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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 16 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 42, No. 47 • November 22–28, 2019
TESTING THE WATERS
Jewish swimmers demand more women-only time at Williamsburg pool
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
The city needs to cut back the
hours that men are allowed to swim
at a public pool in Williamsburg
to accommodate ultra-Orthodox
Jewish women, who are forbidden
from bathing with men for religious
reasons, civic gurus claimed
at a meeting Tuesday.
Acting on the request of a group
of mostly Hasidic women, Community
Board 1’s full board passed
a motion demanding the Parks Department
set aside an additional
three hours a week for femaleonly
swimmers at the Metropolitan
Recreation Center, because
the current time slots are so jampacked
that one Williamsburger
said she no longer allows her aging
mother to use it for fear she’ll
drown.
“My mom — who is hitting
90-years-old, thank god — she’s
a Holocaust survivor and she has
been in the Metropolitan pool for
many many years, keeping her
health and keeping her beauty,”
said Esther Weiss at the civic meeting.
“But now, due to the fact that
they cut the women’s swim, she
can no longer come because she’s
in danger of drowning with other
people bumping and shoving her —
we do not allow her to come.”
The city-owned pool and gym at
the corner of Bedford and Metropolitan
avenues currently reserves
the pool for women for an hour on
Monday morning from 10-11 am,
two hours on Wednesday from 9-11
am, and two hours for women and
girls on Sunday afternoon.
The northern Brooklyn civic
panel passed a motion put forward
by its Women’s Issues committee
to add an extra hour on Monday
starting at 9 am and a twohour
slot from 9-11 am on Friday,
with 22 board members voting in
favor, four against, and eight abstaining.
The city has accommodated
gender-segregated swimming
times for decades to accommodate
Williamsburg’s large Hasidic
community, which forbids women
from swimming with men under
Jewish law.
The St. John’s Recreation Center
Pool in Crown Heights — another
neighborhood with a large
Hasidic community — also has
one two-hour slot for women
swimming.
The Parks Department briefly
eliminated the female-only hours
after an anonymous complaint
prompted a review by the city’s
Photo by Caroline Ourso
Human Rights Commission in
2016.
The investigation found the
policy to be in violation of the
city’s human rights law, which
forbids gender discrimination
in public buildings, but bureaucrats
allowed for an exemption after
Parks honchos proposed cutting
back the women’s hours and
axing the men’s-only block at the
Crown Heights facility, according
to a New York Times report.
New Yorkers can still use all
city-owned single-sex facilities that
most closely align with their gender
identity, according to a 2016 decree
by Mayor Bill de Blasio.
One board member and LGBTQ
advocate slammed the policy
— which has previously also
been condemned by the New York
Civil Liberties Union and the New
York Times Editorial Board — because
it doesn’t account for Brooklynites
that don’t identify with the
gender binary.
“This is not a progressive policy,”
said Thomas Burrows, a member
of the LGBTQ political club
the Lambda Independent Democrats.
“Gender-segregated public
areas such as locker rooms and rest
rooms pose a significant hurdle.
By definition these spaces exclude
people who do not identify with
either gender or have experienced
trauma in such spaces.”
But the head of the Women’s
Issue committee argued that the
gendered swimming time is for
women of various backgrounds
who feel more comfortable without
men in the pool.
“We’re a community that has a
huge population of Jewish, Muslim,
and older people who really feel
that they are too modest to be able
to swim,” said Jan Peterson.
A spokeswoman for the Parks
Department said the agency
does not plan to extend the current
hours.
“Currently we have no plans
to further expand women’s only
swimming at any of our centers,”
said Charisse Hill in an emailed
statement.
Community Board 1 voted to ask the Parks Department to add three more women-only
hours at the Metropolitan Recreation Center on Nov. 13.
Developers plan to erect a seven-story condo building
on city land at 335 Ralph Ave., along with six other belowmarket
rate developments in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
City eyes property giveaway
in ‘affordable housing’ plan
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
The city wants to transfer a
slate of vacant, publicly-owned
lots to three development firms
seeking to erect seven so-called
“affordable housing” condominiums
in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The Department of Housing
Preservation and Development
plans to sell the sites adjacent to
Herkimer Street between Kingston
and Ralph avenues, where
builders plan to raise four- to
seven-story condos with a total
Fulcrum Properties
Free land
for devs
See BED-STUY on page 5
‘Uber of buses’ planning W’Burg stop
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
A cut-rate shuttle company that offers
service to a handful of East Coast metropolises
wants to take on passengers
in Williamsburg, thereby saving Kings
County travelers the hassle of traveling to
Manhattan to catch a bus, a spokesman
told a local civic panel Tuesday.
“We see a demand within the neighborhood
and neighborhoods immediately
surrounding Williamsburg to have intercity
bus service, instead of having to travel
to Midtown or Chinatown — it’s just easier,”
Judd Krasher, government affairs
manager at FlixBus, said at Community
Board 1’s full monthly meeting.
A German-based transit purveyor,
Flixbus offer trips to cities including
Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington,
D.C. for as little as $4.99, while
also boasting routes that ferry passengers
to more distant locales, including
the West and Gulf coasts.
Unlike Greyhound, or Megabus, Flixbus
doesn’t own or operate its buses, but
contracts local firms, who then slap the
company’s green and orange paint onto
their fleet.
