Move Over, Queen Mary

¡Aye, P 7 FIX YOUR HOME P 13 BROOKLYN Art snafu at THE BROOKLYN SMART ‘park’ auctions By Gersh Find a HOME IMPROVEMENT ANGLE Kuntzman Rosie! SEE PAGE 2 Perez’s doc on Puerto Rico specialist in CLASSIFIEDS P16 mom BRIEFS Save the ‘Softee’ jingle! P 6 BROOKLYN’S REAL NEWSPAPERS Including The Brooklyn Heights Paper, Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill Paper, DUMBO Paper and the Downtown News Published every Saturday — online all the time — by Brooklyn Paper Publications Inc, 55 Washington St, Suite 624, Brooklyn NY 11201. Phone 718-834-9350 • www.BrooklynPapers.com • © 2006 Brooklyn Paper Publications • 16 pages •Vol. 29, No. 23 BWN • Saturday, June 10, 2006 • FREE Move over, Yards Queen Mary racial By Gersh Kuntzman since the QM2 took up residence in April. The Brooklyn Papers The 3,080-passenger Crown Princess will fire make its maiden voyage — a two-day cruise to The Queen Mary 2 is going to have to share nowhere for media and cruise industry insiders her new Brooklyn digs — with mere a princess. — and return for the traditional champagne-bot- Ratner foe hit On Sunday, Princess Cruises new megaliner, tle sendoff on Wednesday, June 15. The Crown Princess, will set sail from the new Martha Stewart, who has taken the job of official Brooklyn Cruise Ship Terminal in Red Hook, the “godmother” to the Crown Princess, will be on over remark first cruise ship to call the $56 million pier home hand to break the bubbly over the bow next week. But which ship is Brook- By Ariella Cohen lyn’s true royalty? Depends on The Brooklyn Papers whether you like your boats really big or merely gargantu- The mud-slinging that surrounds the Atlan- an. tic Yards project returned to a classic wedge In this corner, is the cham- issue — race — this week, when the project’s pion, weighing in at 151,000 Greenhood / Aaron loudest opponent made what some on both tons and 14 decks, just a few sides of the development divide interpreted as feet shorter the Empire State a racially insensitive remark. Building, and with enough Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn spokesman restaurants to serve the Eighth Daniel Goldstein described the relationship between Army — the Queen Mary 2! Papers The Brooklyn Yards developer Bruce Ratner and some of his black In the far corner, weighing in That’s some good grass: Sunset Parker David Cohen leads a band of modern-day Appleseeds. allies as one of “wealthy white masters” and slaves. at 113,000 tons and 19 decks, Goldstein later apologized for his wording. The Crown Princess is storming Queen Mary 2’s turf in Red Hook. See QUEEN on page 6 The comment came during a heated email ex- change between Goldstein and Daily News political gossip blogger Ben Smith in which Goldstein criti- Let every pothole cized Smith for giving black-led organizations such as BUILD and ACORN a free ride. Both groups re- ceive funding from Ratner (see editorial, page 4). “When are you going to start outing all the bulls—t on the other side of the Atlantic Yards issue?” Gold- stein asked Smith. “Or is their power too scary for bloom—with grass! you that you have to smack [Yards opponents] while … astroturf groups and their wealthy white masters [avoid] your wicked barbs?” The News’s coverage of By Ariella Cohen Queens Expressway underpass. Ratner’s project has been generally favorable; both The Brooklyn Papers Cohen’s seed has spread to include 139 people, the newspaper and its lead local columnist, Errol Brooklyn’s new graffiti is grass. mostly Brooklyn-based artists, and he expects the Louis, have strongly endorsed the project. And its principal artist is David Cohen. numbers to shoot up after a major seed event next Goldstein’s comments were a hot topic hours lat- “I live in one of the least-natural places I’ve ever week on the Lower East Side. er at a candidates’ forum. experienced,” said Cohen, a 37-year old artist who Cohen recruits members on a website linked to “I told Dan he should apologize, and he did,” said lives above a tire shop in the gritty nether-hood a magazine he publishes, Artworld Digest (www. Bill Batson, a project opponent running for Assem- some know as the South Slope and others as Sun- artworldigest.com/seedproject.html), and by ped- bly, disavowing Goldstein’s comment. set Park. dling seeds in artsy pockets of Fort Greene and But race has never been far from the surface of the / Tom Callan / Tom Being surrounded by gray infrastructure all Williamsburg. Atlantic Yards debate, with some noting that Ratner day encouraged Cohen to create the Seed Project, “Sometimes I go out with a metal folding table has played the game early and often. In April, former an online club that requires its members to plant and sign artists up,” he said, adding that the tactic