Vaguely apartment seeking

The canvas stretchers are a good idea. I did this in an old apartment with unstretched cotton duck (I just primed it, put a couple grommets in the fabric, and hung it by a couple of nails) to cover a really ugly wall. Plus if you get bored later, you can paint it.

Posted by: Zach at August 4, 2009 1:56 PM in response to Covering Up Exposed Brick

This is terrific. What a bummer.

Posted by: Zach at June 19, 2009 11:33 AM in response to The Last of the Bungalows

Er, you're right, I took Brownstoner's note of "1920" to heart, but I wrote 1912 on the photo after checking the LPC designation, so I guess that was what I meant to type. Oops!

Posted by: Zach at May 19, 2009 10:20 PM in response to Maple Street, Then and Now

re Bob Marvin:

Bear in mind that I only concluded it was about 1920 because there were new trees (the houses were built around 1918). So don't take it as proof... the original was undated.

Posted by: Zach at May 19, 2009 6:58 PM in response to Maple Street, Then and Now

Yup, next to McGolrick Park.

Posted by: Zach at January 7, 2009 10:33 PM in response to Tuesday Blogwrap

Thanks for the link!

Posted by: Zach at November 7, 2008 11:06 AM in response to Comparing the Past and the Present

Plenty of Greenpoint brokers charge 1 mo... Ula's, Proper, probably others.

Posted by: Zach at August 6, 2008 12:12 PM in response to Spiking Broker Fees in Williamsburg

11217: NY and SFO are also the two most expensive cities in the country. The existing rent control laws mean you can't kick out tenants without stringent compensation; great for the tenants, but it locks up 50% of the city's housing stock... effectively forever.

Catsimatidis is right, anyway. You can only wave your hands and demand so much affordable housing. We already pay the highest taxes of, what, anyone in the US here? Pumping it into rent subsidies that prevent demolition (and turnover) only makes the tax base more stagnant.

To put it another way, if New Yorkers already can't afford their homes, are we improving their situation by taxing them to pay for other people's homes on top of that? Or are we making home ownership impossible for those who can't afford a brownstone?

Displacement sucks and has hidden costs, no doubt about it, but if we demand subsidized housing units in every large construction project, the whole city will be a housing project. And I don't mean that in a "boo-hoo-hoo-I-hate-the-poor" way, I mean badly designed, badly executed, badly funded, and badly maintained.

Posted by: Zach at July 17, 2008 4:51 PM in response to John Catsimatidis: Tough Guy For Tough Times

Love that storefront church building with the towers around it. There ought to be a preservation law that forces developers to keep one brutally underscaled building at every corner, just for the cool effect. This would work quite well in Williamsburg.

Posted by: Zach at July 10, 2008 3:12 PM in response to Hello Living Build Spreads to Washington

Out of scale? Um, it's, what, nine feet higher than the building next door. Shame about the cornice position, but big whoop. Age it for thirty years and it'll look pretty nice anyway.

Posted by: Zach at July 7, 2008 12:50 PM in response to Out-of-Scale Addition at 524 State Street

Neat. Always thought it was weird that the Slope had so few bike lanes compared to the surrounding neighborhoods.

Posted by: Zach at July 1, 2008 4:36 PM in response to Closing Bell: Bike Slope

That'd be an awfully long walk to the supermarket...

Posted by: Zach at June 23, 2008 12:30 PM in response to Triple Five Soul, Vespa Lease Up at 33 Nassau Avenue

Good idea, the sidewalks on Montague get pretty crowded and irritating on the weekends. This ought to improve the space a lot. Boo-hoo-hoo for Brooklyn Heights drivers like 10:25 who have to detour three whole blocks.

Posted by: Zach at June 20, 2008 1:06 PM in response to 'Summer Space' Coming to Brooklyn Heights?

There's two good pharmacies on Graham -- one on Metro, and Saldo's on Frost.

Posted by: Zach at May 9, 2008 12:20 PM in response to Burg Wants Cinema and Pharmacy—Not Galleries, Clubs

That is a terrific space.

Posted by: Zach at May 9, 2008 12:19 PM in response to Bird Blog: Week 2

Hey, Brownstoner, be kind enough to allow Preview TinyURL links (which let you verify the URL before proceeding). I don't know how to post one without blocking my comment, but check out their website...

Posted by: Zach at May 7, 2008 1:35 PM in response to Raising the Bar a Little

Polemicist:

I've read that Cato article before, and while it makes some good points, the bit about rent control hampering new construction because of the threat of expanded regulation is pretty much bunk. The city hasn't expanded rent control since the Second World War.

Rent control still impairs the city's ability to develop new housing, but that's mostly because it's so difficult to demolish a building with RS/RC tenants (and since every pre-1971 tenement is RS, this group is guaranteed to include all of the city's worst housing stock). The second half of the Cato argument really only makes sense for cities with room to grow.

