A Tale Of Two Tacos

Will somebody please tell the Department of Health that all is forgiven regarding that nasty Taco Bell business? Eager to appear rigorous, they first went after Di Fara Pizza and now the Red Hook Ballfields may be regulated to death:

Every summer for more than 30 years, Yolando Ceron has pitched a tent by the Red Hook ball fields and sold authentic Colombian dishes, from smoked sausages to deep fried stuffed potatoes.

“They’re unbelievable. Nature’s perfect food,” said Steven Goodman, 56, a stuffed-potato fan who has been coming to eat at the soccer fields for about eight years.

Long one of Brooklyn’s best-kept secrets, the tacos, ceviche and empanadas sold by a dozen Latin American vendors on Bay Street today draw food lovers from across the city.

. . .

Now, that secret has managed to get to the Department of Health, which for the first time is regulating the stands and is making demands that some vendors feel could seal their demise as early as this weekend.

. . .

Vendors must supply hot and cold running water, make pre-prepared food in commercial kitchens, and refrigerate foods, among other requirements, by Saturday, according to the department.

The city has been cooperative with the taco makers, and has offered to help them apply for mobile vending licenses and complete food safety training, said Cesar Fuentes, director of the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park.

Already three portable water units have been set up on opposite sides of the field. About 40 percent of the 13 vendors currently have a food license, Fuentes said.

“We’re doing the best we can to be compliant in the shortest amount of time possible,” Fuentes said. “But right now we’re not even sure if people will be able to sell next week.”

Meeting all the Health Department’s regulations would require “a substantial investment,” Fuentes said. And vendors are worried if they will be able to implement the changes.

“It’s impossible to have a refrigerator in every tent,” said Reina Carrillo, 35, a vendor who invests $700 a week to sell tacos and homemade fruit drinks.

Location Scout: Red Hook Ballfields.

Astroland To Astroturf

Because of course the YouTube demographic is closely aligned with the big-time New York City developer demographic:

A video posted on Coney Island developer Thor Equities’ Web site and YouTube last week has ruffled some fins out in the seaside neighborhood.

The clip, which opens and closes with the Mermaid Parade logo, features costumed revelers professing their love of Coney Island and the parade. Then, in the last few seconds, a woman wearing a Viking helmet slips in: “The spirit of Thor matches that of Coney Island!”

The woman was Digna Rodriguez, a Thor Equities employee.

The video was designed as goodwill promotional material and showcased the High Steppers, a Brooklyn-based marching band Thor Equities sponsored in the parade. Absent from the video were the many protesters who marched in the parade to “Save Coney Island.” Many fear Thor’s proposals to transform Coney Island into a year-round attraction with upscale hotels will wash away the local character(s).

And see what you get when you renege on plans to save some dumpy old building? They revoke your ability to mediate experiences on the internet:

“Thor has just been sent an email,” Dick Zigun of Coney Island USA, the group that runs the Mermaid Parade, wrote on his Web site, “informing them that they have NO PERMISSION to use the name or logo MERMAID PARADE within their FUTURE OF CONEY ISLAND logo such as they have done at the start and finish of the YOU TUBE piece.”

See also: “thorothunder”‘s Thor at Coney Island’s Mermaid Parade YouTube Video.

It’ll Be Like Staying At A Toys “R” Us!

Now here’s an idea:

City Hall wants to kill a $1.5-billion plan to turn Coney Island into a fantasyland of hotels, amusements and rides — but down on the boardwalk, at least one ride operator is singing a different tune.

“Stranger things have happened than a hotel atrium built around a Ferris wheel,” said Dennis Vourderis, owner of Coney’s landmarked Wonder Wheel ride and operator of Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park, most of which was recently sold to embattled Coney developer Joe Sitt by Vourderis’ landlord Jack Ward.

Vourderis retains a 13-year lease to the boardwalk park, but he told The Brooklyn Paper that he would consider selling his lease for the chance to build a Wonder Wheel hotel.

“With creativity and a lot of money, it could be awesome,” he said.

Location Scout: The Wonder Wheel.

Bruce Ratner’s So Loaded, He Leaves $400 Hammers Lying Around!

When you start construction pre-emptively, there’s always the danger that people will swipe stuff left unattended:

One of Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards construction sites was robbed of hundreds of dollars in equipment, cops said.

According to the police report, Forest City Ratner Companies said that unknown perps entered the construction site — on Pacific Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues — between 1:30 pm on Aug. 1 and 9 am on Aug. 3 and stole two $300 saws, two $300 drill sets, a $500 generator, and a $400 hammer.

It is unclear why no one apparently noticed the alleged crime for most of the day Wednesday and all of Thursday before it was reported to the 78th Precinct on Friday morning.

(What exactly does a $400 hammer do anyway?)

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

Red State-Blue State Divide Narrows

They’re not in Kansas anymore:

It took experts until late in the afternoon yesterday to confirm what many in southwestern Brooklyn knew had descended on their neighborhoods as a new workday dawned. It was a tornado — the first to hit Brooklyn since modern record-keeping began — and it turned whole sections of Sunset Park and Bay Ridge upside down.

Roofs were torn off houses. More than 30 families were forced from their homes. Tall trees as thick as men were yanked out by the roots. No one was seriously injured, but cars were turned sideways, awnings and aluminum siding shredded, and countless windows and windshields shattered, in a destructive rain of brick and branch and water that concentrated much of its wrath on 58th Street in Sunset Park.

. . .

The National Weather Service declared the storm a Category 2 tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale, with winds from 111 to 135 miles an hour. It was the first tornado recorded in Brooklyn since record-keeping began in 1950, said Jeffrey M. Warner, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, and only the sixth recorded in New York City since 1950 and the first since a weak one touched down on Staten Island in 2003.