GerritsenBeach.net

Beach Water quality raises red flags - News 12

I just found a News 12 article specifically talking about Kiddie Beach and the recent report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The only problem is that everything in the report is wrong!

First off, they didn’t even get the name of the organization that released the report correct. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released the report, they incorrectly have it as the “Natural Resource Council”. It isn’t a big deal but it’s a sign of things to come and I’m sure the NRDC wouldn’t be too happy about giving a fictitious group credit for their report.

“News” 12 goes on to say that Kiddie Beach was shut down over 40 times due to “pollution”.

Kiddie Beach was never shut down over “pollution”. In fact the Department of Health did not close ANY of the beaches due to water quality in 2007.

Why is news 12 making up facts?

The facts are that Kiddie Beach is automatically issued a preemptive wet weather advisory after a rainfall of 0.2 inch per 2 hours or 0.4 inch per 24 hours. The rainwater all over the city runs off or is dumped into area water ways by millions of gallons.

These are the only reasons a beach can be closed.

1. Confirmed samples show that bathing beach water quality exceeds the following water quality standard for marine water beaches: Enterococci geometric mean shall not exceed 35 Colony Forming Units (CFU) per 100 ml for a series of five or more samples collected during a 30-day period.
2. Epidemiological data indicates a significant incidence of related illnesses or repeated complaints/reports of illness/injury received from beach patrons.
3. Sanitary and Safety Survey/Investigation: A sanitary and safety survey or an investigation reveals the presence of potentially hazardous amounts of floatable debris, medical/infectious waste, toxic contaminants, petroleum products or other contamination on the beach, or there is evidence of sewage and wastewater discharge in sufficient quantities that will adversely affect the quality of the beach water.
4. Any other environmental factors determined to be a public health or safety hazard by the NYCDOHMH.

Maybe writing and filiming stories in their cars without any research is a problem.

Seba Avenue Skate Park is a Disgrace!

If it’s not the trees being broken in half, it’s now the litter, destruction and complete lack of maintenance.

What used to be a beautiful park, which opened in November 2007 , is now a disaster. Completely green grass is now a desert or in some spots completely overgrown. The park is completely covered in garbage: bottles, cans, beer, liquor, plastic bags, broken glass, cardboard boxes, and graffiti.

The toddler park has broken glass in it and empty beer cans and boxes.

Even better is the bus shelter that is currently destroyed on Everett Avenue. The posters from that shelter are at the park (here and here). Case Solved. The Seba Avenue bus shelter covered in graffiti, is in front of the park again cased solved.

There has been alot of talk and hope that the local kids will police themselves back there. Well that idea is shot dead as of right now. That park (including RCSMP) needs enforcement.

Maybe Fred Wilkins the park manager will do something/anything, but more than likely he won’t. I have not seen any litter removal at Seba Avenue Park in weeks. Also, from comments on this site (made by parks managers) and “meeting chatter” our park manager isn’t to fond of our neighborhood.

We all know there is ZERO enforcement back weeds and at the park, just last night there was 30-40 kids at the park past 9pm, when a “cop in a box”(those interceptors/scooters) drove past and did nothing. All that cop would have to do it get out and say leave, hang out for 10 minutes to make sure and we won’t get our parks and bus shelters destroyed.

I don’t know about you, but considering what it cost to build this park, I’m angry there is no enforcement and more angry that no one is doing anything about it.

I don’t want to see the NYPD wasting their time or our time with their Guard Tower, or the captain himself on Gerritsen Avenue on the 4th of July. They just need to patrol!

Without enforcement, this park will be destroyed soon.

Check out the park in its former glory

Short Answer: Never

Long Answer: Unless you live on a block with 3-5 houses it’s not your spot. Even then it’s not your spot. If someone is parked there park elsewhere. It might be annoying if you cant park 5 feet from your house or gate, get over it and walk.

This happens in both sections so this applies to everyone. People are leaving harshly written notes on others cars not to park in “their spot”. People will honk if a car is in “their spot”. Its complete crap and crazy. People who leave notes are like Mr. Wilson from Dennis the menace, a crotchety old man

DON’T BICKER with your neighbors about whose spot is whose. For instance, recently a family moved in on my block, they have two cars which threw off the daily parking scheme. People were leaving notes on their cars not to park where they were parking. No matter where they parked they received notes.

Does that make that family welcome? Don’t they have a right to park wherever? Even if it was just a single man or woman doesn’t he have the same right?

So, park wherever you want.

Blog Rumors Are Not True? Really?

Just to let everyone know, there are TWO sites in our part of Brooklyn where people can go and get news, GerritsenBeach.net and Sheepshead Bay Civics site and forum at SBPCivic.org.

If you have been following, Councilman Mike Nelson’s former deputy chief of staff Robert Varley recently went public with that Nelson told him to post things on the two area sites.

It was recently picked up by the Brooklyn View. Who ran the story with the title “blog rumors are not true”. What blog are they talking about? SBPBCivic.org in their own article is called a forum, oh that’s right, this is the only “blog” they can be talking about, but let’s not credit this site properly. Let’s continue to STEAL images off the web and now stories. Then lets overuse the word “blog” until it sounds like you don’t know what your talking about. You know what fine, I burnt that bridge by calling you out for stealing images.

The article continues to say that Mike Nelson doesn’t read local blogs(why plural?), WHICH COULD NOT BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. Why did he have his people get in touch with me to stop the comments on the original Manhattan Beach post that was bashing him? But I forgot he doesn’t read them because they have zero accountability. Apparently the post had enough credibility for him to want it to stop.

