Service Changes

Starting today, the southbound side of the Avenue U and Neck Road stations (Brighton line/Q) will be closed for almost a year while they do station rehabilitation. Here's what the MTA site has to say about it:

From Kings Highway, all southbound B/Q service is on the express track.

Suggestions for Alternate Service:

- Use the Kings Highway or Sheepshead Bay B/Q stations.

- Use the Av U F station.

- To travel from Av U and Neck Rd take a 57 St/7 Av bound Q train to Kings Highway and transfer to a Coney Island bound Q.

- To travel to Av U and Neck Rd continue to Sheepshead Bay and transfer to a 57 St/7 Av bound Q train.

- On weekday afternoons, please transfer to the B3K at the Kings Highway B/Q station. The B3K will operate on weekdays only, from 2:50 PM to 7:45 PM, on Av U between Ocean Av and Gerritsen Av to/from the Kings Highway/East 16 St station. The B3K will run every 10 minutes. Travel time is approximately 15 minutes in each direction. The regular fare is charged for the B3K bus.

I'm glad to see that they're finally renovating the stations; I wonder if they'll bother to reopen the south exit of Avenue U. It always annoyed me that people would have to run across the street to catch the B3; people often ran into traffic, which was incredibly dangerous, and the MTA's brilliant solution to that was to move the bus stop a block over. Maybe they'll move it back.

As for the B3K, it sounds like a nice idea, but why does it only run in the afternoons/evenings? What about the mornings? And the whole terminating at Gerritsen Avenue doesn't help me much.

One thing I do have to commend them on is how they're handling the service changes this past weekend and this coming weekend. A shuttle bus replaces Q service from Kings Highway to Stillwell Avenue. The bus leaves from Quentin Road/East 16th Street, where the B2 starts. They've left that station entrance open and put up plenty of signage to get people to the shuttle buses quicker/easier. There was a guy with a bullhorn directing people to the buses, making sure they didn't get on the wrong bus. And the buses came like every two minutes when I was there, though I'm sure it's fallen off already.

What are they teaching kids in school these days?

Been taking an earlier bus lately, but today I was running late and found out I missed some action on the 9:30am B100 to Kings Highway yesterday.

The cops stopped the bus at East 16th and refused to let anyone off the bus, coming aboard and checking people's bags and such. Why? Well, it turns out that two kids robbed a store and then decided to use the bus as their escape vehicle. They were arrested and taken off the bus, and everyone else was released. Took up five minutes at the most.

Guess you know gas prices are high when even the criminals have to take public transportation.

Pix Pix Pix

We're in the waning days of July, one month until the end of summer. But there's still four good weeks left, so let's enjoy them while they last, eh?

And now, some random pics from around Brooklyn.

Spotted sitting on someone's fence while I waited for the bus.

Concrete filling a crack in the platform of the Kings Highway B/Q station. Yes, that's exactly what it looked like, no Photoshop necessary. Feel free to laugh.

Crashed arcade machine at the Sheepshead Bay movie theater.

Faded sign along the Boardwalk.

Always Brooklyn Day in My Heart

Happy Brooklyn Brooklyn-Queens Anniversary All-City Day!

Article 52, Section 2586 of New York State Consolidated Law:

§ 2586. Anniversary  day  as  a  holiday  in the public schools of the
borough of Brooklyn and in the borough of Queens, city of New York.  The
first  Thursday  in  June  in  each year, except in those years when the
first Thursday in June occurs in the same week with Memorial day, and in
such years the second Thursday in June, known as  anniversary  day,  and
celebrated  in  commemoration  of the organization of Sunday schools, is
hereby made and declared to be a holiday in all the  public  schools  in
the  borough of Brooklyn and in the borough of Queens, city of New York,
and the board of  education  of  such  city  is  hereby  authorized  and
directed  to  cause all the public schools in such boroughs to be closed
on such day.

By Sunday Schools they mean Protestant schools, which is something my sixth grade teacher told us about but I never quite believed her, what with the separation of church and state and so forth. Of course, it amazes me that they had parades and such for the occasion when this is very much a Catholic city (and if you disagree with that, check out the exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, titled Catholics in New York, 1808-1946, which argues that "by organizing to build their own communities, institutions, and political organizations, Catholics reshaped the fabric of life in all five boroughs.").

When I was in elementary/junior high school we just called it Brooklyn Day; I never even heard the "Queens" part until I was in high school in Manhattan. I assume that the primacy of Brooklyn comes from the fact that there was no Borough of Queens at the time the holiday was created in 1829, while Brooklyn existed as long as there has been a Kings Country, which itself was created in 1683. (Queens County was also one of the original counties of New York State, but there was no formal organized City of Queens or similar, not until formal consolidation in 1898.)

It must have sucked to be a kid in Manhattan, the Bronx, or Staten Island and know that us lucky bastards in Brooklyn and Queens got an extra day off from school. Kind of like the hate we public school students have for Catholic/private schools and all their snow days. Of course, once I started going to school in Manhattan, I joined the ranks of the envious. And then there was this one time I was coming home from school and tried to get on the bus and the stupid driver wouldn't let, because "there's no school."

"Yes, there is, it's a Thursday."

"It's Brooklyn-Queens Day, there's no school."

"And I go to school in Manhattan."

"There's no school today! It's Brooklyn-Queens Day."

"Yes, in Brooklyn and Queens. I go to school in Man-hat-tan."

I showed her my program card, but she had never even heard of Stuyvesant, which was weird in itself. Eventually she gave up... begrudgingly.

