Basra Slope

Some Park Slope deli owners have stopped selling alcohol:

At Stop and Fifth deli on Fifth Avenue and Fifth Street, where Mr. Ramirez had often bought beer in the past, he discovered that the Rolling Rocks had been replaced by organic vanilla soy milk. And two blocks south, Mr. Ramirez found that the Salem Deli and Grocery on Fifth Avenue and Seventh Street was also suddenly going dry, with just a few stray bottles of beer and wine coolers left on its shelves.

As it turns out, the Muslim owners of both delis have stopped selling alcoholic drinks, largely for religious reasons. The move has surprised longtime customers like Mr. Ramirez, leaving some to speculate on whether other Muslim merchants might follow suit.

Although both delis sit squarely in a busy, youthful neighborhood with no shortage of potential customers, the owners were firm about their decision.

But without the lucrative income from selling $10 sixpacks of Rolling Rock, how will they make money? On principle:

“The Koran says no alcohol,” said Abraham Saleh, a Yemeni immigrant who is a co-owner of Stop and Fifth. After he and his partners bought the store in the spring, he explained, they began a gradual upgrade of the space. They stopped selling beer as soon as they obtained a license to sell cigarettes, which helped replace the lost beer income.

And Everybody Hates The Yuppies

Tom Lehrer can adjust his lyrics accordingly:

The Hasidic and Spanish communities of south Williamsburg are often rivals over the neighborhood’s housing stock, but they cooperate when it comes to keeping out a common enemy: gentrifiers.

Evidence of both the competition and the teamwork were on public display this Monday afternoon on South 8th Street between Bedford and Berry.

In the middle of that residential block, developer Michael Zazza has plans to tear down two of the oldest buildings in Williamsburg and put up a 20-story luxury condo in their place. “This is not going to be Jewish,” complained Ms. Cohen, who lives in an eight-story affordable apartment building down the block. “It’s going to be a new trend: Yuppies. They’re going to take over the neighborhood.”

Cohen was joined by over a dozen other orthodox Jews, the Four Borough Neighborhood Preservation Alliance (4BNA), Queens Councilman Tony Avella, and a few members of the local Spanish community to call on New York City to landmark 118 South 8th Street, an 1840s building which served as a social hall in the 19th century for Democrats, Republicans, Suffragettes, philosophers, healers, and teetotalers alike.

“This building represents the identity of this community,” argued retired firefighter Serafin Flores. “This is an important symbol which might be destroyed.”

When the Star asked Flores about the local rivalry between the two ethnic groups, he said, “We are competing for housing, let’s be honest. But on this, yes, we are united.”

Rabbi E. Katz quickly jumped in to agree to disagree and to just plain agree. “We have a problem,” he explained. “Everybody needs housing, but now we are united.”

Doesn’t This Mean You’re Basically Living On Top Of Fresh Kills?

The giant oil spill circulating underneath Greenpoint is leaking methane gas:

High levels of explosive methane vapors in shallow soil near the massive Greenpoint oil spill have forced alarmed state officials to do emergency gas testing in nearby homes, the Daily News has learned.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is pushing local residents to sign up to have their homes checked for the potentially combustible vapors.

“They should have come years ago,” said disgusted homeowner Dorothy Swick, who lives on Hausman St. “Nobody ever told me how dangerous it was.”

The gases are believed to be bubbling up from a 17 million gallon underground oil spill discovered in 1978.

. . .

The elevated gas levels, released last week, were found in tests done by ExxonMobil contractor Roux Associates under orders from the DEC.

It was the first time the state or the oil giant have acknowledged gas from the Newtown Creek oil spill could be hazardous to residents.

The testing also found elevated readings of benzene, which can cause cancer.

The potentially lethal vapors were found in a commercial and industrial area — but there are some homes across the street from at least one testing site.

The vapors were found in soil samples along Bridgewater St., at the intersections of Apollo St., Norman Ave., and at Nassau Ave. and Hausman St.

And not to sound like too much of a wuss, but it makes the idea of kayaking and — ew! — crabbing in Newtown Creek seem a little premature . . .

See also: Better Late Than Never.

“You Remember 1977, Right?”

New York Magazine investigates the outbreak of suspicious fires plaguing valuable development opportunities in Brooklyn:

The fact is we’re in a burning season. Uniformed Firefighters Association stats say the 2006 “fire season” — the winter months when items like electric blankets and space heaters are in operation — saw an increase in “greater” blazes (of two alarms or more) of 50 percent over the record year 2005.

