Welcome Back! Many Eateries And Bars In BoCoCa Now Offer Outdoor Seating On Smith And Court Streets

Brooklyn Social, Smith Street

Brooklyn Social and Planted on Smith Street

Kittery, Smith Street

Bar Great Harry, Smith Street

Cubana Café, Smith Street

Brooklyn Pizza Market, Smith Street

White Maize, Smith Street

Wing Bar, Smith Street

Union Grounds, Smith Street

Angry Wade's, Smith Street

Café Luluc on left, Leyenda on right, Smith Street

Café Luluc, Smith Street

Purépecha on Smith Street

Clover Club, Smith Street

Fragole, Court Street

East One on Court Street

Gersi on Court Street

The Chocolate Room, Court Street

Buddy's Burrito on Court Street

Kitchen on Court Street

After months of quarantine due to the Covid-19 pandemic, New Yorkers have embraced Phase Two of the long awaited re-opening of New York City.
As of last week, New York City has allowed bars and restaurants to place tables and chairs outside on the sidewalk as well as permitted establishments to take over parking spots in front of their place of business.
Business owners have taken advantage of the outdoor seating to kick start their businesses after the three months closure, and it appears that customers were happy to patronize them over the week-end.

The City imposes quite a few regulations about distancing customers from each other while outdoor dining.  Some restaurants seemed to be pushing the limit in placing tables and chairs too close to each other and not maintaining a safe 6 feet between groups. Some others were more cautious and followed the rules to a tee, it seems.

As a pedestrian walking past the eateries, it can be a bit intimidating seeing people without a mask, eating and drinking, while one has to walk past them on the sidewalk.
This Morning, Governor Cuomo warned that perhaps, he would reverse the reopening if people continue to meet up in large crowds at bars.

What do you think? Have you eaten in one of our neighborhood's eateries yet? Or are you waiting a bit longer to dine al fresco on Smith or Court Street?
Which restaurant or bar are you most excited to return to?
We would love to hear from you.


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BoCoCa Residents Putting Quarantine Rainbows In Their Windows As A Neighborhood-Wide "I Spy"

From the Google Quarantine Rainbow Map

Quite a number of Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill and Gowanus children and their parents have joined in a giant neighborhood-wide "I Spy" game by hanging rainbows in their windows. As one mother put it, it is "a lovely reminder for all of us that in a storm there is still something to look forward to."

Not only is it a way for families stuck at home to connect to the outside work during this time of Covid-19 pandemic, but it brightens people's day as they spot the rainbows all around the neighborhood.

There is even a Google "rainbow map" to which you can add your very own brightly colored arch. along with pictures of rainbows that you spot!
Here’s how:
1. From your browser visit the map: http://bit.ly/2TW6a7E
2. Log-in to your Google account (same as Gmail)
3. Click edit in the top left corner, find the pin you want to edit and click the camera icon to add an image.

A big shoutout to Marisa Macner Migdal for coming up with the idea, to Anna Grotzky for putting the Google map together and to Sadie Struss for helping to spread the word.

Please share this with your neighbors and friends far and wise. Let us show solidarity and hope during this time of crisis. The idea has already spread from BoCoCa to other Brooklyn neighborhoods, as well as to Tennessee, California, Canada, Bermuda, and Venezuela!!

Let us try to make things a bit brighter throughout our world.

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Three Chain Stores Close On Smith Street

Tea Two on 140 Smith Street

MAC at 165 Smith Street now closed

Closed Lucky Jeans at 135 Smith Street

We have all been lamenting the closing of mom and pop stores on Smith and Court Streets here in the the Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill and Carroll Gardens area. And indeed, we have lost many individually owned businesses on our two main shopping strips as chain stores and/or franchises have taken over the spaces.

It was therefore interesting to notice that three chain stores have recently closed on Smith Street alone: Tea Too, MAC and Lucky Jeans.

