Rain, Sleet And Snow Are One Thing, But Stoops And Smells Are Quite Another

After earlier drawing the line at “smell,” apparently some Brooklyn mail carriers are also balking at “stoop”:

Neither snow, rain, nor gloom of night will stop letter carriers from completing their rounds. But brownstone stoops in Brooklyn? Well, that’s a different story.

The residents are complaining that mail carriers have been dumping letters by their garden gates rather than making their way up the brownstone steps.

Letters, catalogs, and magazines delivered to certain streets in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill have been rained upon, blown away, and destroyed. Some residents who filed official complaints with the postmaster found that their mail stopped coming around at all for several days.

Postal workers complain that trekking up the steps is treacherous business, especially in the ice and snow.

When the sidewalk mailbox belonging to Elizabeth Juviler, a real estate agent in Bedford-Stuyvesant, recently fell off, her attempts to replace it with a box inside her foyer failed because her letter carrier refused to use it.

“Our mailman said he didn’t climb stoops,” Ms. Juviler said.

. . .

As part of the move to phase out stoop service, when new residents move in to a brownstone they are not guaranteed mail delivery to the top of the stoop, according to a customer service agent at the Postal Service.

Head In The Unremediated Sand

It’s sort of like not wanting to go to the dentist because you’re worried he’ll tell you you have a cavity . . . except we’re talking about up to 30 million gallons of oil:

Suspicious about long-delayed promises to clean up the massive Greenpoint oil spill, residents have not signed up to let state officials test their homes for cancer-causing vapors.

At a community meeting held Wednesday night by state environmental and health officials, homeowners repeatedly demanded guarantees their insurance policies would not be canceled and their houses would not be condemned if tests come back positive.

“What if . . . we have to vacate?” Ludwig Bauer, 51, asked from a crowd of 200 residents.

Despite pleas from elected officials to sign up for the testing, only 10 residents asked for more information about the program, state Department of Environmental Conservation officials said yesterday.

Some, including Bauer, said they will not sign up.

“I’m terrified,” said Bauer’s wife, Catherine. “What if they say my house is condemned?”

It’s Good To Be Beep!

Parking spaces? We don’t need no stinking parking spaces:

Borough President Marty Markowitz has 13 coveted parking spots in traffic-congested downtown Brooklyn — but that hasn’t stopped him and his staff from using the Borough Hall pedestrian plaza as an illegal parking lot.

The Daily News found up to 17 cars at a time parked on the flagstone plaza in the last three months — even though it’s in the middle of Columbus Park, a city park.

“It is illegal for anyone to park on the pedestrian plaza around Borough Hall,” said a city official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Markowitz’s own black SUV is routinely parked on the sidewalk on Joralemon St. next to a busy newspaper kiosk amid a throng of pedestrians.

. . .

“You don’t need a car,” said [Larry] Johnson. “There’s a bus and train on every corner. They should be subject to the same tyranny as us, and park on the street.”

Williamsburg, Brooklyn Or Williamsburg, Virginia?

An evangelical group targets rootless Brooklyn hipsters:

While Greenpoint hipsters sip lattes and leaf through the Sunday papers at Café Grumpy on Meserole Ave., a fervent group of young neighborhood churchgoers prays behind them.

“I am evil, born in sin,” chant worshipers in the newly established Williamsburg Church.

Since July, a congregation of 15 has been gathering on Sunday nights in a nook in the back of the cafe, an area that operates as an art gallery the rest of the week.

“A church isn’t a building, it’s a people,” said pastor Robert Elkin, who moved to Brooklyn six months ago to open the church.

Elkin is a member of the Heritage Bible Church, a 1,400-person evangelical group based in Greer, S.C. The born-again missionaries hope to open churches across the country, particularly in areas where religion isn’t at the top of people’s to-do lists.

“It’s a ripe environment, but it’s a challenge,” said Elkin, who sees “hedonism” in Williamsburg and Greenpoint’s youth culture.

The group’s target audience is hip, young New Yorkers who have ignored God for too long — and have been overlooked by God’s messengers.

. . .

Café Grumpy owner Caroline Bell didn’t want to talk about her new tenant. “Anybody who wants to rent out the back can,” she said.

It Was For The Birds

Sure, spin it as a way to save the birds:

They spent $1.7 million to re-light the Parachute Jump earlier this summer — but the landmark will soon go dark to save birds.

Last week, the Parachute Jump became the first Brooklyn building to join the “Lights Out New York” program, which encourages tall buildings to douse their lights to protect migratory birds.

“On a foggy night, when the birds don’t have the moon or the stars as a navigational guide, they [can] start circling lighted towers,” said Yigal Gelb, of New York City Audubon.

Once the birds begin circling, they get disoriented, and crash into each other or the tower. And sometimes they get so tired flying around that they drop simply from exhaustion.

. . .

The Parachute Jump is the program’s only Brooklyn member, and one of only six members citywide, a group that includes the Chrysler and Citicorp buildings.

Parachute Jump lightning designer Leni Schwendinger said she was more than happy to re-program the tower’s lighting scheme during the fall and spring migratory seasons.

“I’m happy to be a poster child” for the “Lights Out” program, Schwendinger said.

But careful readers may remember that the lights weren’t all that bright to begin with:

The reviews from those assembled were muted. Phyllis Carbo, 70, who rode on the Parachute Jump as a girl, hesitated when asked for her opinion. “I’m running for Assembly on the Republican line, so I have to be very careful,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

Even the evening’s master of ceremonies, Dick Zigun, one of Coney Island’s leading boosters, pronounced the light show “very subtle.”

Others were less restrained.

“Did they light it already? Is this it?” asked Joe Joya, 63.

His wife, Jane, 61, said, “I thought it was going to be a lot brighter. I thought that the lights were going to be more of a Vegas type of thing.”