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His parents still live there. He still keeps an office there. But it's not the same neighborhood he grew up in, and his feelings about newcomers now inhabiting once-blighted parts of America's most-populous city like Fort Greene slapped many people in the face after the famed director went into an expletive-laced rant during an African-American History Month lecture on Tuesday. Spike Lee on gentrification "I grew up here in New York. It's changed," Lee said at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, an art, design, and architecture school. "And why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the South Bronx,...

<p>The "Defend Brooklyn" hoodie that Spike Lee wore last night should've been a clear indicator regarding his thoughts on gentrification in the borough that raised him.</p> <p>Last night, Lee appeared at Pratt Institute for a Black History Month lecture, but the discussion quickly became a piercingly truthful rant from the opinionated auteur. Citing a New York Times article about the supposed good of gentrification, Lee unleashed a seven-minute tirade about how the changes in Brooklyn infuriate him, specifically the "Christopher Columbus Syndrome."</p>

Mayor de Blasio made a call to a top NYPD spokeswoman about the arrest of a pal who was key to helping him in the black vote last year – and the guy was spared a night in jail. Bishop Orlando Findlayter, pastor of New Hope Christian church in Queens, was pulled over at 11:21 p.m. Monday in East Flatbush, Brooklyn for making a left turn without signaling, according to the Wall Street Journal. When cops ran his license, they found two warrants issued on Jan. 16 for failing to appear in court for prior protest arrests. He was arrested...

GED prep guides, nursing and other professional exam cliff notes were high on the list of frequently filched books — but so too were graphic novels, library officials said. Book thieves checked out but never returned 70,144 books from Brooklyn Public Library’s 60 cash-strapped branches in 2012, records show. GED prep guides, nursing and other professional exam cliff notes were high on the list of frequently filched books — but so too were graphic novels, library officials said. “Those are always going missing,” a librarian at the Brooklyn Heights branch told the Daily News Thursday.

The Church of the Holy Name of Jesus in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, has begun the process of undoing the comically awful wreckovation to which it was subjected in 1980. Built and consecrated in 1878, the church’s original sanctuary looked like this. (Photographs from the parish's facebook page.) The first shows the original altar during a wedding, the second gives a better idea of the paintings on the back wall behind it. It was changed to look like this. No one will be surprised to hear that the comments on the facebook page linked above are...

I am watching them take my country from me -- the Obamas, the de Blasios, the Holders, the generic Democrats with their imaginary sincerity and their simplistic complaints about income inequality. As if excellence and the ability to earn are wicked traits. In the meantime, Obama and his ilk are living pretty well. They are not sleeping in boxes on cold urban streets. Like thieves in the night, they try to steal the votes from the poor so that they can live even richer lifestyles. They pretend to identify with the middle class, as if their lifestyles and prestige even...

Monday, January 20, 2014 A Bangladesh Grows in Brooklyn Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Walk along Church Avenue past Beverly Road and turn east onto McDonald Avenue and you will see where the old standards of working class Brooklyn, aging homes with faded American flags and loose siding flapping in the wind, surly bars tucked into the shadows of street corners and the last video stores hanging on to a dying industry give way to mosques and grocery stores selling goat meat. Mosques grow like mushrooms in basements and above stores offering halal patties, pizza and...

Brooklyn - Council Member Inez Barron is opposed to her Council district being the site for Denny’s Restaurant reported new location on Pennsylvania Ave between Linden Boulevard and Stanley Avenue. “It is insulting for Denny’s to seek to come into a community that is Black and Latino. Just as we fought successfully to keep Wal-Mart with a similar history of discrimination and low wage workers with minimal benefits from coming to our community, we will wage the battles necessary to keep Denny’s out,” Councilmember Barron says. "Denny’s racist and discriminatory past cannot be ignored. In 1994, Denny’s paid out an...

Mayor de Blasio’s ties to the Brooklyn Democratic boss he teamed up with to anoint the next City Council speaker run all the way to Hizzoner’s doorstep, The Post has learned. Since 2012, de Blasio has refinanced both homes he owns in Park Slope through the firm where Brooklyn Democratic leader Frank Seddio formerly served as vice president — Wall Street Mortgage Bankers. Public records show that the most recent deal came just three days after de Blasio’s primary victory on Sept. 10, when he refinanced his 11th Street home with the firm for $625,000. In June 2012, he had...

A Brooklyn man named Barry Baldwin, 35, has been arrested and charged with five incidents in which Jewish women were viciously punched for no apparent reason. The incidents are seen as being connected to a sadistic game called the “knockout game,” which involves targeting unsuspecting victims on the street and knocking them out with a sucker punch. Police picked up Baldwin last week, and originally connected him to six incidents and charged him with six hate crimes because he targeted Jewish victims, sources told the Daily News. For some reason, the charges were later downgraded to assaults without a hate...

