SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Source: David Mendl via flavorwire.com

David Mandl, a writer, photographer and Bensonhurst native, completed a gorgeous new photo essay for Flavor Wire. The photo essay explores what Mandl calls “Unknown Brooklyn.” For better or worse, it’s almost exclusively Southern Brooklyn, with photos from Midwood, Sea Gate, Canarsie and Sheepshead Bay. Sure, it’s known to us, but we’re used to being a world away from Flavor Wire’s “culturally connected people.” That’s fine by us.

Source: David Mendl via flavorwire.com

One of my favorite passages describes Mandl’s trip through Sheepshead Bay where he discovered a strip of tiny houses with an interesting history:

Toward the eastern end of Sheepshead Bay and just off the neighborhood’s main drag, Emmons Avenue, there’s a cluster of tiny streets that most people pass by without even noticing them. Created mostly in the ’20s, and “built on sand,” according to one resident I spoke to, they used to be lined with summer cottages used by wealthy patrons of the nearby race track (which was demolished long ago). Those cottages have been replaced with real, heated, year-round houses, albeit very small ones.

I also appreciated Mandl’s exploration of the abandoned Long Island Rail Road line that cuts through Midwood. The creepy abandoned tracks always give a ghostly vibe when I cross the blocked overpasses that give you a limited view of a once busy transit line.

Source: David Mandl via flavorwire.com

Some of the damage in Sea Gate, at the tip of Coney Island, left by Sandy. Photo by Erica Sherman

A news report is shining a light on Coney Island residents still left in the dark with no power, and in some cases with no heat or hot water. Public housing buildings right by the boardwalk got smashed by Sandy – flooding basements, pouring sand into building lobbies, and totaling cars – leaving elderly residents vulnerable, and causing increasing dismay as each day passes.

“Cold, no water, can’t flush my commode, I have to come downstairs and bring water up, ice, my refrigerator is not working because I have no electric. We need help,” told a Coney Island tenant to NY1.

As Sheepshead Bites’ own Laura Vladimirova previously reported, the situation on Coney Island is dire, and the area is in desperate need of supplies and volunteers like her and Bensonhurst Bean’s David Cohen, who both graciously offered their time to help out. If you are looking to donate, Laura recommends the following items: water, matches, candles, flashlights, canned goods, blankets, and clothing.

The Red Cross, FEMA, and the National Guard have set up emergency services in the area to help residents in the area with food and supplies. If you are a Coney Island resident in need of relief services, you can head to Brighton Beach Avenue and Coney Island Avenue until 4:00 p.m. Services are also being offered at West 25th Street and Surf Avenue until 4:00 p.m., and FEMA will be at the MCU Ballpark until 5 p.m.

More information can also be found on the Twitter pages of local pols, including Councilman Domenic M. Recchia, and Assemblymen Alec Brook-Krasny, both of whom are supplying up to the minute status reports and updates from Coney Island in an effort bring the area back from the abyss.

Julia Yakovlev (right) and her attorney Anna Val. Source: NY Daily News/Todd Maisel

A small measure of justice will be meted out in the case of the mysterious disappearance and presumed death of a reclusive Russian court translator living in Manhattan Beach.

Federal Judge I. Leo Glasser sentenced Julia Yakovlev, 37, to three years in prison, after she pleaded guilty a week before her trial was set to begin, for allegedly collaborating with her ex-surgeon husband, Dmitriy Yakovlev, 43, in the identity theft of Irina Malezhik. The missing 47-year-old Ukraine-born translator, who had no friends or family and “often wore her brown hair in a long braid,” was last seen passing a surveillance camera in her Corbin Place building’s lobby around 1 p.m., October 15, 2007 before she vanished.

It is presumed that Malezhik was murdered by the Russian ex-surgeon “after doing business with him.” He is also charged in the presumed murders of jewelry importer Viktor Alekseyev, who disappeared in 2005 and whose body was found dismembered in a New Jersey woods in 2006, and former NYPD mechanic Michael Klein.

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