Bad Advice

Piledriver Update

Remember how yesterday I said that the piledriver wasn't so bad? Yeah, well, I was wrong. Imagine having an angry giant monster, jumping up and down, right next to your house. Everything is bouncing, books are falling off shelves. As I work at home, I'm sure today is going to be a really productive day.

And you know, if any of you new Williamsburg condo owners are reading—which I doubt—you guys must be out of your minds. The "luxury" condos next door are being built on a hazmat site. The ones across the street are built on a bubbling field of oil and those down the street are being constructed on top of a brown field that's laid dormant for the last decade because it was so toxic!

Why on earth would you move here when there are really nice neighborhoods with things like trees? I was in Fort Greene this weekend and would gladly trade up if it weren't for monetary constraints. But you people buying million-buck condos? You don't have those problems. Your only dilemma is that you have more money than sense. Wait until you start having kids with six arms and giant goiters.

I am going to vomit.

The piledriver arrived this morning. We were woken up at 7:41 by this horrible, metallic screeching and I knew. Sure enough, Inky and I looked out the window and there it was. The dreaded piledriver. If you live pretty much anywhere in New York City, you're familiar with these giant crane-like machines. If you've never experienced one, you can watch this video, complete with dry British commentary.

My building isn't some bunker-like structure—it was constructed to house poor people (because the non-rich have always been such a priority!). As a result, the whole structure shook like there was an earthquake going on when there were only bulldozers and augers next door. My sense of humor is completely gone (sorry!) and I'm just really worried I'm going to come home from work tonite and find my building uninhabitable or worse. Do I bring my cats to work? My computer? This sucks.

UPDATE: Much like math tests I've taken, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. Yes, everything I own is shaking, but the building—so far—isn't lurching. It's deafeningly loud and definitely not pleasant, but not as terrifying as I'd predicted. Phew!

The New Williamsburg

Yesterday morning I was picking up a few things at the newly refurbished bodega at North 8th & Bedford. When I got to the counter, the cashier was talking to an obviously inebriated customer, asking him what was happening with the laundromat/shoe repair place that's closing across the street.

"Dawk restaurant," he cackled.

She looked at him quizzically. "Dark? Dark restaurant?"

"No!" he laughed. "DOG! Dog restaurant—woof woof!"

She asked me if I spoke Polish so we could get to the bottom of this. I don't. "It's going to be a dog restaurant?" she asked.

The dude was cracking himself up, but threw in a couple more barks as he staggered out of the store. So there you have it—scuttlebutt on the street is that a dog restaurant is opening up on N. 8th and Bedford. I would have found this concept completely ridiculous had I not seen a flyer advertising "reiki for dogs" just a week earlier.

UPDATE: Another—presumably sober—tipster just wrote me, saying he'd heard it was going to be a "doggie spa." Oh. Well, that's much better.

Myrtle Hits the Big Time

First on the case was Gowanus Lounge. Then Curbed, then AMNY, now 1010 WINS and Channel 2 news at 6:00 is covering the infuriating tale of Myrtle the graffitied turtle. Who will be next? I'm hoping for Al Roker.

With any luck, Myrtle is going to need an agent to handle his or her new-found fame.

(Photo of Deborah Garcia holding the spray can in question, courtesy my phone.)

Kicking Ass

If you haven't been by to check it out, go look at Bob Guskind's new and improved Gowanus Lounge. There you will read the horrifying tale of Myrtle, the graffitied turtle. Myrtle has lived in my building's backyard for years now. She wanders through the adjoining yards, eating bologna and generally keeping an eye on things. But this year she wandered onto the construction site and some jerk decided to fuck with her by covering her in paint. Turtle shells are permeable, so it's not like we can douse her in turpentine. We just have to hope the stuff flakes off naturally.

Also, there's a story that made me want to take up smoking, if only to blow the smoke into the cherubic little faces of this uptight woman's brats.

It's Construction Safety Week!

