In the dressing room of the Galapagos Art Space, DUMBO (Photo: Anna Codrea-Rado/The Brooklyn Ink)

A warm red glow washes over the leather booths of the Galapagos Art Space. The tables – later to be filled with couples, birthday and bachelor parties – are separated by a central walkway that’s suspended over water. The Dumbo theater’s staff is busying themselves with preparations for the evening’s performance of the Floating Kabarette.

In a matter of hours, performers will emerge onto the walkway, strut up and take to the stage. For the audience, a night at the theater means watching their performance. They’ll only see what is put in front of them, what’s displayed on the stage.

But what happens behind the scenes?

Through the steel door marked “Stage door,” a concrete labyrinth winds through the bowels of the theater. A smell of chlorine wafts along its corridors.

The first dancer arrives. Her voluminous ebony hair emphasizes her slight frame. With feline caution, she plods onto the stage that’s still wet from being cleaned earlier in the day, sits cross-legged on the floor and stretches out. A few feet away, the stage manager is atop a ten foot ladder, changing light filters. The red curtain is drawn across the stage.

*

Anna Codrea-Rado/The Brooklyn Ink

Two dancers stand before the mirror in the main dressing room. Their eyes are locked in concentration as they draw Cleopatra lines along their eyelids. The harsh light from the fluorescent bulbs above the mirror make their faces look deceptively severe. Among the make-up bags lining the ledge of the mirror, an oversized bag of pretzels is propped up against the glass. Its contents gradually diminish over the course of the evening as performers reach into it, replenishing themselves after their act.

On the other wall, two mirrors hang next one another. Another dancer with dirty blond hair, sits in front of them gluing on false eyelashes.

The host’s booming voice rings from downstairs as he warms up.

A voluptuous woman in a leopard print, faux-fur coat bursts into the room. She unbuttons her coat to reveal a sparkling red dress; the light catches its sequins. Her arrival makes the already-cramped room suddenly feel smaller.

The lady in red steps out of her dress and prances around the dressing room in black underwear. The stage manager appears. “Half an hour call,” he says to a chorus of, “Thank you!”

A girl with bleached-blond hair scrapped into a topknot, revealing a chunk of pink underneath, maneuvers a suitcase past the girls preening in the mirror. The dirty blonde steps past her, flips her waist length hair over her head and fills the room with the smell of apple sours from her hairspray. She twizzles her curls relentlessly, fixing them up and then tugging them back down.

“I can’t tell if my hair looks dumb,” she says to no one in particular.

One of her colleagues responds, “It does not look dumb.”

As the lady in red pats vibrant red glitter over her lipstick, the host calls, “Have a great show everyone.” The first act is called to the stage, and the dressing room clears out.

*

Anna Codrea-Rado/The Brooklyn Ink

Less than ten minutes pass and the dancers drag white boxes, props from their act, off stage. They change out of their costumes as Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round” pounds from the front of house and whoops emit from the crowd.

The ebony-haired dancer takes a red wig of a plastic bag and tucks her locks into it. She stands on tiptoes, leaning on her elbows as she paints black teardrops beneath her eyes. She takes a step backwards to examine her work, then leans back into the mirror and pulls the line further down her cheek. Her mouth is slightly open as she replicates the pattern on the other side.

A narrow corridor juts out of the back of dressing room. She steps into it, plugs her iPod headphones into her ears and robotically jerks through her routine.  The synthetic red wig sticks to her face.

*

Two aerialists push a yoga matt up against a wall. One sits with his legs stretched out, toes in point. The dirty blonde curls up next to him and puts her head in his lap.

“The pain tolerance is the worst,” he says. “If you can deal with that, you can do it.”

The rhythm of the muffled music from the front of house is abruptly interrupted. The three stop their conversation and exchange quizzical looks. The stage manager runs up the stairs, leaps over them and darts out the door that leads to the auditorium. The crowd chant of “Kris, Kris, Kris!”

Five minutes pass and still no music can be heard. The three have resumed their conversation. Eventually the music starts up. The show goes on.

The ebony-haired dancer appears. She stands in front of the matt. “They kept telling me ‘go on,’ ‘don’t go on.’” She’s agitated. A colleague comforts her. She goes back into the dressing room and stands in front of the bright mirror.

She wipes the black teardrops away from her under her eyes. “It feels so good to take everything off.”

*

Anna Codrea-Rado/The Brooklyn Ink

A bald, suited man appears from the stairwell halfway through the evening and hands out the paychecks. The host looks at his before folding it in half and tucking it into his breast pocket.

The aerialists have performed their act. They bid everyone goodnight and leave.

The ebony-haired dancer pulls on a pair of grey, faded jeans and black jumper. She loosely pins up her hair. A few strands fall out the back. She packs away the red wig into her suitcase.

“Where,” she asks, “are my drinks tickets?”

Mayor Bloomberg announced in June that 20 parks across the five boroughs would provide free Wi-Fi, but so far the service is available in only some of the parks, according to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The department has information available on its website on the specific locations in each park.

The project in Brooklyn Bridge Park is a joint venture between DUMBO Industrial District, Two Trees Management Company and NYC Wireless.

The DUMBO free WiFi service plaque outside Brooklyn Bridge Park. Photo by Neha Banka/The Brooklyn Ink.

Robert Perris, the district manager for Brooklyn Community Board 2 told The Brooklyn Ink, “As the largest property owner and developer, Two Trees Management has taken many initiatives to make DUMBO location an attractive neighborhood to live and work.  Installation of free Wi-Fi is just one of these initiatives, and one that is made logistically easier for Two Trees because it owns so many of the buildings where digital equipment has been installed.”

