El Gaucho Offers Authentic Argentinean Cuisine

Shmuel David, owner and manager of El Gaucho in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, explains that it was a long-time dream of his to “offer the kosher community the exciting experience of eating an authentic Argentinean steak.”

One of El Gaucho’s specialties includes asado (barbecue) which is a fire made on the ground or in a fire pit. The fire is encircled by metal sticks which hold the entire opened up carcass of the animal which then cooks by the heat of the fire. Shmuel David replicates this traditional cooking method in his restaurant using cutting-edge radiant grill technology by which the meat never touches a flame, but is entirely cooked by the heat of the fire. The meat is then served individually on personal sized table grills called parillas which keep the meat hot and sizzling.

El Gaucho, which has the added advantage of being Glatt Kosher, is located at 4102 18th Avenue at the corner of East 4th Street. For more information or to make reservations call 718-438-3006.

Rocky’s Pizza Best in Kensington

At 474 Coney Island Avenue, right off Church Avenue is a pizza place worth remembering: Rocky’s Pizzaria Restaurant.

The menu is huge, with a choice of appetizers such as mozzarella sticks, garlic knots or hot dogs in blankets; calzones of many kinds; pasta al horno; and much more.

You are welcome to come in to eat, but if you are just hanging out at home, they are happy to deliver to your door. Rocky suggests that you go to their web site, organize your order and then call 718-854-9270, and your order will arrive in practically no time at all.

Halloween Decoration Stirs Controversy in Brooklyn

Councilman Charles Barron

Halloween is not a holiday known for its respectful, conforming flavor; but for many this year’s Kensington prank went just a little bit too far.

Someone hung an obviously black-skinned scarecrow from a tree in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Kensington this week, bringing to many people’s mind a vision of an old, southern-style lynching.

The tasteless Halloween decoration was brought to the attention of City Councilman Charles Barron. In response he released a statement which said, "The scarecrow is offensive and reprehensible not only to the Black Community, but to all those who have a history of persecution and, or have been victimized by lynch mobs. The perpetrators of this horrific display are only acting out what they conceal in their hearts."

Barron added that not only was the display ‘grotesque’ it was also definitely not ‘cool.’

Barron’s opinion was not shared by everyone, however. One woman, Nicole Clemente, expressed her own feelings about the Halloween prank, "I don't think that that portrays lynching. I mean, it's Halloween, that's part of the Halloween spirit. When I see a jack-o-lantern with a scary face on, I don't get scared and think monsters are going to come get me."

Whatever the consensus on the distinctly original Halloween display, the NYPD took down the scarecrow on the grounds that the tree is city property and the law disallows all forms of decorations or signage to be hung on public property.

The perpetrator of the misdemeanor has not yet been apprehended.

Lander Calls For End to Helicoper Joy Rides

A group of Brooklyn officials are calling for a ban on low-flying tourist helicopters over the city, according to reports printed in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

The demand to halt tourist helicopter flights is in response to the tragic crash of a helicopter into the East River last week which killed one passenger and seriously hurt three out of a total of five on board.

Five political figures called for the ban, including Councilman Brad Lander, Democratic representative from Kensington/Park Slope. These five had previously asked for an end to low-flying helicopter flights due to the noise pollution they create, but now the issue is even more essential, as it involves safety and life and death issues.

Councilman Brad Lander Calling Citizens to Get Involved

Brad Lander and fellow councilmembers Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn), Eric Ulrich (R-Queens), and Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-Manhattan) are excited over an initiative which will give residents real power to say how they want their tax money spent in their districts.

Brad Lander

It is called “Participatory Budgeting,” and Lander explains why he is so enthusiastic about the initiative:

"This is a time when faith in government is weakened; but for those of us who believe democracy is at its best when we work together as a community to solve problems, this is an opportunity to take part," explained Lander. "

The plan was first announced in September. In the next few weeks Lander’s 39th district will hold assemblies to get people involved. The first such assembly will be held in Park Slope this coming Wednesday, October 5th, at the Old First Reformed Church at 729 Carroll Street. A second assembly is planned for October 20th, at PS 58 in Carroll Gardens, both for 6:30pm.

