Like much of Red Hook, Fairway was destroyed by the flood waters. Every single component of the store—from the food products to the cash registers to the shelves—was irreparably damaged. When I visited last week it was startling to see how completely the space had been stripped. What was once a bustling grocery store is now a brick-walled shell. However, Fairway will be able to come back. Unlike many of the other small businesses that were damaged, Fairway has the reserves to rebuild. It's taking a particularly long time because of the massive amounts of equipment that needed to be re-ordered. It's not the kind of stuff you can get from IKEA. In the meantime, though, every single worker who had been employed at the Red Hook branch has been reassigned to other Fairway locations and provided with free transportation to those satellite stores. (via)
The space will encompass two decks overlooking the New York Harbor, so like Alma, it should boast unrivaled views. They'll serve seafood from up and down the Atlantic coast and will offer salads, soups, sandwiches, and a raw bar. There are also rumors of miniature golf. It's unclear how long construction should take—it's a major undertaking and all of the owners all have small children—but they hope to open by this summer. (via)
Cerise Mayo expected better of her bees. She had raised them right, given them all the best opportunities — acres of urban farmland strewn with fruits and vegetables, a bounty of natural nectar and pollen. Blinded by devotion, she assumed they shared her values: a fidelity to the land, to food sources free of high-fructose corn syrup and artificial food coloring.
And then this. Her bees, the ones she had been raising in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and on Governors Island since May, started coming home to their hives looking suspicious. Of course, it was the foragers — the adventurers, the wild waggle dancers, the social networkers incessantly buzzing about their business — who were showing up with mysterious stripes of color. Where there should have been a touch of gentle amber showing through the membrane of their honey stomachs was instead a garish bright red. The honeycombs, too, were an alarming shade of Robitussin.
“I thought maybe it was coming from some kind of weird tree, maybe a sumac,” said Ms. Mayo, who tends seven hives for Added Value, an education nonprofit in Red Hook. “We were at a loss.”
An acquaintance, only joking, suggested the unthinkable: Maybe the bees were hitting the juice — maraschino cherry juice, that sweet, sticky stuff sloshing around vats at Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company over on Dikeman Street in Red Hook. (via)
the red hook waterfront is full of converted warehouses from brooklyn's industrial past. at the end of van brunt street (across from the fairway) is the beard street warehouse. it was a really cool collection of artists' studios and living spaces.
the remnants of an old-timey cable-car system run throughout these warehouses. there are even some old left over cars behind the fairway.
brix + trax.
this guy was really awesome. some artists were just hanging out in there...working and welding and shit. it looked like an ok life.
on my way home, i stopped in and had lunch at baked on van brunt st. it was really cool inside, lots of orange, and delicious to boot!
when it was announced that ikea would build it's first nyc store in brooklyn, experts and residents were concerned that an influx of automobile traffic would overwhelm the otherwise quiet red hook neighborhood. however, traffic studies conducted since the opening are showing that things are in fact better than most expected.
