Of All The Reasons . . .

Parent groups have been vocal about the Board of Education’s plans to increase the number of “schools within a school” — specialized magnet programs — throughout the city. Space considerations are a big issue, but then there’s this:

Park Slope parents are up in arms over a Department of Education proposal to insert a new small school focusing on Arabic language and culture inside the same building as their children’s elementary school.

Department officials faced what is becoming a familiar uproar over new small schools when they announced a proposal to locate the Khalil Gibran International Academy, one of the more than 200 small high schools created by the Bloomberg administration, inside P.S. 282, the Park Slope school.

. . .

Fearing that their children will lose art, music, and science classrooms and a library if Khalil Gibran moves into the Park Slope school’s top floor, parents reacted by “screaming and crying,” a parent who attended the meeting with department officials Monday night in the school’s auditorium, Jennifer Bacon-Fossati, said. She said parents were also concerned about the safety of their younger children, who may have to share bathrooms with the older students.

. . .

Another parent, who asked that her name be withheld to protect her child’s safety, said she feared that the school’s focus on Arabic culture and language may draw a backlash from right-wing groups that could threaten the building’s students.

“There are concerns of the kind of criticism this school could face,” she said. [Emph. added]

Lady, quit overreacting! The students are long gone by the time Sanitation gets there on trash day . . .

The “It Scares Me” Approach To Urban Planning

East Village residents are going to great lengths to argue against bars operating in their neighborhood:

Death & Co., an upscale new nightspot that serves drinks and appetizers, has attracted glowing reviews and throngs of patrons since it opened at the beginning of January. But the bar and restaurant at 433 E. Sixth St. has also attracted sharp criticism from several neighbors and Community Board 3. In fact, with its ominous name and décor, Death & Co. actually has some neighbors scared, dredging up their worst nightmares — while other neighbors say their nights are literally haunted by the bar’s din.

. . .

. . . Members of Synagogue Anshe Meseritz, at 415 E. Sixth St., object to Death & Co.’s name and appearance.

The windowless bronze facade stands out from the surrounding buildings, and features 100-year-old cedar planks, cast-iron columns and a black flag. Inside, gold-flecked wallpaper catches light from chandeliers and candles, and a long mirror reflects plush booths and the bar’s marble countertop.

“We don’t need another bar on the block,” said Les Sussman, an Anshe Meseritz congregant who attended the meeting but has not been inside Death & Co. “We don’t need one with Nazi devil symbolism, [with a] gothic satanic door and a black flag flying.”

The facade looks like a boxcar used to transport Jews to concentration camps, Sussman said, and disturbs elderly synagogue members who survived the Holocaust.

“They don’t want to pass a place that is frightening,” he said.

“I have a Holocaust relative myself,” [Death & Co. owner David] Kaplan responded. “I am Jewish, and I never considered it offensive in that way.”

Death & Co.’s name comes from the title of a Prohibition propaganda poster, and “has nothing to do with anything dark or gothic, and nothing to do with death itself,” Kaplan said.

Only Slightly Better Than “BoCoCa” And Just A Tad Less Obnoxious Than “SoBro”

But at least it’s not “HoHo”:

Does LoHo exist? Not according to Wikipedia.

An entry for LoHo posted on the popular online encyclopedia was deleted in late January following a series of debates on whether or not the posting met Wikipedia’s guidelines.

LoHo is an acronym for Lower Houston and its boosters say it signifies a specific neighborhood within the larger Lower East Side. However, opponents of LoHo’s being listed on Wikipedia argued that LoHo is not a distinct neighborhood, rather, that it is just a new, fancy name for the Lower East Side.

Juda Engelmayer, who posted the LoHo listing on Wikipedia, explained that LoHo is not all of the Lower East Side, but an area stretching from Houston St. to Chrystie St. and South St. to the East River.

“The Lower East Side is the old neighborhood,” Engelmayer said. The new name, he said, comes as a result of “new generations moving in.”

Engelmayer lives in the area and runs Kossar’s Bialys on Grand St.

. . .

Some criticize the new acronym as merely being a marketing ploy. The popularizing of the name has been connected with LoHo Reality [sic], a real estate brokerage firm located on Grand St. However, the term appears to have been coined by LoHo Studios, a music recording studio that got its start on Lafayette St. in 1983 and moved to Clinton St. on the Lower East Side in the late 1990s. Jacob Goldman, LoHo Reality’s president, disagrees with those who say that LoHo doesn’t exist.

“There is an area within the Lower East Side that is referred to as LoHo. Some people use it and some people don’t,” Goldman said.

Goldman said he thought it was ridiculous for people to act as though the LoHo name wasn’t in use at all.

“Companies use it in their names . . . LoHo Studios, etc. Mainstream media such as The New York Times have used the name LoHo. You can say that not a lot of people use it, but it is in use.”

. . .

Susan Stetzer, Community Board 3’s district manager, said that while the matter of the LoHo name’s validity and right to exist has never come before the board as an issue, she has “never heard anyone on the board use ‘LoHo’; it’s always ‘the Lower East Side.'” Stetzer said people are proud of the traditional name.

Whichever Of Youse Smelt It . . .

I wouldn’t expect New Jersey officials to accept theories about the origin of the mysterious smell without at least a token protest:

Garden State officials slammed New York City bigwigs yesterday for blaming New Jersey for the mighty stench that blanketed swaths of the city on Monday.

“It looks an awful lot like jumping to conclusions,” Lisa Jackson, New Jersey commissioner for environmental protection, told The Associated Press.

. . .

Amid the finger-pointing, neither state was any closer to finding the exact cause of the gaseous smell, which forced the evacuation of schools, stores and offices in Manhattan.

Makes Hagstrom Mapmakers Squirm

Maybe they should just rename it “Columbia”:

As Columbia University seeks to expand, there is almost as much debate about what to call its target neighborhood — bounded by 125th and 135th Sts., Broadway and Riverside Drive — as there is about the project itself.

Is it Manhattanville, as Columbia contends, or West Harlem?

“It’s an odd sort of a quibble,” said Eric Washington, author of “Manhattanville: Old Heart of West Harlem.”