"The idea is so novel; it's something people won't want to miss. If this works, we'll be part of something as pioneers," said Maria Pagano, Carroll Gardens resident and the President of the Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association.

Lander is hoping a large contingent from his district will participate, involving Brooklynites from Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Columbia Waterfront, Gowanus, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Boro Park, and Kensington.

Kensington Youthmarket a Success

This spring and summer saw the opening of the Kensington-Windsor Terrace Youthmarket. The market was such a success that it was the largest revenue producing Youthmarket of all the GrowNYC markets in the network.

The good news was announced by Catherine Zinnel, the Kensington Liaison/District Director, who was appointed to her position by Councilman Brad Lander.

Due to the great success of the project here in Kensington, the initial trial period is now over and we can all expect to see the Youthmarket back next spring, perhaps in an expanded version with flowers, fresh meat and/or fish for sale.

The Youthmarket is scheduled to stay open every Saturday this season until closing day on October 29. Go see what all the excitement is about on East 5th Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway from 9am to 3pm.

Summons Slowdown Eliciting Ire of Police Chief James Tuller

The NYPD ticket-writing slowdown is resulting in such a huge loss of income for the city that three-star chief James Tuller wants to see his cops writing at least 15 summonses each month.

This quota, which police officials would rather call a “productivity goal” has annoyed police in return.

Moving violations, like running a red light, using a cell phone or driving without a seatbelt, have dropped by 44% during the week ending on September 11th, as compared to the same time last year. For the 28 days previously the numbers of moving violation tickets were also down by 36.3% throughout the city, as compared to last year.

The 70th Precinct, which is in Kensington, was particularly hit hard. Here, as well as in Midtown Manhattan and the 122nd Precinct in Staten Island had a 79% reduction in summonses for the above named moving violations.
Due to the pressure coming from Chief Tuller, many commanders have been placed in an awkward position. As one policeman put it,

"Most precinct commanders don't care about summons 'productivity.' Their careers are based on crime reduction," he said. "The bosses can push a precinct C.O., but you still gotta get a cop to write them."

Park Slope Fiend Attacks Again

In what adds up to the eleventh such attack since March, a 29 year-old woman was approached from behind as she left the Prospect Avenue R train station at 9:05pm last Wednesday night. The attacker, who is now known as the Park Slope Sex Fiend, grabbed her breasts from behind and then ran away after she screamed.

Typical of Other Attacks

The police are convinced that this latest attack is indeed the work of the same perpetrator of the other attacks.

“The victim’s description fits with the pattern of attempted assaults,” said a police source. “And it’s typical with the other incidents. She was grabbed from behind by surprise.”

Since March the fiend, or perhaps fiends, since there are different descriptions of what the assailant looks like, has managed to rape one woman and grope ten others, frightening women from South Slope, Bay Ridge, Sunset Park and Park Slope.

Residents Respond

The latest attack comes just one day after the police told a frustrated citizenry that they are doing all they can to nab the criminal. Residents, not satisfied with the police response, have held rallies, placed ‘Wanted’ posters, and organized self-defense classes. The police say they have added patrols as of August, after the fifth attack.

A woman from Kensington said that she called Crime Stoppers after someone who fit the description of the Park Slope Fiend exposed himself to her on the subway. Unfortunately, according to the woman, the officer on the phone hung up on her.

Brooklyn Bike Patrol Take Back Brooklyn Streets

Jay Ruiz of Brooklyn Bike Patrol

Park Slope, a neighborhood just a bit north of Kensington, has responded to an increase in the number of sexual assaults that have taken place there lately, with a bike patrol composed of volunteers.

Brooklyn bikers will stand at the ready when a woman emerges from the subway station and will offer to accompany her home if she does not feel comfortable walking  alone at night.