Two Trees Management Company was also instrumental in the installation of the much-publicized Jane’s Carousel, which sits in Brooklyn Bridge Park as well. The Wi-Fi was inaugurated in June and the Carousel opened in September this year.

Jane Walentas, the president and founder of Jane’s Carousel, insists that the carousel and Wi-Fi have nothing to do with each other.

“We’re not that imaginative,” Walentas said in response to The Brooklyn Ink’s queries about whether setting up both the Wi-Fi and the carousel within months of each other was a strategic move by Two Trees Management Company. Walentas is married to the owner of Two Trees, Mr. David Walentas.

“Two Trees donates a lot to the arts and parks and is trying to make DUMBO a more livable place,” said Barbara Wagner, the spokeswoman for Two Trees Management.

Ellen P. Ryan, vice president of strategic partnerships of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Council said that that the Brooklyn Bridge Park Committee did not formally seek and select anyone to offer free Wi-Fi.

“The three partners—the Dumbo BID, Two Trees and NYC Wireless—were wiring all the public spaces of Dumbo and offered to include the park sections in their fit-out of the network,” she said. “We were happy to have the park spaces here included in this network, as a service to our visitors. This service was free to us and our visitors.”

“Anecdotal evidence suggests that the provision of free Wi-Fi in Brooklyn Bridge Park is a desirable amenity for visitors”, said Ryan.

The Wi-Fi requires registration prior to using it. Dumbo Improvement District, which manages the free service, was unavailable for comment on this pre-requisite.

Many other parks around New York City have started providing free Wi-Fi to visitors but unlike the Brooklyn Bridge Park, it doesn’t usually cover large expanses of the park. Central Park, one of the largest parks in New York City, only had free Wi-Fi during the open-air concert week during summer. In the coming months, according to the mayor’s office, free Wi-Fi services will be provided to others parks across the boroughs.

Source: AP

Delen Parsley awoke at 5:30 this morning, and he just knew.

“Yo,” he said to his wife laying next to him. “Joe Frazier passed away.”

His wife refused to believe him. How could Delen know that? The two had slept through the night, with the TV off. So Delen reached over and turned it on. He was right. Joe Frazier, the heavyweight champion he grew up idolizing, was dead of liver cancer at the age of 67.

“He was a great fighter, man, he’s going to be missed,” Parsley says, sitting at a small table to the side of Gleason’s gym in DUMBO, where he trains fighters. Around here, the rotund, imposing Parsley is known simply as “Blimp.” He unwraps a sandwich, takes a bite, and surveys the room from his perch.

It’s 1 p.m., and light floods in through the second floor space’s factory windows. The air is thick with sweat. Grunts, the shuffle of shoes on the mat, and the sharp slap of gloves on punching bags reverberate off the deep red concrete walls. Plastered on these walls are pictures of former fighters who jumped rope on this floor, sparred in these rings, performed countless lifts using these ancient, rusty weights. A snack bar sits in an alcove opposite the entrance, selling 30-cent bananas and assorted sports drinks. A small television sits on top of the beverage refrigerator, playing an old HBO boxing broadcast on tape. The tracking is off, so the image occasionally flickers upward. To the side of the TV, a shelf is packed with countless VHS tapes. Each contains a different set of fights, some from as far back as Frazier’s heyday in the early 70s.

“Frazier was bobbin’ and weavin’, throwing his left hook and body shots. He tried to bend you over, wear you out,” Parsley says, smiling to reveal three gold teeth in his upper jaw. “He loved sweating, loved sitting in the eye of the storm.”

In 1971, Frazier encountered a storm of a different type. Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden. Billed as “The Fight of the Century” It was the kind of clash never before seen – two undefeated heavyweight champions, face-to-face. The bout lasted a punishing 15 rounds. As was his style, Frazier absorbed Ali’s punches in the early rounds, then countered as the cockiness subsided. Frazier knocked Ali down in the 15th round, retaining his world title. Then both fighters went to the hospital. Over the next four years, the two would fight twice more, with Ali winning both rematches.

“Those were the three best fights of all time, definitely” says Tony Baldwin, another one of Gleason’s trainers. He sits on a training table across from Parsley. “You have fights today where both guys can box, but they’re both fighting the same style. When you have Ali-Frazier in the ring, they’re completely different types of fighters. It was the perfect match, the perfect marriage.”

Or, as Parsley succinctly puts it, “Those were FIGHTS, man.”

A lot has changed since then. Gleason’s moved from The Bronx, to Manhattan, and then to its current location in DUMBO. Cable TV and Pay-Per-View took boxing off the airwaves. Promoters grew in influence. As a result, purses for winning fighters rose dramatically – Parsley says Frazier earned only $100,000-$200,000 per bout – both he and Ali earned $2.5 million for their first fight, chump change compared to the millions earned by top fighters today. Ali-Frazier I may well have been the Fight of the Century, but fact is it’s not that century anymore.

“Fighters in the heavyweight division today don’t take things as serious as Frazier did,” Baldwin says. “He was a picture perfect brawler. He brought it. The guys today aren’t bringing it.”

That and many other reasons, asserts Parsley, is why boxing is in decline. Fighters, in his view, don’t care. And the personality that endeared them so much to fans seems to be a thing of the past.

“Most fighters, their style mimics who they are,” he says. “Frazier lived a rough life, but he just stuck his nose to the ground and worked hard. I watched him fight and said ‘I want to work hard. I want to earn what I get.’ Fighters today don’t earn what they get.”

