Brooklyn

Three mornings a week I ride past the South Brooklyn Casket Company on Union Street with my two-year-old son strapped to the back of my bicycle on our way to the nursery school. Though the Casket Company always has trucks parked and unloading all over the sidewalk (and someone, I assume it's the boss, likes to park his Mercedes right next to the building's front door), I've always had a real soft spot for the Casket Co.. It is one of the last functioning light industrial companies in the neighborhood. And I know that my block, the stretch of little townhouses on the south side of Union between 4th and 5th was once filled with Italian funeral parlors. Bearing the pre-gentrifcation name, "South Brooklyn," the Casket Company is one of the last genuine remnants of the old neighborhood.

Guess what Transportation Alternatives' Brooke DuBose and Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson found in Downtown Brooklyn's physically-separated bike lane on Tillary Street this morning? Cars and trucks, of course. Four of them driving, parking or unloading in the "protected" bike lane in just ten minutes of filming. Streetsbloggers who have been debating bike lane design and enjoying Bollard Porn, will appreciate Clarence's video:

Norman "the Human Tape Rec'oder" Oder , the hardest working advocacy journalist in New York City, has really been digging in to the important but not-particularly-sexy issue of parking policy at Forest City Enterprise's proposed "Atlantic Yards" development in Brooklyn.

An Interview With Kent Barwick, President of the Municipal Art Society

See the world's first music video about shared-lane bike markings by Streetfilms Clarence Eckerson.

 Before being transformed into a public plaza, Willoughby Street was filled with illegally parked cars.

The green circle with the red dot in the middle marks the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Glenwood Road where, between 1995 and 2001 there were 23 pedestrian injuries and one fatality. More recent data shows the intersection to be one of the most dangerous in New York City. Source: Crashstat.org

BrooklynSpeaks on Atlantic Yards and Buses:

The scene on Monday morning at the pedestrian refuge island in the middle of Flatbush Avenue between Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Public Library.