Jay Ruiz, a 55 year old dispatcher for a bike messenger company,  founded the group and gave it the name Brooklyn Bike Patrol.  Ruiz said,

“We just want the monsters to stop already.”

The group began escorting women home last Friday.

Ruiz explained that they are not only covering the area of southern Park Slope, but the Brooklyn Bike Patrol will also be on the lookout for crimes in his own neighborhood of Prospect Heights, which has had several robberies in the recent past.

Ruiz explained his motivation: “It’s so bad to see women getting attacked. I feel like I have to do something.”
So far Ruiz has found 10 volunteers to help him cover the area from 8pm to midnight, with an emphasis on the five subway stations in the area.

What finally inspired Ruiz to take action was the “Take Back Our Streets” rally last week which was organized by women of the neighborhood.

"The cops can't be everywhere," Ruiz said. "Just give us a call and we'll have someone there."

Diversity Abounds in Kensington, Brooklyn

Kensington is known as a quiet, verdant area in Brooklyn. It is only one square mile, but packed into that limited area are well over 70,000 residents. Among those residents are several well-established immigrant groups, adding to the neighborhood’s color, interest and wonderful diversity, with the neighborhood's children speaking at least 25 different languages.

Just south of Windsor Terrace, Kensington’s borders are Caton Avenue and Fort Hamilton Parkway on the North, Coney Island Avenue on the East, 18th Avenue on the south, and McDonald Avenue and 36th Street on the west.

Prices of homes are more reasonable in Kensington than in many other nearby Brooklyn neighborhoods. Gentrification is coming to Kensington, but at a much slower pace than in other areas, which should help keep the prices of homes down, while forcing residents to go elsewhere for good restaurants and other forms of entertainment.

Kensington Apartment Building

Among the diverse populations of Kensington is said to be the highest in Brooklyn. In Kensington can be found Bangladeshi and Pakistani residents; with Muslims along the eastern strip with Coney Island Avenue. An ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish community lives along the southern border, next to Borough Park.  The main shopping is on Church Avenue, but there are many other streets with smaller commercial areas. There is easy access to the subway, which will bring you to Midtown Manhattan in about 45 minutes. Express busses get to town quicker, with a 15 minute commute to Wall Street and about 30 minutes to Midtown.


Considering everything, its nice to call Kensington home.

Bike Share Coming to Kensington and Other Parts of Brooklyn

Brooklyn will soon be joining many major cities around the world that have an innovative and clever alternative means of transportation at their disposal; and that is a European style bike sharing program.

The Department of Transportation of New York City announced yesterday that Alta Bicycle Share won the contract to operate the bike system, after an evaluation of several proposals by a number of different companies specializing in creating and running such systems.

Alta Bike Share will not need any taxpayer money to run the program, and any profit they have will be shared with the city as a result of a revenue sharing agreement which is part of the deal.

Brooklynites will be able to use Alta bike share bicycles for a yearly or monthly fee, which will be made available to them at bike stations located at a large number of crucial spots around town. The idea is that riders take a bike from one station, for instance near their homes, and leave the bike at another station, perhaps near a subway stop. 

Alta Bike Share published their preliminary plans for station locations. They are planning on building stations in Brooklyn stretching from Greenpoint, Kensington and Brooklyn Heights to parts of Bedford-Stuyvesant and south to Park Slope.

“Public bike sharing is a great opportunity for the city to continue moving in a greener direction through expanding mobility options for NYC residents; the initiative also promotes a healthy lifestyle,” said Council Member Letitia James (D-Fort Greene/Prospect Heights). “Also, new jobs will be created through the NYC Bike Share program, along with an increase in revenue for the city, which should make bicycle sharing a win-win program all around.”