From across the room, Hector Roca overhears Parsley say this. A world-famous trainer, Roca has worked with countless actors and actresses, including Hillary Swank for the Oscar-winning boxing film “Million Dollar Baby.” He silently saunters over to the table, withdraws his iPhone, and displays the picture on the screen. It’s him, with his arm over Joe Frazier. The picture was taken nine months ago, after a commercial shoot in which Roca helped Frazier spar in this very gym. In the picture, both men smile from ear to ear.

“He was fun. A very happy guy. When he’s (boxing), he enjoys himself,” Roca says. “Everybody has to go. The sad thing is when you go and nobody knows your name.

“But everybody knows Joe Frazier.”

Independent shops and cafes, like this one, abound in DUMBO where there are no chain stores. Elisabeth Anderson/The Brooklyn Ink

By Elisabeth Anderson

Phil Li, an executive from Park Slope, has a longer commute to his current job at a non-profit in DUMBO than to his previous one in midtown Manhattan.  And not unlike a mountaineer preparing for a climb, he always checks his gear before beginning the trek.

“Accessibility is an issue and that dovetails with convenience,” explained Li, 50, who is chief operating officer of the Brooklyn Community Foundation.  “For restaurants, retail options and the like, my worst nightmare is forgetting something that I need.  Running out to grab a birthday card or needing to fill a prescription become major endeavors up the hill into Brooklyn Heights.  Depending on what you’re looking for, you can be a 15 minute walk away from a Hallmark store or Duane Reade.”

It isn’t that DUMBO is lacking for retail business.  But it’s the oddball mix that has intrigued Li since he moved into his office at 45 Main St., in the heart of DUMBO’s historic district, two years ago.  “DUMBO does have an abundance of home furnishing and pet stores,” he said, “but that’s not really so helpful on a daily basis or for the average person who works here.

“From multiple pet supply stores and a veterinarian to a doggie day care center, you know who the ‘kids’ of DUMBO really are,” he continued.  45 Main is a dog-friendly building, and Li often observes pooches riding elevators along with suits.  He’d never seen anything like it in his 20 plus years of work in New York.  “The first time I saw it, I scratched my head and was wondering what was going on,” Li said.

Phil Li says retail options in the neighborhood are limited. Peas & Pickles, the largest market in DUMBO, is one of the few places to carry greeting cards. Aliza Moorji/The Brooklyn Ink

It’s just one of the head scratch-worthy realities for those who work or live in DUMBO, a neighborhood where a resident can pay upwards of $900 per square foot for the privilege of facing parking nightmares and having no proper supermarket, pharmacy, or school within its borders (DUMBO parents generally send them to school in neighboring Brooklyn Heights).

It isn’t all bad news.  Trains are okay – DUMBO is accessible by the F line at York Street and the A/C at High Street.  And the area boasts a post office plus two banks, Chase and Sovereign.

DUMBO, which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, stretches from Hudson Street to Fulton Street and from Prospect Street to John Street (the East River).  The neighborhood is situated between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges and includes the area east of the Manhattan Bridge towards Vinegar Hill.

It originated as a transportation and manufacturing hub in the 1600s, and began to decline during the industrial downturn of the 1930s and ‘40s.  The private sector started to reinvest in DUMBO when artists moved in during the 1970s and early 1980s.  Developers began converting warehouses into residential lofts and commercial spaces, and independent small businesses soon followed.

A critical demographic shift began in the late 1990s, according to Michael Brown, a 29-year-old Brooklyn-based city planner who runs his own agency, MLB Planning.  The city, formerly reluctant to rezone the area for condo development, relented.  A residential rezoning was enacted in 1998, and 1 Main Street became the first development.  Warehouses and lofts got converted in droves, prices went up, and artist residents were squeezed out.

“I don’t know how much more expensive DUMBO can get,” Brown said, citing the ubiquity of condo listings in the $1-2 million range.  “I don’t know many artists that can afford those prices.”  DUMBO ushered in a young, yuppie crowd.  Some are young families, but many have no kids.  Brown calls what’s happened in DUMBO “the typical cycle of gentrification.”  He thinks the same process is underway in Gowanus, and that Red Hook may be next.

Old and new have merged in the past decade, as highrise condos have risen throughout the neighborhood. Elisabeth Anderson/The Brooklyn Ink

With gentrification in DUMBO has come a huge population surge.  According to new census estimates, New Yorkers seem to be favoring neighborhoods that offer French pastry shops, funky clothiers, and waterfront and recreational amenities (Brooklyn Bride Park’s final renovation stage will end this summer) over the basics.  DUMBO’s population has more than tripled in the past decade, to more than 3,600 today.  “You’ve got to look at market forces,” Brown said.  “The reason the demographics have changed is because it’s become a desirable place to be.”

Oh, and there’s one other factor keeping the DUMBO real estate market hot.  “The most coveted amenity you get in DUMBO is a great view,” explained Eric Fleming, a vice president at The Corcoran Group who negotiates many sales in the neighborhood.  “If a unit has a protected river and city view, you can expect that unit to command a much higher price than a unit without,” he said.  Condos in established buildings typically sell for around $800-900 per square foot, and “the trophy units can go for much higher.”

Fleming added that the converted loft layouts of many units are also appealing.  “You don’t see as many typical one-bedrooms as you would in Manhattan,” he said.  “Proportionally, the units are much larger.”

He also says that prices are stable but “inventory is in extremely short supply.”  There are only about 10 or so condominiums to choose from, and “there’s not a lot being constructed in the DUMBO historic district aside from the Two Trees Dock Street project which has been on the table for a few years.”  Development is spilling over in adjacent Vinegar Hill, where one new condo just opened and three more are in the works.

