The Brooklyn booth, which opened Thursday at 1 MetroTech Center at Jay Street and Myrtle Avenue, sold around 150 tickets during its first day.

But Victoria Bailey, executive director of the Theatre Development Fund, which operates TKTS, hopes the Brooklyn spot will be selling 2,500 to 3,000 tickets a week by the end of the year. The South Street Seaport location sells around 5,000 tickets a week, depending on time of year and weather. The main TKTS booth in Times Square, known for its long lines of impulsive tourists, sells between 18,000 and 30,000 tickets a week.

Is quiet Windsor Terrace going to become Brooklyn’s Lower East Side? No, but the owners of two LES shops are joining forces to open a bar and restaurant on 16th Street and Prospect Park West. One of the guys behind Ludlow Street’s bakery/record store/gig space Cake Shop is teaming with the owner of Rivington Street’s Tiny’s Giant Sandwich Shop to bring a beer bar and eatery to the old Universal Video space. The biz, name TBD, will probably open in the fall, according to Greg Curley, the Cake Shop co-owner behind the Windsor Terrace venture. Curley says he and his partner hope to have “low-key” performances but that it’s not going to be a full-blown venue like Cake Shop. What it will definitely be, we think, is some new-school competition for Farrell’s.

A tree was planted in front of the store in her memory on Sat. May 24th and Commerce Bank rep Clieve Christian and the Prospect Park Commerce Bank generously helped the community set up the Linda Woo Memorial Fund. The fund will pay for a plaque to be placed under the tree and for a fence to enclose the tree’s base. After these items are paid for, any additional funds will be given to Mrs. Woo’s family to use at their discretion.

There are several ways to contribute to the fund:

Checks can be made out to the Linda Woo Memorial Fund, placed in an envelope marked
“Memorial Fund” and dropped in the mail slots of either 243 Windsor Place or 18 Reeve Place.

Checks can be made out to the Linda Woo Memorial Fund and mailed to:

The Linda Woo Memorial Fund
c/o Brenna Beirne
711 Greenwood Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11218

www.paypal.com and donate to this account community11218@gmail.com which has been created specifically for this memorial fund—note that the purpose of your
donation is for the Linda Woo memorial fund. Paypal accepts major credit cards.

The fund was set up by members of the community and updates will be posted regularly on
kwtneighbors@yahoogroups.com and on www.windsorterracealliance.org. If you have questions, please call Community Board 7 at (718) 854-0003 or email communityboard7@yahoo.com.
Thank you for letting your friends and neighbors know about this fund.

South Slope writers, mommies and, yes, even a few coffee lovers, were crying in their lattes this week at the news that the original Tea Lounge — a neighborhood staple on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 10th Street — will close at the end of July, a victim, its owner said, of soaring rent demands.

“It’s killing us,” said co-owner Greg Wolf, who opened the popular java joint in early 2001. “The closing is completely ruining our lives.”

Wolf blamed his landlord, Georgina Tufano, for doubling the rent on his small storefront, though he declined to reveal the dollar figure.

“It’s astronomical,” said Wolf, whose other bars are on Union Street in Park Slope and on Court Street in Cobble Hill.

Tufano could not be reached for comment. Her lawyer did not return a call.

Tea Lounge fans were distressed by the news. “I am certain that this is the end of my writing career,” said author Libba Bray, who wrote the better part of her four novels — including the forthcoming mad cow disease comedy, “Going Bovine” — on the third couch from the door.

“The Tea Lounge is like ‘Cheers’ with coffee,” she added. “It is the source of my creativity and my super-foxiness.”

Susan Fox, who is not only a Park Slope parent, but the founder of the seminal Park Slope Parents Web site, said the closure would hit local moms hard.

“It’s an iconic mommy meeting place,” said Fox, a mother of two. “I blame gentrification.”

Perhaps, but if high rents are the villain here, the Tea Lounge is a victim of its own success. When it opened, property values and rents in the area below Ninth Street were lower and bodegas were more common than tony coffee joints.