Kensington Resident Cleans Up Flooded Passageway

After days of waiting for city officials to alleviate the flooding and subsequent mess caused by the recent rains along the passageway to the Fort Hamilton Parkway F/G subway station in Kensington, one neighbor took the initiative of cleaning up the refuse. The neighbor borrowed a shovel from Sasco tools on Coney Island Avenue and a broom from Sean Casey Animal Rescue to get the job done, carefully placing the debris and trash in a neat pile for the powers-that-be to haul away as per their jobs.

The difference is huge and the entire neighborhood sends kudos to the good neighbor who made it his responsibility when no one else did to make the time and effort to help his neighbors despite there being no other reward than the satisfaction of helping out.

Ten Years Later: Kensington Families Featured in Stories About 9/11

It is exactly ten years since the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center buildings, which killed almost 3,000 people and left about 3,000 children younger than 18 without a parent.

Some of those families were and/or are Kensington residents, and their stories are featured in such places as the New York Times and ESPN.

One of the stories, written by Steve Wulf for ESPN discusses the uplifting story of the Conroy family whose husband/father Kevin Conroy, was killed on September 11. The four children were taken under the wing of Bobby Valentine, former major league baseball player and manager.

The New York Times article focuses on the Vukosa family of Kensington, especially Adam and Austin, who also lost their father, Alfred, when the WTC was destroyed.

FEMA Leaves Brooklyn Off Funding List in Wake of Irene

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is blowing up a storm in reaction to the decision by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to leave Brooklyn out of the declared region which will receive federal aid to help clean up after the mess Hurricane Irene left in her wake.

Brooklyn is the only borough of New York’s five which was left out of the FEMA declared areas, although its status can still change. In the next few days a more complete assessment of the damage inflicted by Irene on Brooklyn will be conducted, which will hopefully change Brooklyn’s status for FEMA funding.

In the meantime Markowitz is blown away by FEMA’s preliminary decision to leave Brooklyn out.

"I am absolutely dumbfounded that federal officials have excluded Kings County from a disaster declaration for public assistance," said Markowitz. "I ... hope that FEMA immediately reverses this dreadful decision and includes Brooklyn.

"In Brooklyn, hundreds of trees were knocked down; doing significant damage to cars, homes and infrastructure, and some Brooklynites remain without power. Brooklyn's low-lying 'Zone A' neighborhoods that were evacuated saw significant flooding," Markowitz added.

Markowitz also said that parts of the BQE were damaged by Irene and will need to be repaired.

Kensington Photographer Catches WTC Inside and Out and Through the Years

Kensington resident and photographer Richard Massie’s photos of the World Trade Center will be featured as a special section of the autumn show “Tales of Breukelen,” which will open this month at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC.)

The exhibition is in honor of the tenth anniversary of the destruction of the WTC on September 11th 2001, and will display views of the WTC from both inside and out using medium-format photos taken during the mid-‘70s through the ‘80s.

The photos follow the development of the towers from when they were first being built, including rare shots of their interiors while they were still under construction. Massie’s goal was to see and show the beauty of the towers at a time when not everyone viewed them with the same artistic eye.

“At the time they were considered monstrosities — they were hated at the time, and considered a boondoggle with public money,” Massie explained. “I was going to try to turn them into something artistically appreciable.”

Also included in the exhibition will be a “works-on-paper” montage which members of BWAC created to be installed in a ceremony in exactly one week, on Sunday, September 11.

You can come visit the exhibition at the BWAC gallery located in Red Hook at 499 Van Brunt Street, Brooklyn.

Goodnight Irene

Here is one of my favorite photos from Irene's visit to New York:

 The sign on the car says "For Sale."   Right.

Some more bad damage, but I guess we're lucky it wasn't any worse.

Let' hope for some drier, calmer days in the future.

Brooklyn Homebrew's Taste Competiton to Take Place In Kensington

Booklyn Homebrew, together with Sycamore, will be presenting “Brooklyn Wort,” a beer tasting and brewing competition to take place in Kensington, at the Sycamore Flower Shop and Bar at 1118 Cortelyou Road.