Black Panther Bob Law, now a Prospect Heights mer- wheatgrass seeds all over — in plots as small as a failed in Soho, where he found “mostly tourists chant, charged Ratner with race-baiting for hawking pothole or as big as a junked Honda. and bankers.” his mega-project mostly via basketball. The Brooklyn Papers The Brooklyn Cohen’s flowering movement of so-called He posts photographs of lush, green mini- “He has the audacity to talk about a basketball “seed bombers” plants trees, flowers or grass in yards on his website and, in the fall, plans to pub- stadium, like black people would be impressed,” areas long reserved for industry. lish them in Artworld Digest. Law said of Ratner. The Crooner’s old lady For example, a small plot of wheatgrass now On an academic level, he said his real and In that highly charged context, Goldstein defend- Kathryn Crosby, Bing Crosby’s widow, sits behind the Mighty Wurlitzer on the site of sits on a fence beneath the Williamsburg Bridge, Web-based fields are a comment on the fragmen- ed himself: “Our opponents are not black people. the old Brooklyn Paramount Theater, where her husband became a legend 75 years planted in a small pot by a Seed Project member. tation of the natural world. In reality, they’re a Our opponents are the powerful interests trying to ago. See story, page 6. Another lived briefly on the side of a Brooklyn- See SEED BOMBER on page 6 run roughshod over our neighborhoods.” MORE COWS THAN JEWS By Sara Vogel The Brooklyn Papers Kane St. Synagogue, now 150, Jewish people are as native to Brooklyn as the bagel. But historians from the Kane Street Synagogue say there was a time when more cows roamed the borough began when B’klyn was farmland than Jews. “[Brooklyn in the 1830s] was all farmland,” said Carol Levin, a trustee of the congregation, formally annual dinner dances — and in the process discovered factory owners. known as Baith Israel Anshei Emes, which is holding juicy details about their ancestors and Brooklyn’s past. They shared the pro-Civil War spirit of Brooklyn its 150th anniversary gala this week at the Brooklyn The Jews who founded the original congregation in poet Walt Whitman and other Brooklyn Democrats, Marriott. 1856, for instance, escaped the gangs of New York for despite the draft riots that burned through lower Man- To prepare for Wednesday’s gala, the synagogue’s the “suburbs” of Brooklyn. hattan, said Levin and former congregation president, historians sifted through the remains of a century and They were middle-class people, mostly of German Judith Greenwald. a half of prayer services, Sunday school picnics and stock — haberdashers, brewers, tailors, butchers and See KANE STREET on page 6 The Kane Street Synagogue’s original building, built in the 1850s, stood on Boerum Place. Yards rivals on same ‘path’ By Dana Rubinstein Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Markowitz The Brooklyn Papers said that the inductees differ on politics, but they do share a certain something. No need to clean your glasses — that “Like all celebrity path honorees, this is Steve Buscemi and Charles Gargano year’s inductees possess that unique posing together (photo right). Brooklyn combination of pride and Has hell frozen over? swagger, tinged with humility and self- Not quite. The anti-Atlantic Yards lessness,” said Markowitz. thespian and pro-Yards chairman of the Gargano was chosen for applying Empire State Development Corporation those “Brooklyn sensibilities to initiatives earned their leaves on the Brooklyn such as the redevelopment of the World Botanic Garden’s “Celebrity Path” last Trade Center site,” Markowitz’s office week in a ceremony that required some said in a statement. dicey commingling. Few would consider that stalled redevel- Some say such mixing and matching opment an accomplishment, yet Gargano’s is part of the beauty of Brooklyn. (Others name is now tucked between those of say Buscemi shoulda decked him.) George Gershwin and veteran character ac- “Only in Brooklyn would these people tor Vincent Gardenia on the Garden Web / Tom Callan / Tom be all together,” said Brian Vines, spokes- site’s list of inductees, and his bronze leaf man for Borough President Markowitz. lies along the Japanese Garden walkway. “Their love of Brooklyn was the guiding The Celebrity Path, the humble cousin / Kathryn Kirk principle.” of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was in- But many were mystified why Garga- augurated in 1985. In 2005, it was ex- The Brooklyn Papers The Brooklyn no, a bureaucrat, was even on a “celebri- panded to include both cultural icons and, ty” path. “I could think of better Brook- more broadly, “civic leaders.” lyn celebrities,” said one political insider.

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