Rentals are few and far between. “I’d say the ratio is about two to one condo to rental,” Fleming said.  According to city planner Brown, the cost of construction and tight lending environment make it undesirable for builders to develop rental properties.

Dogs on leashes and babies in strollers are a common sight. Elisabeth Anderson/The Brooklyn Ink

Amanda Butler, a 32-year-old footwear designer for Cole Haan, has lived in the neighborhood with her husband Darren for five and a half years.  They were among the first residents to move into their building, 70 Washington St., where they own a one bedroom condo.  “In 13 years of living in several different neighborhoods in Brooklyn, this, more than any other, feels like a true neighborhood,” Butler said.  Even though the artists have largely left, she loves the “artsy feel,” enjoying First Thursdays gallery walks and the fall DUMBO Arts Festival.

Still, she conceded, “The lack of a true supermarket is a challenge.”  While the two biggest grocery stores in the neighborhood, Peas & Pickles and Foragers generally have what she needs, “that comes at a price.”  And when she throws a dinner party, she usually needs to order from FreshDirect or rent a Zipcar to get to Fairway in Red Hook.

City planner Brown said upwardly-mobile DUMBO residents don’t mind sacrificing convenience for cachet.  When home is a DUMBO apartment with a panoramic view, they are willing to pick things up in Manhattan on their way home from work, or pay to have groceries and prescriptions delivered.

Butler said she doesn’t mind using a mom and pop drugstore on Jay Street in Brooklyn Heights, which delivers.  In fact, she’d rather support them than a chain.  Still, she does dream of the day a proper supermarket comes to town, though she’s not sure DUMBO residents would provide the volume to sustain one.  “It would be amazing to have a supermarket like Whole Foods or Trader Joes,” she said.

Pricey groceries are available at relatively small grocers like Peas & Pickles. Aliza Moorji/The Brooklyn Ink

When Ellen Salpeter moved to DUMBO in 1986, you could barely get Chinese takeout, let alone organic produce.  Residents like Butler have replaced ones like Salpeter, the 50-year-old director of Heart of Brooklyn, a partnership of cultural institutions including the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Brooklyn Museum.  Salpeter, who lived in an unrenovated DUMBO loft from 1986 to 1997, recalls a very different neighborhood.  “There were no chocolate shops or dry cleaners,” she said.  “You could get rice and beans and the Post.”

Salpeter remembers a neighborhood brimming with artists like herself, and factory workers.  In the late 1980s, she said nobody rode the subway after 9 p.m., and car services were afraid to go to DUMBO.  There was just one takeout place, a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn Heights, that was willing to deliver dinner to her door.

But for her the grit was part of the appeal.  “It was great because it was isolated,” Salpeter said.  “Very Dickensian feeling to the streets.”

Today those streets are no longer gritty, but the cobblestones are in need of repair.  According to Alexandria Sica, the 31-year-old executive director of the DUMBO Improvement District, the city hasn’t kept pace maintaining the streets.  Two streets have been restored, and the District is advocating for the $60 million needed to take care of the rest.

Sica’s proud of the work her group is doing to restore the neighborhood’s historic elements, manage community spaces and programming, and encourage digital and creative businesses to set up shop.  In five years, she envisions DUMBO as a “bigger and better version of what it is now,” she said.  “I actually think we want more people.”

Perhaps she’ll be one of them.  Asked whether she lives in the neighborhood, Sica replied “I don’t.  But of course I’d like to.”

According to city planner Brown, the increased flow of residents is likely to cause significant changes in the next five years.  On the commercial front, he foresees a lot of turnover among older businesses, as landlords squeeze out small firms using shared workspaces in favor of larger, better established companies.

Among residents, Brown thinks they may well drum up demand for a school, and for a supermarket.  “People are going to want to stop grabbing a Zipcar everytime they go pick up a gallon of milk,” Brown mused.  Of a big market, “I think it’ll take away from the character of the neighborhood.  But that won’t stop it.”

Throughout most of Brooklyn, the housing market has rebounded from the slump that followed the economic collapse of 2008. While the number of new properties being sold in America is currently the lowest in recorded history, Brooklyn has seen an increase in total sales and sales prices in the past year. But the health of the housing market depends on that familiar variable: location, location, location. While western and southern Brooklyn have seen a steady increase in sales and prices, some neighborhoods east of Flatbush Avenue, such as Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York, are still mired in the mess of foreclosures that have swept America over the past two years.

Williamsburg/Greenpoint: Rebounding

The party only lasted for a year, and by 2002, the prices in Williamsburg were on par with the rest of Brooklyn.

Since then, the market has climbed steadily, although not particularly steeply.

For the last 8 years, the median sales price in both Williamsburg and Greenpoint have been significantly lower than the Brooklyn average, but the price per square foot has been much higher, indicating a market for smaller apartments.

The kind of properties dominating the market in Williamsburg and Greenpoint —new, and relatively luxurious— have been hit hard by the recession nationally but numbers indicate that these neighborhoods have made a relatively speedy recovery.

Dave Behin, who works as a consultant for The Developer’s Group, a company offering consulting and brokering services to developers, says that in the eight or nine months following the failure of Lehman Brothers the market slowed down, but that by 2009 it was already recovering. “We are not yet at the price points of 2007, but people recognize a good deal,” Behin says.

The Developer’s Group is behind massive, up-scale developments all over Brooklyn, such as The Edge in Williamsburg and 315 Gates in Clinton Hill. Behin said some customers offer him significantly less than asking price for a new condo, but that these customers misunderstand the housing market and believe that the situation in New York is similar to that in Arizona and Nevada. But it’s not.

“In 2003 the market was very strong. We could sell incomplete buildings based on drawings. The sellers couldn’t keep up with the buyers. Now we have to work harder to sell,” Behin says. “But if the developer has built a good project and the price is right, it will sell.”

