Could the news get any worse today? Terry Schiavo dies. Gasoline and Home Heating Oil prices surge to record levels (did I call it? I called it.) And now, we find out that Diane Boisvert has closed her Vanderbilt Ave. gallery: “The gallery has closed its doors but it will remain online,” Diane says in a tersely worded statement on her website.

Diane opened the gallery in September 2002: “What charmed me most about the place was the storefront. It used to be an old antiques store, but I decided to use it as my studio and to open the doors to fellow artists and the public … I realized that this wonderful space had too much potential to keep it just to myself.”

She had dedicated the space to showcasing contemporary artists with “individual” and “intense” works: “People who move me and give me a punch in the heart, head and spirit.”

Vivian of Housebroken asked us to put the word out that Vanderbilt Ave. businesses will be doing their own First Saturday thing this weekend: “A lot of the businesses will be open until later and will offer special discounts.” Not sure of many specifics yet, but we know that Fermented Grapes will be doing a wine tasting from 4-7 pm with Daniel from Domaine Select Wine Estates, who “will pour some amazing wines from Italy and elsewhere. We will offer a 5% discount on wines from the tasting.” Do you have any other First Saturday updates or news? Let us know.

Oh. Did we mention that the Brooklyn Museum will also be open this Saturday night? Check out the schedule. Let’s see if Basquiat mania can push First Saturday over into another new attendance record.

REFERENCE: [Record 12,000 Crowd at First Saturday]

Reason #384: Every time we try to get “fancy” with a post, Microsoft Internet Explorer goes haywire (am I right?).


Reason #385: Customized alerts, like the one below:

Send in Your Menus! (And if you know someone who has a local restaurant, point them to this page.)

1. E-mail attachments (or website links) to whatsnew@dailyheights.com, or fax to this number.
2. If not obvious, indicate whether the restaurant is (a) located in Prospect Heights or (b) willing to deliver to Prospect Heights (neither is necessary, but this will determine where your menu gets posted). Restaurant owners: please note that including photos, reviews, etc. will increase the chances that we’ll do a write-up or at least take a closer look. People will be able to find your menu on the Bars and Restaurants page, which right now looks like it’s an absolute mess (almost time for sub-pages).

Thanks to Lizzie for the inspiration: “How about a section on take-out and delivery? It could work like the car service section, with comments from the peanut gallery. Perhaps someone out there even has a scanner, and you could post all the menus in the area, so that thereafter, not a one of us would have to sort through stacks of Sushi Tatsu menus screaming “I KNOW there’s a Biscuit menu in here somewhere!!!”

UPDATE: Menus found! Jon Keegan pointed out that this site has about 35 menus for restaurants in the North Flatbush area, including Geido, Biscuit and of course, Sushi Tatsu.

Just a friendly reminder to leave your windows and front doors wide open in observance of Outdoor Loudness Season (OLS), sometimes referred to as “Spring.” Please be sure to maintain minimum decibel levels, particularly when washing your car, or pulling up to the curb to pick up your friends.

Those living in apartments on 4th or higher floors may need to increase stereo volume to compensate for distance from the street. Rule of thumb: simply double the standard blasting volume to be sure you’re in the “safe zone.”

Is Your Friend/Relative/”Connection” At Home? No need to use your cell phone during Outdoor Loudness Season. Just be sure your to have the bass pumping, and your windows rolled down, BEFORE you double park on the opposite side of the street. If double parking is not available, block a fire hydrant. Please be sure to spend at least 5 minutes crossing the street, knocking on the door of your friend who is clearly not at home, and then walking, slowly, again, back, across, two, lanes, of, traffic (allow an extra 2 minutes if neighborhood babies are napping in bedrooms facing the street).

Musical selections are no longer mandatory for 2005 (ref. “Hey Ya/When I Move, You Move” alternate-side blasting regulations of 2004). However, playing prerecorded tapes of dancehall reggae deejays grunting and yelling at strategic intervals (i.e., “HUUNNNH!”) is widely encouraged.

