That’s Water Street, Brooklyn, Not Water Street, Manhattan

DUMBO may not have a lot of amenities, but it is home to a rising number of lawyers:

“We’re getting more conventional tenants,” said Chris Havens, director of leasing for Two Trees Management, the area’s main property owner. “Four years ago we had two law firms. Now, we have eight. Though some of the firms moving here have a little bit of edge and are a little more informal.”

Of Dumbo’s 1.5 million square feet of commercial space, roughly half is rented by artists and the rest is now being used for office space, Havens said. “We’re still renting to artists. The change is that these are people who are selling art.”

Court Street has hundreds of attorneys, Havens said. “Costs are really going up there. So, if they’re not running back and forth all day to court, then they can come down to us.”

Three financial firms recently leased space at 45 Main St., including a consulting group that has offices in Lower Manhattan, an investment banking firm with offices in Rockefeller Center and a Brooklyn Heights-based asset management company. Also, a Scandinavian bank opened backup trade space.

“That wouldn’t have happened five years ago,” Havens said. “The buildings weren’t as renovated. Dumbo didn’t have the reputation.”

Location Scout: DUMBO.

Two Terms You Wouldn’t Expect To Find In Proximity To One Another Are “Brooklyn” And “Wildlife Poachers” But There They Are

Poachers are stealing Brooklyn’s wild parrots:

Who is bird-napping Brooklyn’s wild monk parrots?

The many who dislike the colorful birds might not care — but Max Ovadia of Midwood does.

Ovadia believes parrot poachers have been loose in the Brooklyn wild late at night.

“We heard them squawking,” he said. “At night, that’s not normal.”

Around midnight one day last month, Ovadia said, he saw a man with a huge net on a 25-foot pole. Accompanied by two teenagers, the suspected poacher even had pole extensions to reach high nests, he said.

The trapping of wild animals, including monk parrots, is illegal without a license.

Ovadia said he scared off the poachers twice, but the nests the parrots called home are now empty. “Only sparrows are going in there,” he said.

. . .

The story of Brooklyn’s monk parrots has come full circle. Native to South America, the first birds were trapped to be brought north as pets.

But many of the original birds were either let loose by pet owners who no longer wanted them or, as legend has it, escaped from a broken container at Kennedy airport in the 1970s.

Large colonies of the birds now live on the walled Brooklyn College campus and Green-Wood Cemetery, where they are protected.

Not all borough residents are thrilled. Homeowners have complained the birds are loud and dirty.

Hotwire My Heart

Moral of the story — you’re taking a risk when you date a tow-truck driver:

An NYPD tow-truck operator, angry at his ex-girlfriend, hooked up a legally parked car on a Brooklyn street and secretly dumped it a mile away, sources said yesterday.

David Fletcher, 46, a civilian police employee, was caught Monday when the woman’s 15-year-old daughter spotted the vehicle hooked to the truck, the sources said.

Investigators later found that Fletcher allegedly hadn’t filed the paperwork indicating the vehicle was towed, leading cops to seek his arrest.

Fletcher surrendered and was charged with petit larceny, unauthorized use of a vehicle, criminal possession of stolen property and official misconduct, according to a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney.

He faces up to a year in jail if convicted.

When “Retro” Is “Overtaken By Events”: Greenpoint’s Concept Of Vintage Is A Black Hole That Collapses Into Itself

The game of Hipster Or Fresh Off The Boat? just got a lot harder:

I just got my bangs trimmed today,” a woman told her friend as they waited to enter Studio B, a new club in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. “How do they look? Kind of like Jean Shrimpton, maybe? Just tell me that.”

Formerly a Polish dance hall, Studio B is now home to people who want to look Shrimptonesque — or at the very least, retro. A week and a half ago, the opening-night crowd was decked out in Members Only jackets, mod dresses and blouses with foofy neck bows — just like the crowd at every other neighborhood club. But Studio B has a lot of features that are local rarities, among them a brightly illuminated sign, large bathrooms, and a V.I.P. room with leather couches. Nice, clean leather couches.