I've chosen to celebrate this blessed week by running between doorways so when my building falls down on my head, maybe I won't be completely crushed. The excavation next door is really kicking into high gear and my building is being tossed around like a refreshing salad, only instead of croutons, we have plaster dust.

Until you've lived through it, you really can't appreciate the feeling of waking up because your bed just lurched and the walls are shaking. It's like living on a fault line.

Why Drugs Are Bad

As some of you know, I have a serious real estate porn addiction. So I was clicking around, looking at lofts and found these two people seeking a roommate:

We are: A married couple in our early 30s. Wilja is an art student and works part time in the theatre industry. Cryptid is a therapeutic massage practitioner, dj, and works part time in the natural foods industry.

You are: An individual or stable couple. Mature, clean, responsible, and an excellent communicator. Able to participate in light cleaning duties including sweeping, dusting, taking out trash and washing your own dishes. We maintain a meat-free kitchen, so vegetarian or veggie-friendly is a huge plus. Pets are okay, but they must interview with our cats, M3a7 and Wheezle.

Translation: We are two under-employed loser hippie douchebags who took too much acid at Burning Man and decided our "slave names" weren't nearly interesting enough. We don't eat meat, which is good since we wouldn't be able to afford it anyway, but we will have no compunction about stealing all your beer. That we are in our thirties shocks everyone—we think their surprise is because of our youthful appearance, but it's actually because we have the same social skills and sensibilities as a pair of 13-year-old goth girls. How the fuck do you even say "M3a7?"

It Finally Hit Me!

I'd been trying to figure out what the new, extremely bright, lighting situation at McCarren Park reminded me of, and last night—as I walked by shielding my eyes from the glare and cackling about all the annoyed new condo people—it came to me. They look just like the mother ship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind!

Wow.

Bob Guskind, of Curbed and Gowanus Lounge just posted an incredibly insightful and thoughtful analysis of my current housing situation and how it's emblematic of everything that's going on in this current climate of development first, people last. (Unless they happen to be rich people.) Here's an excerpt:

Even if you don't care about people, there has to be a self-centered part of everyone that can picture what it's like to be in your home and suddenly be afraid you're going to become homeless because of work going on next door. There has to a part of everyone that can understand the insane, helpless rage that comes from watching someone bash in your wall and having no one to turn to because you are dealing with an unresponsive and/or utterly ineffective system. There has to be a part of even the most callous "deal with it" person that becomes a little frustrated knowing that a phone call will be ignored or that inspectors will show up days after the problem was reported and, then, will duly note, "we didn't see a problem."

Being stuck smack dab in the middle of all the insanity, it's been extremely difficult for me to pull my head out of my ass long enough to be eloquent about anything other than how stressed and frustrated I've been. I feel really lucky that there are people like Bob around who can see the bigger picture and bring it home to people who might otherwise shrug it off as "not their problem." Because damn, it might not be your problem today, but who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Good Morning!

Nothing like being torn out of a dead sleep by your building lurching back and forth!

My neighbors on the demo side of the building had it even worse. They had what they thought was black smoke pouring into their apartment and so called 911.

Turns out the scofflaws at MMG were once again using a backhoe—which they don't have a permit to use—to tear down what's left of 5 Roebling.

The firemen came, the cops showed up and the MMG troll/job manager from MMG told them that we were overreacting and presumably tried to cover her ass. (She's the midget talking to the firemen.) They determined that it was black dust, not smoke, going into my neighbor's apartment and now my neighbor has a wall that gives when you push it. A different tenant now has big cracks running down her wall.

Everyone in my building has called 311 more times than I can count. Sometimes they won't even take our complaints because they say they're duplicates, which keeps the true number of complaints about MMG's shoddy and unsafe work practices from showing up in DOB records. 

Who do we have to blow at the DOB to get an inspector to come out immediately? Because, really, we'll draw straws and one of us will take one for the team.