The Jackson Five, though pioneers of Loud in at least one respect, are expressly forbidden for the duration of The Season. [IMAGE CONSULTANT: J5-Collector.com]

No more ‘ProHo.’ You have been WARNED. I am putting you yuppies on NOTICE:

“THe name of the neighbothood is PROSPECT HEIGHTS that is it no nickname needed … You Yuppies may have ruined downtown brooklyn, by you ain’t gonna ruine Prosect Heights”

It’s been more than 24 hours. Was it too subtle?

LOCATION: Freddy’s on Dean near Flatbush. Probably will get underway around 8. $1 Per Round; Winner Take All. See the Events Calendar for more details. JOSH tells DH: “The bee should be extra fun tonight since I think there are going to be a fair amount of bee virgins.”

BAD SPELLERS, TAKE NOTE: “Would you mention something about how a woman told me how bad of a speller she was before the last Bee I had, and she went on to win.”

PHOTO: Chris “Got the Jimmy Legs” G. gets alphabetic at last month’s bee. Heather: “It is turning into a force to be reckoned with. The house was packed — people were standing in the back due to lack of enough seating.”

Recycle Your Electronics Day: Sunday, April 3rd
11am to 3pm @ Prospect Park West at Grand Army Plaza

-Bring your old computer
-Bring your friends and their old computers
-Stop by to say hello
-Help load the truck

WHAT CAN BE RECYCLED? Working and non-working computers, servers, monitors, printers, copiers, fax machines, scanners, TVs (no
wooden consoles please), keyboards, mice, cables, docking stations, battery backups, storage devices, routers, radios, phones, cell phones, stereo equipment, CD players and microwaves.

WHERE WILL THE ELECTRONICS GO? To Per Scholas, a nonprofit organization in the South Bronx with three primary goals: bring computers to technologically deprived children and families at the lowest possible cost, train disadvantaged community residents to become computer technicians, and provide environmentally responsible recycling of end-of-life computer equipment in their EPA Approved Recycling Facility.

Donations: Appreciated but not required. In exchange for each $10 donation, contributors will receive a $25 coupon toward the purchase of a Per Scholas reconditioned computer.

QUIG checks in: “The other day, I stumbled upon this listing:

SUPREME COURT — KINGS COUNTY … AL’S REAL ESTATE, INC., plaintiff, against MAURICE GIBSON, et al, Defendants … foreclosure and sale … I will sell, at public auction, to the highest bidder … on April 7, 2005, at 3:00 p.m. … 951 Pacific Street, Brooklyn … Judgment is for $183,526.00 …

“Auction? Real Estate? P_heights? It was a Tom Vu moment. What castle could be picked up for pennies on the Euro? I decided to investigate while walking my dogs, Monster 1 and 2. What I came upon was this vision in galvanized steel and cinderblock: What could be hidden behind those walls?”

I’m about to set up a Cafe Press account for DAILY HEIGHTS and it says “Give credit to the person who referred you!” If you want credit, send me your Store ID.

Susan writes: “I just posted some photos of examples of modern architecture in the vicinity (crow hill, ph, and park slope). There’s a new little modern box of a building at 303 St. Mark’s (St. Mark’s & Underhill) that peaked my interest, so I picked some other favorites to show, too.”

Here’s a map of the place. According to PropertyShark.com, the owners of the place are John and Jill Bouratoglou, both of whom are listed as archtectural faculty with the New York City College of Technology (CUNY).

Amy, one of the ProHo’ers who took us up on the Kind-of-Free Blog offer, is already up and running–told you it was easy. Check out the The Selfindulgence Blah-g, in which Amy says: “inspired by the awesome Apartment Therapy web site I am posting some photos of my recently renovated kitchen.

This could be you! Secret codes are still available. And no, DH is not getting a kickback from the Typepad/Movable Type/Six Apart people.

UPDATED: Amy has a great post today about a Corcoran open house in her building: “I don’t think you could get $260k for this place if it was in Manhattan. I see they have sheduled another open house for next weekend…”

Reference: [GET A BLOG: Typepad 90 Days Free with Secret DAILYHEIGHTS Code]

Part 2 in the “Impending Economic Disaster” Series

DAILY HEIGHTS confuses a lot of people. Why the obsession with Home Heating Oil? Is it a hip and ironic club, or a workaday storefront business trafficking in fossil fuel-related products? And what’s the point of a website that forces focus on one tiny neighborhood? Isn’t the Web all about global communities that transcend those pesky geographical barriers?

