SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

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Continuing our coverage of landlords who have been less than responsive to tenants devastated by Hurricane Sandy, The New York Post highlights the plight of those located at the 2101 Avenue Z. The apartment building still doesn’t have heat or electricity since Sandy struck late in October.

Residents of the building, which include young children and the elderly, have taken to pasting signs in the windows that read, “Help!” and “We Have Rights.”

The tenants of the neglected apartment building blame their landlord, Leonid Rubanov.

“Our landlord came the next day [after Sandy] to collect the rent. He said, ‘I need the money to do the repairs.’ Then three, four days went by, he doesn’t pick up the phone, he doesn’t do anything,” Alex Kudryavtsev, 26, who lives in the building with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. “We went over to his house in Manhattan Beach and the repairs on his house were already under way,” he said. “Instead of putting the money toward our residence, he decided his house was more important.”

The landlord, Leonid Rubanov, declined to answer the door at his lavish home, adorned with wrought ironwork, silk drapes, columns and ornamental flourishes.

“If you’re from the newspaper, you have to call the Department of Buildings and HPD. It’s a bad idea to come to my home,” he told The Post, referring to the city’s Department of Housing Preservations and Development.

HPD has issued several violations to Rubanov, and sources said more inspections are expected today.

Sandy has apparently put the spotlight on some of our local slumlords. We hope Rubanov gets his things in order as it has been over three weeks and temperatures continue to decrease.

There’s no shortage of interesting, odd and quirky things found curbside in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. But something about this one seemed especially appropriate. Especially since there didn’t appear to be any damage to the photo or frame – I think the owner just didn’t want to look at water anymore.

Seen on Avenue Z, near East 17th Street.

What weird things have you seen curbside since the hurricane?

Photo: Maria Danalakis

Two weeks after Hurricane Sandy forced the evacuation of Coney Island Hospital, the institution reopened yesterday with limited operations, with full services expected to come back online in the first days of 2013.

The hospital, at 2601 Ocean Parkway, is offering limited outpatient services, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Patients should enter through the Tower building on Avenue Z, and can call (718) 616-6360 for more information.

Coney Island Hospital was evacuated the afternoon after Hurricane Sandy made landfall, knocking power out to the building and flooding the complex’s basements, where generators were stored.

Rebooting the emergency room is the Heath and Hospital Corporation’s next priority, which will take several more weeks.

“Full service for [Coney Island and Bellevue] hospitals, including their critical care units, their operating rooms, their in-patient units for Coney Island, we believe we can do that by the first week of January,” said Alan Aviles of the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation (HHC), according to NY1.

Located within the Zone A evacuation area, Coney Island Hospital suffered extreme flooding throughout the complex. Not only will boilers, electrical systems and air conditioning need replacement, but the hospitals also stored backup generators, IT servers and assistance, and emergency room support technologies in basements that became submerged with water.

HHC said they will make changes to the hospital’s setup to better prepare for storms and flooding in the future, including moving backup generators and IT support to higher floors.

FEMA will cover some of the damages, as well as reimburse the city for some of the work done.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has requested $300 million for emergency room repairs resulting from Sandy.

Approximately 20 volunteers came out last night to greet the 24-foot-long truck and unload its haul of donations for Sheepshead Bay residents. (Photo: Erica Sherman)

A group of friends and family living around P.S. 52 have worked hard to bring needed supplies to Sheepshead Bay while others have overlooked our hard hit waterfront. They sent me this e-mail, requesting help distributing supplies dropped off last night by former residents in a jam-packed 24-foot truck.

We need walkers, runners, and bikers to distribute supplies in stranded Sheepshead Bay!

Vote, volunteer, and take home needed supplies!

Volunteers are needed in Sheepshead Bay Tuesday, 11/6 (Election Day!) from 9am to 3pm, and Wednesday and Thursday from 4-6pm to help distribute much needed supplies that just arrived from North Carolina in a 24′ truck.

Come to the Nostrand Avenue entrance between Voorhies Avenue and Avenue Z of the Sheepshead Bay Elementary School (PS 52) to hand out supplies at the school and to fan out into the neighborhood (which still has no heat, power, cell phone service, internet, access to gas, or subway service) on foot or bicycle and distribute desperately needed supplies like food, water, clothes, and toiletries that just arrived in a 24′ truck from North Carolina.  If you have a hand truck or cart, please bring it!

Locals are welcome to come to the school to pick up what they need.  (Please bring your own bags!)

Since you may now vote at any polling place, you can also do that at the school!  We also hope you’ll stay, if only for an hour hour two, to help.

These supplies were collected and delivered by George and Pat Aswad, former Sheepshead Bay and Gerritsen Beach residents who relocated to Havelock, North Carolina, where they opened a restaurant, Crabby Patty’s.  They have no political affiliation; they are just neighbors helping neighbors.  The Aswads and their friends had initially headed to the Rockaways because that is where the media indicated there was most need.  Luckily, they were turned away, but had just enough gas to get to Sheepshead Bay, where they were welcomed with open arms.

When power returned unexpectedly to huge swaths of the neighborhood yesterday, it brought fires with it as electricity surged into broken power lines and flooded homes.

In the video above, Sheepshead Bites reader Marina captured a tree on East 21st Street between Avenue Y and Avenue Z that burst into flames when a broken power line draped across it came alive.

In Manhattan Beach, much of it still under inches of water and with homes flooded, the return of power led to what one described as an “underground explosion.” Police were reportedly telling people to leave their homes and blocked off sections as fire crews responded across the area.

