This Week in Brooklyn: Back to the Future
The past takes centerstage in Brooklyn this week as many previously "obsolete" practices have come back into use by enterprising New Yorkers.First up: sharecropping! Brooklyn entrepeneur Stacey Murphy has hit upon a plan wherein she leases unused backyard space from Brooklynites and grows crops in their gardens for them. Murphy and her employees provide all the work, seeds and fertilizer, while landowners collect a quarter to a third of everything that is grown on their land. Murphy says she believes that such an enterprise has high growth potential, given the number of individuals interested in organic, healthy food and the enterprise is almost infinitely scaleable. Already, two households have signed on with Murphy, and six more are slated to lease their land when the next major growing season starts in spring.
Your Land is Their Land [Brooklyn Paper]
Next is the trolley system, while the last streetcars in Brooklyn disappeared shortly after the Second World War, some, including the mayor, have been making the case recently that they could be a solution for Red Hook’s lack of mass transit. According to backers of the proposal, the proposal would take 1/20th the cash of building a new subway line through those areas. The area already has the tracks laid down, the federal government has provided $300,000 to study the concept and Mike Bloomberg’s a supporter of the idea. However, other studies have not been so optimistic, such as the Regional Plan Association, which earlier this month called the idea "probably unworkable and not cost effective.”
Mayor Wants F on Fast Track – But He Doesn’t Control the MTA [The Brooklyn Paper]
Book banning, long something New Yorkers have smugly assumed happens outside the city limits, has also made a comeback, albeit a small one. It was revealed this week by the New York Times that the comic book "Tintin au Congo" was pulled from regular circulation at the Brooklyn Public Library two years ago, and is available to view only by appointment inside an ordinarily locked room. The complaint that promped its removal addressed the characterization of Africans in the book, which the complaint-filer described as "looking like monkeys." The book, written in 1930, was one of the influential "Tintin" series of comics by Belgian artist Hergé that have spawned several movies, two animated series and an upcoming film directed by Steven Spielberg. Out of 24 complaints recieved by the New York libraries since 2005, the complaint about the Tintin book is the only one to have been acted upon.
A Library’s Approach to Books that Offend [New York Times]
Finally, public housing is also being dusted off and dragged out again. The federal stimulus plan will reach New York via the construction of four different public housing projects announced by the city on Monday. 4 buildings containing 798 units of housing are being built with $60 million in HUD funding, three of them to be built in Harlem and one to be built in East New York. Officials at the press conference said that the move may bring as many as 2,800 jobs, but cautioned that nobody had been hired yet and that the work will come slowly, over the next 18 to 24 months.
Stimulus will Finance Four Housing Projects [New York Times]
