One of the vehicles in the Brooklyn Van Lines service that has gained popularity in the last year due to MTA bus cancellations. (Photo: Cristabelle Tumola / The Brooklyn Ink)

Weekday mornings Osmond Thorne takes commuters and children to school, but he is not driving a bus or subway train. He is behind the wheel of a 15-person commuter van.

The vans are a cheap and convenient way to get around Brooklyn, but they also skirt city regulations by regularly straying outside of their licensed routes to get more passengers.

A round of MTA bus cancellations last year led more passengers to depend on commuter vans such as Thorne’s Brooklyn Van Lines service. After the bus cancellations, many Brooklyn residents endured longer travel time to work and were stuck taking several subway lines to visit the Prospect Park area.

“By not having the service they are cut off not just to the rest of Brooklyn, but to the rest of the city and that’s very unfortunate,” says Jeffrey Zupan of the Regional Plan Association, an independent urban research and advocacy group for the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan region.

Whenever the MTA has to cut costs, it’s the riders who suffer the most, particularly those who lose service in areas where there are few transportation options, Zupan says.

One solution was the Group Ride Vehicle program. In September 2010 the city’s Taxi & Limousine Commission gave private commuter van companies a special license to pick up passengers along five cancelled bus routes in Brooklyn and Queens. Thorne’s Brooklyn Van Lines was licensed to stop along the old B71 route, which served parts of Red Hook, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Park Slope, Prospect Heights and Crown Heights.

The program led to an increase in people using Thorne’s vans as an alternative to public transportation.

Dave Abraham, chair of Transportation Alternatives’ Brooklyn Committee, says before the Group Van Ride program many former MTA customers may have not trusted less official-looking van services.

Sarah Collins uses Brooklyn Van Lines to take her children to and from school. Collins lives in Red Hook and has been riding with Thorne since the beginning of last school year. During the ride to school, she chats with other parents among the sounds of their noisy children. “For day to day commuting it has been perfect,” she says.

Ty Jones also uses Brooklyn Van Lines to take her child from her home in Crown Heights to her babysitter in Park Slope. From there Jones can easily hop on the subway to her job in Manhattan.

This May, however, the TLC cancelled the last remaining van line because of “sporadic service they had been providing along the B71 route,” according to TLC spokesman Allan Fromberg.

The action didn’t diminish Brooklyn Van Lines’ business, however. The company still had its standard TLC license and continued picking up passengers along that route, despite rules, that according to Fromberg of the TLC, do not permit the vans to pick up passengers in much of the area of the former B71 route.

Brooklyn Van Lines still charges the $2 pickup and drop off fee that it did with the TLC program, with passengers negotiating what to pay if they want to go outside of the old B71 route.

Jones feels lucky that she was able to find a cheap mode of transportation when the B71 line was cancelled: “Without this service I would have to pay $10 each way for a cab.”

Andrea Vaughn, who has been taking commuter vans since December, also feels fortunate for their existence. When the B71 was cancelled her commute went from 20 minutes to up to an hour. She had to take two buses to her job at the Brooklyn Public Library’s central branch. Now it takes her only 15 minutes and she also has “some good conversation” along with her commute.

Vaughn has been telling people in her area about the commuter vans on the neighborhood blog she writes for, The Word on Columbia Street. “Word of mouth has been very strong,” she says.

Another commuter van rider who is also helping spread the word is Marta Heilborn. She takes a Brooklyn Van Lines van to her job in the Grand Army Plaza area. She recalled how she recently met a woman on the street who was complaining about having to take three subway lines to work. Heilborn told her about the van service she uses.

Word of mouth has helped Brooklyn Van Lines’ business grow. Thorne attributes some of this increase to the beginning of the school year. The parents who have been using his service since the last school year have been telling others about it.

As a result, Thorne hopes to soon add more vans to serve the old B71 bus passengers. In the meantime, with the cold weather quickly approaching, he is sure that more people will call him for a ride.

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As he makes the egg cream, a tyke decked out in a black and white striped jumper brings a silver ice cream dish up to her mouth and slurps the melted remains.  It’s early evening, and business is slow.  Saxophone music plays in the background, almost drowning out the whirring sounds of the soda machine.

