Mother nature teased us with amazing weather all weekend only to wake us up Monday and Tuesday to an intense case of blue balls. “Rain rain go away come back another day!” because you’re ruining my life with this rain crap. I’m so ready for McCarren Pool (capacity 900 hipsters = roughly 15,000 tattoos) to open this summer. In the meantime, we have no choice but to cope. If you’re lame and don’t plan on coming out to play after work today, no worries, here are a few videos to keep you occupied and get some testosterone circulating in those “Gonads”. I’m Justin Little by the way, whisper sweet nothings into my ear if you hear something you like. Enjoy!

Chicago – I’m a Man

Chicago on the web:
chicagotheband.com/

Chicago on Facebook:
facebook.com/chicago.official

Chicago on Twitter:
twitter.com/chicagotheband

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Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, which as you all know, commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland something you won’t remember by 3 p.m. If you’re looking to stay local, here are some north Brooklyn Irish bars, some of which will be having specials.

Of course, if you’re really into the holiday, you may be better off leaving the area for, say, Bay Ridge or something. This isn’t Paczki Day, after all.

Williamsburg:

Banter, 132 Havemeyer St. (at S. 1st) 20 oz. pints and, starting at 10pm, DJ Dolanite

Gordon Bennett, 109 S. 6th St.

Iona, 180 Grand St. Happy Hour prices until 7pm, screening Ireland v. England rugby game

Mug’s Ale House, 125 Bedford Ave. (at N. 10th)

Spike Hill, 184 Bedford Ave. “A whole day of nonstop Irish partying” with music (Pitchblak Brass Band, The Fuego Quintet) and dancing (a “surprise” DJ). Also corned beef and cabbage, plus free giveaways.

Greenpoint:

Connie O’s Pub, 158 Norman Ave.

Palace Café, 206 Nassau Ave. (at Russell)

Shayz Lounge, 130 Franklin St. (between Kent and Java) Live traditional Irish music

nycitybikeshare.com

This summer, New York City is rolling out a shared bicycle program, joining the ranks of cities like Washington D.C. and Paris. There will be ten thousand bikes for rent at six hundred hubs throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. A draft of the station locations, however, shows that Greenpoint is notably lacking.

streetsblog.org

According to local news site DNAinfo, a Department of Transportation draft has no stations east of McGuiness Boulevard. This is odd considering the neighborhood is known for its lack of Manhattan-bound stations and bikes could be an effective way to get people across the Williamsburg bridge, or at least to the L train in Williamsburg. (The neighborhood’s only two stations, the Greenpoint Ave. and Nassau Ave. G trains only go to Queens and south Brooklyn.)

The only map draft I found is from October, which indeed shows the proposed boundary at McGuiness.

Five backwards halfwits living in their moms’ basements and drawing swastikas on their bedroom walls doesn’t really warrant a trend in our minds. Has anyone else noticed an upsurge?

It is at once a deeply-rooted Polish neighbourhood with industrial roots where immigrants still speak in their native tongue on the streets.

At the same time, Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighbourhood is a fast-gentrifying area of New York full of young families and working professionals who wish to live close to Manhattan.

But the northernmost neighbourhood in Brooklyn is also home to a group of Polish neo-Nazis, who walk the streets, just like anybody else, and are fiercely proud of their beliefs….

A Facebook group called Greenpoint Antifa was founded by activists in the neighbourhood who serve as vigilantes against what they say is ‘fascist, violent’ conditions.

In fact, there have been rumblings of unrest over the past few years. Only last month, earrings bearing the symbol were spotted at a store on Manhattan Avenue.

The swastika studs were nearly sold out at The Bejewelled shop, with only one pair left. ‘It’s totally outrageous,’ City Councilman Steve Levin told the New York Daily News.

In 2009, the Greenpoint Gazette noted that there was an upsurge of anti-Semitic and homophobic graffiti posted on mailboxes or sprayed on walls.

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Today is Fat Tuesday, which means that people from all over will be coming to Greenpoint, New York City’s most Polish neighborhood, for the most authentic paczki available. For Polish Americans, Fat Tuesday (the day before Ash Wednesday) is also known as Paczki Day because according to tradition, households must use up the sugar, eggs, fruit, and other ingredients before Lent. If you’re unfamiliar with the Polish pastry, here is a quick rundown:

-A paczek is deep-fried flat dough with fruit or cream filling and usually covered with sugar or icing

-Paczek is the singular, Paczki is the plural

-Paczek is translated as “doughnut” or “little package”

-The American equivalent is the jelly doughnut

-The pastry dates back to Poland in the Middle Ages

Rzeszowska Bakery (948 Manhattan Ave.), Syrena Bakery (207 Norman Ave.), and Star Deli & Bakery (176 Nassau Ave.) are just some of the places in Greenpoint to pick up the treat, according to Yelp.

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Looking for an early-morning Valentine’s Day date that’s sure to impress leave an impression on your special someone? The sewage plant located on the beautiful famously disgusting Newtown Creek is offering special tours for the holiday.

Yes, you read that correctly. The Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant – which is the city’s largest wastewater facility and processes 1.3 million gallons each day – is opening its doors on Tuesday for a special tour of its “digester eggs” (ew that name).  Monthly tours are available from its 2-year-old visitor center, but Tuesday’s tour will be an added date and will end in a Hershey’s kiss for each attendee (seriously).