Crown Heights/Bedford-Stuyvesant/East New York: A whiff of panic

While the housing market on the west side of Flatbush Avenue appears stable or on the rebound, east of the avenue it’s “bordering on depression,” according to Michael Corley, a real estate broker and resident of Crown Heights. “We’re seeing broadly that there is no demand consuming the amount of inventory coming on board,” Corley said. “People are still very skittish.”

The median home sales price decreased 16.8 percent in Bedford-Stuyvesant and 14.1 percent in East New York, respectively, compared to a year ago, while the number of sales rose in both neighborhoods. While both home prices and the numbers of sales in Crown Heights are up since last year, Corley said most of the buyers in central Brooklyn are investors or developers, not families. There are more short sales than regular sales taking place in central Brooklyn, which shows that homeowners continue to default on their mortgages. Residents are desperate and choose to short sell as an alternative to foreclosing. Meanwhile, the sharp drop in home values that began in Jan. 2008 continues in this area of Brooklyn. Home values dropped by about 19 percent in Crown Heights and 12 percent in Bedford-Stuyvesant, respectively.

Corley also said central Brooklyn east of Flatbush Avenue will see more foreclosures in 2011. Real estate search engine Trulia shows there are 654 homes in the pre-foreclosure, auction, or bank-owned stages of the foreclosure process in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and 381 in East New York, respectively.

Dumbo/Downtown Brooklyn: Little neighborhoods, big prices

The Dumbo and Downtown Brooklyn neighborhoods have remained stable through the recession. Like other neighborhoods, sales are up but prices are down. According to Trulia.com, at the end of October the average listing price for Dumbo and Downtown Brooklyn was $593,959, while the median sales price this fall was $548,056. Last year the median sales price was $747,975 and five years ago it was $476,580. This shows that prices boomed and then fell in 2009, but then leveled out higher than 2005’s average.

As for sales, both areas were recently rezoned for residency, which has put these once commercial neighborhoods at the forefront of Brooklyn real estate.

Asher Abehsera, executive vice president of residential properties for Two Trees, describes Dumbo as a small, charming enclave. He thinks that the market in Dumbo is ruled by supply and demand. “It’s a couple of buildings tucked in between two bridges and there hasn’t been a new condo built since 2006 or 2007,” he said. So most of the real estate activity that happens in Dumbo is due to resales in which everyone buys from the developer and the market remains stable.

In Downtown Brooklyn Abehsera said that the neighborhood’s value changes block by block. The Two Trees building at Court and Atlantic has no vacancies and a wait list, while near Flatbush Avenue, there is lots of construction and the area is still getting established for residences. Abehsera cites the area’s lack of grocery stores and neighborhood amenities.

Bay Ridge/Dyker Heights: Steady as she goes

Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, unlike most of the borough, were only marginally affected by the recession. Home values in each area have actually increased from Aug. 2009 to Aug. 2010, according to Zillow.com. Bay Ridge’s average home values have gone up 7.8 percent, to $648,000, and Dyker Heights’ average values have increased 9.8 percent, to $610,000.

In August 2010, the median sales prices for Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights were $645,000 and $566,000, respectively.

Real estate agents said the housing market is generally steady, and that families who can’t afford housing in a neighborhood like Park Slope often choose to settle in Bay Ridge instead.

Frank DeSantis of New Spirit Realty said Bay Ridge is unique because of its location. It is only accessible by the “R” train and a handful of bus lines, and it can take residents almost an hour to travel to Manhattan. As a result, the area has become very family-oriented and communal.

“Bay Ridge is a solid community,” DeSantis said. “Some people say the R train, the slowest train in the west, keeps it that way. It’s like a hidden secret.” DeSantis also said rentals have been particularly strong this year.

Cliff Venturini of Ben Ray Real Estate Company in Dyker Heights said his business is up 18 percent this year. He attributed that to an increase in advertising, which he said is crucial for agencies even during tough economic times. “At this office, we’re spending more money than ever on advertising,” he said. “You have to spend money in this business.”

Becky Bratu, Evan MacDonald, Vegas Tenold, and Cambrey Thomas contributed to this report.

Continue reading Part III “Growing Up Ain’t Cheap.”

Plush zombies greet Etsy crafters at a zombie making class in Dumbo. (Cambrey Thomas/The Brooklyn Ink)

By Cambrey N Thomas

I got off the elevator on the 5th floor at 55 Washington St. in Dumbo and followed the sandwich board signs to the Etsy Labs. A few turns down a winding hallway later and I was signing in for “Craft Night: Make a Zombie with Diana Schoenbrun.” Visitors to the labs have to wear nametags. The tags were stickers shaped like a embroidery frames that had “Hello my name is ___ and I heart ____” printed across them.

Etsy, founded in 2005, is an eBay-style Website for crafters and artisans to sell their found and handmade goods. On Mondays and Thursdays, the company invites Etsy enthusiasts and crafters to its headquarters for a craft night. And since it was just days before Halloween, Schoenbrun was going to teach us to make the plush zombies from her book, Beasties: How to Make 22 Mischievous Monsters That Go Bump in the Night.

“Cut out the arms and body,” she called out to the room as I walked in. As I passed by she handed me a zombie paper pattern that had each body part neatly numbered.

The room was small and packed. Nearly every table was full and all the tables were pushed a little too close to each other so that crafters sat back to back.

I squeezed into a seat at the first table between Ayun Halliday and a woman from Australia whose nametag said she loves Sam. Next to Halliday was her son, Milo, whose nametag said he loves evil. Across from us was a man coloring a large “Happy Halloween” banner. “It’s a secret,” he said.