<p>A federal judgeon Wednesday backed the city's Department of Education, ruling that the display of the nativity scene, unlike Christmas trees and menorahs, was not secular and has no place in classrooms.</p> <p>Judge Charles Sifton in Brooklyn dismissed the lawsuit brought forth by Andrea Skoros, 34, of College Point, saying the city's holiday displays policy banning non-secular symbols from schools did not violate her right to free exercise of religion.</p>

Year-end boasts by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that New York is the safest big city in America can ring hollow in Brownsville, a Brooklyn neighborhood where the cycle of violence, silence and retribution feels entrenched and where crime seems immune to strategies that have brought record lows across the city. A burst of gunfire on neighborhood streets this past summer typified the frustrating cycle. A baby boy was struck in the head by a stray bullet and killed as he sat in his stroller. His father, who police believe was the intended target, refused to help police identify the gunman. […]...

Brooklyn District Attorney-elect Ken Thompson is happy to be taking Charles Hynes’ seat next week—but he says the veteran lawman can keep his throne. Thompson transition aide Arnie Kriss has told a Hynes staffer that Thompson wants the toilet seat in the district attorney’s private bathroom replaced, said a source close to the outgoing DA. “Kriss said Thompson wants a new toilet seat installed in the DA’s private bathroom because he doesn’t want to sit on the same toilet seat that Hynes sat on,” the source said. “You’d think he’d be worried about running the office, not about a toilet...

Hundreds of teenagers stormed and trashed a Brooklyn mall in a wild flash mob that forced the shopping center to close its doors during day-after Christmas sales, sources said on Friday. More than 400 crazed teens grabbed and smashed jars of candy, stole cheap items such as baby balloons and beat up security guards at Kings Plaza Shopping Center in Mill Basin between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., merchants said. A violent game of “Knockout” also broke out on the upper level of the mall — and one teen may have been carrying a gun, sources said.

Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron was a firebrand to the end, delivering a farewell speech that echoed many of the greatest hits of his controversial tenure barron.jpg “I just wanted to come before you to say that I will always be black, radical, revolutionary. I will always be a socialist, anti-capitalist/imperialist” said Barron, who represents East New York, at the Council’s last meeting Thursday, where many members took the chance to make farewell remarks. “I went to Cuba. I went to Venezuela. I went to Zimbabwe. I brought you the president and you didn’t appreciate it!” he said, a reference to...

Brooklyn, NY - A woman walking along a Brooklyn street Saturday became the latest apparent victim of the sick “knockout game.” The 33-year-old was walking down the block with her 7-year-old daughter when she was ambushed in front of 1212 Elm Street in Midwood by a Black male in his thirties. The victim was taken to Maimonides Medical Center by EMS where she was treated for minor injuries and later released. the NYPD’s 70th precinct hate crime task force is investigating, no arrests have been made in the assault. police gave the description of the perpetrator as a Male, Black,...

When Haredim engage in violence, it's always, without exception, unequivocally, for a reason.What happened on Sunday, Dec. 1 that provoked the alleged Haredi outpouring of violence that resulted in serious bodily injury to one Taj Patterson, 22, on a street corner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at 4:00 in the morning? I recall a 1980s quote from an African American lady who said when she hears footsteps coming up behind her in an alley at night, turning back to see a group of Orthodox Jews is a big relief—compared with the alternative in her neighborhood. I’m sure you’ve heard a version of...

Oy vey you gorgeous people: enthusiasm junkie Marty Markowitz only has about 19 days left as Brooklyn's Greatest Borough President Ever!! And he's been on something of a zydy tour lately! Which means he's had plenty of opportunities to wax poetic about his 12 years in office, which have been THE GREATEST 12 YEARS IN THE HISTORY OF BROOKLYN OR THE WORLD!! Here, watch him rap about it. He stopped by The Brian Lehrer Show yesterday to talk about how Brooklyn has changed, and offered lots of praise, to all the beautiful lesbians and all the hard-working gays: “We remain...

The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the alleged beating of a 22-year-old fashion student at the hands of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish mob. Taj Patterson, 22, was walking home from a party through the predominantly ultra-Orthodox section of South Williamsburg when he says a group of at least twenty Jewish men attacked him. Patterson says that during the beating, the men yelled anti-gay slurs, including, "Stay down, f----t!” "I’m walking down some block by myself and then the next thing I know, I’m surrounded by a group of Hasidic Jewish men and they’re attacking me,” Patterson tells the Daily...

Amid an array of “knock-out” attacks against a number of Jews in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, a city councilwoman pointed to the success of the Jewish community as triggering the aggression. Councilwoman-elect Laurie Cumbo emphasized that while she “admire[s] the Jewish community immensely” for its work ethic, black teens may see it differently. “While I personally regard this level of tenacity, I also recognize that for others, the accomplishments of the Jewish community triggers feelings of resentment, and a sense that Jewish success is not also their success,” Cumbo, who was recently elected, wrote in a letter. Chief among the...