SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Photo By Erica Sherman

After a stream of complaints sent to the Bloomberg administration and pressure from Senator Charles Schumer, the city has reversed its refusal to reimburse Superstorm Sandy victims who already spent their own money on repairing their properties, according to a report by the New York Times.

Earlier this month, we reported on how the disbursement of federal dollars from the $60 billion Sandy bill excluded paybacks for New York City residents who already paid for storm repairs out of pocket. Residents living in the rest of New York state, Long Island and New Jersey would be paid back, regardless of whether they had paid for repairs yet or not. The whole situation seemed unfair.

At the time before the reversal, the city argued that they wanted to focus the first $1.77 billion Community Development Block Grants on property owners who couldn’t afford repairs. The city received a torrent of complaints on the plan to exclude people who were desperate to rebuild as quickly as possible during a two-week comment period. The Bloomberg administration subsequently reversed their decision.

Senator Schumer who was adamantly opposed to the original plan from the start called the city’s reversal, ” a step in the right direction.”

Now that everyone has a chance to be reimbursed for Sandy repairs, the revised city plan goes to the Housing and Urban Development Department for review. Once the plan is officially considered, the city promised it would provide more details for how people can qualify for the grants.

Today’s lesson: life isn’t fair. According to a report in the New York Daily News, the federal government will reimburse those who live in Long Island and made Sandy repairs out-of-pocket, but not those who live in New York City.

The difference has to do with the distribution of community development block grants being doled out by the federal government. The City of New York is receiving $1.8 billion to be dispersed to residents. It is the only municipality to be given an allocation directly from the federal government. The feds gave separate block grants to New York State, excluding the city, and New Jersey.

Sounds good, except the city, which, like New York State and New Jersey, drew up its own proposed guidelines for disbursement, included a clause that prohibits city dwellers from receiving compensation for repairs that they have already paid for. The State of New York, meanwhile, is getting $1.7 billion. There is no such restriction in the dispersal of their funds, and the state is expected to reimburse homeowners who paid for repairs themselves.

New York City residents were predictably peeved at the short shrift headed their way.

“I’m angry, but not surprised. The city does things their way,” Kathy Kirker told the Daily News.

Kirker, a Breezy Point resident, said her mother had to shell out $15,000 for a new furnace because her insurance wouldn’t cover it.

Senator Charles Schumer has rightfully called the discrepancy unfair and is fighting the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to get it changed.

“There needs to be consistency between New York City and New York State’s action plans to ensure that all homeowners in New York can access the same type of assistance,” Schumer wrote in a letter to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan on Tuesday.

“A homeowner in Rockaway Beach … will not be eligible for the same benefit that a homeowner in Long Beach, just 10 miles away, will be able to access.”

In their defense, a spokesman for the city claimed that all of the plans to dole out the $1.8 billion was preliminary and that changes might come in the future. However, if things stand the way they are now, those who paid big bucks to fix their homes might be out of luck from getting any of that money back.

While Superstorm Sandy hit everyone in Southern Brooklyn hard, perhaps no one was hit harder than low-income renters in Coney Island and Brighton Beach, according to a report published by the New York Daily News.

Residents in Coney and Brighton filed more requests for federal aid after Sandy than any other neighborhood in the city. In numbers tabulated by Enterprise Community Partners, a national affordable housing organization, 14,649 people requested aid in Brighton Beach compared to 12,764 in Coney Island.

According to the report, 69 percent of the people requesting aid were earning less than $30,000, illuminating the overwhelming financial burden Sandy has imposed on those who could afford it least.

“Much of the reporting on Sandy victims has focused on homeowners. Yet, 55 percent of the surge victims in New York were very low-income renters, whose incomes are $18,000 a year on average,” said Max Weselcouch of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. “These households were vulnerable before the storm, and programs to assist them will need to take their need for affordable housing into account in order for them to fully recover from the storm’s damage.”

Twenty years ago, a Sheepshead Bay native took one of the neighborhood’s most popular summer pastimes – handball – and turned it into a beach sport.