To introduce more confusion (and fear) on the issues of fossil fuel and the new localism, we now present excerpts from “The Long Emergency,” an essay by James Howard Kunstler that appeared recently in Rolling Stone. Please don’t read unless you plan on surviving the painful, apocalyptic disintegration of the modern world into medieval fiefdoms, which begins right now–if you believe those tin-foil-hat-wearing crackpots at that fringe outfit known as the U.S. Department of Energy.

[ROAD WARRIORS: Marauding thugs pursue an oil tanker in the outback. Could we too, one day, be forced to live like Australians?]

KUNSTLER in ROLLING STONE: “…America is still sleepwalking into the future … we face the end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era … The most knowledgeable experts … now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production. … In March, the Department of Energy released a report that officially acknowledges for the first time that “peak oil” is for real and states plainly that ‘the world has never faced a problem like this’ …”

“We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a world-wide power shortage … If there is any positive side … it may be in the benefits of close communal relations, of having to really work intimately (and physically) with our neighbors, to be part of an enterprise that really matters and to be fully engaged in meaningful social enactments instead of being merely entertained to avoid boredom.”

Have a nice day.

Laura B asks on the DAILY HEIGHTS message boards: “When I read ‘What Happens If It Bursts?’ in last weekend’s Times, I couldn’t help wondering how Prospect Heights would fare in an economic downturn. The article says that proximity to resources (transportation, shopping) is key to property maintaining its value, which would seem to bode well for the PH. What do others think?

The article doesn’t say much about Brooklyn but quotes Brad Lander of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development (PICCED) as saying that fashionable areas playing host to “fringe gentrification” typically get harder hit: “If prices come down in general, Mr. Lander said, buyers will be less willing to deal with the relative isolation, limited retail and school choice in a place like Williamsburg.”

Nichelle points out that Amorina gets top billing in the latest “Openings & Buzz” column in New York Metro:

Albano Ballerini continues to remake burgeoning Vanderbilt Avenue in his own offbeat culinary image … he’s transformed a Brooklyn slice joint into a boutique focacceria. Pizza chef Ruth Kaplan, an Aliseo customer and avid home cook whose puffy, free-form pies got her the Amorina gig, has a toppings repertoire that runs the gamut from classic (tomatoes and mozzarella) to creative (dried cherries, nutmeg, orange peel, and crème fraîche)…”

Amorina (Cucina Rustica) | 624 Vanderbilt Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11238. 718-230-3030.

[Photo: Kenneth Chen]

Nichelle points out that Amorina gets top billing in the latest “Openings & Buzz” column in New York Metro:

Albano Ballerini continues to remake burgeoning Vanderbilt Avenue in his own offbeat culinary image … he’s transformed a Brooklyn slice joint into a boutique focacceria. Pizza chef Ruth Kaplan, an Aliseo customer and avid home cook whose puffy, free-form pies got her the Amorina gig, has a toppings repertoire that runs the gamut from classic (tomatoes and mozzarella) to creative (dried cherries, nutmeg, orange peel, and crème fraîche)…”

Amorina (Cucina Rustica) | 624 Vanderbilt Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11238. 718-230-3030.

[Photo: Kenneth Chen]

Isabel and Chay (center, right) show Park Sloper Leah (left) how things are done in the PH.

Soda Bar | 629 Vanderbilt Ave. at St. Marks Ave. 718-230-8393.

NOTE! Entry #2 in the ProHo Cuties category. Send in your cuties (animal or human) to prohocuties@dailyheights.com.

Manufacturer    Lindt            Hershey’sBrand  		LINDOR           Solid Milk                Liliput-Eier 	 Chocolate EggsCost  		3.90 Euros  	 $2.99                (150g)           (260g)Appearance   	Smooth   	 Rabbit poopConsistency   	Hard shell,      Rabbit poop		creamy centerTaste  		Like chocolate   Byproduct of                                 chocolate                                 manufacturing                                 process

Though Europe switched over early this morning, daylight savings time for New York (EST, GMT -7:00) takes place NEXT weekend. Set your clocks ahead (spring forward) one hour at 2:00 a.m. on Sunday, April 3, 2005.

