New York City

The following are selected links from this past week on blogs and websites with discussion about Dumbo (and its neighboring areas): Stories behind Brooklyn neighborhood names: Sheepshead Bay and DUMBO, 17May2013, News12 Mosley, award-winning writer, to speak in DUMBO, 16May2013, BK Eagle Heights’ Resident Paul Giamatti Filming ‘Amazing Spider-Man 2? In DUMBO, 14May2013, BHB DOT Reworks Cadman Plaza West Sidewalk, 17May2013, Brownstoner 50 Bridge Street, #609, $1.5MM, 16May2013, Brownstoner Renderings Live for the New Dumbo Townhouses, 15May2013, Brownstoner Brooklyn designers showcase their handcrafted wares, 10May2013, NYDN Floating Pool for Dumbo?, 14May2013, Brownstoner 28 Old Fulton Street, #5E, $1341/mo cc, 1800sf, #1.35MM, 13May2013, Brownstoner 306 Gold Street, #25D, 1092sf, $970k, 14May2013, Brownstoner

A cyclist was struck and killed by a livery cab on Eastern Parkway early this morning. Police say a man was biking east between Underhill and Washington avenues at around 1:14 a.m. when he was hit by a livery cab traveling the same direction. The man was taken to Methodist Hospital where he was pronounced dead, while the driver of the livery cab remained on the scene. An NYPD spokesman said that currently there are no charges pending, and that the investigation is ongoing. [ more › ]

On Friday evening, a 32-year-old man was fatally shot in the middle of Greenwich Village in what police believe was "clearly a hate crime." Brooklyn resident Mark Carson was walking with friend on Sixth Avenue near West 8th Street around midnight Friday when they were confronted by 33-year-old Elliot Morales and two others. "Do you want to die here?" Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Morales asked Carson. Morales then allegedly pulled out a .38-caliber revolver and shot him once in the cheek. [ more › ]

For everyone to doled out precious bucks you could have spent on a latte at Starbucks on a Powerball ticket, the winning one—with the numbers 10, 13, 14, 22, 52 and Powerball 11—was sold in Florida at a supermarket. [ more › ]

At midnight last night in Greenwich Village a candlelight vigil was held for Mark Carson, the gay man who was shot in the head and killed this weekend by a man shouting homophobic slurs.Photographer Stacy Walsh Rosenstock shares photos of the vigil:View all of Stacy's photos here.Read a full account of the hate crime at the New York Times.

