In the spirit of encouraging a free exchange of ideas, The Brooklyn Paper makes this space available to our readers.
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By Susan Rosenthal Jay
Parenting: All the action for you and your kids!
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All the important meetings you should be going to.
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Our own editor, Gersh Kuntzman (left in photo), was again in the moderator’s chair for BCAT’s “Reporter Roundtable” this week — but instead of jousting with grizzled print veterans, Kuntzman faced down the blogerati of Brooklyn.
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By Ann Castello
Bay Ridge: Our pal Ann Castello, a.k.a. the Bensonhurst Bubba, shared with us the diaries she started keeping (and still has!) when she was 11 years old in 1947.
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By Adam F. Hutton
Williamsburg: Williamsburg community board is going to war against the Navy Yard.
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By Matthew Lysiak
Bay Ridge: Two local merchants are under scrutiny for the “disgusting” display in front of their stores — they’re using the sidewalk as part of the selling floor, officials say.
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By Juliana Bunim
Heights Lowdown: Brooklyn Vegetarian Week is all well and good, but the Heights doesn’t have any vegetarian restaurants!
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Letters: The Brooklyn Paper received more e-mails and comments regarding its front page story on 6-year-old “graffiti” vandal Natalie Shea than on any story in its 30-year history (“New face of vandalism,” Oct. 13). True, the ease of Internet communication and the nature of modern blogging played a role, but there’s no question that Shea’s story touched people in ways in which they are not usually touched. Here’s a sampling from our mailbag.
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By Dana Rubinstein
Greene Acres: Our columnist finds that the Pratt Area Community Council doesn’t always practice what it preaches.
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By Dana Rubinstein
Fort Greene: Brooklyn will soon have the honor of being home to the first building in the city to use wind turbines to harvest energy.
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By Mike McLaughlin
Carroll Gardens: A 15-year-old martial arts school is being forced out of its Smith Street location by the end of the year, because its small operation can no longer afford one of Brooklyn’s hottest commercial corridors.
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Letters: Our mailbag groans under the weight of letters about Grand Army Plaza, pay-to-play politics in the City Council, The Paper’s Atlantic Yards editorial and New York University’s proposed merger with Polytechnic University.
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By Dana Rubinstein
Park Slope: Flatbush Avenue’s two Victorian-style street-clocks will tick-tock-tick again by the end of October.
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By Mike McLaughlin
Carroll Gardens: Neighborhood enhancement or a precedent-setting event that could destroy decades’ worth of historic preservation — you decide.
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By Adam F. Hutton
Downtown: Who said Hollywood types are heartless: after turning Brooklyn Heights into their own back lot, the Coen Brothers have started spreading some major green throughout the neighborhood.
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By Adam Rathe
Art: Art festival washes up on the banks of the canal.
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By Chris Varmus
Nightlife: Hipsters fret as Williamsburg welcomes its first sports bar.
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By Juliana Bunim
Dining: GO’s glossary for pesky vegetarian verbage.
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By Gersh Kuntzman
PS … I Love You: Why do all the drivers — and some bikers — want to destroy our bike-commuting editor?
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By Adam F. Hutton
Williamsburg: The city is sifting through several proposals from ferry operators to shuttle commuters between Manhattan and at least three stops in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, an effort that the city hopes will reduce congestion on the roads and also on the overloaded G and L trains.
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By Matthew Lysiak
Yellow Hooker: Local activists are asking if the destruction of three beloved Bay Ridge Victorian homes is the beginning of a broader trend. Well, this columnist has an answer — let’s hope so!
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By Adam F. Hutton
Art: Galapagos Art Space — that hipster haven on North Sixth Street that has been Williamsburg’s home to outsider performance art since 2003 — is moving to DUMBO next year, and when it does, it’s going to be green.
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By Louise Crawford
Perspective: Smartmom and her daughter are addicted to the new show, “Gossip Girl.” It’s like “The O.C.,” only better (it’s in Brooklyn!).
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By Jessica Grose
Dining: Our writer attempts to shed pounds & detox with star advisor’s cleansing liquid diet.
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By Ariella Cohen
Brooklyn South: Our columnist’s friend helped nab a wanted bar robber. Here’s the saga.
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By Tom Gilbert
Beside the Point: Our columnist offers a pop quiz for people who think they know North Brooklyn.
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By Ariella Cohen
Carroll Gardens: A truck driver learned the hard way never to trust a flirt when a younger woman offered to share a drink with him — then stole a computer from his parked rig before the first sip was taken. Plus all the crime news from Carroll Gardens, Red Hook and Cobble Hill’s 76th Precinct.
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By Matthew Lysiak
Bay Ridge: Talk about an extreme makeover! Three elegant Victorian homes on 74th Street have been reduced to rubble — and will be replaced by five, three-family townhouses, according to the Basile Builders Group, which owns the property.
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By Gersh Kuntzman
Park Slope: A woman spilled a drink on the wrong person at a Fifth Avenue restaurant and ended up having her bag stolen by the angry and sopping wet spill victim. Plus all the crime news from Park Slope’s 78th Precinct.