Halliday sells her ‘zine, The East Village Inky, over Etsy and is also a fan of zombies. She participated in last year’s ZombieCon, and her husband, Greg Kotis, is writing a musical about zombies. “Will you cut out my stray parts?” she asked Milo, referring to the eyeballs and ears on the zombie pattern sheet.

Our table was scattered with markers, needles, spools of thread, and multicolored cloth. The room was littered with ropes of red pompoms, boxes of bright felt, pillows ripped open for fluff. A rack of lab coats stood nearby, but no one wore one.

Soon we all quieted down in concentration, carefully organizing our spare parts and politely passing around scissors. Halliday and Milo began stitching their zombie together while the man who’d been coloring switched to drawing Fox News logos. A woman with nasal septum piercing asked if we need any help. The crafters said “no.”

Schoenbrun stopped at our table to observe our progress. She wasn’t always known for her D.I.Y. zombies. “It started with a Yeti,” she said. “Then my book editor asked if I had any more.”

A few minutes later, she peered over my shoulder to remind me to not use cloth scissors to cut paper. I lifted my thumb off the scissors to show they had “PAPER” written in blue marker. “Oops, sorry, “ she said.

The man coloring the banner suddenly disappeared from our table. I found him taping his creation to a wall on the other side of the room, a “Happy Halloween” banner with little Fox News logos placed on each side.

We walked back to the table and Milo shouted “Freaky momma!” Halliday was holding up the pale green cotton fleshed zombie with outstretched orange arms.

“He’s bleeding from the mouth?” she asked. “Horrifying!”

“I like horrifying,” said Milo.

Aurelio "AJ" Manresa, 22, was shot outside his home after a fight broke out across the street on September 24. (Photo: Jabonda Payne/Facebook)

Aurelio “AJ” Manresa, Jr. liked to play handball. Candice Battice, a family friend who knew Manresa and saw him grow up, remembers him as a 6’3″ athletic 22-year-old who liked hitting the gym and playing sports. But of all the games he played, she said, he liked handball best. “He would walk around with a glove and a ball,” said Battice. “And if you walked by he would ask you to play.”

He would play in the court behind the Farragut Houses, where he lived and where on the night of September 24 he was fatally shot in the chest.

Police reported that a fight broke out that night and shots were fired. Manresa was stuck in the crossfire. An earlier police report says he was after shot after witnessing a wild street fight. And an even earlier report says an angry guest opened fire on a house party he was attending. In each case, police said it is unclear whether he was a witness, involved, or caught by a stray bullet. His family and friends believe he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Battice lived in the homes too, but moved away seven years ago. She was close to Manresa’s sister, Jabonda Payne and remembers Manresa being a jokester when the two tried to hang out. “He’d just be out there dancing, just busting a move on his sister,” Battice said. “We’d have to sit him in the back.”

Payne says that Manresa was the type to make a joke out of everything to lighten a mood or calm a situation, even when he was upset. She said she’ll miss his smile and laugh. “I’m going to miss being a big sister,” she said, too.

They liked to watch movies together. Payne says that although he loved quoting Scarface, he loved anything with an animated crime-fighter like Batman or Spiderman. Happy Feet, an animated film about a penguin born with the ability to tap dance when all the other penguins could only sing, was another one of his favorites.

His mother, Norma Douglas, said her son would dance anywhere, even in public. “Come on mom, let’s dance,” she recalled him saying when a good song came on. They would dance to anything, but he he especially liked hip-hop and salsa.

Before he was born, Manresa’s parents lived in Manhattan. When his mother went into labor, her family rushed her to Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. “He was my birthday present,” Douglas said. “They brought him to me with ribbons on him, balloons, and a little cake.” That was July 1, 1988.

They named the baby after his father, who was named after his father, Aurelio Manresa who was born in Havana, Cuba. “He would wave his Cuban flag,” she said of her son. He wore a Cuban flag belt buckle, too.

The family moved to Brooklyn when Manresa was a toddler. Douglas taught her son to do impersonations and the two would watch the Discovery Channel together. Douglas said he was an especially active child and would talk about how he wanted to grow up to be a wrestler.

Payne says that her brother loved watching wrestling on TV and kept posters of The Rock, his favorite wrestler. He often did impersonations of the wrestler and thought they resembled each other.

However, the dream of being a wrestler faded as Manresa got older. He worked as a security guard in Brooklyn clubs and as a bodyguard for his musician uncle. In fact, he had just finished getting his security guard license. On the side he performed freestyle rap for his friends, but shrugged off his talent when anyone suggested hooking him up with connections or giving him a stage to perform on.

Manresa liked living in Farragut, but he wanted something else. “He said it was hard to leave. He wanted to get out, but he didn’t know how,” said his friend, Curtis Shannon, Jr.

Shannon met Manresa six months ago. They became friends after he began seeing Manresa’s ex-girlfriend, Cynthia Sanchez. Sanchez, who remained close with Manresa, introduced them. He and Manresa would play Rock Band and go to Webster Hall on Thursday nights to hang out.

“We would talk about our problems,” said Shannon. “He would talk about getting his money right so he could do something with his life.” In fact, Manresa had just started modeling and had showed him and Sanchez his new modeling portfolio. “He was really excited.”

Another friend, 19-year-old Joshua Navarro, recalls how Manresa liked to make peoplke laugh. “He was so funny,” Navarro said. “He would make up words to make everyone laugh. Navarro recalled how once when he was having a bad day he went to talk to Manresa.

