Locavore Movement Gains Steam

Raising chickens in your backyard is a fine thing. A fine thing. It’s part of our heritage:

Investigators who raided a Brooklyn apartment building Wednesday found a cockfighting factory, a breeding ground for brutality.

There were chicks a few months old and battle-scarred veterans — 59 in all, destined for the lucrative betting rings that pop up across the city.

“There is no ring here, but they were breeding and housing them for the fights,” said Al Lombardo, deputy chief of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes’ investigators.

“I love my birds,” Corchado, 40, protested as he was led away in handcuffs.

Cages of the raging roosters were stacked three deep in the Arlington Ave. backyard. Shipping labels showed some were brought in from Puerto Rico.

Most had their combs cut off, making it harder for opposing birds to grab them. Other were shaved.

“I shave them because the weather is hot,” Corchado said.

Prosecutors scoffed at the excuse.

“They are placing razor blades on the birds’ legs to cut humidity? No, these animals were trained to kill everything around them,” said Deputy District Attorney Carol Moran.

Next Thing You Know, You’ll Be Thinking Blue And Yellow Actually Go Together

This is how it happens:

But since the store opened, something unexpected has happened. Ikea has won grudging acceptance from some of its detractors, who admit, somewhat sheepishly, that the feared blue box has brought perks enjoyed even by those who have no interest in stepping into the store.

There is the daily water taxi and shuttle bus service provided free by Ikea, technically for its customers. But for residents, the boats and buses have made the hard-to-reach neighborhood without a subway stop a little less remote; the ferries in particular have given them a picturesque way to travel between Manhattan and Red Hook.

The grassy waterfront esplanade that Ikea built, featuring benches with a view of the Lower Manhattan skyline, framed by remnants of Red Hook’s maritime past, is also catching on as a neighborhood attraction.

And the onslaught of Ikea-generated traffic that so many predicted has yet to materialize. Indeed, traffic is so light on some days that a rumor started among locals that Ikea was actually turning out to be a customer-starved failure (Ikea said its store was meeting its financial expectations).

Just before sunset one recent evening, Kerri-Ann Jennings, a graduate student at Columbia University who said she had opposed the store’s opening, sat in a chair on the esplanade with a view of the water, sketching plans for a new bedroom that she was considering filling with Ikea furniture. She offered the kind of reluctant approval heard over and over in interviews, a declaration somewhere between an armistice and a retreat.

“It isn’t awful,” she said.

If Joe Sitt Has His Way . . .

. . . just look what we will have lost:

Some people look at Coney Island and see a paradise of carefree entertainment. Others see a cesspool of gritty squalor. Few are those who gaze upon its shrieking kids, grizzled wanderers and fast-talking flimflam artists and see an opportunity for engaged political discourse.

But it was just that improbable impulse that drove the artist Steve Powers to open the new “Waterboard Thrill Ride” on West 12th Street, just off Surf Avenue, in the shadow of the Cyclone and a mere corn dog’s throw from Nathan’s.

It looks at first like any other shuttered storefront near the boardwalk: some garish lettering and a cartoonish invitation to a delight or a scam — in this case there’s SpongeBob SquarePants saying, “It don’t Gitmo better!”

If you climb up a few cinderblock steps to the small window, you can look through the bars at a scene meant to invoke a Guantánamo Bay interrogation. A lifesize figure in a dark sweatshirt, the hood drawn low over his face, leans over another figure in an orange jumpsuit, his face covered by a towel and his body strapped down on a tilted surface.

Feed a dollar into a slot, the lights go on, and Black Hood pours water up Orange Jumpsuit’s nose and mouth while Orange Jumpsuit convulses against his restraints for 15 seconds. O.K., kids, who wants more cotton candy!

. . .

Mr. Powers, who has undertaken many creative projects in Coney Island, said he started thinking about interrogation when he first saw the cramped, concrete room. “I thought, ‘This looks like a torture chamber,'” he said brightly.

But his initial idea was for real people to undergo real waterboarding, right there in real time. He’d be the first volunteer, then he’d perform it on the next guy, who’d turn the hose on the next one, and so on.

He said his wife was among the first to point out that that might be a tad over the line. (It’s fun to picture that conversation.) “In the meantime,” he said, “robot waterboarding became a way of exploring the issue without doing any harm. It’s the perfect Coney Island distraction — it’s not quite delivering what it offers, but it’s putting a unique experience on the table. And it doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to look in there and say: ‘That’s really what’s going on? That’s crazy.'”

What You Don’t Know Is That These Days Marconi Is Just A Mean Old Drunk Who Panhandles Down On The Seedy Stretch Of Market

Two things are wrong with this. One, “city proclamations” officially have lost all meaning and two, well, two is quite obvious.

What If The Problem Is Us?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Property owners are finally taking a stand against disgusting dog owners who think it’s perfectly reasonable to allow their animals to defecate where people sit:

As new residents move in to the predominantly commercial area, so too are residents’ dogs, and, in an area unaccustomed to the needs of a 24-7 population, there are very few places where residents can walk — and relieve — their Fidos and Fifis.

The open space most convenient to many of the buildings — including the BellTel Lofts at Bridge and Willoughby streets — is the green commons within the Metrotech campus, between Jay Street and Flatbush Avenue Extension.

But the management company that oversees the complex recently prohibited dogs from the area, roping off the commons and posing bright yellow signs that read, “No dogs on the grass, please.”

. . .

In the early mornings, the ritual of taking one’s dog out for a quick walk is now as much a part of the Metrotech Commons traffic as is corporate workers who are early to work, snagging their hot coffee and darting into office buildings.

Even during a quick walk in the evenings, it is common to see young women walking their small, fluffy lapdogs and larger, beefier men run past with their bulldogs.

Young mothers now bring their children play in the grass, and but carefully steer their dogs away from the same inviting lawns.

Sanitation is the biggest issue, explained Metrotech Business Improvement Director Mike Weiss, who said he is working with residents to find proper accommodations for the growing canine population.

“[We are] certainly willing to have people sit there on a blanket — that’s not prohibited — but it conflicts with the dog thing because if the dog is doing his number on the lawn, it could be unsanitary,” Weiss said. “You can just clean up so much, and you can’t clean up wet stuff.”

Let’s be clear: Letting your dog poop on precious open space is one of the most selfish things you can do.

Let’s be clearer: By letting your dog crap on the one patch of grass in an urban neighborhood, you’re being a gigantic asshat.

Leat’s be even clearer: You, sir, who let your dumb-ass dog shit on grass where people might want to sit, are basically a total asshole.