And unlike its neighbors, Studio B comes with a night life pedigree: the D.J. Justine D. is the creative director, and Todd P., a well-regarded indie music promoter, will book some acts. The proprietors also own the Delancey on the Lower East Side and Studio A, a hipster rock nightclub in downtown Miami.

. . .

The owners have left many of the previous occupant’s fixtures intact; there’s a smoke machine and automated swirling lights that make the dance floor glow (O.K., it is a little Miami). Several patrons said it reminded them of the early rave scene — not always in a good way.

“It’s like the worst imitation of the 80’s,” said Bert Kietzerow, 39, a hairstylist who lives in Williamsburg.

Mostly, though, the retro vibe fits.

“It’s not slick or fancy, it’s cheesy,” said Leslie Hermelin, 27, a music publicist. It’s also enormous (9,500 square feet). At 1 a.m., when the Belgian D.J.’s Soulwax took the stage, the club was jammed, the dance floor a sea of pumping fists and flashing camera phones. Even Mr. Kietzerow succumbed to the beat and the fog.

“That smoke machine is so lame,” Ms. Hermelin said, “it’s cool.”

Real Estate Brokers Agree — Follow The Lesbians

Sure, blame it on the strollers:

As the Park Slope mommies, daddies and Bugaboos multiply, a fringe group that once dominated a piece of the neighborhood has taken itself back to the fringe.

. . .

The southward shift of the lesbian community is far from surprising.

One obvious reason is the skyrocketing cost of living in Park Slope. On average, men earn 21 percent more than women, an income discrepancy that becomes wider for women-only households. But finances are only part of the neighborhood’s waning desirability among lesbians.

In the end, the real turnoff may be simply too many people who look like one another.

“I went to the Tea Lounge the other day and it totally freaked me out,” said Gabrielle Belfiglio, a lesbian who once lived in Park Slope, but has since moved to Windsor Terrace. “Everyone looked like they were part of the same photo shoot, posing with a laptop or a baby.

“There used to be a sense of diversity that isn’t there anymore,” she added. “You can walk around Windsor Terrace and Kensington and see a Hassid next to a woman in hijab next to a Jamaican kid. You can be who you are in that mix of people.”

It’s great to feel comfortable in a “mix of people” . . . do the Hassids and women in hijab feel the same?

And although I like the idea of tying the decline of lesbian community in Park Slope to the male-female economic gap — interesting theory! — this story isn’t exactly new, is it? Even the Times was writing about the exodus from “Dyke Slope” back in January 2005:

When Emily Haddad moved to New York shortly after finishing college in 2001, she didn’t know much about the city, but being gay, she knew she wanted to live in a gay-friendly community.

Her neighborhood of choice? Park Slope.

“It seemed like lesbian central in New York,” said Ms. Haddad, 24, whose unaccented speech belies her North Carolina roots.

Park Slope was the neighborhood where she marched in the Brooklyn Pride Parade during her first summer in New York. She spent another afternoon at the Rising Cafe, a lesbian coffee shop on Fifth Avenue, and ended up in a spirited discussion with some women from Dyke TV, a weekly television show. It was also the neighborhood where she volunteered at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, on 14th Street near Prospect Park. The Archives, and by extension Park Slope, became her adopted home.

But she never did make Park Slope her actual home, nor did any of her lesbian friends. “Dyke Slope,” as it is affectionately called by many lesbians, was too expensive for them, as it has become for many other New Yorkers. Instead, Ms. Haddad found a cheap, newly renovated two-bedroom apartment in a rowhouse on 51st Street, deep amid the residential sleepiness of Sunset Park. She splits the $1,500 monthly rent with a female roommate, who is straight.

(In fact, it’s such old news that the Brooklyn Paper story even features a picture of someone who was interviewed in the Times piece. She’s still not living in Park Slope.)