land with flowers! With generous assistance from Partnerships for Parks (who will be providing bulbs and guidance), Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park together with the community will seed the continued park activation process by planting daffodil bulbs on park grounds. Folks will assemble at the BIP community building located on Kent Ave at N. 9th Street in Williamsburg. Gloves and tools will be provided. Please dress for the weather and encountering dirt.
Can you make a 311 call and Tweet DeBlasio @NYCMayor today? Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park is organizing a Twitter Storm at 12pm!
After manymonths of nonstopactivism to try to get the city to acquire the CitiStorage site—the last piece to complete Bushwick Inlet Park—it looks like the city and the owner of the property are close to reaching a negotiated deal. But they are only “close” and time is genuinely running out.
From Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park: We have been relatively quiet recently to let them work things out but now MAYOR DEBLASIO NEEDS TO HEAR FROM ALL OF US (ALL AT ONCE PREFERABLY).
We need to tell him to:
CLOSE the CitiStorage deal and deliver the FULL 27 Acre Bushwick Inlet Park NOW! Let’s all engage in a “Twitter-Storm” and/or 311 call-in from 12 noon- 2 p.m. today, Thursday, October 27. A flurry of activity will maximize our impact! Twitter: @NYCMayor Call: 311 (Parks and Recreation: You can let them know that eleven acres are missing from Bushwick Inlet Park.) You can also sign the Bushwick Inlet Park petition here.
What’s been going on with the negotiations between the city and the owner of the CitiStorage site? Come join Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park tonight at Greenpoint Beer & Ale to chat about the park’s future. While there’s currently nothing specific to report, FBIP has been told that the parties have begun negotiating, so they’re cautiously optimistic. But that said, they believe that time is of the essence and hope the parties will come to a settlement soon. However, if negotiations fall apart and no deal is made then potentially the only remaining course of action would be for the city proceed to eminent domain and condemn the CitiStorage site for the public good, fulfilling the 2005 rezoning agreement to the benefit of all New Yorkers.
Join FBIP tonight and engage with fellow open space advocates!
Greenpoint Beer and Ale | 7 N15th St @ Franklin St. Wednesday October 5th Meet Up at 7:00pm Updates + Q&A at 7:30-8:00pm Craft Beer & Conversation thereafter
The North Brooklyn Community and Elected Officials at the steps of City Hall
“The city can’t just rest on its laurels and say it made an offer,” said State Assemblyman Joe Lentol on the steps of City Hall, where the North Brooklyn community alongside elected officials turned up the heat on an already sweltering summer day for Bushwick Inlet Park. It’s because the $100 million offer that the city made to acquire the last remaining parcel of prospective park land expired yesterday, Monday, August 8.
This puts the future of all 28 acres of open space in a precarious position and Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park is not taking it lying down. With impassioned chants of “Where’s our park?” and a series of speeches by community leaders and elected officials, they demanded that Mayor de Blasio does what it takes to deliver the waterfront park that was promised 11 years ago. Continue reading →
Crowd watching a film in Transmitter Park, last summer.
One of the area’s brightest summer events, Films on the Green will be returning to Greenpoint’s WNYC Transmitter Park to project two films ‘en plein air’.
An initiative of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the US, the FACE Foundation and the City of New York Parks & Recreation, Films on the Green Films is unique among the myriad of free movie screenings attracting cineastes to NY green spaces every summer, as each year the series presents a free and fresh sampling of French films around a given theme.
This year, as part of the Tandem Paris-New York, a cultural partnership between the cities of New York and Paris including a music festival, film, art, and other events, running between June and October 2016, Films on the Green presents classic and contemporary films that, “present the diversity of Paris, its inhabitants, landscapes, and cultures”.
Greenpointers can view two classic French films projected alongside an unmatched East River view of Manhattan, when Luc Besson’s ‘Subway’ screens June 24th and François Truffaut’s ‘400 Blows’ on July 1st. Continue reading →
