Taken January 25, 2012.
Posts Tagged ‘ Southside Brooklyn ’
LAST GASP: Live From The Community Board 1 Public Safety Committee; Toshi Presents!
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Toshi himself was present.
Floor plans were reviewed and residential apartments were noted.
Curbed was on this first when they wrote (on September 21st):
The Hotel Toshi outpost at 808 Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg has been a source of frustration for longer-term building tenants, some of whom broke their leases early because they were fed up with Toshi’s habits of allegedly leaving the building’s side door open, moving tenants’ mail, and renting out rooms for all-night parties. Some long-term renters remained—in fact, the Toshi outpost is apparently legal because the majority of the units are not Toshi-occupied—but they’re not all on board with Toshi’s latest plan: opening a cafe in the building. A tipster sends along the deets.
You can (and should) read the rest by clicking here. Here’s what I can tell you from last night’s proceedings:
1. Cafe Toshi will be offering “heat and eat” meals and touted support from residential tenants of said building.
2. Concerns about egress and overall compliance with Department of Buildings regulations were raised by the Committee.
3. Thus, the application was turned down until documentation about the legality of the “kitchen plus office” is confirmed by the Department of Buildings.
4. Inasmuch as I can recall, Mr. Toshi is the first and only attendee to bring his dog to a Community Board 1 meeting. He (she?) was in a rather nice carrier and kept quiet throughout the proceedings.
For more reading about the Toshi Empire (and its rather rapacious appetite for commandeering residential apartments for “hotel” use, among other things) click here, here, here, here, here and ESPECIALLY HERE.
FRIDAY: “Sew Draw”
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This item comes courtesy of Megan who writes:
Miss Heather,
I attach a press release for our next exhibition. It promises to be a stunner; both of these artists work at a prestigious gallery in Manhattan, and they should draw an interesting crowd. We’d love to get the word out to your readers.
Here’s a little information about the featured artists, Richie Lasansky and Allison Read Smith from the aforementioned press release:
Born in La Paz, Bolivia, while his parents were in the peace corps, Lasansky’s interest in drawing and art stems from an age when he could first hold a pencil. His parents being music and dance performers, he traveled around with them, constantly drawing everything he saw. For a while he thought his interest in animals would lead him to a career in science. After graduation from Hebron Academy, he studied biology at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., but upon graduation, moved to Iowa to study printmaking formally with his grandfather – Mauricio Lasansky. He spent eight years in this apprenticeship…
Allison Read Smith was born and raised in Memphis, TN and has lived and worked in NYC for the past twelve years.
Merging Southern storytelling with the more brisk pace of New York she has generated a body of work that uses pedestrian materials, such as newspaper, magazines, postal stamps, cardboard, and rubber. For this exhibition she relies mainly on roofing rubber to generate a cartoonish, malleable dark humor….
You can get (much) more information by pointing and clicking your way over the Pandemic’s web site. Check it out!
Sew Draw
Opening Reception: November 12, 2010 7:00 – 11:00 p.m.
Pandemic Gallery
37 Broadway
Brooklyn, New York 11211
Miss Heather











