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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 22 pages • Vol. 42, No. 8 Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint • February 22–28, 2019
Used their noodles!
Mother-daughter duo Alexis Cole, right, and Alonna Storey drew
praise for their two mac-and-cheese recipes — creamy-cheesy
mac-and-cheese, and cheesy with onions and peppers — which
they served up alongside other home cooks during the 15th-annual
Mac ‘n’ Cheeze Takedown on Feb. 17 at Bushwick venue Lot 45.
Photo by Trey Pentecost
PLANK GOODNESS!
Wood expert debunks Park’s reasons for Squibb Bridge decay
By Julianne Cuba
Brooklyn Paper
Wood you look at that?
The sustainable and long-lasting
black-locust wood used to construct the
soon-to-be-demolished Squibb Bridge
to Brooklyn Bridge Park is not to blame
for the span’s structural failures, despite
meadow stewards’ claims, according to
a wood expert who supplies the timber
for projects across the country.
“It’s really not the wood’s fault at all,”
said Zach Rike, the founder of North
Carolina–based supplier Robi Decking,
and a self-described 40-year veteran of
the business. “It is easy for everyone to
blame an inanimate object, but nothing
could be further from the truth. The
wood is not to blame.”
Bigwigs at the semi-private Brooklyn
Bridge Park Corporation in July closed
the Squibb Bridge , which zig-zags between
its namesake Squibb Park and
the waterfront lawn, for the second time
since it opened in 2013, claiming a single
faulty piece of black locust endangered
locals walking across the span. Months
later, green-space keepers in September
announced the bridge would be shuttered
indefinitely because a “higher than expected
moisture level” caused more than
just one of its planks to decay.
span in its place.
But Rike — who supplied the black
locust used to build the roof deck at the
Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and other
still-standing projects across the city and
country — challenged Landau’s claim
that the timber, which is known for its
ability to withstand the harshest of elements,
simply rotted.
The expert argued that any deterioration
found in the wood was instead
the fault of the bridge’s designers, who
he said didn’t account for how the timber
reacts to changes in climate, and
too tightly fastened the metal connectors
at the end of each plank, resulting
in the deterioration.
“The issue with the bridge was the
design, and specifically the connectors
used. These connectors did not allow for
the wood to expand and contract with
moisture changes, and when the wood
had nowhere to expand, it caused tension,
and the wood fibers to press against
each other,” Rike said. “The wood did
not rot. It’s woodworking 101.”
Rike compared the need for space between
wood and connector to the need
for space between a finger and a ring.
When it’s cold out, a finger may contract,
but when it’s hot, that finger will
File photo by Jordan Rathkopf
A 40-year veteran of the wood business claims that the Squibb Bridge’s
black-locust wood is not to blame for the span’s recent structural
problems, which he claimed were the fault of engineering issues.
“Sadly, that one piece that showed
visual signs of problems is not the only
piece where we have deterioration,”
said Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation
President Eric Landau, president
of the semi-private Brooklyn Bridge
Park Corporation.
And last December, meadow stewards
revealed they would spend millions
to replace the bridge originally
funded by taxpayer dollars, and construct
a new steel-and-aluminum
What fresh is this?
MTA drops new details about ‘disruptive service’ this year
By Julianne Cuba
Brooklyn Paper
It’s still going to be a bumpy
ride.
State transit officials on Feb.
13 dropped more details about
the service changes and alternative
transportation options straphangers
will find once repairs to
the beleaguered L train begin in
two months.
And the new plan to shore up
the line’s superstorm Sandy–ravaged
Canarsie Tube — which now
calls for night and weekend work
to fix one of its two East River–
spanning tunnels at a time, leaving
the other free for trains to
travel the subway’s entire route
— will still wreak havoc on commuters,
though not as badly, according
to the head of the staterun
Metropolitan Transportation
Authority.
“We’ll be able to maintain service,
but it will be a disruptive
service,” Ronnie Hakim told a select
group of reporters during a
phone call, according to an am-
NewYork report.
Work on the silver bullet’s East
River-spanning Tube is still slated
to begin on April 27 as previously
planned — but instead of not running
subways to the distant isle of
Manhattan for 15 months, trains
will run the full line every 20
minutes on nights and weekends
once the big fix begins, with decreased
weeknight service starting
as early as 8 pm, two hours
before one of the tunnels closes
for repairs at 10 pm, according to
the reporters on the call.
The L’s First and Third avenue
stations in Manhattan, however,
may be made “exit only” stops
on weekends in order to mitigate
the overcrowding that is expected
on the line’s platforms.
Trains on nearby subway lines,
including the G, M, and 7, will
run more frequently to mitigate
the slower L service, but officials
will no longer add more cars to
lengthen G trains as they planned
to do during the full shutdown,
according to reports .
The Metropolitan Transportation
Authority is also weighing a
plan to run a bus shuttling straphangers
between the Bedford Av-
L
State transportation leaders on Feb. 13 revealed more details
about the “disruptive service” they expect under their
new plan to repair the beleagured L train.
Photo by Stefano Giovannini
rush-hour window.
