Don’t Tell Me You Can Resist Reading Past The Lede!

I believe this is what is known as a “dog bites man” type of story:

Four local young men have discovered they have a mutual love for music and are intent on making it their career.

Amazing — who has ever heard of such a thing?

The Best Defense Is A Good Offense

After West Village neighbors proposed to close the popular Christopher Street pier an hour earlier, the kids who frequent the site countered by calling for an even later curfew:

Community members proposed a stricter curfew for Pier 45 — better known as Christopher Street pier — in the West Village at last night’s Community Board 2 meeting, despite objections from LGBT youths who frequent the pier.

Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth group FIERCE — which stands for Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment — about 60 of whom were in attendance at the meeting, countered board members by proposing a later 4 a.m. curfew in place of the current 1 a.m.

. . .

[Parks and Waterfront Committee chairman Arthur] Schwartz said he sympathized with the youths’ desire for a “place to call their own,” though their curfew proposal is unrealistic.

“We need a solution that isn’t 4 a.m.,” Schwartz said. “The mayor won’t allow it. The government won’t allow it.”

Some members of the board said a midnight closing is simply a matter of city regulation. “You can’t stay in a park all night long,” Schwartz said. “There are rules.”

. . .

Malcolm Brown, a Brooklyn resident and supporter of FIERCE, said the community board was discriminatory for focusing only on the noise created by LGBT youth from the pier and not on noise from those who frequent bars and clubs on Christopher Street.

“If there has to be a curfew for the pier,” Brown said, “there should be a curfew for the heterosexuals at the restaurants and the NYU kids at the bars, too.”

Where’s Robert Moses When You Need Him?

Will anyone ever be able to figure out Red Hook? Unlikely; it seems to be a case of the blue-collar businesses against the box stores against the artists against the developers against the factory owners — did we mention that everyone hates the box stores? — except for the residents of the housing projects, who want the jobs in the box stores! — yet then there are the musicians who aren’t like artists but who need cheap rent (and seem to be unaware of any other borough) and . . . and everybody hates the Jews* . . . !

No, seriously, it sounds like that:

Red Hook is poised to receive stores like Ikea and Fairway, million-dollar condominiums, humming factories and bustling docks, and even a pier for the 1,132-foot Queen Mary 2 and other cruise ships. Yet, its future is caught up in a battle royal.

Developers want to convert waterfront warehouses and factories into apartments, even though the areas are zoned for manufacturing. But factory owners and cargo haulers fear that well-heeled apartment dwellers would not take kindly to their trucks barreling through Red Hook’s narrow cobblestone streets or their middle-of-the-night foghorns and bright lights.

“You’re going to be doing something they don’t like, even if it’s interfering with a guy barbecuing on the block,” said Michael DiMarino, owner of Linda Tool and Die Corporation, a precision metal fabricator with clients like NASA and Boeing. “I don’t blame him, but we were here first.”

Many factions dread the prospect of big-box stores like Ikea, which plans to build a waterfront furniture emporium with 1,500 parking spaces by 2007. Blue-collar businesses fear that Ikea’s shoppers would clog Red Hook, stalling their trucks. Homeowners worry that Ikea would shatter the quiet.

Yet residents of the housing projects, whose 8,000 tenants represent three-quarters of Red Hook’s population, are eager for the 500 jobs Ikea is dangling. Dorothy Shields, 74, the president of the Red Hook Houses East Tenants Association, who has taken a liking to Ikea’s Swedish meatballs, supports the store because one of every four of the projects’ tenants is unemployed.

“It’s the jobs,” she said. “I have so many people who needs jobs.”

Artists and craftsmen trickling in from Dumbo and Williamsburg fear any change because they suspect they will end up priced out of another blossoming neighborhood. Madigan Shive, a 29-year-old cellist, moved from San Francisco into a rental house with three other artists.

“There’s a good chance we could lose our house in the next year,” she said. “If I lose this space, I don’t know that I can stay in New York.”

*As per Tom Lehrer’s “National Brotherhood Week”.

A New Brand Of Hemispherical Bluster And Bravado

New York is the biggest, bestest city on the planet and we have the busiest Target store in the state — no, country — no! — hemisphere! Yes, one of the busiest in the Northern Hemisphere:

Just about any weekend or weeknight, the Target Store in Atlantic Terminal Mall is packed with shoppers. Lines leading to cashiers extend down the store’s wide aisles.

“I can’t tell you how often I stop here on my way home from work. It’s becoming a bad habit for me,” said Lucy Valderon, a Bedford-Stuyvesant hair stylist who lives in the Bronx.

Published reports say the Brooklyn Target is one of the busiest in the Northern Hemisphere.

“We understand the store is doing extremely well,” said head researcher Hitesh Kuvelkar of First Global.