Ragamuffin Parade 2015 – one month away

Get your costumes ready for the Ragamuffin Parade on October 3rd in Bay Ridge.

Of course, the Third Avenue Festival that everyone looks forward to is the following day, October 4th.

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The 68th Precinct Twitter Account Should Be Shut Down

Max Jaeger, writer for the Brooklyn Paper usually is pretty good about reporting the news for Bay Ridge. Yet, I wasn’t a fan of today’s article posted online in the Brooklyn Paper because the 68th Precinct doesn’t even try to embrace twitter!

1) I was told by a lieutenant last month that the account is managed by an older police officer and that’s why I didn’t receive responses.  If we are short on officers at this precinct, we shouldn’t be using any of them on Twitter. In Jaeger’s article, he states that Captain Festino is overseeing the Twitter account.  

2) There’s no reason to follow the 68th Precinct Twitter account because it’s a one way intercom. Like how many pictures do we need of Captain Festino? Yes they posted this. Once in awhile the account will post a couple of drug bust pictures with no details – that’s why I don’t follow them.  Twitter is for communication, not nonsense PR.

We need leaders in our city who aren’t afraid to communicate with people in modern ways. 

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Feel Good Articles and Printing Press Releases Hurts Bay Ridge

Dear Journalists,

Sometimes in your effort to write an article and get paid,  you are hurting my community, Bay Ridge. When you print a press release, without investigating if it is true, you make the politicians in our area look like they are doing quite a bit for us, when in reality they aren’t. When you present some positive points and not the whole story, it is misleading. We have some serious problems developing in the area and they aren’t being handled because the politician’s offices are able to feed some pics and a story to the press about “sweet topics.”

I purchased a home in 2009 and my taxes were around $4,000. Now my property taxes are $1748 quarterly – almost $7000 for the year.  I am sharing my tax bill with you so you know the issue is real. 

I hope you will think about the residents of Brooklyn before you print that “feel good” easy press release you received.

The 68th Precinct tells us they are so understaffed they can’t answer our calls. Yet, other precincts are thanking our precinct for loaning them officers. How about a story on how many PO’s work at the 68th Precinct versus other precincts. Can you believe that the 68th precinct is understaffed, but they have a police officer whose job it is to manage their twitter acct? Me either, but I spoke to a lieutenant at the 68th about it earlier this summer and he told me that there is someone close to retirement who is managing it. The NYPD account shares pictures of drugs – here too, yet the papers don’t cover what our local pols are doing to combat this problem.

When you pat politicians on the back with your writing and don’t tell the community the whole story, it lets the politician sit back and do nothing about real problems. Reading local papers leaves residents frustrated and they are blowing up my Facebook feed with stories about drugs being dealt on their block. Politicians could have cameras and signs put up on these blocks, but residents say these problems have existed for years and no one is helping them. They are even leaving comments on an article Will Bredderman wrote in 2012.  It might help to join the Bay Ridge Community on Facebook if you want to know what concerns residents have. Try a search on twitter and see what residents have written to @NYPD68Pct  and see that the 68th Precinct doesn’t respond to them. (Here’s just a few: Car break ins, parks that need monitoring and PBA cards used for parking)

If you want to do feel good stories once in awhile, please do it about residents doing good things (like this guy and this woman) and not politicians who are trying to stay relevant with a ‘feel good’ story, but aren’t helping most of community. If you cover a story of a politician introducing a bill, you need to cover the entire story and tell us that they didn’t carry the bill to a law (which is rare in some cases).  

Some journalists have told me that their boss dictates the article and even the title. C’mon journalists, you can still use your eloquent words to shed light in our community. Let’s end the printing of the ‘feel good’ press releases and go back to printing the news. And I’ll go back to working, collecting my paycheck and paying my huge property taxes.

PS.   In the future, I will be responding to all feel good, half-baked stories. 

Topics: Bay Ridge | 3 Comments »

Pasta Night September 19th Brooklyn to Benefit Sean Casey Animal Rescue

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Lee’s Workshop

Lee’s enjoying a new workshop!

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Nicole Malliotakis There’s a Problem if Only Two Children Show Up!

Two children showed for an event planned by Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis on Saturday, August 29th from 10:00 – 11:00 AM. Malliotakis invited the press to write an article and videotape the event, even though she knew there would be a low turnout.   See the newspaper article AND  the video.  Malliotakis isn’t in any of the pictures or the video and neither journalist questioned why there are only two children are there! I asked the woman in the video if there was only two kids and she responded that is what she saw there.  September 2, 2015 – the other journalist also confirmed by e-mail that there were just two kids present.

