Sure, it's no big deal, but it's another example of what I call "Atlantic Yards down the memory hole," when fuzzy observations turn into mistaken assumptions.
In an essay in last Sunday's New York Times Sunday Review, headlined online as The City of Lost Love and in print as "The City That Belonged to Us," novelist and contributing writer Kaitlyn Greenidge reflected:
It was Freddy's where the Atlantic Yards resistance gathered, and also where, at a 2007 "Ratnerville Singout," one band played "Freddy's Is An Escalator Now," incorporating the prediction that the site would be replaced by the future arena.
What's there now
Today, after the Freddy's parcel lingered as cleared but unbuilt space, it's now part of the site for 38 Sixth, a "100% affordable" tower--not an "impossibly priced condominium development"--that, ironically enough, isn't that affordable, with half the units going to middle-class households (who weren't very interested in them, given the lottery response). Next to it is another rental building, 50% "affordable" (aka income-linked), 461 Dean.
The towers, while certainly distinctive, are hardly as impressive esthetically as the one actual condo building, 550 Vanderbilt, nearly two blocks away. And that may be the only condo development in Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, given the loss of 421-a tax benefits. (Do remember the maneuvering that gave condo buyers a dramatic tax cut.)
The other irony regarding that former Freddy's site is the presence of a new health center, as I wrote last month; while it is claimed to be fulfill the requirements of the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement, there's no evidence that this facility is helping low-income households and thus fulfilling the CBA.
In an essay in last Sunday's New York Times Sunday Review, headlined online as The City of Lost Love and in print as "The City That Belonged to Us," novelist and contributing writer Kaitlyn Greenidge reflected:
If you live in New York long enough, and date and make friends here, you have your own secret map of the city and the places that make you nostalgic...I too have some (complicated) nostalgia for Freddy's, a place I could once walk to, though we've both since moved. (Here's coverage of a 2010 documentary.)
Freddy’s hasn’t been on the corner of Dean Street and Sixth Avenue for years but every time I pass the place where it used to sit, I think of the night a few writer friends and I got into a tiff with some poets from N.Y.U., left a bar in the West Village to buy $60 worth of Gray’s Papaya for friends who stayed at the bar, returned to find the place closed; stood for a moment on the corner wondering how we’d get nine people and 25 hot dogs to Brooklyn to continue the party; and were blessed by the arrival of a white stretch limousine, out of nowhere.
The driver offered to take us across the bridge if we each gave him $10. We told him to take us to Freddy’s. We arrived at 1 a.m. and stayed until 4 before we shuffled in a stumbling group to my apartment to sleep it off. When I pass that corner, that’s all I see. I imagine it will always be all I see, even as yellow cranes build one imposing, impossibly priced condominium development after another in its place.
It was Freddy's where the Atlantic Yards resistance gathered, and also where, at a 2007 "Ratnerville Singout," one band played "Freddy's Is An Escalator Now," incorporating the prediction that the site would be replaced by the future arena.
What's there now
Today, after the Freddy's parcel lingered as cleared but unbuilt space, it's now part of the site for 38 Sixth, a "100% affordable" tower--not an "impossibly priced condominium development"--that, ironically enough, isn't that affordable, with half the units going to middle-class households (who weren't very interested in them, given the lottery response). Next to it is another rental building, 50% "affordable" (aka income-linked), 461 Dean.
The towers, while certainly distinctive, are hardly as impressive esthetically as the one actual condo building, 550 Vanderbilt, nearly two blocks away. And that may be the only condo development in Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, given the loss of 421-a tax benefits. (Do remember the maneuvering that gave condo buyers a dramatic tax cut.)
The other irony regarding that former Freddy's site is the presence of a new health center, as I wrote last month; while it is claimed to be fulfill the requirements of the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement, there's no evidence that this facility is helping low-income households and thus fulfilling the CBA.
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