New York Is Unique!

New York is like every other town in America:

A six-hole Brooklyn-themed golf course designed for celebrations of the Brooklyn Bridge’s 125th anniversary last year will be set up for several days in September.

“Minigolf is kind of a craze these days,” said Michael Burke of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, noting that artists in Bushwick successfully turned a vacant lot into a miniature golf course this summer. “It draws a lot of people.”

Location Scout: Columbus Park, Brooklyn.

Sit On My Facebook! Your Wall Caused 9/11! What, Too Soon?

The headline of the day is “Williamsburg wall denounces World Trade Center attacks” though I’m not sure that’s exactly right . . . I guess walls are just a lot less sentimental these days:

Cops are looking for the un-patriotic — and not very creative — neighborhood wall-scrawler who commented on one of the worst days in the city’s history with the words “F–K 9-11.”

The mean-spirited missive reportedly popped up on a wall on South 5th Street between Bedford Avenue and Berry Street on the night of July 28, outraged residents said.

The Limits Of The New Journalism

Hyperlocal website jacked after letting domain expire, hilarity ensues:

In a sharp reversal from the Rover’s previous incarnation as a hyper-local news and commentary blog, the new Web site consists of incoherent ramblings that seem like they were written from, well, halfway around the world.

A July 17 post extols on imaginary Bay Ridge eateries like “Purple Haze,” allegedly an Italian restaurant “tucked away in the serene ambience of Cherry Bay in the South East of Bay Ridge,” and the made-up “Hotel Prime Sweden,” which allegedly serves a popular meatball dish in the so-called “Columbia area” of Bay Ridge.

In a piece titled, “Bay Ridge, all set to stand tall,” the pseudo-Rover claims the neighborhood is undergoing an “increase in immigrants, especially the Irish and Italians,” while a post titled, “The place to be” describes the nearby neighborhoods of “Green Park, Rock Avenue and Slopebush.”

This is only a sampling of the peculiar reportage that has turned the once-savvy community blog into a bizarre hub of misinformation — and Web-connected Ridgites aren’t happy about it.

“I don’t get it. You must be blogging from an alternate universe,” a commenter named Tara exclaimed after a particularly strange article touted fictional Bay Ridge stores like “Eva Mall Stop,” “Electronica Mall,” “Sparkle,” and “Jacy’s.”

But the new Rover told The Brooklyn Paper that he’s trying as hard as he can to cover Bay Ridge — even though he’s doing it from Greece.

“We intend to bring the site back to [its] previous glory either by keeping it [on] our network and updating it often, or giving it to someone interested [in] it,” said Stelios Vathrakokoilis, who noted that he decided to purchase the site because his grandfather was one of the first Greek immigrants in Bay Ridge.

“When I saw the site being filled with filthy ads and having lost all the content it used to have, I decided to pay the price and try to at least bring the old content back and then to add new articles,” he said. “Although it is hard for me to keep the standards the old site had, at least I try.”

You Mean Cooler Than Andre Agassi’s Canon Rebel-G Camera?

Hmm . . . actually I can think of a few cooler things, but to each his own:

The only thing cooler than a pool party on a summer night in New York City is a secret pool party.

And the only thing cooler than that, as a few enterprising developers recently discovered, is a secret pool party in a pool made out of a Dumpster on the banks of the Gowanus Canal in industrial Brooklyn.

. . .

“The water’s amazingly fresh, for swimming in a Dumpster,” said Alexis Bloom, a documentary filmmaker from TriBeCa, after doing a few laps. She compared it favorably to the pool at Soho House, an actual urban country club.

Now You’ve Heard Everything

Pleasurecraft docking in that big oil spill between Brooklyn and Queens:

It’s one of the most polluted waterways in New York — a fetid stew of oil, sewage and sludge.

But Newtown Creek is paradise for Max Mulhern.

The 47-year-old London-based sculptor is spending part of his U.S. vacation docked at the notorious waterway separating Brooklyn and Queens as part of a quirky family boat trip.

“I like to stay off the beaten path,” Mulhern said on Thursday aboard his 40-foot sailboat. “It leads to much more interesting encounters.”

Keeping his boat tethered to a crumbling cement wall in an industrial section of Long Island City has another key perk: he’s staying in the city rent-free.

Mulhern, an accomplished skipper on an artist’s budget, seeks out the desolate and sometimes very dirty nooks as he travels along the East Coast en route to Maine.

On this, his second such boating trip in as many years, Mulhern has already spent two days docked at another unlikely locale, Coney Island Creek.

Location Scout: Newtown Creek.