Unfortunately, according to Kinetic Carnival, the Coney Island blog, Thor has begun booting poor people from the area. Says Kinetic Carnival:

Thor has given notice to most of their newly acquired tenants in the Henderson’s building and beyond!…This is just the beginning of Thor clearing its land up for the zone that will mark the first construction site towards the revitalization of the New Coney.

Having spent some scary summer nights watching cops chase teens through Astroland, we are not too sad about this massive urban renewal. And we don’t trust opponents. After all, community activists also objected to the construction of Keyspan Park, home of a very minor league Mets team, and that turned out to be such an astonishing addition to the area, we are almost trading in our copy of Das Kapital for a Brooks Brothers tie.

We do have one question. After Thor finishes the project, will the area still have that hot-doggy, French-fryey smell that mugged our senses as we walked from the D Train, down the ramp to the Surf Avenue on the hottest day in July?

– Jerry Saieh

– Olena Adames

From the website of DDB: “About two dozen people — including homeowners, a commercial property owner, Freddy’s Bar on Dean Street and families and individuals who rent — are arguing that use of eminent domain is unconstitutional.

“You have a Puerto Rican extended family, a Romanian immigrant, you have a Pakistani family with nine kids — this is New York. This is Brooklyn,” said plaintiff Daniel Goldstein, who helped organize the anti-arena group, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn.

The 8-million-square-foot project will create 6,400 housing units, including 2,250 units for low- and middle-income families. About 600 of those affordable apartments will be for sale. A spokesman for Forest CityRatner declined comment for this story.”

Having lived a few blocks from the project from nearly 27 years, we have mixed feelings. While we are not crazy-in-love with Atlantic Avenue, we hate, hate, hate Ratner’s other project–the Atlantic Mall.

94 years Old & Homeless. The Brooklyn Paper, which often does harder-hitting stories than the gossip-heavy dailies, has a horrifying story about Dominck Diomede who has lived in Carroll Gardens who is being evicted because he doesn’t have a lease. He didn’t need one; he rented from his best friend. Now the long-dead friend’s grandkids want Diomede out because he pays only $500 rent.

Brooklyn tops Lonely Planet’s “best” life for ‘07. Headscratcher of the week. Iconoclastic travel guide, The Lonely Planet, has picked Brooklyn as one of the “hottest” places to visit on earth. We have endured Brooklyn since 1979, and while we find many things here, uh, endearing, we find many other things about Brooklyn red-neckish. Like murder, for instance. Like the Park Slope Food Co-op. Like creepy landlords who evict 94-year-olds who always pay the rent. Like anything having to do with Borough President Marty Markowitz. Like hipper-than-thou trendoids who laughingly socialize with each other as the World Trade Center burns in the background (click to see photo and critique of Frank Rich’s famoust NYT article). Like 100-degree days and middle-of-the-night boom boxes on wheels, and pols who kiss anyone’s ass who’ll get them elected, and boring movies, and DUMBO becoming a millionaires enclave, and Little League organizations that force tens of thousand of kids to live in bench-dwelling misery each summer.

Yeah, this place is hotter’n a pepper sprout.

Here are the likely consequences, with some NYC thrown in.

1. frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (like 20 more above 100 degree days in August).

2. floods–overflowing sewers–cholera, impassable streets, stuck subways

3. droughts–water is our main resource. No water, no city.

4. heat waves–death, increased reliance on AC, blackouts, looting.

5. hurricanes\tornados–Think Katrina in NYC.

6. Varying crop yield–nice way to say bare shelves at your local Met Foods

7. Rising oceans–oceans rise, Manhattan disappears. You can’t stop tides.

8. species extinctions–if insect-eating birds alone vanish, the incidence of malaria skyrockets. Malaria kills 1-3 million people each year, and is the fifth leading cause of death among children in Africa.

Other effects:

Effects on ecosystems: Some species may be forced from their habitats (possibly to extinction) because of changing conditions, while others may flourish.

Thawing of tundra, which can release significant amounts of the potent greenhouse gas, methane, which is trapped in permafrost and ice clathrate compounds.

One ecological effect: polar bears use sea ice to reach their prey and they must swim to another ice floe when one breaks up.

Glacier retreat around the world: there has been a net decline in 142 of the 144 mountain glaciers with records from 1900 to 1980. Since 1980 global glacier retreat has increased significantly. Hindu Kush and Himalayan glacial melts are especially scarey. The melt of these glaciers is a large and reliable source of water for China, India, and much of Asia Increased melting would cause greater flow for several decades, after which “some areas of the most populated region on Earth are likely to ‘run out of water’”

Destabilization of ocean currents. Any change in currents would change the earth’s weather systems. We have no way to survive raging elements

Environmental refugees: as coastal cities flood, refugees would flee, overtaxing social structures of neighboring cities.

Spread of disease: outbreaks of Vibrio parahaemolyticus gastroenteritis has been attributed to generally rising ocean temperature where infected oysters were harvested in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 2005.

Financial effects: Financial institutions, including the world’s two largest insurance companies, Munich Re and Swiss Re, warned in a 2002 study (UNEP summary) that “the increasing frequency of severe climatic events, coupled with social trends” could cost almost US$150 billion each year in the next decade. These costs would, through increased costs related to insurance and disaster relief, burden customers, taxpayers, and industry alike.

Biomass production: While it’s thought that an increase in carbon dioxide levels should speed up plant growth, which would slow down the effects of global warming, a new study has found the opposite to be true.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Hey Maimonides: you a hospital or dumpster?

– Susan Cruz

– Ricky Sit

This in mind, Recharger has contacted every bird-rescue person he knows, all of whom have refused to adopt the bird, though one bird-rescuer is looking into donating Karl to the inmate garden on Rikers Island, where he will live out his days eating insects.

Karl apparently fell off a doomsday truck and wandered until a few tragically-hip Williamsburg types–wanting to do good without having to actually do good–pawned the former Herald Tribune writer off on doggy-hearted Recharger, who took the bird to his ex-dog’s house.

One reason, no one wants Karl is because of the bird flu menace domestic birds may or may not spread. With more than 300 live poulty businesses in the metropolitan area, this is serious stuff. A recurrence of the avian flew epidemic, like the one in 1918 that wiped out an estimated 40 million people worldwide, has been predicted for years. New York health officials, however, assure us that guineahens like Karl–if he did indeed fall off a poultry truck–are not infectious.

Other than that–and the early years when one or two revelers got shot–the parade has always been a yawn. Recharger thinks NYC should cancel ALL parades–starting with that epitome of pretention–the sophmoric Mermaid Parade.