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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2020 12 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 43, No. 10 • March 6–12, 2020
Photo by Take the Streets NYC Very close shave
Pharmacies cleaned out by preppers
By Meg Capone
for Brooklyn Paper
Pharmacy staff are struggling to
keep shelves stocked with cleaning
supplies, masks, and cold medication
as locals stockpile supplies in
the wake of New York City’s first
coronavirus diagnosis.
“We just can’t seem to get stuff
on the shelf fast enough and people
are getting upset,” said an employee
at a Park Slope Rite Aid located
on Flatbush Avenue between
Fifth And Sixth Streets, who only
gave her name as Catalina.
Staff reported stockpiling at all
GHOSTLY LINEUP
seven stores surveyed by Brooklyn
Paper in Downtown Brooklyn,
Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope,
with customers making a b-line
for cleaning and healthcare products
including Lysol, hand sanitizer,
bottled water, wet wipes,
face masks, gloves and cold and
flu medication.
Stores had been selling more
than their usual share of those
products in the months since the
coronavirus began spreading out
of Wuhan, China, but locals have
been grabbing supplies by the arm
full since the NYC case was diagnosed
in Manhattan Sunday, Catalina
22 pairs of shoes were placed in front of the mayors favored workout spot.
said.
“When people come in here they
take a lot—like 20 mini hand sanitizers
at a time–and that’s why we
run out so fast,” she said.
Staff at a Duane Reade located
on Fulton Street near Jay Street
have resorted to rationing items
in a bid to keep certain products
in stock and ensure that all customers
can get at least some of
what they need.
“Our issue is people who are
coming in and buying in bulk.
We’ve been rationing but things
still go so quickly we’re forced
to restock,” said a manager there,
who gave his name as Ken, “I just
feel like it’s not fair that people
are hogging stuff and leaving others
with nothing.”
Another Downtown Duane
Reade located on Court Street
near Montague Street accepted
a shipment of over 1,000 bottles
of hand sanitizer on Friday — only
to completely sell out before Monday
morning, according to the drug
store manager.
“Sometimes we run out in
hours,” said Ken, “I recommend
coming in before noon or else there
will probably be nothing left.”
In addition to cleaning and
medical supplies, customers are
coming into drug stores seeking
flu shots in unusually high number,
according to the supervising
pharmacist at the Fulton Street
Duane Reade.
And as the stockpiling leads
to empty shelves, patrons turned
their frustration over the lack of
supplies and growing threat of the
coronavirus on staff.
“Stores need to be doing
better,”said one customer at the Jerolemon
Street Rite Aid near Clinton
Street in Brooklyn Heights,
who gave her name as Sariah. “This
isn’t a joke anymore.”
Gregory Pirog feeds the birds in MetroTech Center.
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
A Windsor Terrace man has
turned Downtown Brooklyn’s
MetroTech Commons into a veritable
circus, where he leads a menagerie
of feathered performers
that are delighting locals.
“They’re willing to put on a
show,” said Gregory Pirog of the
pigeons. “The part that gives me
the most joy is when they fly up
and down, they beat there wings
so hard — they’re like angels.”
The 68-year-old uses bird feed
as a lure to train his fowl friends
outside his office in America’s
By Todd Maisel
for Brooklyn Paper
Three workers escaped a potentially
deadly scaffolding collapse
with only minor injuries in
Williamsburg Thursday, according
to firefighters.
“These guys are awfully
lucky, that was a lot of debris
from those scaffolding,” said one
smoke eater.
The collapse occurred at a sixstory
construction site on Grand
Street between Lorimer Street
and Union Avenue at about 3 pm.
Workers were laboring from the
roof of a neighboring building,
when Thursday’s high winds toppled
the scaffolding supports, fire
officials said.
Firefighters raced to the scene
to find tons of wood and metal
tangled on the three story adjoining
roof and strewn across a rear
courtyard below, but the debris did
not bury the three workers caught
in the collapse, and rescuers were
able to provide immediate assistance,
authorities say.
Paramedics ferried the workers
from Global Construction to
the hospital, and supervisors on
the scene said, “Thank God they
will be okay,” while declining
further comment.
The fire department called inspectors
with the Department of
Buildings to the site, and officials
ordered a stop to all construction
worker pending further
investigation.
By Ben Verde
Brooklyn Paper
Transportation advocates lined
the sidewalk outside of Mayor Bill
de Blasio’s go-to YMCA branch in
Park Slope with an row of empty
shoes, hoping the scene would call
Hizzoner’s attention to the 22 pedestrians
killed by drivers in the
city since New Years.
At least, that was the plan —
another pedestrian was killed in
Queens during the early hours
Monday morning, bringing the
number of fatalities up to 23, and
leaving the activists short one pair
of shoes.