Mark Miller, born in Sheepshead and raised in Fire Island, was bouncing a ball inside his music studio. After the ball took an unusual bounce off the inside corner of his wall, he decided to create a game built on reflexes.

What Miller invented soon evolved into is known as “Trangleball,” and if you head down to the beaches of Fire Island in the summer, or perhaps even the Czech Republic, you’re likely to see people playing it surrounded by onlookers.

The official version of the sport involves six people split into two teams, standing in a circle surrounding a yard-high, wooden pyramid. One of them bounces the ball off the face of the pyramid either towards a teammate or towards the opponents. Scoring occurs when a player fails to catch the ball within the boundaries, or steps outside the boundaries with the ball. The game is scored like volleyball and played to 11 points.

Trangleball has steadily become more popular through the years because its easy to learn and fun for anyone who likes to catch and throw, said its creator. Miller has promoted the game as much as possible throughout the years, but he doesn’t directly sell the ball and pyramid.

“I’m trying to sell the concept of the sport and educate them, I’m not trying to sell the game on my own,” he told Newsday years ago.

According to Trangleball’s official website, in the early 90′s the New York Department of Corrections purchased 10 games and Miller went to prisons to teach the game to inmates. Then in 2000, a student at a university in the Czech Republic wrote a thesis on Trangleball, and Miller traveled to “The European Sports Conference” to do a 10-day workshop on the sport. Since then, Trangleball has spread to other places like New Zealand, Japan, and France.

Miller has said in the past that he plans to continue promoting the game and creating different variations. Check out the detailed rules on the Trangleball website, and watch the instructional video for more info.

Source: ilination.net

There are lots of people who often joke about New York City seceding from New York State, and I admit, I’m one of them. But imagine my surprise to hear that there’s a secessionist movement for Long Island. As it turns out, Brooklyn is the capital of The Independent State of Long Island. That’s right.

I was watching the most recent episode of “How The States Got Their Names” on History Channel. This episode focused on the various accents across the country and eventually they got to discussing the accent’s from Long Island. This led to a small segment about The Independent State of Long Island and their dream of Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk succeeding into it’s own state. There’s even a pretty clever flag! Well, it got me to thinking. If Brooklyn was the capital of Long Island the 51st state then what would that mean for Sheepshead Bay?

How would things be different around here? Would we get more tax money for infrastructure? Would the port and bay get more development? Would we be a tourist destination? Without the MTA would we retain the focus for public transport to New York, or would easy access to the rest of the island become a priority?

Kinda makes you think doesn’t it? As for The Independent State of Long Island, the movement has been around since 2007. Check out the website for a whole bunch of interesting statistics, they even have a news page! As for me, I kinda wanna get that flag…

Clemente's crabs (Courtesy of fmk via Flickr)

Clemente’s Maryland Crabhouse (3939 Emmons Avenue), a rising star in Sheepshead Bay’s gastronomy scene, is gearing up for its first expansion. Known for their $29.95 all-you-can-eat crabs, the owners are fresh off the heels of a November renovation and are now plotting a grand opening in Montauk. Grub Street reports:

Jimmy Muir, owner of Clemente’s Maryland Crab House in Sheepshead Bay (a summer spot every bit as enjoyable as Captain Luna’s), tells us he’s opening a Montauk location, at the old Havana Beach Club at 448 West Lake Drive, in about three weeks. Like the current Clemente’s, which got a gut renovation back in November, it’ll have a back deck overlooking a marina (it’ll seat about 70), and it’ll also boast a takeout window (for lobster rolls and Italian ices) overlooking a front yard with about 50 seats for picnicking. What there won’t be, owing to seating concerns, is the $29.95 all-you-can-eat crab special that Clemente’s is best known for.

Great to see some Sheepshead Bay charm gussyin’ up those Lawnguyland shlubs, but what sort of “seating concerns” are preventing the restaurant from offering its most renowned menu item?