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Learning from Miami: NYC Activists Beware!
By Williams ColeIf last month’s protest in Miami against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) meeting is any indication, the strategy developing among law enforcement agencies regarding how to handle large protests is similar to a Powell Doctrine for domestic dissent: overwhelming force, preemptive arrests, and intense multi-agency reconnaissance.
There Goes the Neighborhood: Luxury Condo Threatens to Destroy Fort Greene’s Historic Charm
By Corrie PikulResidents expressed disbelief that a building of this size would be permitted within the Fort Greene Historic District. But that main point of confusion for the citizens is the saving grace of the developers: 383 Carlton Avenue is contiguous with the Historic District, but does not technically fall within its protective boundaries.
A Clinton Hill Condo’s Secret Past
By Claire HoffmanThe large sandstone plaque over the front door at 320 Washington Avenue in Brooklyn reads “Graham Home for Old Ladies.” Nestled away from the street on a quiet, residential block of polished brownstones and an elegant park, the building’s soaring windows, circular driveway, and red brick colonnades seem to be yet another architectural marvel in Brooklyn’s historic landmark district of Clinton Hill.
Letitia James Takes Office
By Signe ShackelfordBy the time Letitia James arrives at Mike’s Restaurant in Fort Greene, she is running an hour behind. But she doesn’t settle at her table until she’s greeted several patrons, all of whom treat her with near reverential respect. She is coming from a senior center, where “one poem became two poems became ten, and I couldn’t leave.”
Coney Island: A 21st-Century Attraction?
By Arthur VaughanThe old photographs tell it best: millions of incandescent lights, the luminous towers rising beside the sea, the electric wheels and fiery minarets, the throng on the boardwalk (women in long skirts, men with straw boaters), the exuberant bathers on the beach.
Inside Brooklyn’s Russian Bathhouses
By Todd ChandlerWhen I asked a couple of Russian friends about the city’s bathhouses, they recounted childhood memories of eucalyptus-scented steam and saunas packed full of sweating family members. New York City and the surrounding boroughs indeed have a long tradition of public bathhouses.
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