Tea Too, or simply T2, originally opened at 140 Smith Street in late in 2015, It closed its doors just last week. The premium tea chain was founded in Australia almost twenty years ago. During this time, the company expanded to New Zealand, London and recently in Soho, New York.
This particular location was their first in Brooklyn.
If you will miss their tea, they still have a few Manhattan locations.

MAC, the cosmetic chain, moved into the area in 2016 and occupied a large corner retail space at 165 Smith Street.  We never saw too many customers in the place and always wondered if there was enough foot traffic in the neighborhood to make it viable.
Perhaps we were right, because the store just closed several weeks ago,

Lucky Jeans, the apparel store, moved into 135 Smith Street around 2010, and seemed to be doing well. We were therefore surprised to see it's doors closed just recently. 

If even chain stores, with their deeper pockets are having a tough time making it on Smith Street, we can imagine more retailers closing. with most people purchasing online these days, there simply isn't enough foot traffic in the area to sustain these businesses.

What do you think? What businesses could successfully replace these three?

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Xochitl Taqueria Opens In Former Red Star Sandwich Shop On Smith Street

screenshot from Fulton Street's Xochitl Taqueria's Menu on  Grubhub 

Smith Street has a new Mexican food option. Xochitl Taqueria has taken over the storefront at 176 Smith Street, which was previously occupied by Red Star Sandwich shop.

Xochitl is part of a little Brooklyn chain, which includes an eatery of the same name on Fulton Street,  Fior Café, also on Fulton Street, as well as Besito Restaurant on 5th Avenue.
If this location's menu will be the same as the others, we can look forward to pretty standard Mexican Burritos, Tacos and Fajitas. The prices seem pretty average.

What do you think? Excited to have another Mexican food option on Smith Street?

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And The Fun Continues At Problematic Construction Site On Smith Street At Douglass Street

Construction site at 232-240 Smith Street

From DoB's web site

view of the black shed that fell onto site from neighboring property

Adjacent property at 57 Douglass Street, which was damaged by work on 232-240 Smith Street

Oops, it happened again! The NYC Department Of Buildings issued yet another violations to the problematic construction site at 232-240 Smith Street near Douglass Street. This latest SWO and Class 1 violation were issued because 'site conditions are 'endangering workers.' Apparently, a large shed tumbled into the big hole in the ground from a property next door.

That brings the number of complaints against this property over the years to 121. There have been over 62 violations issued, as well as 90 ECB violations, of which 10 are still open.

Granted, some of the violations date to before construction started on this site, but the majority were issued while it has been in progress.
This ineptitude has even caused a 'vacate order' for the property next door at 57 Douglass Street when that building was damaged during underpinning work in October 2018.

Here is some background on the 232-240 Smith Street site:
The long saga of this construction site started about 12 years ago with the demolition of several one story buildings that housed a few stores and a then-popular Argentinian restaurant named Sur, which helped spark Smith Street's revival. During a decade, nothing happened on the lot except for violations handed out by the NYC Department Of Buildings for 'failure to maintain construction fence."

Finally, in 2015, Commercial Observer reported that "Madison Realty Capital provided Brooklyn-based Second Development Services with a short-term $9 million loan for the acquisition and development of 232 Smith Street." Louis Greco of SDS told the Observer that he is planning a 15,000-square-foot retail building on the site.

D.o.B. permits were filed by OCV Architects shortly afterwards and by the fall of 2016 work finally began and... stopped. Within weeks, the D.o.B. issued a stop work order for "failure to notify DOB within 24-48 hours of the start of excavation" and for 'failure to safeguard all persons and property."
In addition, the site regularly fills up with water and there have been problems with the sewer lines.

It had been announced to the community that a Crunch Fitness would be the tenant in this new building. A rendering of the building with the Crunch logo has been removed from the construction site recently.

At this point, perhaps we should all be concerned about the site's proximity to the F/G subway line, which runs parallel to the site.

If the construction team is so inept, who is to say that the subway tunnel will not be compromised?

That sure would be a headache for the entire neighborhood...and everyone that uses those two lines in BRooklyn.

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