“We didn’t cut any corners,” Mr. Walentas said. “If we had, this just wouldn’t have worked.” ….
The hotel’s website, proudly declares: “Wythe has rooms for artists, friends, brewmasters, musicians, concertgoers, mothers, brothers, grandmothers, bowlers, interns, twins, engineers, vignerons, and chefs,” which sounds exactly right.
The same exacting quality is behind every bar (four, counting the event spaces) and on every plate in Reynards. “You won’t read the farmer’s name on the menu because we’re not into boasting, but know that we’ve met every single one of our producers and shaken their hand, and that is the kind of experience we want to share with our guests,”
People speculated – somewhat facetiously – that Friday’s bomb scare on Bedford Avenue must have been an art project because, after all, it is Williamsburg. Turns out they were right. 50-year-old artist and Brooklyn resident Takeshi Miyakawa was behind the installation and has since been arrested.
Police apprehended Miyakawa on Saturday when he was putting up another installation at the intersection of Bedford, Lorimer, and Nassau and charged him with planting false bombs. He was arraigned on Sunday and will be put through a 30 day mental health evaluation.
The objects – “I Love New York” bags that contain LED lights and battery packs – were for NY Design Week and supposedly would have come down today. An artist who works with Miyakawa described him as “polite, calm, and presentable.” The New York Times states that the artist intended the installation to be “a display of his love for the city.”
According to his website, Miyakawa was born in Japan and has been living in New York City since 1989. He mostly designs furniture, some of which is priced at $20,000.
The L train to Manhattan stopped running around 9:45 a.m., sources report. According to the @NYCTrains Twitter feed, there is a police investigation at Union Square.
Here’s a video of school children in Greenpoint protesting the recent decision to cut half of School Settlement’s 153 free after school programs in Brooklyn.
Hopefully the protest will be just as effective as it is adorable. Look at this colorful signs!
Mr. Kiernan has spent the last year lobbying to fill Regis Philbin’s seat on “Live! With Kelly,” and he has had a handful of guest host appearances on the morning show in the last two months. It is precisely this timing that helps make Mr. Kiernan’s move seem, on the face of it, rather odd.
Here he is, a local celebrity, pounding on the door of one of the most coveted jobs in broadcasting, the glitter of national-talk-show fairy dust sprinkled in his neat blond hair. And there he goes, moving from a fabulous penthouse on the Upper West Side to a house with vanilla-colored siding that is across the street from a hardware store and costs half as much as the place where he lives now.
No, the choice is not obvious. But on a walk through their new home on a rainy afternoon last week, Mr. Kiernan and his wife, Dawn, explained that at first sight, the house, its garden, the neighborhood and even the L train got under their skin.
“We’re under no illusions that it could be confused with a trophy property from the front,” Mr. Kiernan said, explaining that the location and the pristine interior were much more important to them. “We’re not trying to build a showy property. We just want a comfortable place to live with our family.”
And it will be comfortable, indeed.
The kitchen opens up into an immense back garden, all warm reddish brick and leafy trees. The couple’s daughters, Lucy, 10, and Maeve, 7, will have their own floor. And the 2,600-square-foot home was fully renovated just over a year ago by a family that planned to stay for the long haul, Mr. Kiernan said. The structural steel, the plumbing, the electrical systems — all were spruced up.
While you were busy yesterday sleeping off your Cinco de Mayo hangover, France was electing a new president. Socialist candidate François Hollande won 51.6% of the vote, beating incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, who had 48.4%.
So what should you know about Hollande? One of his biggest challenges will be dealing with European and national debt, which he plans to address by raising taxes on the rich and corporations. He also wants more teachers, judges, and houses, and supports gay marriage. The mother of his four children, Ségolène Royal, is also an important French Socialist politician.
Oh, and his official campaign video is set to “Ni**as in Paris.” Quite a different direction from Sarkozy’s politics.
Hollande may take office as soon as May 14th. At least Sarkozy can always fall back on his wife’s singingacting career.
Get to a rooftop if you can, the space shuttle Enterprise is flying over New York City right now. Jalopnik posted this handy map of the shuttle’s route, via NYC Aviation. It will be landing at JFK at 11:30 a.m.
#SpotTheShuttle and #Enterprise are both trending on Twitter in New York right now.
Must have something to do with his love of The Gutter. Evidently, NY’s favorite news anchor paid 2 mil for his townhouse. His gig as the new Regis must be paying him well.
NY1’S PAT Kiernan, every hipster’s favorite morning anchor, is moving from Manhattan to Williamsburg. Kiernan paid $2.02 million for an unassuming-looking three-story, four-bedroom townhouse with aluminum siding on Bedford Ave., records show. The Brownstoner blog called it the highest price ever paid for a single-family home in the Brooklyn neighborhood.
The 2,600-square-foot address is right in the crowded heart of world’s biggest hipster hangout. Even the Duane Reade on Bedford Ave. has a bar in it.
But Kiernan, who gets up at 3 a.m., may find it hard to enjoy the nightlife at his new doorstep.
Kiernan, 43, his wife and two daughters are moving from W. 75th St. on the staid upper West Side. He’s angling to go to national TV by stepping into Regis Philbin’s shoes as co-host of “Live! with Kelly.”
“It evokes both an Art Deco parlor room and a Spanish colonial cathedral,” Huckman says of the décor. The dramatically rounded high ceiling — beautiful and impossible to ignore — disguises multiple layers of soundproofing, cushioning noise that might migrate upstairs to the neighbors. Bar stools are fastidiously and playfully tiled by hand in eight-bit patterns. Even the floors tell a story: Greenpoint’s Tall Cotton Supply sourced the reclaimed pine salvaged from a 1906 Philadelphia apartment building.
Like the décor, food and drink offerings are spirited and original. “The cocktail menu is lighthearted and approachable,” says the bar manager Jeremy Oertel (of Dram and Mayahuel). “Some of the drinks are stirred and boozy. Others are light and refreshing, and then I threw a couple oddballs in there just for fun.” Basically, there’s a tipple for everyone. Original concoctions include the subtly smoky Scarlet Fever: shaken tequila blanco, Mezcal, peach liqueur and lime juice, poured into a Champagne coupe and finished with a spicy salt rim. (more…)
The War on Brunch continues this morning and the hipster brunch-goers have lost an important battle: Lokal, the perpetually crowded bistro at the intersection of Nassau, Bedford, and Lorimer, is facing a citation for breaking a rule that states that sidewalk cafés cannot operate before noon on Sundays.
Lokal’s owners will go in front of a judge on June 11th. Despite all of the neighborhood’s brunch places, Lokal is the only one to receive a citation so far.
Tom Burrows, the public safety general for the area’s Community Board 1 is the main voice behind the battle against early morning brunch spots. Burrows’ main concern is that outdoor eating crowds the sidewalks for Sunday churchgoers.