“You know what I also have that is gonna be delicious?” chef Zakary Pelaccio asks his wife and co-chef, Jori Jayne Emde, leaning over the kitchen island in their Old Chatham farmhouse. “We have the phytoplankton here, which I love.” It’s two days before their new restaurant, Fish & Game, opens in Hudson, and the couple is finalizing details of two prix fixe menus (one vegetarian, one carnivore) for the seasonal, local-farm-driven eatery. The restaurant will be a two-hour drive up the Taconic Parkway from Manhattan, but Pelaccio is banking on his city reputation as both the genius co-founder of the Fatty Crab and ’Cue restaurants and the spirited chef who once listed an eight ball and joints as merry-making “necessities” in a roast-pig recipe to convince the food-obsessed to make the pilgrimage. It’s hard to tell the couple are 48 hours from a restaurant launch; a half-hour morning menu discussion, occasionally accompanied by Pelaccio whistling along to Quincy Jones’s “Killer Joe,” is relaxed (but productive). He puts in a quick fish order, then we hit the woods to hunt for dinner: greens and mushrooms to use at the restaurant. After traipsing by creeks, under thorny branches, through pine-tree-bordered clearings, we drop to our hands and knees to comb the forest floor for morels. “I’ve never had much success, and I definitely want to,” says Pelaccio. “Well, who doesn’t?” Emde goads him. “I don’t know anybody who likes food and is like, ‘I don’t really have any desiiiire to find morels.’?” Foraging for ingredients turns out to have its limitations. Before long, Pelaccio suggests we give up the mushroom hunt. Emde reluctantly agrees. “I mean, I can smell mushrooms though,” she says, then tells me about recently sniffing her way to ramps. “Zak calls me a hound dog.” She gives an animalistic howl. “It’s weird, that’s the sound I make when we’re having sex.” “It boosts my self-esteem,” says Pelaccio. “Like you need it,” she returns. “We always need it,” Pelaccio says. Next, a search for salad greens. Pelaccio hands me a freshly picked garlic-mustard leaf to try (Pelaccio deems its aftertaste salami-esque). We move on to clip pepperwort (sharp and horseradishy) before heading back to the house, stopping by a barn that holds a pro-kitchen-size walk-in where prosciutto hangs drying next to jars of kimchee and Vermont butter aged for nine months. On one side of the room are barrels of homemade fish sauces, a healthy layer of funky mold growing atop them. The house begs you to be outside—sunlight irradiates the spacious kitchen; back doors open to reveal an outdoor fire pit. A large bookshelf of almost exclusively cookbooks—from The Way to a Man’s Heart to Modernist Cuisine—bisects the living room and dining area, and upstairs are two bedrooms, one soon to be decorated with Elvis prints for Hudson, Pelaccio’s 9-year-old son, whose drawings hang by a shelf stacked high with Emde’s homemade vinegars. After a thorough tick check, Pelaccio sets to work making a lunch of pasta, cutting the aged butter into rough blocks and coarsely chopping the garlic mustard. He runs to the barn to grab some cider a friend in Vermont made them while Emde tends to the boiling pot. Ten minutes later he stomps back in the house, mock-crying: “We drank all our cider! Oh, no!” Emde: “Get out of here! It’s all gone?” “It’s all gone,” Pelaccio confirms with a tragic laugh. “I’m so sad. That’s fucked up, right?” After a brief period of mourning, we instead drink a bottle of juicy Slovenian wine; Pelaccio swirls a Long Island white. “What vision did you have, Zak?” Emde

Did you lose a bird recently? We stopped at 6th Ave veterinary yesterday (Saturday 5/18) then a woman with a kid & a goldendoodle came in and said that they had just found (or rather a parakeet had found them) at the park. The bird had flown up to the dog and started playing with it. She brought it to the vet hoping that they could take it, but the office was closing and no staff were there. The bird climbed right up onto my partner's finger, onto her arm, and nuzzled into her neck & hoodie. The parakeet wasn't afraid of our dogs either. We took the bird and ended up at Unleashed (pet smart?) on 7th ave to buy a crate and some food. Fortunately for us, an animal rescue shelter was there - and the guy driving the van does bird rescue! He said it was a girl. She was cold and hungry. She was a bit thin so probably had been loose for a few days. If this is your bird, please contact: Sean Casey Animal Rescue 153 E 3rd Street Brooklyn, NY 718-436-5163 nyanimalrescue@yahoo.com open daily 11a-7p We gave her up to the driver. We told him to name her Molly. He said parakeets usually go pretty quickly - so hopefully she will find a good home.

