SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Capt. Mastrokostas and Council President Etienne present "Cop of the Month" awards to 4 officers

A larger audience than usual turned out to last night’s 61st Community Council meeting. Many, it seems, turned out to challenge Captain Georgios Mastrokostas from the 61st Precinct about problems on their block or with area businesses.

The most contentious part of the meeting occurred when a resident of East 19th Street and Avenue W complained to the captain about the dismissive attitude of police responding to consistent problems on her block. We’ve written before about this block being a haven for graffiti, and the resident stressed that despite numerous complaints police offers appear to have done little. She also said drugs were increasingly a problem, and that she had called police to have them pick up a bag of crack-cocaine she found in the street. She said dealers in cars often come to the poorly lit street to conduct transactions before driving off.

“The block is a hangout spot, an orgy spot, a get high spot,” she said.

Read the captain’s response and more meeting coverage

From the New York Times:

Boy’s Leg Is Severed in Tunnel on N Line

A teenager’s leg was severed by a train while he was in a Brooklyn subway tunnel on Saturday night, planning to paint graffiti with two other boys, the authorities said.

…

They were about 75 feet north of the platform at the Kings Highway station when the accident occurred, the police said.

The teenagers had noticed a train leaving the station and were standing inside recesses normally used by maintenance workers alongside the tracks. It was unclear whether Jose’s leg had been in the path of the train, if his clothing got caught, or if there was some other cause, the police said.

“He was in a box by himself,” Julio said, referring to the recess that Jose was standing in. “I knew something was going to happen, I saw my cousin walk to my brother’s box. The train sliced his knee. I saw sparks and him laying there.”

According to a law enforcement official who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details of the investigation, Jose was hit by a metal part of the train called the shoe, which connects to the third rail.

“He is lucky that all he had was his leg amputated,” the official said. “If he had been touching another piece of metal when he was hit by the shoe, he would have burst into flames because of all the electricity.”

It was not clear whether Jose’s leg was severed by the shoe or by the train’s wheels.

The train did not stop because the driver did not know anyone had been hit, the official said.

Julio said that he yelled to his brother, “Droopy’s dead! Droopy’s dead!” using Jose’s nickname.

“He was moaning, ‘Oh, my knee,’ ” Julio said. “We said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here.’ ”

Julio said that only a little skin connected the lower part of Jose’s leg with the top; Julio tried to hold it together while his brother struggled to carry Jose on his back.

A train passed in the other direction, and the police and rescue workers soon arrived.

“He asked the cops, ‘Can I get up and walk?’ ” Julio said. “They said, ‘No, you have no leg.’ ”

Recently we ran an article that covered a graffiti problem on East 19th Street and other places (and here, here, here and here). It began to look like Sheepshead Bites is anti-graffiti, but in reality this blog’s editor, Ned Berke, is a big fan of street art done well. We just don’t like the shmucks who are putting their hideous marks on other people’s property.

We have a message for them: practice at home. Get good, then get paid for it.

There are many businesses in the area that have put talented graffiti artists to good use.

Benny's Gourmet Pizza (Photo by Ray Johnson)

Above, Pizzeria Del Corso (3003 Avenue U off Batchelder Street) has done a mural that is a perfect example of graffiti done right. It’s a beautiful, full-size mural promoting the business it adorns. It is there with purpose and reason, it’s fun to look at, and it’s not vandalism.

They’re not the only pie-tossers with the idea. Benny’s Gourmet Pizza (1730 Jerome Avenue) has a really well-done piece that takes up the entire length of the building and has some interesting characters on it.

The new Boost Mobile store opening up at 1505 Sheepshead Bay Road is getting artist Sueworks to put up a mural indoors once they get permission from the suits higher up.

And sometimes graffiti can be informational, like this piece on Coney Island Avenue:

For those of you “artists” out there that enjoy tagging post offices and garages, why not take this example to heart? You don’t have to vandalize property to display your art. It certainly doesn’t make you better, and no one gives a crap about your street cred. You get cred by being good. So find someone who’ll give you a legal canvas to work on, volunteer your talent, and help make your neighborhood a better place to live. You can earn some respect and some bank while you’re at it, and come out of the shadows as a respected artist.

With additional reporting by Ned Berke.

The owners of the two houses at 1809 and 1811 Voorhies Avenue told Courier-Life reporters they would prefer to subcontract the houses to the city for use as a halfway house or homeless shelter.

We wrote about the houses last week, after tenants at 1811 Voorhies sprayed graffiti reading “Welcome to Hell” and “Bed Bugs Paradise” along the front. The graffiti has since been removed.

One can only wonder what set Courier-Life on the case (hmm…), but reporters spoke to the owners, Iliya Honovich and Vladimir Parsol, who said they bought the properties back in 2006. They are approved only for single room occupancy (SRO) so they can only serve as rooming houses. The duo bought the pair of houses hoping to rezone it to build condos, but Community Board 15 rejected their attempts saying there are already too many condos in the area.