“When we moved in, the neighborhood was different — everything is more expensive now,” Wolf said. “The only businesses opening on Seventh Avenue now are national chains, banks or real-estate brokers.

At the price our landlord wants,” Wolf added, “we would have to sell a coffee to everyone in the borough every single day.”

There are two pools near Park Slope and Windsor Terrace. The largest and nicest pool, Red Hook, is located at 155 Bay Street, between Clinton and Henry Streets. The closest subway stop in the F/G at Smith/9th Streets, and the closest bus stop is the B77 to Clinton/Lorraine.

There is also a little known pool at 3rd Avenue and Degraw St. It has a wading pool and I have heard good things about it too. The closest subway stop is the R at Union St. The closest bus stop is the B37 to 3rd Ave/Degraw, or the B63 to 5th Ave/St. Johns.

Please note that the City Parks and Recreation Department has a bizarre set of rules that must be followed in order to swim, including:

• You can wear a t-shirt with your bathing suit, but only if it is plain white.
• No bandaids. (My two year old will melt down at this rule.)
• No swimming aids, toys or flotation devices.
• Beach chairs, baby strollers, bags, blankets, or beach balls are not permitted on the pool deck.
• Books and bound periodicals are permitted on the pool deck. Newspapers are not.
• No eating or drinking except in designated areas.
• No hats in the water.

61-year-old, Michael Martin of Stamford, CT was charged by the NYPD after assaulting children in Gravesend Park and two hours later at Diglio Playground in Boro Park, where the screams of a brother and sister brought the citizens patrol.

From the NY Post:

A pervert molested three young children in bathrooms at two Brooklyn parks before he was nabbed by a civilian patrol, police said Friday.

Michael Martin, 61, first struck about 2:30 p.m. Thursday in Gravesend Park in the Borough Park neighborhood after following an 8-year-old girl and her 4-year-old brother into the restroom.

As the girl lifted her brother onto the toilet, Martin said, “Don’t do that. The seat’s dirty,” a police source said.

Martin, who gives his address as a senior citizens’ home in Stamford, Conn., then sexually assaulted the boy and rubbed a sex toy on his sister, sources said.

The children screamed, and Martin took off, heading to another park less than a mile away.

Martin found his next victim two hours later in the Digilio Playground in Parkville, cops said.

He again followed an 8-year-old girl into a bathroom, where he asked her to touch a sex toy, police said.

The girl screamed, and the Shomrim civilian patrol grabbed Martin and held him until police arrived.

“This playground is packed with kids,” said Jorge Torres, 22, who was at the Digilio park Friday with his 7-month-old daughter. “What was he even doing around here? He should go to jail for the rest of his life. How could he do this to our children?”

Michael Catusco, 40, a transit cop, said he and his 10-year-old daughter had been at Gravesend Park on Thursday. “It was so crowded you couldn’t tell what was going on,” he said. “You see a lot of kids unattended. Children watching children. Anything can happen anytime.”

Martin, who was convicted of robbery in New York in 1987, was charged with committing a criminal sexual act, two counts of sexual abuse and three counts of endangering the welfare of a child. He was awaiting arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court last night.

None of the children suffered any physical injuries, but all were taken to area hospitals for evaluation.

From Gothamist:

The 61-year-old Stamford, CT man accused of sexually abusing three children in two different Brooklyn park bathrooms begged for mercy as he was being apprehended, but pleaded not guilty in front of a judge. Michael Martin was arrested after allegedly molesting three children at two Brooklyn parks. After the second incident, Martin was quickly caught by civilian patrol officers at the park and begged them not to call the police. He allegedly yelled, “I know what I did! I’ll seek professional help!”