Meanwhile, the organization manages
on online storefront in the form of a mobile
app, while also handling the marketing,
network planning, and customer
service, according to the Krasher.
The company came to the Williamsburg
community board seeking an endorse
for their application to the Department
of Transportation for a curbside
permit, but one member raised concerns
that the company’s unique business model
would disenfranchise the little guy.
“This sounds like the Uber of buses,”
said Tom Burrows. “What about the big
bus companies that are already here. Are
they all going to start showing up here
and get on the bandwagon.”
Another civic guru worried that the
buses would overburden the area’s clogged
streets and impede first responders.
“Forget about just traffic for people to
move about who live in the community,
but as somebody who works with the
NYPD I know that emergency response
cars are having trouble so you’re then
adding to that,” said Dana Rachlin. “I’m
just worried about infrastructure.”
Krasher said that the company puts
each partnering company through its own
training program, and provides insurance
so that they don’t compromise safety, or
dodge liability.
“We have our own insurance that along
with our bus partners our bus companies
and those are very much linked,” he
said. “So if god forbid there was something
that went wrong we do not absolve
ourselves of the responsibility if it was
damaged or an injury or something like
that — no we don’t do that.”
He added that FlixBus would not
stand in the way of any company wishing
to unionize.
“We don’t have any union requirements
when it comes to our bus partners,”
he said. “If a particular company
wants to unionize that we work with,
we don’t stand in the way of that, that
is their prerogative.”
The transit company will work with
the community board, Councilman Stephen
Levin, and the transportation officials
to find a suitable location for its
bus stop, before submitting their application
to the city sometime in the next
two to three months.
“Our intent is to not pick a point on
a map… and invade a neighborhood,”
he said.
German intercity bus company FlixBus wants to set up shop in Williamsburg.
FlixMobility
Deadly fungus strikes boro
Report: Dangerous infection treated at many Bklyn hospitals
By Rose Adams
Brooklyn Paper
Brooklynites suffered the highest
infection rates of a deadly, drugresistant
fungus in New York, with
more than 200 out of the state’s
388 cases occurring in Kings
County, a health report revealed
on Wednesday.
Candida auris, an antifungal
resistant yeast infection, has
germinated in New York for the
past two years, with the number
of cases jumping from 37 to 388
between 2016 and 2018, according
to the report. The disease is
notoriously difficult to diagnose
and treat, and doesn’t respond to
common anti-fungal treatments
used to combat similar infections,
according to the the Center for
Disease Control.
The deadly fungus preys on patients
who have weak immune systems
and use invasive devices, such
as ventilators and catheters, and the
Center for Disease Control
elderly are especially susceptible to
infection — the average patient is
69 years old. About half of people
who contract C. auris die within
90 days, although some patients
who suffer from it may die from a
combination of causes, according
to the New York Times.
The infection tends to proliferate
in healthcare facilities, where
it spreads on equipment, clothing,
and skin, according to the report,
which released the names of medical
facilities in the state that have
treated C. auris patients.
In Brooklyn, 52 healthcare facilities
made the list — including
15 hospitals, 35 nursing homes,
and two hospices. Nearly all major
hospitals and nursings homes,
such as Maimonides Medical Center,
Coney Island Hospital, and
NYU Lagone, have treated patients
with the infection.
Officials say that they decided
to disclose the facilities in an effort
to bring attention to the rapidly
spreading infection.
Despite the dire findings, health
experts urge patients to continue
visiting medical facilities that treat
patients with C. auris, claiming that
many do a good job containing
the infection and aren’t currently
treating affected patients.
Health officials also argue that
the state is taking steps to mitigate
the spread of C. auris by conducting
onsite inspections at healthcare
facilities, providing infection
control education, and monitoring
facility compliance with infection
control recommendations,
among other precautions.
And local hospitals say that
they’re doing their part to contain
the disease.
“All Mount Sinai Health System
hospitals have developed policies
and procedures,” said a representative
for Mount Sinai Brooklyn,
which has treated C. auris patients.
“Protocols include close monitoring
of hand hygiene, using contact
precautions (wearing gloves
and gowns), using effective disinfectants,
and ensuring that our
laboratory can rapidly identify
C. auris.”
A strain of C. auris cultured
at CDC labs.
These adorable red panda cubs are ready for visitors at the Prospect Park Zoo.
By Ben Verde
Brooklyn Paper
Brooklyn cutest new residents
made their public debut
this week.
The Prospect Park Zoo’s two
new male red panda cubs are finally
old enough to strut their
stuff in the public eye – and they
don’t disappoint.
The rouge tinted raccoons –
which are not related to giant pandas
– were born over the summer
in their indoor den, where they
were cared for by their mother,
Willow, until they were ready to
venture outside.
Now they’re making themselves
at home in the red panda habitat –
climbing up trees, frolicking across
their enclosure and munching on
Bamboo leaves, the rascals.
Check out Brooklyn’s newest
procyonids at the Prospect Park
Zoo . Open 10 am – 4:40 pm.
Adults, $9.95; children under 13,
$6.95; seniors over 65, $7.95.
Julie Larson Maher, Prospect Park Zoo
Seeing red at the P’Park Zoo
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