Posted by: Zach at April 28, 2008 11:29 AM in response to Council Gunning for Oversight of Rent Regulation

Jesus Christ, Soundfix is basically the last surviving, decent cultural institution on the Northside. If they close it I'm offering the owners my damn living room.

Also, although I don't hang out at SoundFix much, I've seen cops come in there more than three times in the last six months. The blocks around North 10th are some of the most old-timery residential blocks in Williamsburg, so it's not so hard to guess who's calling in to complain...

Posted by: Zach at April 18, 2008 5:36 PM in response to Sound Fix Feels the Noise from City Agencies

Oh, this will be awesome. I ride that stretch of Kent a lot and it's polite to call it inhospitable. This will pretty much be my new bike route to central and south Brooklyn.

Posted by: Zach at April 11, 2008 10:22 AM in response to CB1 OKs Brooklyn Greenway Bike Path

Wireless? What, do kids bring laptops to high school in Sunset Park?

Posted by: Zach at March 28, 2008 12:50 PM in response to Development Watch: Sunset Park H.S. Rising Fast

Ironically, that photo is of a building on Leonard Street in Greenpoint.

Posted by: Zach at March 26, 2008 9:40 AM in response to Market Update: Bad News For Subprime-Stunned Nabes

Williamsburg certainly has projects. Ever heard of the Williamsburg Houses? I think you mean "Bedford doesn't have projects."

Vinegar Hill is great if you're a weirdo and don't want services. I, for example, love it and would move there if a downturn made it affordable again. But it's a stupid place to live if you like seeing people or doing things... it's a couple dozen houses in the middle of nothing. That's the point.

Posted by: Zach at March 24, 2008 1:51 PM in response to Dumbo: A Bridge Too Far?

Well, actually, I did choose the worst blocks in ENY, because that's the sort of thing that needs documenting. Nice blocks don't get destroyed, and it's true, there are some. I only grabbed shots of a couple, though. Cypress Hills, on the other hand, is basically all reasonably nice blocks. I used to live across the park in Ridgewood, but never made it into Highland Park so far.

Posted by: Zach at March 14, 2008 1:57 PM in response to Fascinating Claim: East New York as the Next Harlem?

Hm, actually, I did, and it got blocked for some reason when I posted the comment. You can check out some of the older housing (mostly in bad shape, but some very nice) here:
http://flickr.com/photos/zachvs/sets/72157602911594648/

I've got some Cypress Hills photos here:
http://flickr.com/photos/zachvs/sets/72157603393333899/

Let's see if this comment sticks.

Posted by: Zach at March 14, 2008 1:10 PM in response to Fascinating Claim: East New York as the Next Harlem?

Markowitz may not be too far off. I took the picture that's used in this post, and that block and the ones around it feel downright suburban -- well-groomed lawns and big cars. It's bizarre. There's a fair share of hipsters at the New Lots L stop (I realize this is unbelievable) -- not many by any means, but then again ENY is beyond cheap.

Check the other photos in that set if you want to see some devastation, though. It's very block-by-block out there.

Posted by: Zach at March 14, 2008 12:43 PM in response to Fascinating Claim: East New York as the Next Harlem?

Hey, ActionJ, nice to see you outside Streetsblog. I think the trend in CBs for the last several years can basically be summed up by the word "downzoning". While it's not a bad thing to have community involvement, everyone will vote themselves parks and brownstones and single-family houses if you give them the option. There's a trend to yell about "neighborhood character" and use it as a buzzword for anything more than one story taller than existing development. It's a disaster for affordability to have the level of stasis that the CBs agitate for.

g-man: That plan was before my time in the neighborhood, although yeah it's not a bad one. But that plan was a compromise between the relentless community yells about massive affordable housing subsidies and Doctoroff's whole "build everything everywhere" camp, right? Neither plan was very promising, and now the CB is angry about all the construction that followed the rezoning.

Posted by: Zach at March 12, 2008 1:31 PM in response to Legislation To Boost Community-Based Planning

I've been to my share of CB meetings (Brooklyn 1 and Manhattan 9). 197-a is a *disaster*. I've made this argument before, but the only purpose it serves is to provide a vent for the sort of outrage that gets guys like Tony Avella elected. Neighborhoods would vote themselves into stagnation and death if you let them. How long until every neighborhood in New York blocked every major development project? A week?

You want this much local control? Look at suburban North Jersey, or Orange County NY. Infrastructure improvements never happen, because they can't be coordinated between the disparate towns and townships and villages and what-have-you, and *nobody* wants a treatment plant in their neighborhood. NIMBY to the tenth power. Frankly, community boards should meet somewhere like Hawaii. The price of sending everybody away would be made up in new development and amenities.