“Who’s playing?” asks a waitress, who sports a white cap with red trim that’s reminiscent of the ones nurses used to wear.

“Wynton Marsalis,” says the red-headed waiter.

“It’s beautiful,” she says. “Isn’t it beautiful?” She turns to another colleague who is sitting at the counter.  He has black curly hair, a handlebar mustache and thick glasses.

“I mean, it’s a cheesy instrument,” he replies in a deadpan voice.

The servers keep gabbing, and the conversation turns a little nutty.

“Almonds are a privileged food,” the waitress states.

“I thought almonds were less in fat and high in protein,” says the red-headed waiter.

“That’s just almond industry propaganda,” the mustached man sighs.

Two beaming folks walk in—one sporting a leather jacket and the other sporting a mohawk.  They walk around as if they are at a museum, picking up the local goods on sale and admiring the old prescription bottles on display in the back of the Farmacy.

“Can we sit anywhere?” one of them asks the red-headed waiter.

“I mean, anywhere within reason,” the waiter chuckles.

“Ugh, I mean what IS reason?” the man exclaimed. “Reason is SO subjective.”

They plop down at a table next to a row of filing drawers that are chock full of over-the-counter medicines, jars of chocolate sauce, and maraschino cherries.

The waitress hands them menus and says, “One time I said sit anywhere, and the guy was like, okay, well, I’m going to walk across the street and have a sandwich.”

Everyone laughs.  On a brisk fall evening, patrons at the Farmacy get a dose of something sweet and a dose of attitude.

John Heyer Jr., parish archivist, said Italian-American attendance is down at Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary & St. Stephen's Roman Catholic Church (Photo: Regan Penaluna/The Brooklyn Ink)

On Court Street in Carroll Gardens, where once stood Café del Sud, a popular hangout for Italian-American men to drink espresso after work, a Dunkin’ Donuts now sits. Two nearby Catholic schools, where Italian-American families once sent their children, are now condominiums.

Carroll Gardens was formerly the heart of Brooklyn’s Italian-American population. The number of those with Italian ancestry living in the general area dropped significantly between 1990 and 2000 from 13,814 to 11,226 and though the population has since held steady, their cultural influence continues to wane. Church attendance is down, social clubs are disappearing, and many ethnic businesses have been replaced by establishments that cater to a young, cosmopolitan clientele.

While some Italians remain in the neighborhood, in spirit, “We’re not here anymore,” said Andrew Mariello, 57, a longtime resident.

Italian immigrants began moving to the neighborhood in the early 19^th century and continued well into the 20^th century. Most were working-class, and many of the men toiled as longshoremen on the docks along the East River. The immigrants brought the traditions of their hometowns, such as Naples, Sorrento and Sicily, to Carroll Gardens and honored their cities’ patron saints in day long celebrations. They also established social clubs in honor of their city of origin, such as the Van Westerhaut Cittadani Molesi, founded by residents from Mola di Bari.

In search of more space in the 1960s and 1970s, many of the Italians left Carroll Gardens for Staten Island, Long Island, and Queens. In the 1980s, gentrification set in. Young professionals from Manhattan flocked to the brownstones in Brooklyn, including those in Carroll Gardens. Ron Schweiger, Brooklyn Borough Historian, said that this influx “changed the face of the community.” The Italians saw the price of their homes increase, and, according to Schweiger, they decided to “cash-in” and move away. Frances Kopito of Brooklyn-Real realty in Carroll Gardens said that in the late 1980s the price of a brownstone was around $300,000, and today the same one is worth well more than a million dollars. Some, she said, top $4 million.

John Heyer Jr., 28, a current resident, remembers as a child seeing Italian widows dressed in black, old men smoking cigars, and young men in white tank-top undershirts. Cadillacs would roll by him along Court Street. Joseph Paino, 79, who left the neighborhood 14 years ago, said that not long before he moved away, “If you didn’t speak Italian, you didn’t understand. You were lost.”

