Come On, You Don’t Think I Already Understand The Risk Of Eating Ceviche I Bought In A City Park?

When the story of who killed the Red Hook Ballfields is written it will turn out that we are all guilty:

Honduras Maya, a restaurant owned by one of the vendors that serves Latin American food on weekends at the Red Hook Ball Fields, was closed down by the Health Department this week after an inspection stemming from the city’s crackdown on the vendors.

The shutdown could merely be a taste of what’s to come if the 13 food vendors at the ball fields fail to meet strict health code requirements by this weekend. And the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation may not extend the vendors’ temporary permit — which officially expires after Labor Day — until the soccer season ends in late October, as earlier promised.

. . .

Cesar Fuentes, executive director of the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, said health inspectors are expected to start issuing fines — or shutting down vendors — this weekend for not meeting requirements like providing hot and cold running water, refrigeration, and preparing food in commercial kitchens rather than at home.

Suany Carcamo, the owner of Honduras Maya, has been operating a Honduran food stand specializing in baleadas at the ball fields for more than a decade. Fuentes said her restaurant was investigated by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as a follow-up to a letter she submitted to prove that she was preparing her food for the stand in a city-certified commercial kitchen — her own restaurant.

The Park Slope restaurant received 122 violation points, compared to the citywide average of 14 points, according to the inspection report. Among the 20 violations listed were: missing Choking First Aid, Alcohol and Pregnancy, and Wash Hands signs; evidence of flying insects and mice; toilet facility not maintained and provided with toilet paper; and wiping cloths dirty or not stored in proper sanitizing equipment.

The owners were not available for comment by press time. An employee, when reached by phone, confirmed that the restaurant had been shut down.

But Carcamo could be viewed as one of the lucky vendors. She is one of only two that also owns a restaurant, while many of the others are struggling to find a commercial or community kitchen certified by the Health Department where they can prepare their food.

“The report from my vendors is that it is basically very, very difficult to do,” said Fuentes. After word traveled that Honduras Maya was shut down, “a lot of people were denying vendors the use [of their facilities] out of fear that the Department of Health would enforce harshly.

“Anyone who doesn’t have that letter wouldn’t be allowed to sell,” he said.

(The vendors do nothing to conceal it, we visit there because we want to eat it, we blame the Health Department for being there, but we are all there . . .)

I guess it’s back to those old reliable subway churros for us . . .

How About An Eau De Landfill For Staten Island?*

The Brooklyn brand is sometimes freaky, sometimes brash, sometimes pizza and yet strangely evocative of a home-brewed melange of essential oils:

Brooklyn, that icon of industry, labor and pollution, now has its own scent. Not a smell (we always had that), but a scent, a nice one, one that Coco Chanel herself may approve of — Eau De Brooklyn.

. . .

“It all started in the kitchen . . .” explained Dr. Emilio Oribe, who began mixing essential oils purchased from health food stores with his wife and kids about a year and a half ago.

“It seemed whatever we liked, others didn’t like and whatever others liked, we couldn’t reproduce,” he recalled.

So after much consultation with friends and neighbors the Oribes got an idea of what they wanted and brought it to professionals, “to make sure it had a shelf life and all those chemistry details that are very important.” By last July, Eau de Brooklyn was on the shelves of area boutiques.

. . .

“You tell me, what should we do with it? Should we really go beyond Brooklyn?” he wonders. Right now, the product line, which consists of two different scented soaps and a perfume, is only retailed in boutiques in southern and western Brooklyn and on their Web site. “We never thought there would be interest anywhere else,” he says.

*Just kidding! They totally don’t find that funny.

The Bride, Until Last Month, Resided In A Building On Pacific Street . . .

This may be one of the few examples of the Sunday Styles vows section as clever political protest*:

It’s getting damn close to the end times for opponents of the Atlantic Yards project, the massive basketball, housing, and retail complex slated to rise up on the rail yards between Fort Greene and Prospect Heights. With two lawsuits drawing to a close in the next few months, lead anti–Atlantic Yards organizer Daniel Goldstein has been dreaming up every way possible to rally support for his cause. When the development company Forest City Ratner started offering lucrative buyouts to the owners of the condo building where he lives, Goldstein was the lone holdout. He’s since spent two years living alone in his 31-unit building, right where the New Jersey Nets will theoretically hit their jumpers.

Now, loner Goldstein has found romance with fellow anti–Atlantic Yards activist Shabnam Merchant, and the two plan to get married next month. And they’ve even cooked up a scheme to use their wedding to advance the anti-Ratner campaign. They’ve submitted their nuptials to the New York Times Sunday wedding-vows section, in the hope that editors will find the concept of NIMBY love too irresistible to pass up — and give the Atlantic Yards campaign a little free publicity to boot.

“I kinda doubt they would run it,” Goldstein says, even as he squirms at the prospect of his personal life bleeding into La Causa. “They get tons of submissions. But I don’t think there’s a more interesting wedding occurring this month.” If they give him a pass, he adds, he wouldn’t be surprised. After all, his arch-nemesis Ratner built the Times’s new headquarters.

*Not counting the Times’ decision back in 2002 to include gay and lesbian unions.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

Oooh That Smell, Can’t You Smell That Smell?

From the Amorphophallus titanum to the Elegant Stinkhorn, Brooklyn leads the city in flora that evokes the odor of putrefying meat:

The stench of raw meat has taken over parts of the Hillside Dog Park on Columbia Heights near Middagh Street. But don’t look for roadkill. The villain here is a slimy florescent orange stalk shooting up between the wood chips and covered with flies.

Say hello to your new neighbor: the Elegant Stinkhorn mushroom.

The Hillside Dog Park, which is covered in wood chips, is practically an all-you-can-eat buffet for the mushroom, which spends its time decomposing the moist, woody pieces.

. . .

The Stinkhorn’s eau de toilet is its aroma of decaying flesh, and the flies can’t get enough. Lured in by the scent, the flies grab some of the Stinkhorn’s sticky slime and spread the mushroom’s spores.

With This Drop I Thee Wed

Apparently the Wonder Wheel was already booked:

Two Brooklyn lovebirds are getting hitched today at the summit of the Cyclone, the historic Coney Island coaster with as many twists and turns as a modern-day marriage.

Robert Meyer, 39 and Teri Muroff, 38, will be married on the coaster’s 85-foot-high peak by the Rev. Cliff Herring, a card-carrying member of the American Coaster Enthusiasts.

“Going up the first ascent, Cliff is going to say the vows, and then we’re going to hit the first drop and scream ‘I do!'” said Muroff, a painters’ union employee who planned the wild ride with Meyer when they got engaged in 2004.

Nearly 100 friends and family members will join the thrill-seeking couple on the platform of the 80-year-old wooden coaster before actually riding it to the top.

Meyer and Muroff plan to read individualized vows during the one-minute, 50-second ride, but said they would take as many rides as it takes to accommodate each of their guests.

“We were concerned that we wanted to have something that wasn’t too tacky,” admitted Meyer, a welder who said he and Muroff initially investigated a wedding on the beach. “But to us, tacky is chandeliers and mirrors in wedding halls.”

Just save the ring exchange for afterwards . . .

Location Scout: The Cyclone.