The “Brooklyn Wort” was originally scheduled to be held on Saturday, August 27th, but due to the arrival of Hurricane Irene, it was rescheduled for September 10th.

One ticket to the event, which will be Brooklyn’s very first live homebrewed beer competition, will entitle participants to food and the tasting of 25 different beers from some of Brooklyn’s most deliciously successful home breweries. In addition to the Brooklyn’s best will also be Ballast Point, a San Diego favorite, pouring some of their incredible hand-crafted beers as well.

For more information visit Brooklyn Homebrew.

Last Week’s Record Rainfall Creates Mosquito Breeding Grounds throughout Brooklyn

Kensington, the rest of Brooklyn, and all other boroughs have become a choice breeding ground for mosquitoes this summer, especially in the wake of last week’s record-breaking rainfall in New York.

Added to the unpleasantness and nuisance of buzzing and biting mosquitoes is the fear that West Nile virus is also being carried by the pesky creatures. The health department has been testing for the deadly virus, and has found it in at least 33 city zip codes in every borough excluding Manhattan. In fact, the first such case of the virus was reported last week in a 64-year old woman from Manhattan. She was hospitalized at the beginning of August and is now getting better.

One woman from Kensington, Sharon Levy, revealed that her children were bitten by mosquitoes while visiting her mother in Park Slope. She believes a small kiddie pool was most likely the source of the mosquitoes, which prefer to breed in pools of standing water.

Kensington Out of Reach? Try Childhood, Brooklyn

Looking for a great place to live, raise your family; and generally enjoy life, but still keeping  a little bit of your hard-earned savings in the bank? Consider what many believe is a more than satisfactory option to the pricey, and increasingly snootier neighborhoods of Kensington and Park Slope; the nearby neighborhood known as Childhood.

Named in honor of the iconic green and crayon-yellow building of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Childhood offers tree-lined streets, Brower Park and of course the museum itself, an easy way for families to pass the day during the hot summer months with their youngins’ in tow in air-conditioned, low-keyed bliss.

Quaint brownstones give the place character while the borders of Nostrand Avenue on the west, Albany Avenue to the east, Eastern Parkway along the south and Atlantic Avenue north surround a diverse and distinct neighborhood which is lacking in many of Brooklyn’s more ‘exclusive’ areas.

According to one Childhood resident the neighborhood is “quiet and it has the park (Brower) so you can come and relax and bring the kids. One child said that Childhood is “fun, the best,” when asked how he liked his neighborhood.

Can’t find something in Kensington at the price you’d like to pay? Look into Childhood. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Kensington Library to Enjoy Longer Hours Beginning in September

Saturday hours are being restored to many branches of the Brooklyn Public Library system, including the Kensington branch library located at 410 Ditmas Avenue between East 4th and East 5th Streets.

Last year the Brooklyn Public Library, the fifth largest library system in the country, reacted to budget cuts by choosing to forego weekend library hours rather than lay-off union employees.

The libraries which will now be open on weekends owe their good fortune to a union-rule change which will force union employees to do basic library tasks during regular library hours instead of during overtime hours. About half of all the Brooklyn branches will benefit, bringing the number of libraries which will stay open six days a week up to 32, while the other 28 branches will still be open only five days each week.

“We are very excited to offer increased hours to our patrons at a time when they need and are using our community libraries at record levels,” said Linda Johnson, the system’s new executive director.

No libraries in the system will be open on Sundays, but the re-organization which Johnson is augmenting will add about 8 hours of service to each branch, on average, beginning on September 10th.

Not everyone is excited by the increase in library hours. The president of the Brooklyn library workers’ union, Local 1482, Eileen Muller, complained that the new schedules will make it more difficult for library staff to prepare programs and will also make it more difficult for the custodians to clean the libraries.

“It would be easier for the staff if they had that extra time in morning,” said Muller. “Unfortunately, the library is trying to make light of the work we have to do behind the scenes.”