“We should not accept any
more traffic fatalities this year
or ever,” the advocates wrote on
Twitter. “Would we really say that
if we ended this year at ‘only’ 122
dead New Yorkers that would be
a success?”
The display, which was installed
outside the Ninth Street gym early
Monday morning, featured quotes
from the mayor himself that read
“Our society can’t prioritize our
cars over our children.”
The scourge of traffic-related
fatalities comes on the heels of
a particularly deadly 2019, when
motorists killed 124 pedestrians
and 28 cyclists — marking the first
time that traffic fatalities had increased
since de Blasio took office
in 2013.
This year is on track to mirror
2019’s numbers, including six pedestrians
that were killed by drivers
just last week.
That recent spate of deaths
Workers escape harrowing W’burg collapse
Street safety advocates greet de Blasio with empty shoes
includes a 7-year-old boy and a
10-year-old girl who were killed
two days apart while walking to
school in East New York.
Following those incidents, de
Blasio shared his grief at the tragedy.
“We won’t rest until the streets
around every school are safe for
our kids,” the Mayor tweeted.
Yet many street safety advocates
panned the lame duck chief
executive’s response as mere talk
and demanded a quicker investment
in Vision Zero — de Blasio’s
signature plan to prioritize
pedestrian safety over motorists
on city streets.
“The city’s 1.4 million car owners
dictate the livelihoods and
safety of 8.6 million New Yorkers,”
said Transportation Alternatives
Executive Director Danny
Harris. “New Yorkers cannot wait
weeks, months, or years for safe
streets. We must accelerate our
path to Vision Zero today.”
At an unrelated press conference
on Feb. 27, Hizzoner punted
on the idea of banning cars in
front of school buildings, saying
it didn’t mesh with his idea of Vision
Zero.
“Vision Zero is about getting
people to handle their vehicles differently.
It is not about the idea
that there aren’t going to be any
vehicles,” he said.
Reps at City Hall did not immediately
comment on whether
de Blasio had made his notorious
12-mile chauffeured drive to
the YMCA on Monday, where the
shoes and signs were removed at
around 8 am.
Three workers were injured when scaffolding collapsed at a construction site.
Photo by Todd Maisel
Local stores struggling to maintain inventory amid coronavirus stockpiling
Empty shelves that once held cleaning and disinfecting
products at a Downtown Duane Reade.
Photo by Meg Capone
D’town’s pigeon whisperer
Photo by Kevin Duggan
Enthusiast draws feathered fl ock to MetroTech
Pol: BQE repairs are biased
Accuses Mayor of favoring white, wealthy Brooklynites in plan
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
A Williamsburg councilman
accused Mayor Bill de Blasio of
favoring white, affluent neighborhoods
of the borough
when it comes to
fixing the ailing Brooklyn
Queens Expressway
at an oversight hearing of
the repair project Tuesday.
“The difference between
what you’re doing
is that you’re doing
it in a white affluent district and
the one we were doing it in was
a poor black and brown district,”
said Antonio Reynoso.
The lawmaker scolded the city’s
lame duck mayor for rejecting his
requests in 2016 to cover three
blocks of the highway between
Rodney Street and Marcy Avenue
near the Williamsburg Bridge
with a park — known as BQ Green
— by putting a hefty $1.2 billion
price tag on it, only for his Department
of Transportation to
propose shelling out $3.6 billion
to fix the crumbling triple cantilever
section wrapping around
the wealthy enclave of Brooklyn
Heights in 2018.
“Of course the last thing the
mayor wants to do is invest in
poor black and brown communities
at this point if they’re willing
to throw out a number like $1.2
billion to persuade us to stay away
from decking the BQE,” Reynoso
said. “We have the least amount
PLUS: BQE TRUCK
CRACKDOWN
SEE PAGE 9
of park space, the park space that
we do have is on either side of
the BQE.”
The lawmaker said that he commissioned
a study in 2016, which
found that the park would cost only
$200 million, similar to the cost
of Klyde Warren Park in Dallas,
Texas, which decks over two blocks
of freeway there.
Reynoso voiced his criticisms
at a hearing in City Hall to discuss
a Council-commissioned report
by engineering and design firm
Arup, which advocated boring an
$11 billion tunnel from the Prospect
Expressway to Bedford Avenue,
creating a bypass for traffic
beneath well-heeled brownstone
neighborhoods.
The plans would call for the triple
cantilever from Atlantic Avenue
to Sands Street to be torn down
and to deck over the roughly three-
FIXING
the BQE
Councilman Antonio Reynoso (D–Williamsburg) slammed
the mayor for dismissing plans to deck over a trench section
of the BQE in Williamsburg.
Photo by William Alatriste for the New York City Council
See BQE o n page 9 See PIGEONS on page 4
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