*/4*%&1"(&40'$0610/4504"7&:06$"4) Yo u r Neighborhood — Yo u r News® BrooklynPaper.com s (718) 260–2500 s Brooklyn, NY s ©2009 DOWNTOWN, PARK SLOPE & BAY RIDGE EDITIONS AWP/14 pages s Vol. 32, No. 37s Friday, September 18, 2009 s FREE ★ ★ ★ ★ 13*."3:★ ★ ★ ★ )"5&*4*/5)&"*3 )&80/ )&80/ Anti-Obama fl iers tossed from tower By Ben Muessig The Brooklyn Paper Hate and profanity filled the skies over Down- town Brooklyn on Wednesday when an anony- mous pamphleteer threw hundreds of copies of an obscene, anti-Obama poem from the top of a building in the Metrotech office complex. The graphic verse, titled “F— YOU OBAMA!!” cursed the president — literally — for his “American hating wife,” his “Ameri- can hating life,” the “isms” of his teachers, the “hatred” of his preachers, the books he reads, and the “liberal blood” he bleeds, among other Ben Muessig Ben Gersh Kuntzman things. Photocopies of the profane prose, which in- cludes the word “f—” 29 times in its 42 lines, fluttered to the ground at around noon — and ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Ross Eric 45&7&-&7*/ #3"%-"/%&3 witnesses first reported that a lone poet hurled The Brooklyn Paper / The Brooklyn Paper / the rhyme from the roof of The Brooklyner, a 52-story tower under construction on Law- rence Street between Willoughby Street and Myrtle Avenue. “The pamphlets came off the roof of 111 The Brooklyn Paper / Lawrence St.,” said Peter Coyne, director of Someone threw thousands of virulantly anti- public safety for the Metrotech Business Im- Obama fliers (circled) off a skyscraper in Down- WINNERS provement District. “I would say it’s a con- town on Wednesday afternoon. The redacted See FLIERS OF HATE on page 5 text (inset) shows just how hateful it was. & LOSERS 3&/%&3&%64&-&44 4)&-045 )&-045 Architect: Arena will be altered for big towers By Gersh Kuntzman night was the explanation that the The Brooklyn Paper freshly drafted design would be Enjoy the new renderings of the radically altered to make room for Barclays Center while you can — the so-called Miss Brooklyn tower, because if the economy gets back officially building B-1, that would on track, the look of the rippling stand at the actual intersection of steel building will be altered radi- the busy avenues. cally to include new buildings, in- Gehry had designed that tower cluding one atop the arena’s sig- to be an iconic gateway to the rest nature entrance way. of the project, fronted by a 10-story, glass-walled “Urban Room” that That was the main bit of news would function both as a public Tom Callan Tom Tom Callan Tom from Monday night’s presentation SHoP ArchitectsSHoP atrium, a route to the subway sta- by the architecture team behind It looks nice now, but the design and context of Bruce Rat- tions below and an entrance to the developer Bruce Ratner’s proposed arena. basketball arena at the intersec- ner’s basketball arena will change dramatically if he moves forward with other buildings. In the current design scheme, ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ tion of Flatbush and Atlantic av- that area is an open plaza below +0"//&4*.0/ +0)/)&:&3 enues. The Brooklyn Paper / a canopy (the bill of the baseball The Brooklyn Paper / Before a crowd of nearly 150 design in greater detail than last jing, and asked what nickname cap, if you will) with a large hole Democrats sent conflicting messages with their votes in the all-important primary in four architecture and urban planning week’s rendering release . they would give to their own de- cut into it. key City Council districts in Brownstone Brooklyn on Tuesday, backing incumbents Letitia professionals, Bill Crockett of the One thing they didn’t say was sign. But if building B-1 is ever built, James (D–Fort Greene) and Diana Reyna (D–Bushwick), and anointing political outsider large Midwestern firm Ellerbe what they call it. Neither even joked an answer, the canopy, which Pasquarelli Brad Lander in a hotly contested race in Park Slope while choosing a party insider, Steve Becket, and Gregg Pasquarelli Both designers squirmed un- lest the name stick to a building had called a “grand urban ges- Levin, in another open-seat race for a Williamsburg–Brooklyn Heights district. Here are of the Manhattan firm, SHoP comfortably when moderator Rick that some have likened to a George ture,” would likely be removed, the results that everyone’s talking about: Architects, which joined the de- Bell of the Center for Architecture Foreman grill, a baseball cap, a he said. sign team in June to diffuse out- mentioned other stadia around the waffle iron, a deflated basketball And on the Dean Street and 33RD DISTRICT 39TH DISTRICT rage over the firing of original de- world, such as the famed “Bird’s and a clamshell. Sixth Avenue sides of the build- Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Kensington