SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Looks like MetroPCS has opened up a new location at 1401 Avenue Z, on the corner of East 14th Street.

The business opened its doors a week or two ago. It replaces Admire Boutique, which moved across the street and down the block after Superstorm Sandy.

We’re not sure, but this location could be a move for the MetroPCS that was at 1710 Sheepshead Bay Road, which shuttered after Sandy. Another MetroPCS location opened and then quickly closed on Sheepshead Bay Road in 2012, just around the corner from where this one is now located.

Good luck in the new location, fellas.

One contractor on the scene said hair salon. Another said barber. We’ll just say tonsorial artist.

Whatever you want to call it, it’s coming soon to 1618 Sheepshead Bay Road. Contractors have been working on the site for a few weeks, and, today, it looks like the storefront windows are just about ready to go.

The location was, until recently, a Quintex Wireless location, an authorized T-Mobile dealer. In fact, we think this was one of the very first cell phone and beeper (remember beepers?!) businesses on Sheepshead Bay Road.

Welcome to the neighborhood!

“Pretty in Purple,” the Relay for Life team that Jessica Rosen — one of our friends (and supporters) from Big Apple Sewer — belongs to just kicked off a new fundraiser that they are dubbing, “Cell Phones for a Cure.”

The concept is simple. According to Rosen, “We are collecting old cell phones then donating them and getting cash in exchange.” The cash collected from the cell phones and batteries will go toward “Pretty in Purple,” which has thus far raised $1,338.92 in support of cancer research.

“Pretty in Purple” will be participating in the “2012 Relay For Life of Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst & Dyker Heights” from 2:00 to 11:00 p.m., June 23 at Fort Hamilton Athletic Field, bounded by 83rd Street to 85th Street, Narrows Avenue and Colonial Road in Bay Ridge.

The event begins at 12:00 p.m., but the opening ceremony is at 2:00 p.m. “Pretty in Purple” will camp out overnight and take turns walking around the track to raise money and awareness to help the American Cancer Society create a world with less cancer and more birthdays.

To learn more about Relay for Life, “Pretty in Purple,” and to contribute, go to their team page by clicking here or call (718) 360-9200.

After less than a year in operation, the MetroPCS at 1419 Sheepshead Bay Road closed down this week.

We walked by yesterday and were shocked to see that the storefront had been cleared out seemingly overnight. The no-contract cell phone dealer opened up last July.

That’s probably good news for the other MetroPCS location, at 1710 Sheepshead Bay Road, which was not affiliated with this one.

Former State Senator Carl Kruger. Image source: Reason.tv. Illustration composite by Erica Sherman

With seemingly little fanfare, a seven-sentence story by Agence France Presse, with the headline “Death toll among pedestrians wearing headphones triples,” popped up on Yahoo News a while back. It is all but forgotten about now, having first appeared mid-January, but the subject merits revisiting. The Yahoo link is borked, but you can read it on any number of websites by going here.

The story reported the results of a study, which revealed that “[T]he annual tally [of US pedestrians killed or badly injured while wearing headphones] rose from 16 in 2004 to 47 in 2011, bringing the total of cases to 116 over this period.” Researchers of the study, headed by Richard Lichenstein of the University of Maryland Hospital for Children, in Baltimore, further warned of an “inattentional blindness,” or “a distraction that lowers the resources the brain devotes to external stimuli.”

The results of the study — conclusive data parsed from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Google News, and the legal database, Westlaw — were published in the British journal, Injury Prevention.

At the time the story appeared, a cursory search of the word “headphones” into Google News generated upward of 330 results, all citing the same Lichenstein study. It surfaced in The Daily News, Fox News Radio…  the L Magazine picked it up from The Daily News, adding that the NYPD’s 34th Precinct “created its own texting-while-walking awareness campaign last year.” The results of the research were also published in The Washington Examiner, ABC News, Metro New York, NBC Washington, and hundreds of other media sources all over the web.

The one conspicuously absent item missing from those 330+ stories was any mention of the 27th Senate District’s now former legislator, Carl Kruger.

Continue Reading »