The article continued to say that they tried to contact Varley by email and he did not respond. He didn’t respond? He seemed like a responsive guy when I LOOKED HIM UP AND SPOKE WITH HIM. Nice reporting Brooklyn View. Boy did I learn a lot speaking with him. All of which will come later.

The Brooklyn View then got a MAJOR fact wrong. The user “City Insider” never attacked Nelson or his family. In fact nowhere on the SBPBCivic.org site does anyone ever attack Nelson. There were anonymous comments on GerritsenBeach.net directed at nelson and his wife, but that’s ok lets not credit anyone or get the facts straight.

Hey, Brooklyn View, can I talk to you over here for a second? If you could not get in touch with Robert Varley why even post RUMORS from blogs “with zero accountability”?

Mike Nelson, you apparently you still can’t count, you said “…I’m not surprised they hide in blogs seen by 30 of their friends”. That is so funny and clever! However, On my site alone I average 725 unique hits a day, some of which are from CITY HALL. That is alot more than your 30 guess. SBPBCivic.org forum is also very popular.

Ugh.

There is a total lack of local newspaper websites.

In our area we have the Bay Currents, Brooklyn View, Our News, Bay News etc… all have attempted, gave up and ultimately failed at developing a quality website. The latest attempt to launch a quality website is by Courier Life. They publish the Bay News and other local papers. They have launched a new website called YourNabe.com completely dropping their other domains (BayNewsBrooklyn.com, KingsCourier.net)

My first impressions of YourNabe.com are, that it is the worst domain name that anyone can ever think of. What the hell does “Nabe” even mean?! It sounds like a disease. If you look Nabe up in a dictionary it means “neighborhood film theater”. Now their domain name makes completely no sense by using a really old word, then using the word incorrectly.

If I ever heard someone use “Nabe” in a sentence I think I would have to kick them in the face for using such a stupid word.

I could go on and on about the design, logos, functionality, bad coding, and end-user interface, but I wont. The site just sucks.
Oh and apparently they don’t know how to code because the whole site breaks in different browsers. Hand code your html like the NYTimes.

These guys were using their jackets to catch the wind to sail down the avenue. It looked they were having fun, until they noticed me driving down the center at them with a camera pointed right at them.

Yes, green streets would of solved this problem, however, just in case you didn’t know, Green Streets is dead and its not coming back. With spring weather arriving, Seba avenue park is going to be packed, the avenue is going to be more crowded with children skating and on bikes.

I do have a solution, everyone needs to follow the speed limit! Wow what a concept, and its not even that hard to do! You can get to from the Point to Avenue W in 3 minutes 30 seconds doing 25 MPH. I have close to a dozen pictures of people passing me, some while people were standing on the median. One fatality and I see green streets back on the DOT table for resurrection and we wont have a say, it will just happen.

Sunday while I was at the point, the parks department was summonsing some paintballers, and as I was taking pictures of them, this woman who never identified herself (pictured above) said “Excuse me you can’t take pictures of officers doing their jobs“. I responded by saying that Yes I can, that’s your misinformed opinion. Nothing came of it and she continued to do her job as you can see.

Lady, if smoking and drinking mountain dew is doing your job where do I sign up to become a park ranger.

I never thought I would be told to stop taking pictures by some sort of officer. Ive read so many stories about others being harassed by police, that I felt prepared to do battle with this misinformed person…. it’s a good thing her mountain dew distracted her.

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This past Saturday December 22nd, I was reading a newspaper when I came across an excerpt written by a 60+ year old man, when this man yelled out, “Blame the Internet”!

I couldn’t believe what I just read. It was one of the most obscene outbursts I’ve ever read. There were 4 friends present around me who merely cursed at the man. I know the comment wasn’t directed at me, otherwise the man who said it, would be sleeping in his own bed comfortably, because I don’t threaten children or the elderly.

If this man is any indication of what we can expect of our elderly we are in a lot of trouble.

I have a theory on what’s causing much of the outrageous behavior by some of our elderly. I believe it’s the newspaper columns such as “Marine Park Bulldog”, and other similar columns available to anyone who wants to say anything about anything, whether its true or not, and rarely if ever, have to worry about the consequences of doing so.

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Both of these thugs are from the area, and I say “the area” because I don’t want to admit that they are from Gerritsen Beach.

Although they don’t represent Gerritsen Beach as a community, it seems like their defense strategies could be coined as the “I’m from Gerritsen Beach” Defense.

• Im not bias against blacks, I’m a blood - Jirovec ‘06

• Im not bias against Gays, I am Gay - Fortunato’06

• Im not bias against Jews, I am a Jew - Jirovec ‘07

What the hell is going on? Is this a few bad eggs?

Does anyone remember after the first Jirovec incident that the police cracked down on our area? The police told the NY Times:

But the police tell a different story. They say the people of Gerritsen Beach have turned inward and wrapped themselves in silence. Deputy Inspector Michael J. Osgood, commanding officer of the Hate Crimes Task Force, said residents of areas where other racially charged episodes occurred — in Howard Beach, Queens; Mill Basin, Brooklyn; and Great Kills, Staten Island — had readily provided the investigators with useful tips.

But the more people in Gerritsen Beach are pressed for information, Inspector Osgood said, the more they shut down.

“The people in the community are refusing to speak to the N.Y.P.D.,” Inspector Osgood said. “We’ve never had this happen before in the city of New York.”

What do you think?

This is wrong. The IBW is very wrong. Everyone should be angry. Check out the Photo gallery!

If you don’t know whats going on. A locally formed backyard wrestling league called the IBW built a ring back weeds. They were recently summonsed by park rangers and someone/s burnt down the area later that day.

Now, fire marshals and the police are starting an investigation and are collecting evidence.

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