North by South

Atlantic Yards Project

    One of the most controversial land development projects in New York City is the proposed Barclays Center in downtown Brooklyn, near Prospect Heights, Park Slope, and what is known as the Atlantic or Vanderbilt train yards. The video below gives an overview of the controversy.

Trash Talking

Although this is a complaint that is often heard echoing around many New York neighborhoods, it's an important complaint. One that everyone in the neighborhood produces, sees, and deals with. It's everywhere - the streets, in our homes, in front of our buildings, and overflowing on our street corners.

It's trash.

And for someone reason, these can't make it into here:

It's everywhere, and it's disgusting. 

While there are many beautiful tree lined streets in Prospect Heights, Lincoln Place is not one of them. It's not for a lack of trying - there are small unhealthy trees attempting to grow in their own little squares of dirt, people hang window boxes full of flowers, and many fire escapes are illegally lined with plants and herbs. However certain people in the neighborhood just can't make their trash fall into the proper receptacle.

It must be tough - getting your trash and cigarette butts off everyone's public property and into one of the million public trash cans we have on every street corner of this entire borough. Do they assume that their mother or the sanitation department is going to come running after them to clean up the slovenly mess they leave everywhere? If that's the way they leave the street, their houses must look like a homeless shelters.

Kids unwrap their sugary bodega treats every day and drop the wrappers at their feet. If some neighborhood old timer happens by and tells them to clean it up, the altercation ends up looking like this: 

It seems odd than in a place like Brooklyn, where people have a tendency to be so proud of the borough and their own neighborhood, that some actually don't care what that place looks like. So Prospect Heights, "are you gonna clean that up?"