“Ka-blue-ke!” Manresa shouted and everyone laughed. “Kablueke” became Manresa’s catchphrase, it was even written in thick marker on the memorial outside his building’s front door.

“Once he came to my house with a weave in his head as a joke,” said Navarro. “He took off has hat and started swinging his hair and said ‘This is me.’”

Manresa tried to teach Navarro to play handball, but they had better luck with video games. Navarro said the two would play the game Mind of Warfare: Call of Duty, but he could never beat Manresa.

“You’d catch AJ in the weirdest sandals – like flip-flops or slippers,” said Battice. She said she would ask him why he would wear them outside. She said he was wearing them Friday night, too.

Douglas said that on the night her son died he was standing outside the Farragut Houses at 177 Sands St. talking to his friend Jonathan Rodriguez. Manresa was on his way to check on his grandmother who lived across the street at 191 Sands St.

Douglas said that his grandmother saw him from her window, but because it was late and dark outside, she couldn’t tell if the young man was her grandson.

According to police, just before 11:15 pm, as he and Rodriguez walked towards the other building, a fight broke out across the street – according to residents, an argument between a man and woman over accusations of cheating. The argument became physical.

At the same time, further down the block, Rev. Dr. Mark V.C. Taylor was sitting in his office at The Church of the Open Door where he serves as pastor. Rev. Taylor has worked in the area for 20 years and said that from his church on Gold Street he gets to see the better part of the Farragut community. He was sitting at his desk when he heard gunfire. “There is a lot of peace in this neighborhood,” he said. “But things flare up.”

Manresa’s grandmother heard the shots too from outside her window and ducked for safety.

Manresa, too, heard the shots and started running back towards his building. But, said his mother, a stray bullet ricocheted off either the building or a metal railing and struck him in the chest. The bullet traveled through Manresa’s lungs, past his heart, and stopped at his shoulder. Douglas said that Rodriguez grabbed her son and started feeling for his exit wound but couldn’t find one.

Rev. Taylor stepped outside and saw police cars speeding north on Gold Street towards the Farragut Houses. Manresa’s grandmother returned to her window to see a man lying on the ground with police and crowds around. She would later learn that it was her grandson.

Douglas got the call at 11:25 pm from her brother-in-law who also lived in the building. She was home in the Bronx with her partner.

“They said they were going to take him to Bellevue,” Douglas said. “But then they said he would die in transit if they did.” The police initially reported he was rushed to Bellevue Hospital Center, but Manresa was rushed to Brooklyn Hospital Center. Rodriguez told Douglas later that police tried to wrestle him away from Manresa, but they couldn’t get him to let him go.

In the emergency room Douglas, Shannon and Sanchez, were told that Manresa lost a lot of blood through internal bleeding.

“We waited for hours for him to come out of the OR,” she said. Doctors eventually called the family to see him once he was out of surgery. “He died in my arms at The Brooklyn Hospital Center at 4:26 am.”

Rev. Taylor said he prayed with Douglas. He’s been praying for the shooter, too. “I don’t believe a person can shoot another person and not have a withdrawal,” he said.

Sanchez says that she still expects Manresa to call her, even though she was with him in the hospital. “I’m going to miss him calling me and coming over,” she said. “I’m going to miss a lot.”

The intersection of Sands and Gold St., where the Friday night shooting happened. (Cambrey Thomas/The Brooklyn Ink)

Mourners Reflect Days After Fatal Shooting in DUMBO

By Cambrey Thomas

Two days after Aurelio “A.J.” Manresa, 21, was shot to death outside one of the Farragut Houses at 191 Sands St., the talk of the street was of confusion.

With glass vigil candles and messages written in marker on ripped cardboard boxes tapped to the wall outside of where Manresa lived at Farragut House at 177 Sands, friends and neighbors offered theories of what really happened that Friday night and why.

“He had nothing to do with nothing,” said one resident who declined to be identified. “He was an honest guy trying to break it up.” According to police, a fight broke out in between the two housing projects and, at 11:15 p.m., Manresa was fatally shot in the chest. He was rushed to Bellevue Hospital and pronounced dead on arrival. But police said it was unclear whether or not Manresa was a witness to the altercation or if he was trying to break it up.  The resident said that back at the scene, just two hours after the shooting, mourners began placing candles at the project’s front door; writing messages on the wall, and leaving stuffed animals and t-shirts.

According to the same resident, Manresa was a good guy getting his life together and his family was hysterical when they heard the news. They did not live in the Farragut Houses with him, but they checked in on him frequently.

“Someone said something to a girl,” said one onlooker at the scene. That’s when the details get blurry. Allegedly the woman, someone’s girlfriend, said something back and then was struck by the man with whom she was arguing. After the argument and scuffle, someone pulled out a gun and started firing. Manresa was hit in the crossfire according to the onlooker. He said the alleged gunman was a friend of Manresa.

Leon Fitzgerald, a member of the nearby Church of the Open Door, said he came to the scene to listen to and pray with those in mourning in hopes to deter retaliation.  “He used to come around and say ‘What’s up’ and would go upstairs,” said Fitzgerald. “He kept it moving.”

Fitzgerald said he knew Manresa only in passing through the neighborhood, but he knew that Manresa belonged to a motorcycle club called the “Ruff Ryders” and held a job during the day, although he did not know what it was. He described the motorcycle club as peaceful and said the group frequently worked with youth in the community. A day after the shooting, on Saturday night, the club hosted a large vigil outside Manresa’s building.

Another member of the nearby Church of the Open Door, pointed to the open front door and said that it never closes, even at night. “They need security in every building,” he said.