The market blaze was only one of the many, many “suspicious” fires to hit the Brooklyn development zones of late. Within three months, from December 7, 2005, to February 24, 2006, there were eleven such fires along Prospect Heights’ “Pacific Street Corridor,” formerly home to single-story factories and flat-fix establishments but now part of the realty zone sandwiched between the escalating rent sprawl of Williamsburg and Fort Greene and the proposed Atlantic Yards megaproject to the West.

Location, location, location. The proximity of the afflicted Prospect Heights addresses raises eyebrows: 1033 Pacific, 1084 Pacific, 1198 Pacific, 1440 Pacific. Other fires were around the corner, at 530 and 600 St. Marks Avenue. Two more occurred at 461 and 658 Park Place, with another at nearby 683 Dean Street.

In the worst of these, the three-alarm arson fire at 1033 Pacific, a dowdy four-story apartment that had been sold and resold several times prior to the blaze (the deed shifting from 1033 Pacific Partner LLC to the 1033 Pacific Partners LLC), four people died. These included Assita Coulibaly, a 36-year-old immigrant from Burkina Faso, and two of her small children. Also dead was 24-year-old Sherrie Williams, who jumped from the fourth-story window. She landed on the concrete stairwell; another jumping tenant, Kassoum Fofana, fell on top of her, possibly saving his life. Months later, the building remained burned out, Williams’s name handwritten on the still-extant row of buzzers.

This was part of a larger pattern. According to FDNY stats, 2005 was the single busiest year in Fire Department history, with a total of 485,702 calls answered. This beat out the former record of 459,567 calls, set back in 1977.

You remember 1977, right?

Location Scout: Greenpoint Terminal Market Fire; Atlantic Yards.

Hey Hipsters, Ed Levine — Unironically! — Will Show You What’s Real

Ed Levine is becoming a big pain in the ass (.pdf) (EL = “Ed Levine” to EB = “Edible Brooklyn”):

EL: Let’s hit Coney Island. That’s a place hipsters haven’t discovered it yet. It’s a little far from Manhattan, but I mean hello! It’s oceanfront! And it’s totally accessible by public transportation.

. . .

EL: . . . Brooklyn is fascinating because it’s NOT homogenous but works anyway. It’s so varied and that variety is in the food in the best possible way. Smith Street is fine and I’m happy that young chefs can open their own places. But people need to get out of those hipster enclaves and see what this borough is about. People need to get outside themselves.

EB: Get outside themselves?

EL: People go to a Thai restaurant and think they’re exploring. This place is becoming insular. It’s not all about Franny’s and Planet Thailand and Marlow & Sons, though I love those places. It’s a class thing. [Totonno’s Pizza owner] Cookie’s not your sorority sister but that’s precisely why your life will be richer if you meet her. Andrew (the chef and owner of Franny’s) has cooked in fine restaurants, but didn’t even visit Totonno’s before opening Franny’s. He’s in this place, but he’s not of this place.

EB: What do you mean, “it’s a class thing?”

EL: You know, there’s Brooklyn (he drops his voice two octaves and throatily pronounces the word as if his name is Vinny) and there’s Brooklyn (he enunciates politely like a charm school graduate). People who live in the latter don’t want to venture into the former, they see it as somehow beneath them. But food is our common ground. It’s an easy path to get outside yourself. You’re probably not going to buy the potency elixir in a Carribean neighborhood, but you might buy the jerk chicken. That’s what’s so exhilarating about Brooklyn. Go for a day to Dyker Heights or East Flatbush or Bensonhurst. You don’t have to change your whole life — just experience something real for an afternoon.

EB: You keep referring to what’s real. What does that word mean to you?

EL: It’s probably not the right term, but by real food, I mean food from previous generations with nothing faux about it.

. . .

EB: So what’s your message to the people you call Brooklyn’s hipsters?

EL: Experience something new, whether jerk chicken or Italian Bensonhurst, foods good enough to make you cry. You’ll see very different kinds of dive bars, that are much less affected. You’ll learn that great food can come out of a completely different aesthetic and cultural milieu from what you know. You’ll expand your universe.

This from the man who thinks that the best pizza in the country is in Phoenix, Arizona . . .