The Red Cross is giving emergency preparedness workshops through the Pillow Project for children in grades 3-5. These workshops are paid for by Disney. On Twitter, you can see these workshops are attended by larger groups of children here,  here and here

Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis made flyers for the workshop and posted it on Facebook.  Did Staten Island parents think their children didn’t need to be taught about hurricane preparation or was this event not announced correctly to them? The Assemblywoman could have offered it to a scout troop or another group so that the Red Cross’ time was better used. 

On Facebook, Malliotakis shared the link the to article and wrote that it was a great event. She didn’t say it was a shame there weren’t a lot of children or she wished that more children showed up. It looks like Politics as usual to me.

Topics: Nicole Malliotakis, Politics, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Cotton Candy Grapes – Don’t Believe the Hype

THEY ARE LYING. DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE.

The cotton candy grapes are $5.99 a pound and the bag we had was $12 (they didn’t have them bagged in a smaller group). We purchased them from Met Fresh Grocery Store 9606 3rd Avenue.

Are the grapes sweet? Yes, all grapes are sweet.

But these do not taste “exactly like cotton candy.” They taste like grapes. We tried these grape on 6 adults and five children today without telling them they were cotton candy grades and not one person said the grape tasted like cotton candy. Even after we told them they were cotton candy grapes, they still didn’t think they tasted like cotton candy.

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Pottery Barn Friends and Family Sale 2015 and Current Codes

What qualifies you as a friend of Pottery Barn? Some malls give out postcards to anyone who stops at Pottery Barn the week or two before the event (even if you just purchase a candle). For years I was invited to the Friends and Family event by the postcard in the mail. Yet in 2010, a year after I spent thousands of dollars at Pottery Barn for  furniture for our home, my credit card and I were not invited to the event.  I called the store and they told me to come in and see one of their associates. 

Current active Pottery Barn codes:

EXTRA25  for 25% off Outdoor Clearance

Sign up for PBs mailings because I received a code for 20% off one item today (PBteen and kids did too)

You can receive a 10% off code from pottery barn if you make a registry and on the date your registry ends, they send you a code. Yes, you can create a registry for your birthday or just because you need a new item registry :)

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E&J Boutique – Antique Store – Thrift Store

E & J Moved to a larger shop across the street from the store below. It’s at 7001 Fort Hamilton now. See the new place here.

E & J Boutique and Antique Store is located at 7014 Fort Hamilton Parkway Brooklyn, NY 11228 (718) 775-8471. This store is loaded with all little hidden treasures and although I hate knick knacks because they bring dust, I knew Lee would love the shop.  

E and J stands for Eric and Jessie, the owners. Both are super friendly, but not in annoying way.  Their store has been there for six months and is loaded with treasures for everyone.

They had a lot of statues, glass and figurines and antique presidential election buttons.

Comic books $1.00

Regular books (all looked brand new) $1.00

They had old razors in their original boxes.

Record  Albums – $5.00

Coins were $1 – $3

Tons of DVDs.

A box of trains – I love these trains, but I didn’t get them so if you are a train collector, these are to the left of the doorway when you come in.

Eric told us that they personalized biker jewelry as well.

Lee picked up this cute old bank.

 We picked up a jewelry cleaning cloth at the counter for $5 because we stopped in so many jewelry stores in Bay Ridge and none of them sell the jewelry cleaning cloths. 

Stop in and get yourself a treasure. A little hint: That planters peanut guy up there behind the teapot might be worth something.

Fishing rods

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Music for the Soul

This afternoon we had some friends stop by and one of them remarked that I am always singing or humming. I do sing or hum a lot, but as I was sitting there, I thought about how many of years of my life were filled with amazing music because my brother was a teen when I was a kid. I know the words to so many songs because he was always playing something, whether it be Billy Joel, Elton John, Cindy Lauper or Meatloaf.

I can usually tell how my soul is feeling by what I am humming. I notice when I am upbeat, I sing great rock and roll songs. And when I am sad, I will choose the saddest song I can think of to sing.

This young teen was on a European version of The Voice last year and her voice still echoes in my head. She’s amazing!

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Lenny this is for you!

August 31st – Baskin Robbins celebrates $1.31 scoops.

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Mermaid School in Brooklyn

Inspired by Disney’s Little Mermaid, there is now Mermaid School and it’s in Brooklyn!  Girls (and boys too – see the FB pictures) go to school to learn to swim with a tail,  mermaid kisses and mermaid navigation,

World of Swimming has Mermaid School, for children 8-12 years old at St. Francis College’s Pool (180 Remsen Street Brooklyn) –

Cost: $290 for class (includes the lessons, tail, tail bag, mermaid top, a photoshoot and video) 

Adults can even take the class to be a mermaid instructor.

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