signer Frank Gehry , presented the Nest” Olympic Stadium in Bei- The biggest bombshell of the ing, the designers’ current ren- DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights, and parts of Carroll Gardens, dering features open plazas that Downtown & parts of Cobble Hill, Gowanus and Cobble Hill would also give way to tall towers Boerum Hill and Park Slope if the economy improves and Rat- Brad Lander: 5,129 (41.1%) Steve Levin: 5,199 (33.7%) ner achieves his current vision of Josh Skaller: 3,180 (25.5%) a basketball arena flanked by four Jo Anne Simon: 3,109 (20.2%) John Heyer: 2,753 (22.1%) FIRE UP THE OVEN mostly residential buildings. Isaac Abraham: 1,937 (12.56%) Bob Zuckerman: 930 (7.5%) Phase 2 of the project, which Evan Thies: 1,915 (12.4%) includes the public open space, the Gary Reilly: 472 (3.8%) Coney institution Totonno’s to reopen Ken Diamondstone: 1,324 (8.6%) vast majority of the below-market- Ken Baer 811 (5.3%) Lander, an affordable housing developer best By Ben Muessig rence and Louise “Cookie” Ciminieri, who said the rate housing, and other public ben- Levin, the hand-picked candidate of the known for his work leading the Fifth Avenue The Brooklyn Paper Mermaid Avenue restaurant was so badly damaged efits is currently off the table until county Democratic Party leader Vito Lopez, Committee and the Pratt Center for Commu- Toton-YES! by the March fire that the structure couldn’t even the economy further improves. spoke to our reporter Ben Muessig outside Lo- nity Development, dominated his four Dem- One of the world’s greatest pizzerias, Toton- support the weight of the celebrated coal-burning Other details emerged from the pez’s clubhouse, the Bushwick ocratic rivals, winning all but no’s in Coney Island, will reopen next month — oven, one of the few of its kind in the city. session: “It would have been easier to just knock the Council of the Knights of Co- one polling location outside the seven months after a devastating fire closed the • Of the limited retail space on lumbus at Wyckoff Avenue and New York’s best heavily Orthodox Jewish, and place down and start over,” Ciminieri told the pie paradise. the ground floor of the arena, the Grove Street. largely conservative, Borough blog, “but we’re already in the middle of this election coverage The good news was first reported by Slice, largest space is reserved for a team The clubhouse is actually Park portion of the district. [renovation] and just have to finish now.” store on Flatbush Avenue. the seminal pizza blog , but was confirmed this in the 34th District, which Lo- In that neighborhood, Strauss said that pizza fans could enjoy To- • Basketball fans will still be week by The Brooklyn Paper. pez-backed candidate Maritza MORE ON PAGE 4 Heyer, who ran on a message tonno’s pies at both his Upper East Side branch able to see the scoreboard from the Davila appears to have nar- of school vouchers and an op- “Sometime in October is the target date,” said as well as one on Second Avenue, a Manhattan street during games, a key Gehry rowly lost to former Lopez- position to gay marriage and J.D. Strauss, manager of the Upper East Side boulevard. design. staffer Diana Reyna (D–Williamsburg). abortion, crushed all his rivals, winning 74 per- branch of the acclaimed pizzeria, which missed But pizza lovers know that it’s not the same as • Advertising signage has been That added a slight tinge of disappointment cent of the vote to Lander’s 13. its first two such “targets” for reopening. making a pilgrimage to the original, 104-year- dramatically scaled back from to the air, especially among staffers sporting But those conservative votes were a tiny frac- It wasn’t all the fault of the pizzeria’s owners Law- old pie shop. Gehry’s scheme, which called for See 33RD on page 4 See 39TH on page 4 See ARENA on page 5 GOOD MORMON TO YOU! 8IFO.PSNPOTJOWBEF A few dozen members of the Church of Latter Day Saints cleaned up the heart of Hipsterville on Saturday, naturally inviting our first-ever “Mormon vs. Hipster” smackdown. Latter-day Saints clean up Hipster Mecca Milton Zinn, Mormon Name, affiliation Justin Urra, hipster By Lysandra Ohrstrom for The Brooklyn Paper 19 Age 24 Wake up, Williamsburg! While you were sleeping last Saturday morning Cadet at West Point Job “Nothing. I shop. Really. I’m there were real live Mormons clean- always falling ass-backwards ing up McCarren Park. into money. I’ll sell a bike More than 100 19- to 30-year-old fender or someone dies Mormons from across the tri-state area and leaves me money.” woke up at 7 am, prayed, and trekked to Greenpoint to pick up trash and rake Church of Latter Day Special feature Tattoo on chest leaves as part of the Church of Jesus Saints yellow volun - reading, “All we see or Christ of Latter-day Saints’ annual com- teer jersey.