“Having an SRO is like a suicide deal. There’s always going to be some kind of problem. There’s always bums and weird people that live there,” Honovich told Courier-Life.

Now the owners are seeking to subcontract the buildings to the city for use as a shelter or other institutional housing, saying the guaranteed rent from the city would afford them better security and maintenance. To simply turn the houses into two-family homes would involve a lengthy,  expensive battle through housing court.

Screw Red Hook and Real World, and screw Jersey Shore and their shore house. I think we just found our shooting location for Sheepshead Shore.

We received a number of e-mails and photos about this building at East 18th Street and Voorhies Avenue. Apparently, unhappy tenants got tired of airing their grievances to the landlord about the bed bugs, and now they’ve made it public. I’ve seen “Welcome to Hell” painted on the building several times over the years.

Does anyone know what the deal with this house is? I’ve heard it was a halfway house or some other sort of institutional housing, while others have told me it’s a boardinghouse for illegal immigrants. That’s a “For Rent” sign on the column, so that may nix the first idea, and – awful as it sounds – the grammar is a little too good to be done by ESL residents.

This has always been one of my favorite houses in Sheepshead Bay, if only for the big mystery it presents and its film noir grittiness. I mean, come on, can’t you just imagine the drama, the drugs, the sex, the murder that tiny, cold door?

It looks as if our local graffiti maven, Red Fish Smoking, is moving away from his crappy stickers and onto some “found art.”

Okay, okay, so it’s not red. But it is dead, and my name is Ned, so it’s all gravy.

After yesterday’s rain, reader EdFark spotted this dead fish smoking on the asphalt near Avenue T and East 18th Street. He snapped a cell phone picture and sent it our way. Any ideas on how this little bugger found his way nearly a mile from any large body of water?

When a resident of East 19th Street first began complaining to us – months ago – about the graffiti here, we shrugged it off. We figured, “This is New York City, there’s always going to be graffiti. You just gotta report it and remove it, like everyone else does.”

When the resident continued to complain, saying the vandals were targeting homes, we thought it was weird and worth checking out. But we got caught up in other things and never went to take photos.

To that resident, we’re sorry. Very, very sorry. You’ve sent us these photos and shocked us. Then we went to take a walk of our own and saw even more graffiti, including on residential property. We dropped the ball on this one.

But we’re not the only ones. I’ve seen the way the the police handle your complaints at meetings. They have the same reaction we initially had. But it’s obvious that East 19th Street between Avenue X and Avenue W has a higher level of graffiti and vandalism than surrounding blocks. It could be because it’s not particularly well lit, and the United States Post Office sorting facility, the auto repair shop, and the apartment building prove to be appealing canvases.

Whatever the case, police officers ought to be making more frequent night patrols down the block and local leaders should work with the business owners to install security lights. This is preventable.

More photos after the jump.

Following yesterday’s report about graffiti vandals tagging the subway platforms at Gravesend Neck Road and Avenue U, one reader sent us a much better shot of the crap at Neck Road. Thank you, reader, you can collect your free hug when we finally have our first Sheepshead Bites meetup.

Courtesy of BrooklynQ

Reports began pouring in about a week ago that the Avenue U and Gravesend Neck Road train stations were already covered in graffiti. It wasn’t very long ago that the platforms finally began to take shape after a year of work, and as soon as they had walls they got some “art.”

Seriously, Sheepshead Bay needs better street artists. These guys suck.

On a related note about things that suck – our budget. We couldn’t afford the $2.25 to go up on the platform and snap a shot, so all we’ve got is this cruddy cell phone photo from a reader. So please, send us more photos of the construction and the vandalism, and we’ll post them. Free hug for every published photo!

Send photos to nberke [at] sheepsheadbites [dot] com or upload them to your Facebook account and tag them with “Sheepshead Bites”

The Brooklyn Paper reported that police captured the graffiti artists who had been tagging North Brooklyn’s signs, surfaces, and buildings with their monickers, “Rex” and “Guder”.

Later, the Brooklyn Heights Blog and some of its investigative readers put faces and videos to the names when they found the suspects’ social networking pages.

Here, in Sheepshead Bay, when vandals plaster poles with their unwanted messages, what do we do? We write posts and the graffiti gets painted over — sort of. So, while North Brooklyn vandals get arrested, Southern Brooklyn criminals still plague us, and there is no clue as to who is responsible for the mysterious Bolshevik Criminal Plague messages.

Detectives at the 84th Precinct got the job done and arrested the guys based on a video that showed Rex Ikwueme and Joseph Daiuto in the act of defacing building’s wall. Doesn’t anyone have any video they can turn over to the 61st Precinct showing our local plaguers in action?

We’ll have to be happy with the solution of paint haphazardly slopped over the mess. Unless, of course, there are some investigative readers out there, looking to step up to the plate by doing some research to put the freeze on these taggers.