Of all the 718 numbers to dial, he had to pick hers…

“An advocacy telephone poll promoting Brooklyn’s biggest potential development project collided with the project’s fiercest opponent while canvassing the borough’s telephone lines this week.”

“What if I told you the Nets stadium would usher in the Golden Age of Brooklyn, and we’ll all be rich and have sparkly new schools… Does that change your opinion?”

“No! Absolutely not!”

“What if they gave lollipops and balloons to all the handicapped children in Brooklyn?”

“Opposed! Strongly opposed!”

“What if …”

“No! No! No!”

–
Thanks to reader NONROYAL for pointing it out: “For pure comedy, it’s hard to beat this.”

Thanks to Atim for sending us the raw, unexpurgated minutes of the first planning meeting, attended by 16 people. Next meeting is tomorrow (Saturday). The big news since the meeting is that Atim met with Council member Letitia James: “She is in full support of the idea and is requesting a proposal.” In addition, Community Board 8 officer Robert Matthews has requested information about the “dynamics” (i.e. street closings, police, fire, stages in parks).

Goals of the Prospect Heights Arts Festival: (1) help creative people reach a broader market than any single group or individual could reach on their own. (2) encourage tourism, support economic development for Prospect Heights.

Artist mix: visual artists, filmmakers, musicians, and performers (poetry, spoken word, comedy and theater).

Best time: Consensus was April or May 2006.

Michelle Washington of Washington Design shared insights on the Dumbo Arts Festival, now in its 8th year:
· Dumbo began from an organization (Dumbo Arts Center)
· Utilized several buildings – given in part by the major real estate company
· Funding by corporations
· Artist participation was at a very low fee of about $25
· Advertising and marketing are vital to its growth and development

For Profit or Not? It would be better to seek a fiscal sponsor for the festival. Heart of Brooklyn has decided not to be a sponsor. Atim will reach out other groups (NYFA, BAC and Hope Center).

Won’t someone please think of the kittens (or 4-year-old cats, as the case may be)?

Someone somewhere in New York writes on Craigslist: “We recently inherited a beautiful 4 year old cat. We already have 5 cats and really can not take her in. We have agreed to care for her temporarily while we search for a loving home. She is extremely nice and loving with people, very affectionate. She is however very jealous and make take some time to adjust if you have other cats. We would prefer her to be in a single cat household, however if you are good with cats and understand them a multiple cat household will be OK. We really would love to hear from you if you are interested. We thought about North Shore animal league, we adopted our cats from them, but really do not want to see her in a tiny cage. As she is 4 years old, the kittens usually get adopted and the older cats get stuck She needs a nice life. I will send photos and provide my cell number to any who are interested. Thanks.”

ANNOUNCING New Category: FREE KITTENS (note: there are no free kittens.)

Despite our strenuous and quite self-important insistence that this site is “more than just a blog,” not to mention our pretentious use of the “Royal We” (Pluralis Majestatis) in posts clearly authored by only one person, DAILY HEIGHTS is humbled, and honored, to be among the 4,516 entries in nyc bloggers, a project to bring together New York City’s blogs, organized geographically.

According to mike, liz, and matt, “The idea is simple: A map of the city that shows where the bloggers are, organized by subway stop. Find out who’s blogging in your neighborhood!”

We checked out this site two months ago, and it looked pretty much abandoned - tons of dead links, and so on. Now, the site looks revitalized, and they are actively seeking volunteers for this not-for-profit project:

1. Volunteers to go through our backlog of blog requests.
2. Programmers who know ASP, VBScript and MS Access to help create the password backend.
3. Designer to update the map.
4. Reviewers.
5. Anyone who can help them figure out how to receive RSS feeds.
6. Someone to help them find a new host.

“The thing is, the Haifa proprietor seemed pleased on 9/11. that was enuf for us, ok.”

Well, that settles it, then.

“Did you not, in fact, on the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, whistle a jaunty, non-Western melody while pushing a broom past a case full of expired dairy products? Answer the question, sir!”

[Flatbush Ave. Bodega “Under Ban for Anti-Americanism”]