Posted by: Zach at March 12, 2008 11:57 AM in response to Legislation To Boost Community-Based Planning

I'm not much of a preservationist, but knocking down gorgeous buildings to build a parking lot in the middle of Brooklyn is so ridiculous that I don't understand why it was ever on the table.

Posted by: Zach at February 26, 2008 1:25 PM in response to FGA Pushes Preservation Plus Market for Admirals' Row

IHOP in Williamsburg will make a damn killing. As a former IHOP employee (those were the days), I plan to eat here every Saturday night for the rest of time. An excuse not to go to Kellogg's!

Posted by: Zach at February 25, 2008 3:54 PM in response to Chain Gang Thrives in Brooklyn

12:03 -- Actually, the Victorians are a superbly bad example... most of the housing that we're lucky enough to have now (and celebrated on this site, for that matter) is a Victorian product for the middle and working class.

I'm a perfect example of the rent control problem -- I'm rent-stabilized but not all that poor. While I'm not in the buying market, I could rent a nicer apartment without struggling. Instead, I stay where I live now -- why wouldn't I? It's a nice place and I'm guaranteed low hikes. I'll probably never move up to a more appropriate apartment.

(In a great rent stab story, my downstairs neighbor, who'd been paying no more than $900 a month for twenty years, bought a $450,000 condo in Williamsburg. This is the exception, not the rule, but smaller stories like mine can't be that rare.)

It also makes demolition harder, artificially aging the housing stock and limiting new construction.

Posted by: Zach at February 20, 2008 1:19 PM in response to Is the Creation of Affordable Housing in Jeopardy?

Wow, this is a cool story. Nice find!

Posted by: Zach at February 14, 2008 12:53 PM in response to The House that Harvey Built

"Creating a nice looking building does not require any more money."

If building one of these cost the same as building an attractive house, the market wouldn't provide for them. Making these ridiculous statements about "lazy builders" is just silly. These are *much* cheaper than comparable attractive buildings throughout the city.

I can agree that these are quite repulsive, but big whoop. Demanding that the city's enormous middle and lower class live in "replica 1890s brownstones" is a pipe dream. That Dryvit point is a more interestng one, but bad construction habits don't really have to do with psf costs. There's incompetent contractors in every price range.

Don't get me wrong... if you make a replica brownstone plan that you can build for $200 psf or something, you'll sell a billion of them and put these jerks out of business. I'll buy one. But you can't do it.

Posted by: Zach at February 8, 2008 2:19 PM in response to When The Music's Over, Turn Out the Lights

I agree with Benson pretty much entirely. Do we have any reasonable evidence that these are badly built, other than the fact that they are admittedly quite ugly, and probably badly laid out, to boot? The maintenance cost for cheesy prefab cement-and-steel-frame stuff doesn't grow anywhere *nearly* as fast as old frame houses, no matter how well designed. While these still require upkeep, they're not "lemons" by any stretch of the word.

Also, standards review boards are a disaster for new construction. If you think you've seen NIMBYism in Brooklyn this year, you'd be in for a surprise. Any house can be renovated with an attractive facade twenty years down the line when the neighborhood is tonier. Banning ugly just pushes the whole city one step further into being an economic monoculture of the very rich.

Posted by: Zach at February 8, 2008 12:28 PM in response to When The Music's Over, Turn Out the Lights

This saves me from riding my bike six miles just to go to Rocketship. Awesome! Except now I won't have any money.

Posted by: Zach at February 7, 2008 1:33 PM in response to Streetlevel: From T-Mobile to Comics on Metropolitan

True, but Bensonhurst would be a nightmarish commute -- I work way uptown. I'd just move to Harlem but I like BK too much.

Posted by: Zach at January 31, 2008 7:26 PM in response to Vaguely apartment seeking

Er, that got cut off, the end should read "<= 1300, probably hopeless." Ha.

Posted by: Zach at January 31, 2008 2:04 PM in response to Vaguely apartment seeking

$20 a foot isn't affordable for any of the artists I know, although I'm sure it's great for small crafts and artisans. An informal survey of everybody I knew living in illegal live/work spaces in Bushwick would suggest $10-$14 as the range that all the weird painters I know could handle.

It depends on improvements (a lot of these lofts were totally bare and needed drywall, stoves, DIY plumbing attachments, space heaters), but typically it's not a "cheap" loft in 2006 unless the monthly rent in dollars is about the same as the square footage. Shame they're not building more spaces like this.

Live/work is the key component for people who are just starting out. When I lived in a crud neighborhood to save cash (not in a live/work space), I was paying $11/sqft/yr. Loft space came at a premium over that, but if you deduct the cost of housing, it was very cheap for studio space. But this becomes less true every day.

Posted by: Zach at January 15, 2008 1:27 PM in response to Sunset Park's Federal #2 a Potential Lifeboat for Creatives

Chalk me up as another white guy that shops at Fulton Mall. It's the next best thing to Manhattan Avenue junk stores for cheap clothes.