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By Adam F. Hutton
Williamsburg: A hooligan scared an 80-year-old woman so badly that she needed an ambulance after the 16-year-old suspect broke into her apartment in the middle of the day on Oct. 15. Plus all the other crime news from Williamsburg and Bushwick’s 90th Precinct.
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By Harry Cheadle
Fort Greene: A routine stop for a man delivering baked goods to a Myrtle Avenue supermarket turned into an armed robbery on Oct. 8. Plus all the other crime news from Fort Greene and Clinton Hill’s 88th Precinct.
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By Matthew Lysiak and Michael Giardina
Bay Ridge: Two more elderly people were robbed after they let in imposters who claimed they were there to check the water. Plus all the crime from Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst and Dyker Heights.
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By Adam Rathe
Breaking Chews: We’re dishing up Brooklyn’s latest food news.
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By Harry Cheadle
Downtown: A woman who followed Nancy Reagan’s famous advice to “just say no” to drugs ended up being robbed of $4,400 in jewelry early on Oct. 12. Plus all the other crime news from Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO and Downtown’s 84th Precinct.
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By Dana Rubinstein
Fort Greene: Janna Kennedy Hyten, the queen of Halloween, has outdone herself already.
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By Adam F. Hutton
Park Slope: Park Slope was just named one of the best neighborhoods in America. Eat it, Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene, Cobble Hill and Bay Ridge!
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By Adam Rathe
Green-wood Cemetery to host spooky Halloween tours.Â
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By GO Brooklyn
Waiting in the Wings: GO’s definitive guide to what’s next in local theater.
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By Adam F. Hutton
Park Slope: The city has ordered 10 planters to be removed from Union Street — part of a crackdown on thousands of miniature cement parks citywide, The Brooklyn Paper has learned.
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By Neil Munshi
Williamsburg: Those damn beautiful-but-fragile Bradford pear trees have become a nuisance on Graham Avenue.
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By Adam F. Hutton
Downtown: Amy Ruth’s, a Harlem soul food restaurant known for a fried chicken-and-waffles dish named after Al Sharpton, will open a second location at the landmark Gage & Tollner site on the Fulton Mall.
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By Gersh Kuntzman
The public has spoken and it has said a mouthful: Akituusaq. That’s the new name of the baby walrus at the New York Aquarium, as selected by viewers of the “Today” show.
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By Adam Rathe
Dining: Adam Rathe chats with the Brooklyn Vegan about what it takes to be animal-free in the borough.
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By Gersh Kuntzman
One of Brooklyn’s best-kept secrets for cheap fruits and vegetables may be forced to raise its stunning low prices after the Labor Department ordered it to pay nearly $700,000 in back wages to workers who were not paid minimum wage and overtime.
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By Adam Rathe
Music: Brooklyn sigs the blues with second ‘Big Eyed Blues Festival.’
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By Deirdre Donovan
Theater: Ride Rep’s ‘Gillian’ is a great ghost story.
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By Mike McLaughlin
Downtown: Vandals scrawled four swastikas in green marker on the side of the landmark Independence Bank on Atlantic Avenue last week (which is soon to house a Trader Joe’s market).
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By Matthew Lysiak
Bay Ridge: Five months after drug enforcement authorities raided Lowen’s, the popular mom-and-pop pharmacy at the corner of Third Avenue and 69th Street, state investigators pounded down the doors again on Tuesday, this time seizing enough raw powder to make nearly a million doses of human growth hormone.
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By Gersh Kuntzman
Dining: Cake Man Raven’s red velvet cakes will soon be sold at your local Applebee’s.
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By Dana Rubinstein
Atlantic Yards: A group of rent-stabilized residents in the Atlantic Yards footprint has lost the latest battle in the war to save their homes.
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By Mike McLaughlin
Atlantic Yards: Three days after Newark residents learned that key streets around that city’s new glass-walled sports arena would be sealed off on game nights, residents of the Atlantic Yards footprint called on state officials to admit that the same frustrating scenario will likely happen in the heart of Brooklyn.
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By Mike McLaughlin
Carroll Gardens: This weekend may be your last chance to bite into a freshly made Honduran papusa at the Red Hook ballfields.
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By Debbie Almontaser
The Brooklyn Paper offers an unedited transcript of a statement read by former Khalil Gibran Academy Principal Debbie Almontaser on Tuesday.
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By Dana Rubinstein
Debbie Almontaser, the founder and former principal of the city’s first Arabic language and culture academy — who was forced to resign this summer over her failure to immediately condemn a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Intifada NYC” — will not be given a chance to get her job back as part of the ongoing search for a new leader for the school.
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By Tina Barry
Dining: V-Spot sibs hope boro-wide celebration appeals to veggie virgins.
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By Michael McLaughlin
Politics: Someone is re-writing history by altering Councilman Bill DeBlasio’s Wikipedia page — and the culprit is someone inside city government.
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