Now that's all irrelevant, as the "holiday" has been extended to all boroughs. Well, except for the teachers, who now all have to work today. So now they can be the envious ones!

Or it could just be a random act of kindness

Just appeared near the B100 bus stop on Avenue T at Mill:



What, did all the people waiting for a bus looked parched? Thing isn't even on, and yesterday someone threw a Capri Sun packet in there.

I can't help but feel like it's meant to lure bus riders in like deer to a watering hole. You know, so they can be shot and stuffed.

A Walk on the Island

This summer I've decided to try to get to know Brooklyn a little better, especially my neck of the woods. So on Monday my boyfriend and I decided to take a little walk around Mill Island, just a few blocks from my house.

Now, in the almost ten years I've lived around here I've never had cause to go there, except to go to Gil Hodges Lanes, or there was that one time I fell into a drunken sleep on the B100 and missed my stop. That was an odd experience - it was after my company holiday party and I woke up to see a side of Kings Plaza I don't normally see.

First off, it's not really an island anymore, I know, it's actually a peninsula, sort of the way Coney Island isn't really an island anymore. But the skinny little piece of land that attaches it to the rest of Brooklyn is misleading, as walking the perimeter took a lot longer than I thought.

The west side of the island is just a view of everything that lines Flatbush Avenue - the mall and the marina. We walked down Mill Avenue instead of Strickland, so I don't have any photos of that right now.

Once you reach National Drive there's not much to see. The houses are somewhere in the middle range and they block any view of the water beyond. Which is okay, because all you would see here is Flatbush Avenue and the Belt. Beyond that is Floyd Bennett Field, so there's not even anything to look forward to after that.



(I used to live next to the Belt, but in a place where the Belt is actually right next to the water so there was something to look at. I kind of miss it, though I do not miss the sound of traffic.)



For some odd reason people like their houses to look like doctor's offices. I didn't see any signs indicating any, but lots and lots of these glass doors. There was even a house that was entirely mirrored.

There's a little split in the middle, and then the houses really start to fancy up.



Dude, that's awesome. They even had stained glass in the garage and everything. And then there's the basketball hoop.



This house apparently belongs to a Russian industrialist.



The backsides of the houses we passed before.



Now that's nice.



I jokingly referred to some of the houses as "Beetlejuice Houses", because if you remember how they renovated the house in that movie? I saw a lot of that as we walked. This one was probably the weirdest, what with the sculptures and the neon. I think I actually saw this house before, at night, when I passed it on the bus. I thought I was imagining it.



I'm going to assume this is the "secret" door to their docks below.



This house had its own guard house in front and a Porsche parked in the driveway. And you thought things like that only existed in Beverly Hills.



And finally, Whitman joins into East 66th, where you get to reenter reality, as evidenced by this lovely view of Bergen Beach.

Courier Life is Dead, Long Live YourNabe?

The Courier Life page has been down for a while, but last week something finally went up: YourNabe.com, which according to the information at the bottom of the page is is part of "News Community Newspapers Holdings" which is in turn, part of News America Incorporated.

Yep, that's right: the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch's company. Our precious local news was bought some time ago, and is now sibling to the FOX Network, FOX News, and the New York Post. Well, and the Queens Times/Ledger papers, which have also been dragged into the YourNabe family.

This news could be distressing, but perhaps it's too early to cast judgment. However, there is one disturbing thing about the new site: no archives seem to have been brought over, so there's hardly anything up there, especially in the special sections like dining and education.

The new Kings Courier site. Lacks flavor, don't it?

Amazon is Killing Our Malls!

I needed new glasses, so I headed to Kings Plaza last week to pick them up from LenCrafters. While waiting for my lenses to be ground and put in their frames, I walked around the mall to discover a few interesting facts, some of which surprised even people who shop there all the time, like my mother:

Waldenbooks and B. Dalton have closed. There are no bookstores in the mall now.

Sam Goody closed at some point, so there's no place to buy CDs either. Or DVDs, since Suncoast closed years ago.

Bomba Toys closed. That was the replacement for KB Toys, but it didn't last long. After walking around some, I did find another store on the second floor which may actually still be Bomba, but under a different name. There wasn't even a sign. The store sucked though; they didn't have any of the newer toy lines.

There are three GameStops in the mall now. Granted, this is because GameStop merged with EB Games, but you think they would have closed at least one store. Two of the stores are across from each other!

I call lame. This sure isn't making a convincing argument for brick-and-mortar shopping.

A Little Bit at a Time

I could be mistaken, but this morning I didn't see the lamp post at the end of Ralph Avenue this morning.  Not sure when it was taken from us, since I don't often get a chance to look at this particular utility pole.   Maybe they thought it posed a safety hazard.  Or maybe it's just part of the making of "new" Brooklyn.  I don't like "new" Brooklyn very much; it lacks charm.

Iron Maiden!

They are currently installing a tall entrance/exit turnstile with fare control at the Quentin Road exit of the Brighton Kings Highway station.

Translation: You will now be able to use that entrance to actually enter 24/7.

It's about freakin' time, given how important that entrance is. Sure, the main entrance is on the station's namesake Kings Highway, but sometimes I think that the Quentin exit is used more, given its proximity to the B2, B31, and B100. They'll probably get a better idea of how many people use it once the new turnstile is available.

I saw the phrasing "tall entrance" on a placard on the train itself, and that's the first time I've ever seen that term, most people just call them the "iron maiden" exits. Which I suppose isn't very friendly.