Martin allegedly sexually assaulted a four-year-old boy in the restroom at Gravesend Park in Brooklyn Thursday afternoon, and then rubbed a sex toy against the boy’s eight-year-old sister. When the children began crying, Martin fled. A few hours later, Martin was back at another restroom, this time in Diglio Playground in Kensington, where he asked an eight-year-old girl to touch his sex toy. The girl screamed, which alerted the civilian patrol to chase and apprehend the Connecticut molestor.

At his arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court, Martin was singing a completely different tune via his lawyer, who told the press “[His client] completely denies all charges.” Martin gave his address as an apartment building on Main St. in Stamford, although no listing at that address could be found. According to the Stamford Advocate, Martin is not listed in a national registry of sex offenders.

The MTA presented a lovely photo-laden deck to the Park Slope Civic Council with the play-by-play.

While weekend service will continue to be disrupted occasionally (I spent two hours coming back from Manhattan last night, much of it transferring from the F, to the F-bus, to the “local shuttle” at Seventh) - work will really begin in the fall.

11/2008

• The G will be extended to Church Ave “indefinitely”

8/2010 - 12/2010

• No northbound service from Ft. Hamilton or Prospect Park - you’ll have to “back-ride” to Church or walk to 7th Ave to go to Manhattan
• Temporary F platform at 4th
• G-only at Smith/9th

1/2011 - 10/2011

• Smith/9th is closed Feb until Oct, bus service added
• F/G normal northbound service from Ft Hamilton, 15th, Seventh

7/2011 - 10/2011

• Southbound local track out - no southbound Prospect Park, Ft Ham
• Temporary southbound platform at 4th Ave

11/2011 - 4/2012

• Southbound service normal, except 4th Ave which is G-only southbound
• Northbound normal

5/2012

• All normal
• G service to Church, still in effect

Parent Play, founded a year and a half ago to help parents get a life, arranges to provide babysitters on site at restaurants and bars that have unused meeting space, and let parents bring their tike along to their (new) favorite watering hole. From The Brooklyn Paper:

Jeffrey Rodman, the owner of DUMBO’s Water Street Restaurant and Lounge, has contracted with a Manhattan company called Parent Play to provide babysitting during dinnertime at the restaurant, which is between Main and Dock streets in the increasingly kid-populated neighborhood.

“Anything’s better than having screaming children in a restaurant,” said Rodman.

Brian Kaplan, who founded Parent Play with his wife a year and a half ago, said the service was easy to use: Parents call the company to make both a dinner and babysitter reservation. At the restaurant, the babysitter, equipped with toys and play mats, gives the parents a “security card” — to prevent the child going home with the wrong adult — and then the babes go play while the parents eat …

The cost of the service, even with Water Street footing some of the bill, is $18 for one child, $25 for two, and $30 for three.

The service is available at three Manhattan restaurants, Kaplan said; Water Street is thus far the only Brooklyn venue.

After years of struggling with being trapped in a neighborhood not of their own making, the Lefferts Manor Association has decided to zoom straight past speed bumps to gating off their private streets — returning peace calm and order to a troubled land.

From Hawthorne Street:

While some residents were opposed to all forms of traffic calming, others were concerned about speed humps’ impact on parking spaces, the potential for pollution and noise, the unattractiveness of additional road signs, and a possible invasion of bears. It was agreed that preventing all through-traffic in Lefferts Manor addressed these concerns.

“We’ve seen some beautiful ornamentation and ironwork in places like Sea Gate,” said Lefferts Manor Association President Ben Edwards, “and we think we can put up similar, if smaller, versions around the Manor.”

Another resident added that the gates would go a long way to “maintaining the country feel of the neighborhood against encroachment from developers.”

…

Reaction from outside of Lefferts Manor was mixed. Neighborhood coffee shop K-Dog and Dunebuggy announced a plan to begin deliveries into Lefferts Manor, while a doctor at Kings County Hospital said “I don’t care; I drive down Winthrop.”

Did I mention I’m sick of hearing about K-Dog? How gentrified can be a neighborhood be if they have exactly one store of note?