–

Bed-Stuy Community Searching for Answers After 2-year-old Boy’s Murder

By Yolanne Almanzar

The man in the green shirt was frantically searching for his son’s body Sunday. His red-rimmed eyes welled with tears as he asked for directions to the hospital.

“We don’t have time for this,” said Ameen Foster to his brother who was talking to reporters about Aiyden Davis, the two-year old who was beaten to death this past Friday.  They disappeared around the corner to Interfaith Medical Center.

Just two nights ago, the boy was rushed there after police responded to a 911 call of assault at 41 Kingston Ave. and found him unconscious. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

His mother, Teresa Foster, 27, was charged with assault, criminal possession of a weapon and endangering the welfare of a child. Her boyfriend, Reginald Williams, 31, who was babysitting the child at the time of his death, was charged with second-degree murder. Both are waiting arraignment.

A spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office said the cause of death was “blunt impact injuries of the head, torso and extremities with liver laceration and internal bleeding.”

The next night, Norvella Jones, 58, sat on an iron bench across the street from the 79th precinct on Saturday night waiting for answers.

“I want to see what these people look like,” she said.

Curious neighbors called out to Jones, who is known in the neighborhood as “Grandma,” and asked her about all the television vans and news reporters. Their reaction upon hearing the news of Aiyden’s death was always the same — shock followed quickly by sadness. Jones’ mood was one of outrage.

“They would’ve had to take me away for murdering him,” she said of Williams. “How can someone do that to a baby?”

Meanwhile, Foster’s next-door neighbor, Nikcole Palmer, 34, was asking the same question. She described Foster as a decent woman who kept her son well groomed.  Williams, she said, was possessive and irritable around the boy.

“He didn’t look like the kind of dude you would want to date,” Palmer said.

Palmer took a phone call. When she hung up, she said her boyfriend was warning her about speaking out.  In a neighborhood she described as getting too dangerous, she looked at her two daughters and said she felt it was her responsibility to speak up.

“I have to speak. Only real mothers and fathers can help these children,” she said.

Back at the precinct house, Jones seemed to be thinking much the same thing. She talked about the case of Marchella Pierce, a 4-year-old girl who was found weighing 18 pounds at the time of her death. Her mother, Carlotta Brett-Pierce, has been charged with beating the child and could face murder charges.

Her voice softened. Tragedies like these, she said, seem to be happening more frequently. By Monday, she added, little Aiyden might well be forgotten.

“It’s so sad,” she said. “He could’ve been the next president.”

Marc Dennis was the kid at the high school party who after a few beers would be dared to eat insects or moths or spiders for a couple of bucks. He always accepted.

“I grew up in a family of five boys, and I know that my mother didn’t want to know half the stuff we were eating,” said Dennis, a 46-year-old professor of painting, drawing and computer imagining at Elmira College in New York. It was a sunny April morning at a local café on Front Street in Brooklyn. He was drinking coffee and eating a blueberry muffin; far less exotic than the cockroaches, flies, wasps, grasshoppers, worms and scorpions he has eaten over the years.

Dennis considers himself a “bug chef.” He founded the organization “Insects are Food,” in 2009 and he is one of the leading proponents of eating insects.

“My main objective is to turn people onto the benefits of entomophagy — the practice of bug eating. To turn them on to the high protein, low fat, some of the vitamins, like Niacin,” he said. “There are probably 1,462 species discovered and categorized as edible, I believe there are more.”

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization confirmed this figure. There are at least 527 different insects that are eaten across 36 countries in Africa along with 29 countries in Asia and 23 in the Americas. In Thailand, almost 200 different insect species are eaten, and vendors selling insects are a common sight.

“Insects can feed the world; cows and pigs are the SUV’s, bugs are the bicycles,” wrote Dave Gracer on InsectsAreFood.com. Gracer, one of the advisors of Dennis’ organization, teaches composition, literature, and public speaking at Community College of Rhode Island and finds wax worms, ants, stinkbugs, and numerous others to be quite tasty.

The public debut of Dennis’ insect cuisine came in 2005 at Bubby’s, a local restaurant in his neighborhood, Dumbo. There was a pie social to benefit for local school. And he served his first caramel cricket northern pecan pie, “bastardized,” he said, from a southern pecan recipe. It was, he added, “the second pie at the social to sell out.”

But it is not always easy to overcome what he calls a “yuck” factor – the rejection of entomophagy with disgust by the insectophobic.

He told how on a visit to Rome, a cockroach wound up on his plate. “The waitress saw it, freaked out and begged me not to get angry,” he said. “I said ‘It’s okay,’ and I picked it up and ate it, and she freaked out even more.” They gave him the meal for free.

“I believe that the best way is to alert people that there are not only tastes, but they can be surprising.”

The people he has surprised are gradually increasing. At his last “bug dinner” in August of last year, Dennis served 22 invited guests bamboo worms with wasabi paste and bamboo worms with Thai peanut sauce as appetizer. The main course was “Jing Leed cricket stir fry” — fried rice and chile pepper glazed onions stirred with imported Thai crickets that sat in Lapsang Souchong tea for an hour.

The number of people who have signed up for the next “bug bite,” has already grown to 53 according to Dennis’ meetup group online.

Back at his stainless steel open kitchen, Dennis put thinly sliced cucumber topped with ginger and a bit of mango chutney into white plate. Then came the dark glossy brown crickets, which he blanched in Lapsang Souchong tea for an hour, to the finishing touch for his “cricket cucumber pokies.”

“No one,” he said, “has ever thrown up at my dinners.”

The road work to support bridge construction will be done primarily on Water Street and Washington Street and is expected to wrap up during summer 2011. Meanwhile, heavy traffic is expected on both bridges, with lane mergers and closings expected over the next four years.