See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Shavana Abruzzo
Brooklyn Daily
April kicked off America’s favorite pastime — and the borough’s home team scored a homerun without setting foot on the field. One of our favorite stories was the Brooklyn Cyclones’ www.brooklyndaily.com/stories/2013/14/all_ebbetsfield_2013_04_05_bk.html ">ticket tributeto their storied ancestors, the Brooklyn Dodgers. The minor league team swung its summer Ebbets Field Centennial Celebration into play by pitching hot-item box seats for $1.50 — the same price boroughites paid for a luxury seat 100 years ago to whoop-n-holler at the inaugural game on the long-gone field of dreams.
Read on for more slammin’ reports that splashed across our pages and website.
• Mill Basin benched: Straphangers in Brooklyn’s “Beverley Hills” were able to wait for the bus in style — or at least in cold comfort — thanks to a Department of Transportation plan to install lone steel benches along the B6 and B41 bus routes, which are among the most well traveled in the borough, according to the agency. Summer is around the corner and steel gets hot (ouch!), so we couldn’t help but wonder how long before riders bolted up again.
• More Di Fara’s: The higgeldy-piggeldy home of peerless pizza made the finger-lickin’ decision to revive the full menu it retired a decade ago, when it made room for the army of slice-meisters who made the snaking lines at Di Fara’s as iconic as its flavorful pies. Aficionados cheered the return of meatballs, chicken parm, and other much-missed favorites — in addition to some promised new menu items. They will be hawked out of a takeout store a few doors down from the legendary Avenue J pizzeria.
• Verrazano bike lane: Brooklyn’s hiking and biking hounds can trek to Staten Island and take in the scenic straits on their own separate , toll-free bike and pedestrian path, on the motorist-exclusive Verrazano-Narrows Bridge according to cycling advocates. The plan calls for connecting Brooklyn and the Rock to complete the so-called “harbor ring” project, a proposed 50-mile loop for walkers and bicyclists necklacing New York Harbor.
• High on the bog: Brighton Beach condo dwellers flushed down the toilet a city proposal to install a public restroom on 20-foot stilts in front of their swanky digs. They say the eye-jarring john would block the oceanic view they pay top dollar to admire. Residents of the Oceana Condominiums argued that the residential complex was named in honor of the coastal crown jewel — not mother nature’s call.
• Turf tiff: North Brooklyn drivers saw red when the city wanted to green-up a traffic-choked area by removing 34 prized parking spots for a bigger recreation space. Park advocates said converting the block would fling open the cramped border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint and link two parts of McCarren Park that are currently divided by asphalt. Tree-huggers embraced the idea, while the auto-set dug in its wheels.
• Late-night Beep: Starry-eyed Borough President Markowitz showed small-screen talking heads how it’s done by turning his final state of the borough address into a personal late-night chat show . Mr. Brooklyn donned a turban for a side-splitting Carnac the Magnificent routine, and gabbed with E-listers like Stoop Talk’s Cat Greenleaf, Brooklyn Brewery founder Steve Hindy, and NY1’s Pat Kiernan. They spoke about the borough’s diversity (“you have the young people, the hipsters, and the old people, the artificial hipsters!”) and Markowitz’s support of gay marriage (“I believe love is love, unless you love the Knicks. Then you’ll burn in hell!”).
• Oar-some race: Fugghedabout the Cambridge and Oxford boat race. A borough paddle club planned to sail into summer with the Gowanus Challenge, a rollicking sloop race on the goopy canal. The club said the half-billion-dollar Superfund site needed to be careened as well as cleaned. The June jolly is open to canoes, kayaks, paddleboats, rowboats, and other non-motorized skiffs gutsy enough to brave “Lavender Lake,” a stinky septic tank containing hazardous metals, raw sewage, cancer-causing chemicals, and gonorrhea.
• Courier genie-uses: It was deadline day, the presses were rolling, and a flurry of press releases inquiring “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” about a “smashing” pending announcement from the Barclays Center momentarily stumped us. But with help from our clairvoyant staff we thought “We Can Work It Out.” And we did, with our spot-on prediction that Paul McCartney would be rattling his wicked vocals in the Brooklyn arena for two nights in June. To all our critics who want to say “Something,” we say, “Let It Be.”
• Coney visionary dead: Horace Bullard, the flamboyant developer who owned the Thunderbolt roller coaster and spent millions of dollars in the 1980s buying property and planning a major revival for the People’s Playground, died on April 9 of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Bullard abandoned his dreams to rebuild Steeplechase Park and reopen the Shore Theater — where Al Jolson and Jerry Lewis once performed — after Mayor Rudy Giuliani terminated his lease amid a recession.
• Young troopers: Pint-sized activists from Girl Scout Troop 2657 in Park Slope proved you can’t judge a book by its cover when they launched a petition to keep the wrecking ball away from the cherished Pacific branch library where they meet each week. The gung-ho grassroots gladiators were miffed that officials plan to hawk the historic facility and open a new branch inside a future skyscraper, instead of coughing up the $11 million needed for repairs. They want the Carnegie-era library turned into a landmark.
• Beastie-rific salute: Deceased Beastie Boys’ founding member Adam Yauch, who grew up in Brooklyn Heights and attended Midwood High School, will live on at the Palmetto Playground on Willow Place and State Street — soon to be known as the Adam Yauch Playground. The rapper died last year of cancer at the age of 47, just weeks before The Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
• Peed-off: Bladder-challenged visitors to Marine Park popped a squat in the shrubbery when nature called and the comfort station was locked up for the night, prompting complaints from disgusted revelers to Community Board 18, which reported the loo-nacy to the Parks Department and pushed for extended hours. Bathrooms in Brooklyn’s largest park are officially open from 8 am to 6 pm, but the park itself closes at 10 pm, bogging down tinklers.
Reach reporter Shavana Abruzzo at sabruzzo@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2529. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/BritShavana