Nancy Foner, a professor of sociology at Hunter College, said that a downturn in church population can be a sign of ethnic decline. Indeed, fewer Italian-Americans are attending Mass at Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary & St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church, the oldest Italian church in the neighborhood. Heyer, the parish archivist, said that in the 1980s, the congregation was 95 percent Italian-American. Now it is 60 percent. The church also did away with its Italian-only service. In 2007, the church closed its Catholic school, the last of five in the neighborhood to close.

Similarly, today only two Italian social clubs remain. One honors the Italians from Mola di Bari on Court Street and the other serves those with ties to Polazzo on Henry Street.

A number of other factors indicate the decline of an urban ethnic culture, said Japonica Brown-Saracino, a sociology professor at Boston University, including the closing of commercial establishments frequented by a particular ethnic group, such as shops, bars, and restaurants. Often, she said, these businesses are replaced by those that cater to newcomers.

Joe Balzano, 72, has a thick Italian accent and enjoys reminiscing about his mozzarella shop, Laticcini Barese, which closed in 2002. He said his cheese was known for its very milky flavor, which brought locals back and attracted Hollywood stars such as Danny DeVito. But neither of his sons were interested in taking over his business, and instead one works as a longshoreman and the other for a cable company. Balzano said that there was not much of a future in his line of work anyway, because the new generation of residents prefers to buy their mozzarella from grocery stores.

Elsewhere in the neighborhood, Anthony Graffeo, 70, has run the Carroll Gardens Florist Shop on Court Street for decades. Until recently, the primary source of income for Graffeo’s store was the Italian funeral business. He specialized in elaborate sculptures made out of flowers for wakes. In an album, he has photographs of a pair of boxing gloves from red rose petals for a fighter, a deck of cards of white roses for a card shark, and—perhaps his most enterprising—a dripping ice cream cone of pink and cream-colored petals for a local ice cream salesman. But now there are only two Italian flower shops in Carroll Gardens out of an original five. “Fewer funerals,” he said, “fewer shops.”

Heyer, who is a parish archivist at Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary & St Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church and works for Scotto Funeral Home, confirmed that the funeral business in Carroll Gardens has been down over 25 percent in the last decade.

Ed Morlock, a research associate at the Center for the Study of Brooklyn at Brooklyn College, said the Italian-American population has aged. Between 1990 and 2008, the average age increased from 44 to 47 and the number of individuals over 85 has also grown.

Meanwhile, a number of new restaurants have sprung up in the neighborhood. Along Court Street are a Thai restaurant, a Sushi bar, and a French café. Stephanie Diamond, 36, who moved from Manhattan to the neighborhood in January, said she often eats at a local Mexican restaurant and another that sells things she remembers from her childhood like Ritz crackers and Bazooka gum. Dennis Portello, 36, said that since he moved to Carroll Gardens from Atlanta eight years ago, “a lot of restaurants opened up.” He enjoys the American bistros, such as Prime Meats and Buttermilk Channel.

Many local Italians say these new restaurants are not there to appeal to them, but to the new residents. Mary Bellocchio, 76, said that Italian families “were always together and would cook good food at home.” Now people have moved in who prefer to eat out and who “don’t have the same lifestyle.”

Mike Sale, 54, who has worked at an Italian specialty shop for 40 years, echoed Bellocchio’s observation that Italians traditionally prefer to cook at home. Many used to come to his shop to buy three to four pounds of sausage. Now he gets mostly non-Italians coming in every so often to “buy one sausage.”

He was the last baby to be born at St. Vincent Hospital, one of the cities oldest hospitals that closed its doors on April 30. Born to Joetta Maue of Carroll Gardens, baby Tesla was the last patient in the maternity ward weighing 7 pounds and 4 ounces.

Tesla’s arrival was a bit unexpected to the St. Vincent’s maternity ward. If not for his birth the hospital would have closed a week earlier. But after 26 hours of labor at home, Joetta, her husband and her midwife decided to head to the hospital for his birth.

Tesla was born by C-section. According to the Brooklyn Eagle both the mother and the baby are doing fine.

Three Brooklyn residents weigh in on the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to place the Gowanus Canal on the Superfund site list.