Earthquake in Brooklyn — Markowitz: ‘We Need This Like a Hole In the Head’

Workers at the renovation site at 20 Henry St., known locally as the “Candy Factory” building, gather across the street after the building was evacuated in the aftermath of yesterday’s surprise earthquake. Photo by Mary Frost

Unnerved pigeons in Greenpoint huddled together after the quake. Photo by Camilla Maxwell

Residents and office workers — and even pigeons — in Brooklyn were rattled by the Tuesday’s 5.9-magnitude earthquake, which was centered in Louisa, Virginia and was felt up and down the East Coast around 1:50 p.m.

Many Downtown Brooklyn government and private office buildings were evacuated, at least temporarily, and people at Coney Island and Brighton Beach started running from the water to the shore.

Brooklyn didn’t suffer much serious building damage, fire or utility outages, however. That was the word from Chris Gilbride, press representative of the Office of Emergency Management in Downtown Brooklyn. Representatives of several of the borough’s community boards, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, the MetroTech BID and the Fire Department concurred. There were reports of some minor damage, including to a chimney in Red Hook.

Some people reported items shaking on their tables and shelves and their furniture moving. So many people made cell phone calls that Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint reported congested circuits.

At the construction site at 20 Henry St. in Brooklyn Heights, steam fitter John Pabon was working on the third floor when he felt the shaking. “The whole building was swaying,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle. “Everybody evacuated.”

The roughly two dozen construction workers ran downstairs and gathered on the sidewalk across Henry Street. Steamfitter Pete P. said the workers were going home for the day. “They’re going to have an engineer check the building,” he said.

Cobble Hill Man Killed in Bike Accident

Jeffrey Axelrod, 52, of Hicks Street, Cobble Hill, was killed Thursday night in an accident on Delancey Street between Christie Street and the Bowery when he fell under the rear wheels of a cement truck, according to the Village Voice. Axelrod was very involved in the Cobble Hill CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) food organization, loved yoga, and lived alone at the historic Cobble Hill Towers apartment complex. Tonight, his neighbors will hold a vigil for him in the courtyard of the Towers.

The tragedy took place mere feet from a ghost bike commemorating the death of Rasha Shamoon.

In the last dozen years, there have been 523 motor vehicle accidents at the intersection of Essex and Delancey Sts. — 134 involving pedestrians and bicyclists, according to the Daily News.

More at L Magazine.

Crane Crashes Into Building in Cobble Hill

AP Photo/ Liz Schultz

A construction vehicle rests at an angle after toppling over Thursday in Cobble Hill. A truck with a crane attached to it tipped over just before noon, sending the crane into the building at 78 Douglass St, a fire department spokesperson said. No injuries or structural damage have been reported.

AP Photo

To Get Safely to Pier 6 Park

Hills & Gardens
By Trudy Whitman

Bikes and trikes, scooters, skates, and strollers — all are being ridden or pushed down Atlantic Avenue to access Brooklyn Bridge Park and the park’s Pier 6 playground. Bringing people back to the waterfront is one of the park’s guiding principles. But the new activity has focused attention on a peril that Cobble Hill residents have long been aware of — vehicular traffic around the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway’s on and off ramps threatens human life.

Citizens and elected officials have been lobbying the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) to introduce pedestrian safety measures since the Pier 6 playground opened in the spring of 2010. State Senator Daniel Squadron and City Council Members Brad Lander and Steve Levin have pushed hard for improvements, as did the Cobble Hill Association (CHA) and the Brooklyn Heights Association. The Community Board 6 Transportation Committee scheduled a special meeting on Thursday, July 7, at Long Island College Hospital to review safety proposals presented by DOT officials. Community Board 2 has already approved the measures. (The area straddles both community boards.)

Summer Plans for Local Parks

Hills & Gardens
By Trudy Whitman

Hills & Gardens — the Summer Fun in Local Parks Edition! The beginning of June is when the hum of what awaits us in the parks and gardens of Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, and Carroll Gardens begins to morph into serious buzz. We’ll begin in Cobble Hill:

If you’ve been to the free Concerts in Cobble Hill Park at Verandah Place and Clinton Street over the past few summers, you know that the eclectic music mix — rock, soul, bluegrass, swing, classical, etc. — attracts everyone from bootie-bopping toddlers to wheelchair-bound residents of the Cobble Hill Health Center on Henry Street. Some worried that when neighbor Rudy Kamuf put down his directorial baton after many years of yeoman service, there would be no volunteers to take up that baton.

Enterprising BookCourt Defies Trend

Hills & Gardens
By Trudy Whitman

Borders book stores recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The formerly indomitable Barnes & Noble closed its Upper West Side mega-store. And only a handful of tenacious independent book stores hang on in the city. Sadly, Heights Books, which relocated from Montague to Smith Street has closed, and Atlantic Book Shop on Atlantic Avenue is in the process of doing the same. These shops featured used and antiquarian merchandise.

Yet Cobble Hill’s BookCourt, 163 Court Street, continues to expand. BookCourt has just announced the addition of a discount floor on the basement level of 163 Court — once a level devoted to such pastimes as travel and cooking, and most recently given over to office space and shipping and receiving. But the shop owners felt it would make good business sense to use the area for remainders, British imports, and used $1 books.