Homes in Manhattan Beach and Sheepshead Bay lit up, and sparks flew from home power lines and caused basement fires.

If your power has not yet been restored, make sure to manually shut off power to your home using your circuit breaker. If your circuit breaker was soaked from the floods, you should have an electrician evaluate it before turning it back on. If you do it yourself, use rubber gloves and rubber soled shoes, and only turn individual sections of your home so you don’t overload your system.

According to the Con Edison outage map, thousands in the area are still without power. While the map does not currently show estimated restoration times, you can get that by using the tool here.

A fabulous addition to any home — a map of Coney Island Hospital and surrounding environs, circa 1929. Source: Fab.com

The people behind the modish website Fab.com, whose mission in life is to make their “customers, partners and employees smile,” as well as “to help people better their lives with design,” invite you to better your life with the design of an “Authentic 1929 Vintage Brooklyn Map” of Coney Island Hospital — because nothing says “hip and trendy” like a map of Coney Island Hospital hanging on the wall of your living room.

Fab is open to everyone and is free to join. They offer exclusive access to daily curated design sales. Here’s their take on the circa 1929 Coney Island Hospital map:

“Let’s take a trip back in time. A time before fixed gear bicycles, ironic moustaches, and artisanal mayonnaise. Before Spike Lee did anything, let alone the Right Thing, and ‘gentrification’ was used to describe white people in Brooklyn. It’s time you hang some real history on your wall, and this Authentic 1929 Vintage Brooklyn Map is just the thing. As colorful as the borough it depicts, this slice of Bucktown is authentic and one of a kind.”

I’m sorry, but… Bucktown?

In either event, the humble beginnings of the hospital — the biggest employer in Southern Brooklyn as of 2011 — dates back to 1875. It opened its doors as “a first aid station on the oceanfront beach nearWest Third Street,” mostly tending to those whose feet were cut by broken bottles.

EXCLUSIVE: After more than 30 years in the local restaurant scene, Chicken Masters’ owner Vinnie Mazzone has served his last piece of fried chicken in New York City, and closed up his Avenue Z shop for good.

But he’s not leaving because sales are slow or rent is high. He’s leaving, he told Sheepshead Bites, because New York City has taken all the joy, respect and honor out of running a small business.

“I’m going to miss this,” he said, hours before locking the doors for the last time. “I’m going to miss being a business owner of an established business. But I’m going out on my terms. I’m not being forced out of here. I didn’t go out because I couldn’t pay my bills. I’m going out because the writing is on the wall.”

That writing comes by way of inspection reports, sales tax audits, employment forms and a slew of other city- and state-mandated regulations that drive up costs and drive down morale.

“The atmosphere for a small businessman [30 years ago] was that you were treated with respect,” Mazzone said. “The government treated you with respect. They didn’t bother you. When the Health Department came in, they weren’t criminals. The whole atmosphere was just awesome and you were proud to be a small businessman.”

Now the government has turned hostile, working, he said, to wring money out of small businesses to fill city and state coffers.

“It’s evolved into a situation where I don’t feel I’m an independent business anymore, I feel like I’ve become a government employee without the benefits,” he said. “And instead of a CEO or CFO, I’m a CCO, which is a chief compliance officer.”

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GARBAGE GAZETTE: In our last edition of Garbage Gazette: Garbage Theory, we deemed the corner “officially a mess” after Sanitation workers failed to empty it on their Tuesday route, and garbage piled up to the point of mini-avalanches.

Friday morning the can was emptied, and again this morning.

On Friday, however, the can was emptied but remnants of the trash pile remained, with litter and debris swirling around the can, and bottles still clogging the sewer drain. Over the weekend, the can neared being full again, and some had placed tied up shopping bags around it. When workers came today, it looks like they must have also brought their brooms, and properly cleaned the corner.

Good on them.

Perhaps our Garbage Theory series will not only tell us whether or not adding a trash can to a corner makes it more messy, but also how often a can needs to be emptied in order to prevent a mess.

Just minutes after New York City was placed under tornado warning on Saturday morning, the area got a bit of Kansas thrown its way. Winds picked up quickly as the storm rolled in off the Atlantic, over the Rockaways, Manhattan Beach, Gerritsen Beach and Sheepshead Bay. And with it came a waterspout – essentially a tornado on water – that came ashore, into Gerritsen Beach, and then up towards Flatbush.

Our readers were all over the place, capturing video and photos as the ominous clouds rolled over the Bay and the funnel touched ground.

Check out the photos and video.

GARBAGE GAZETTE: With the trash bin long past full, people have started delicately balancing coffee cups and other wonderful decorations in nooks in the trash heap. But they haven’t stayed there long, as it looks like there’s been a few mini avalanches. The worst part is the area between the can and the light pole, which I didn’t capture very well in this photo.

It’s also pouring out more towards the street, and more litter is filling the sewer drain:

We say it again: before last week, when there was no can at this Avenue Z and East 14th Street corner, there was no garbage problem. Now we’ve got a can, and we’ve got a garbage problem.

Following our update yesterday, a few readers asked if we were suggesting that all trash cans be removed, or if more pickups are needed, or if just this can needs to be removed, or this or that or the other. The answer is, we don’t know. There was a theory that garbage cans lead to more garbage, not less, and so cans should be removed. We’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

But one thing’s for sure: this is officially a mess.