Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Sunday, March 14, 2010

By NY Times

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

By Petrusich, NY Times

Friday, March 05, 2010

By Oliver Strand, NY Times

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

IT might come as a surprise to most espresso drinkers, but some of the most obsessive figures in coffee take their cues not just from Italy, but from Japan.

Just peek inside Blue Bottle Coffee in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on March 10 when it is scheduled to open (inspection permitting).

Sharing the counter with two espresso machines are two ''pour over'' bars where drip coffee is made a cup at a time using a Japanese kettle with a swan-neck spout that delivers a thin, precise stream of water. On weekends there will be ''nel drip'' coffee made with Japanese flannel filters.

And there are the showstoppers, the five Japanese slow-drip devices for iced coffee, each three feet tall — they look like an aristocrat's science experiment, the wood and brass frames supporting a network of glass globes and adjustable nozzles that mete out liquid at 88 drops a minute.

Blue Bottle Coffee, out of Oakland, Calif., is known for making coffee worth the show and hassle. Ever since Mr. Freeman first wheeled his pushcart to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco in 2003, he's had a fanatical following that doesn't mind waiting 40 minutes to order a cappuccino.

The Williamsburg location is spare and airy — it was designed by DCR, the firm behind Momofuku Ssam Bar — with a glass-panel storefront that will roll up when weather permits.

While the coffee bar will start at full steam, the roaster, one of a growing number in New York, will begin slowly, with only five or so different types of coffee at first. (Around 15 are roasted in Oakland.) As production increases, Mr. Freeman wants the New York coffee to be suggestive of San Francisco.

''It's different here,'' he said. ''Different water, different air, a different neighborhood.''

He added: ''I might let it evolve. The thing about coffee is that coffee is local. I'm not just showing up in New York, I'm showing up on Berry Street.''

Blue Bottle Coffee, 160 Berry (No. 5th St.), Williamsburg, (718) 534-5488; bluebottlecoffee.net, open as early as March 10.

By Florence Fabricant, NY Times

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Chester Higgens, Jr. NY Times

PIES 'N' THIGHS It took almost two years, and now Sarah Buck, Carolyn Bane and Erika Geldzahler (left to right in photo) have opened their barbecue, fried chicken and pie restaurant. After working in a makeshift space under the Williamsburg Bridge, they now have a simple 60-seat restaurant. Ms. Buck said a new smoker will let them enlarge the menu, which includes North Carolina pork, fried catfish and a big salad with black-eyed peas. The rotating lineup of four pies will grow to six: 166 So. 4th St. (Driggs Ave.), Williamsburg, (347) 529-6090.

By Florence Fabricant

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

After dispensing ice cream churned from Hudson Valley milk and cream from their five butter-yellow trucks since 2008, Ben Van Leeuwen, his wife, Laura O'Neill, and his brother, Peter Van Leeuwen, have settled down in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

They have a charming new storefront, vanilla white and chocolate brown, with a big arch crowning the little counter, some tile-topped tables and windows that will swing open once the weather warms. It opened Feb. 27. The menu is the same as on the trucks, which still roll: the ice cream is mixed with ingredients like organic Oregon peppermint, biodynamic single-estate Ceylon cinnamon and hand-picked Bronte pistachios from Sicily. Even the vanilla is made with organic beans from Papua New Guinea that have been aged in oak barrels for three months.

Pastries, including Sicilian fig cookies and Cheddar-dill scones, are on the menu, and there is a list of classic hot and cold coffee and espresso drinks.

Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream, 632 Manhattan Avenue (Bedford Avenue), Greenpoint, Brooklyn, (718) 701-1630. Ice cream, $3.95 and $5.75 for cups and cones; toppings, $1 to $1.25; sundaes, $7.25 and $8; hand-packed pints, $8.

By Sam Sifton, NY Times

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

THERE was a television crew in Motorino in Williamsburg a couple of weeks ago, Michelle Park from NY1 shooting a segment with the restaurant's chef, the elegant young Mathieu Palombino. He smiled shyly in chef's whites.

There have been others. Fame stalks the restaurant, which has locations in Brooklyn and the East Village.

Motorino is having a moment. That seems fair. It serves the city's best pizza.

It does so consistently, at both locations, whether Mr. Palombino is cooking or not. Made to his specifications and cooked in the tempering heat of a wood fire, his crust emerges from the oven as a Neapolitan fantasy of crispness that is also pillowy and soft, sweet but not sugared, tangy without too much salt.

Multiple visits to the restaurants confirm: Motorino pies are great hot out of the oven, 5 minutes later, 10. You can order too much, watch a pie go cool on the plate, eat it anyway and discover: terrific.