Posted by: Zach at December 25, 2007 1:32 PM in response to Fulton Mall ‘Mallification’ Inevitable?

Oof, $379K for a one-bedroom condo, facing the projects, on friggin' Maujer Street? There goes the neighborhood.

Posted by: Zach at December 25, 2007 1:21 PM in response to Just Sold in Brooklyn

The part of Ridgewood near Brooklyn has some of these surviving (Grove St, Linden St, etc.) -- or Wallabout, maybe?

Posted by: Zach at December 14, 2007 3:58 PM in response to Anyone know of an original cornice on a frame house?

Man, I've been wondering why there wasn't a bus like this since forever. Awesome.

Posted by: Zach at December 14, 2007 10:41 AM in response to AM Millman Pushes For Bus Route Through Battery Tunnel

Those Greenpoint apartments exist; I pay $1300 for my 2-bedroom, and it wasn't *that* hard to find. It just took a lot of legwork (I used local brokers but ended up just finding it on Craigslist). You can definitely do it. Times Square is maybe a 20-minute ride, and the neighborhood's fun.

Bay Ridge probably isn't that racist, but who knows. It's certainly not very convenient.

Posted by: Zach at December 12, 2007 3:55 PM in response to Renting an Apartment in Brooklyn

This is actually Humboldt and Herbert. It's also a disgraceful site -- there's a 6'x3' hole in the fence, leading to that death-pit of stagnant water. I believe it's a Scarano; it's a total disgrace, safety-wise.

Posted by: Zach at December 5, 2007 4:56 PM in response to Wednesday Blogwrap

My old vinyl siding dump looked like this, except slap an extra few decades of neglect on top. Beautiful apartment, although it may well have been beyond saving.

That said... not the best corner of Bed-Stuy. Or of Bushwick, for that matter. You're pretty much in Ocean Hill at this point, and there's probably a similarly decent house you could buy closer to, say, the L train.

Posted by: Zach at December 4, 2007 10:11 PM in response to House of the Day: 735 Decatur Street

Ooh, expensive housing! Maybe a crappy park!

Posted by: Zach at November 26, 2007 4:24 PM in response to Closing Bell: What’s Up With the Abandoned 4th Ave. Lot?

Does anyone really? I used to live out in this area, and while the rest of the neighborhood has nasty moments, Irving Square is really, really awful.

This is what always summed it up for me:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E4D61230F934A2575BC0A9659C8B63

Posted by: Zach at November 21, 2007 3:02 AM in response to Closing Bell: Makeover for Irving Square Park

Thanks!

Posted by: Zach at November 15, 2007 5:33 PM in response to Wednesday Blogwrap

Rents right next to the Graham stop are way high, but I don't know anyone in the neighborhood (BQE-area Greenpoint/Burg) paying more than $1500 for two beds. These listings are insane. Go to one of the local brokers, there's still 1-beds under 1200 bucks, even if you don't speak Polish or Italian.

Posted by: Zach at November 15, 2007 5:16 PM in response to Rentals of the Day: Burg Share Edition

The Royal Tenenbaums house is in Harlem -- southwest corner of Convent & 144th Street. It's actually for sale right now also.

Posted by: Zach at November 12, 2007 2:52 PM in response to House of the Day: 282 DeKalb Avenue

"Beer Table"? I love it.

Posted by: Zach at November 12, 2007 2:49 PM in response to StreetLevel: Suds for the South Slope

Hang material over walls?

See the apartment decoration efforts at warymeyers.com for more ideas. Many of the apartments they've decorated feature exposed brick.

Posted by: mopar at August 4, 2009 3:11 PM in response to Covering Up Exposed Brick

You could take entire sheets of homosote, which is a compressed paper pulp product, (4'x6, found at HD, Lowe's, very cheap) and cover them in fabric, or wallpaper, or brown or white craft paper, or even a collage of newspaper or wrapping paper or other materials. You could also prime and paint, too. Papers could be glued, fabric and craft paper from a roll could be stretched and stapled to the back. These could either be just leaned up against the walls, if you don't have kids or pets to bother them, or hung on hooks from the moulding, ceiling, or descreetly bolted to the walls.

Posted by: Montrose Morris at August 6, 2009 11:22 AM in response to Covering Up Exposed Brick

thank you all for the suggestions. will not be painting as landlord has specifically requested i don't.

montrose -- i will look into homosote, thanks for that specifically.

Posted by: duckumu at August 6, 2009 11:48 AM in response to Covering Up Exposed Brick

I would recommand sheet rocking the wall with 1/2 inch sheet rock that later on can be removed call this guy from park slope that does great work and great prices extremely neat at gabipaintinginc@aol.com or 718=331=3889

Posted by: max senises at October 8, 2009 11:33 PM in response to Covering Up Exposed Brick