Like the fancy restaurant where your date is expecting is expecting to go, the plant requires reservations. Email events@dep.nyc.gov. The tour begins at 10 a.m.

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The Super Bowl is hours away and you need a place to watch it. Luckily for you, The Greenpoint Gazette published a list of 18 bars in Williamsburg and Greenpoint that will be airing the game. I cut that list in half, narrowing it down to my top picks of which bars and specials sound best. Descriptions by the Gazette.

- Full Circle Bar (318 Grand Street, 347-725-4588): Giving out free Bon Chon Bowl wings, showing the game on three 40+ inch HD TV’s, and selling 24 ounces of Genesee Beer for $10.

- Huckleberry Bar (588 Grand Street, 718-218-8555): Serving up chili nachos ($7) and chili dogs ($4), $15 buckets of Budweiser and Bud Light (5 beers in each), and projecting the game onto the wall.

- Knitting Factory (361 Metropolitan Avenue, 347-529-6696): Showing the game on a 12-foot projection screen in the main room and on two 48-inch screens in the front bar, providing free snacks, and offering a food menu complete with pizza, wings, and party food. Reserve a party package and get seated before everyone else. The packages are First Down (12 beers, 1 pizza and a reserved table for $45), Field Goal (24 beers, 2 pizzas, plate of wings and a reserved table for $85), and Touchdown (48 beers, 4 pizzas, plate of wings and a reserved table for $150).

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Williamsburg and Greenpoint have a unique homeless problem because most of the individuals speak little to no English. While there are resources for some of New York City’s non-English speaking homeless populations, there are far fewer, if any, for those people who speak only Polish.

So what happens to them? Sadly, many fall into depression and alcoholism and camp out in McGolrick and McCarren parks. It’s in these parks that five homeless people have died in the past fifteen months. At least two of those were suicides, the most recent one happening in October.

Now, the New York City Department of Homeless Services is stepping in, offering Greenpont’s churches $100,000 to give the local homeless population a place to sleep for the night. Currently, St. Anthony of Padua on Manhattan Ave. opens its doors at night, but only when temperatures drop below 24 degrees.

But it seems that $100K isn’t enough for local churches to take on the responsibility. According to one paper, the money has been on the table for six months, during which time seven churches have rejected the offer. Officials at the various churches have cited limited space and fear of theft and vandalism as reasons for not accepting the money.

Meanwhile, local residents have been fighting a 200-bed homeless shelter planned for McGuinness Boulevard since 2010. Greenpoint’s city councilman Steve Levin complained that the neighborhood is “inundated with services that we provide to the rest of the city [...] on a level that no other neighborhood has to do.” Last May, Levin hosted a “Rally to Stop The Proposed Homeless Shelter,” which drew significant community support.

According to the Department of Homeless Services’ statistics for 2011, Brooklyn has 242 homeless individuals on its streets.

This Thursday MTV will debut its new series, I Just Want My Pants Back, a scripted show about young twenty-somethings living in and around Greenpoint. The series is based on the 2007 book by David J. Rosen and a “sneak peak” of the pilot episode aired back in August. I got my hands on a press screener of three episodes. Here’s what to expect, spoiler-free.

The basic premise: Jason, a shaggy-haired guy a few years out of college meets a girl at a bar and takes her back to his one-bedroom off the Nassau G. They have a crazy night together and in the morning, she absconds with his pants. He’s hooked and becomes preoccupied with finding her, which distracts him from his job as a receptionist for a media company. (So far, minus the falling victim to pants thievery, this is my life.)

Jason’s sidekick is Tina, a foul-mouthed, crop-topped blonde who engages in some sexual misadventures of her own. There’s also Stacey and Eric, an interracial couple living together and going to grad school. The four characters have been friends since college.

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c/o New York Shitty

Eater is running a column called “A Beer At…” where Robert Simonson ventures the city’s “more anonymous watering holes” aka some of the shittiest bars the five boroughs have to offer. The bar of the week is Greenpoint’s own Connie O’s.

Simonson writes, “There are two taps at Connie O’s. One says Coors. One says Coors Light. They both draw Coors Light. ‘I know it says Coors, but it’s always Coors Light,’ said the blonde woman behind the bar with the careworn face. If you want something else, there’s Bud Light in bottles. If you want something other than that, go find another bar. ‘$1.50,’ said the woman. $1.50? I looked at my watch. 9 PM. Not happy hour. I laid down two soft, crumbled dollars and got two quarters back. Hell, Coors Light ain’t worth much, but it’s worth that. The woman retreated to her high, cushioned chair under the television. ‘You want to watch something else,’ she asked her two customers, an unsmiling, unmoving woman wearing a pony tail and a blank stare, and a sweatshirt-wearing retiree who had spread a bunch of dollars on the bar to make sure the mugs of Coors Light never stopped coming. The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree ceremony was suggested.”

The description of Connie O’s and it’s loyal patrons could not be more spot-on. Also, I’m pretty positive that “unsmiling, unmoving woman wearing a pony tail,” is my friend’s landlord. Read the rest of the article here.