Metropolitan Transportation
Authority officials hope the massive
project will wrap within 15
to 20 months once it kicks off, but
have yet to announce a final timeline,
according to reports.
News of the new details came
weeks after the authority gave
commuters a little taste of L —
for the second time — when it
suspended the subway’s weeknight
service between Bushwick
and Manhattan for eight weeks
straight starting Jan. 27.
And in addition to the weeknight
closures, the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority’s previously
announced mini-shutdowns
will stop full L-train service on
weekends through March — including
on Feb. 22–25, March 1–4,
March 8–11, and March 15–18,
when no trains will run between
Manhattan and Broadway Junction
from 10:45 pm on Fridays
until 5 am on Mondays.
enue L stop and the J, M, and Z
trains at Marcy Avenue station
during the repairs.
And authority chiefs confirmed
they will nix the planned High
Occupancy Vehicle lane across
the Williamsburg Bridge, which
would have been reserved for cars
carrying three or more passengers
during an undetermined
RIVER OF TEARS
See SQUIBB on page 18
The owner of McNally Jackson, whose Williamsburg bookstore is seen here, is opening
her second Kings County location inside Downtown’s City Point shopping center.
A three-volume set
Indie bookshop will open in Downtown mall
By Julianne Cuba
Brooklyn Paper
Read all about it!
A beloved independent bookseller
is expanding its Brooklyn
operation with a new storefront in
America’s Downtown, its owner
announced.
The owner of indie bookstore
McNally Jackson, who opened
her first Kings County outpost
in Williamsburg last year, will
soon set up her third shop inside
the massive City Point residential
and retail complex, she announced
on Feb. 12.
The expansion announcement
came at the same time that local
literary magnate Sarah McNally,
a Brooklynite of 20 years, confirmed
her flagship Manhattan
store will not vacate its long-time
home despite previous reports —
a double dose of good news that
McNally called a fairy-tale ending
following several months of
uncertainty.
“City Point feels like a fulcrum,
a town square. It is the
perfect spot for McNally Jackson
and we are excited to introduce
our literary haven to this
expansive community,” McNally
said in a statement following the
news first reported by website
Vulture .
McNally’s third store will occupy
a two-floor space inside the
Willoughby Street shopping center
between Albee Square West
and Flatbush Avenue Extension,
which is also home to a Target,
Trader Joe’s, an Alamo Drafthouse
Cinema, and the DeKalb
Market Hall grub hub.
The shop, which is slated to
open this fall, will boast a communal
space, a massive kids’ section,
and room for author readings,
according to a rep for City
Point — where police in November
arrested two men after one
of them allegedly shot and killed
a guy inside the mall .
Photo by Maya Harrison
Anti-Semite strikes on Shabbat
Cops hunting for bigot who attacked Bushwick synagogue
By Julianne Cuba
Brooklyn Paper
Authorities are investigating
after some bigot hurled an
object through the window of
a Bushwick synagogue, just
as families gathered inside to
break bread during the Sabbath,
according to police and
local religious leaders.
“Our community was seated
around the table, enjoying each
other’s company and the peace
and joy of the Shabbat, when
our front window was shattered
and destroyed by the attackers,
feet from where my
children were playing,” Rabbi
Menachem Heller, the head of
Chabad of Bushwick–East Williamsburg,
said in a Facebook
post published hours after the
incident occurred.
The vandal, whom cops have
yet to identify, threw the unknown
item through the Flushing
Avenue synagogue’s win-
dow on Feb. 16 around 2 am,
shattering it and covering the
sidewalk between Knickerbocker
and Porters avenues
with glass, according to authorities,
who said the attack
injured no one.
Gov. Cuomo the next day
called on both the state and city
Police Departments’ Hate Crimes
units to investigate the alleged
bout of anti-Semitism, which followed
several similar attacks targeting
the borough’s Jewish community
over the past months.
“This act of hate is shocking
and abhorrent, especially
at a time of great division in
this country,” said Cuomo, who
spoke beside a handful of other
local pols, including state Sen.
Julia Salazar (D–Bushwick) and
Councilman Antonio Reynoso
(D–Bushwick).
But the biased baddie will not
deter members of the congregation
from convening at their
synagogue, according to Heller,
who said the incident further
united his community, which
will only strengthen its efforts
to promote togetherness in the
face of hate.
“We face this unfortunate experience
not with discouragement,
but with solid determination:
to continue celebrating
our faith, sharing our rich heritage,
and offering our culture in
an inclusive and warm environment,”
the rabbi said in his Facebook
post. “At the same time,
we acknowledge the disturbing
and increasingly frequent incidents
of hate and prejudice in our
New York community, and their
destructive and divisive effects,
especially on young people. We
encourage each other and the public
to stand up against it, whenever
it occurs, whatever form it
takes, and towards whomever it
is directed. An attack on one of
us is an attack on all of us.”
Chabad Of Bushwick–East Williamsburg
Hot and bothered
Drug bust in Red Hook has a real kick
See page 3
A bigot threw an object through
the window of a Bushwick shul
early on the morning of Feb. 16.
PLUS
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