It’s been a real week here in Bushwick already, friends. While you have been enjoying CMJ and messing around on Vine, a lot has been going on right outside your door!
News12 Brooklyn reports that on Wednesday, Make The Road New York organized a 200-strong march in the neighborhood to demand that Bushwick receive more attention from Alternative Enforcement Program, the Department of Housing’s initiative to provide maintenance services where landlords fall short. The DOB has responded to the march with the statement that the group doesn’t accurately represent the extent of the work they’ve done in the neighborhood, so doubtless there will be plenty more news on the subject in the coming weeks.
Danielle Furfaro at the Brooklyn Paper reports that there’s significant frustration and accusations of governmental racism at Bushwick’s District 14 Community Education Council over a proposed plan from the Department of Education to add a second elementary school to the campus at 207 Bushwick Avenue, between Scholes and Meserole, which already houses both PS 196 and MS 582. The plan would increase the student body by about 30%, which the DOE states is reasonable for a school that it describes as currently at only 64% capacity, but educators and administrators who work in the school are concerned that the addition would mean fewer science labs, dance rooms, and other amenities for students who are part of a historically underserved community. While we’re sure the DOE is stretched pretty thin in general these days, we’re also sure that adding 300 students to a school building doesn’t sound like something that would fly in a more affluent neighborhood, where controversy would typically alight on far more trivial things (we’re looking at you, Park Slope).
If you were living on the boat that got evicted last week, we’re sorry to hear it. When you move into your new place, be it a treehouse, a bouncy castle or a rainbow school bus, please invite us over for parties.
Bedford and Bowery hosted a reading by Bushwick literary darlings Brando Skyhouse, Paul Rome, and Patricia E. Gillespie on Wednesday night. If you didn’t make it but would be into checking out the newest work from the three, there’s a stream of the evening up on the B&B site.
And Banksy was back on the Bushwick border with another piece yesterday (how’s that for alliteration?!) – although Gothamist and the Post inform us that the NYPD has it out for the dude.