In October of 2011, I visited Taipei—the city where my parents went to college and where my dad and his parents currently live—for the first time in over a decade, accompanied by one of my best friends, Lee Anne, whose maternal grandparents live in Taipei. I'm guessing I wrote this post near the end of 2011, but it fell by the wayside because my words reach peak coherence when they're allowed to ferment for one and a half years JUST KIDDING I am really slow. So I'm writing about the trip now, long after my memories of the trip have mostly fizzled into question marks, because I won't setting for "giving up"—but I will settle for "barely trying." Well there, here we go. A road in Taipei. I couldn't get it out of my head. The question I asked myself shortly after stepping onto the streets of downtown Taipei. What's that smell? Not a lip-curling, is-that-the-stench-of-decay-or-did-someone-fart smell, but a mild, omnipresent scent that says, "You're definitely in Taipei." And thus I became unnaturally flush with excitement* when one night out of the blue Lee Anne said, "There's a distinct smell here." Oh, Lee Anne [clutches chest]—you totally get me. In addition to "BFF" you have earned the badge of "SMELL PARTNER 4 LYFE." And you're really smart, so I bet you know what the smell is. * I mean, I'm easily excited, but it's usually at the hands of a voluminous ice cream sundae or a puppy acting helpless in a totally nonthreatening situation and thus looking immeasurably cute, not by smells. "Oh my god, yes! The smell! There's a smell! You know the smell! ...What is this smell?" "I think it's a mix of food and exhaust," Lee Anne started. "With some incense." Keep going. "And a bit of air freshener." Keeeep going. "And...toilet?" I nodded. It's not a scent I'd apply to my skin, but If I could bottle up Taipei street air and take it home for the occasional closed-eyed whiff, I would. It would transport me back to Taipei in a way nothing else can. Nice door. Taipei's smell was one thing about Taipei that hadn't changed since my last visit in 1999 and when I had lived there from 1996 to 1998 (6th and 7th grade, if I am to date myself). Most things were familiar: towering department stores, alleyways full of restaurants and shops, 7-11s and Family Marts on every other corner, rows of scooters waiting at traffic lights, rows of scooters parked by the sidewalk, grime-dripping buildings that look like they'll be torn down before they ever get washed, dingy eateries aglow with fluorescent lights. Taipei City Hall station, doughnuts, and Taipei 101. Things that were different: Mister Donut, Taipei 101, bubble tea shops galore, far fewer stray dogs (the overpopulation of stray dogs is still a big problem, though), and the metro. The best new thing to me is the metro/MRT, which was but a stunted newborn the last time I saw it. It's clean! Bright! Spacious! Easy to follow! With trains that run smoothly and frequently! With clear announcements in Chinese and English! And the stations have restrooms—restrooms that don't make you fear for the potential horrors within! Ignoring that New York City's subway system has instilled me with low standards (it's very good for what it is—I do keep in mind it's an over hundred-year-old system that runs 24/7), I'm pretty sure Taipei's metro is objectively great. Grandma looking out the window of a relative's apartment. A fancypants apartment. Another difference: my grandparents. It's been years since I last saw them—perhaps a decade. They were old the last time I saw them; now they're...really old. More specifically, my grandma ("ama" in Taiwanese) is 91 and my grandpa ("agong" in Taiwanese) is 94. When I was little, I'd semi-joke that they'd live forever. They've outlasted colon cancer and stomach cancer; they really are en route to reaching 100. If it was hard to communicate with them before, it was even harder now. They speak Taiwanese, some Japane

Brooklyn Half Marathon The 33rd annual Brooklyn Half Marathon had a record number of participants this past Saturday. Beginning at the Brooklyn Museum the 20,000 runners blazed a path through Prospect Park, Ocean Parkway and down south until they reached the finish line in Coney Island. Only seven months since the unprecedented damage caused by Hurricane Sandy last October, runners were able to get an up-close view of the re-construction underway throughout Brooklyn, especially in Coney Island, which was severely ravaged by the violent storm. “You can see people rebuilding as we walked around. The whole entire race finished in the middle of a construction zone,” one runner said. Many of the runners, as well as onlookers, couldn’t help but to feel that the race was a positive statement about the way Brooklyn has come back after the storm. “The greatest thing of all was that no matter what time, no matter where we crossed, what mile it was, people were just hanging over bridges, coming out of their cars, coming out of the streets, giving us a high five. The cops, the workers, nurses were coming out of the hospital,” said Petrina Esposito, a participant in the run. “Brooklyn is Brooklyn and the heart of people will always be here.” The Brooklyn Half Marathon is the second largest such race in the country. This year security was heightened, organizers asking runners to place their property in clear, drawstring bags which were provided by them. When the race was over, for many the fun had just begun. People walked around Coney Island, enjoying the rides, eating, drinking and just plain celebrating the new beginning for Brooklyn. “Now what am I going to do? I’m going to eat this hot dog,” said John Bennion, a runner. “It’s good to see everyone come together and have fun and kind of just rebuilding, coming back to normal and try to be positive about it,” said Kathryn Bannister, also a participant in the race.

Anyone know what happened in front of the Museum last night? Lots of cops, saw a few cars in the street, a woman with cuffs on, a bike in the middle of the street. It looked like it should be bad, but didn't see an ambulance or anything indicating a big accident.