Better to take the L train the three stops into Brooklyn and enjoy the benefits of Kings County real estate: a large high-ceilinged room with warm incandescent lighting over wooden floors and soft-hued marble, the scent of the wood oven and the taste, against a cold Peroni, of transcendent pizza.

(But, wow, that margherita pie is good: perfect-pitch dough with exactly the correct ratios of tomato to cheese to surface area to char to bubble and flat.)

Mr. Palombino has put thought into appetizers: a wonderfully bright and flavorful farro salad, say; or a small plate of baby spinach and prosciutto spun together with stracciatella so that it becomes a new take on creamed spinach; or a plate of nutty, rich, fire-roasted mortadella that could serve as the explanation for the inclusion of fried bologna in the good-food hall of fame.

The margherita is Motorino's baseline dish. Mr. Palombino provides two, one attached to an AOC designation as if it were a product of Naples. It features buffalo mozzarella along with tomatoes and basil. The regular uses plain old cow's milk cheese. Both are outstanding.

319 Graham Ave. cor..Devoe, Williamsburg, (718) 599-8899; motorinopizza.com.

PRICE RANGE Antipasti, $6 to $12; pizzas, $9 to $17.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

By Oliver Strand, NY Times

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Elizabeth Lippman, NYTimes

BECO

45 Richardson St. (Lorimer St.), Williamsburg, (718) 599-1645; becobar.com.

Beco in Williamsburg calls itself a boteco, a Brazilian institution that's a cross between a bar and a coffee shop.

Feijoada is as Brazilian as bossa nova and the bicycle kick, but it stands up to a New York winter.

A hearty combination of black beans, sausage and stewing meat, it's the kind of comfort food found at Beco, a small Brazilian-accented spot that opened last May on a quiet Williamsburg side street. Beco is no tropical-themed novelty. The pedigree is more subtle. There's an illuminated sign for Brahma beer, International Style touches (battered chrome chairs with vinyl seats the color of milky coffee, a band of casement windows letting in the light), a projection TV waiting for the World Cup to start.

And the drinks are nice. There are bottles of Xingu ($4) and tumblers of whiskey with coconut water ($8). The Batida de Coco ($8) is more dessert than cocktail. A shot of cachaça hiding inside coconut milk, condensed milk and shaved coconut, it's best enjoyed at the end of a meal.

Split the bar snacks instead, both the excellent pão de queijo ($4), a basket of six puffed cheesy breads the size of Ping-Pong balls; and the sliced linguiça sausage ($6), made by a Brazilian butcher in Newark and browned in a skillet, then finished with cachaça.

It's solid cooking that doesn't try to do too much, tasty food to accompany a beer while watching the Corinthians try (finally) to win the Copa Libertadores.

By Linda Collins, Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Saturday, January 09, 2010

WILLIAMSBURG — An architectural firm in Williamsburg has created a unique mixed-use building that is now finished and occupied on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg.

First noticed by and reported on Curbed.com, the project by Loading Dock 5 Architects involved the renovation and conversion of an existing commercial building for retail use plus the addition of a duplex single-family home above it.

But more than that, the home they created is an energy-efficient passive solar house, whose design takes advantage of the sun and minimizes the owners' heating costs in winter and cooling costs in summer.

he design of the passive solar upstairs home was achieved by constructing a well-insulated building shell and a south-facing triple-insulated glass facade which leads to a roof garden on top of the one-story retail spaces. A 4-foot roof overhang and third floor balcony provide shading for the glass facade in summer while the low angle of the sun in winter provides heat for the interior.

On one particular sunny day, ''like we had last week, the owners can have the heat off all day,'' said Bargetz, who noted that energy savings can be as much as 50 percent, particularly with the energy recovery ventilator, which uses the warm exhaust air to preheat the incoming cool fresh air.

In the summer months, the ventilator works in reverse.

The design of the openings on the Bedford Avenue were determined following meetings with the clients onsite ''to determine where certain openings could be placed to respond to light conditions, views of the skies and exterior, and to maintain privacy,'' according to the design firm's web site.

By Corey Kilgannon, NY Times

Friday, December 18, 2009

NYC FUNK LIVE is a new Meetup group formed by Meredith Nadler, 26, a Web producer from Williamsburg, whose friends lacked her enthusiasm to go out and dance to what she calls ''the joyous beats.'' ''There's still plenty of funk to be found in New York,'' she said. ''I wanted to find people who live for the stuff as much as I do.'' And she has: By Thursday, 62 people had responded to a listing Ms. Nadler posted on Meetup.com detailing performances and encouraging people to ''come check 'em out with your fellow funk-adoring comrades.'' The group's first show was on Dec. 10 at the Knitting Factory in Williamsburg, where the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, a Bushwick-based group, began performing at 12:30 a.m. People danced till after 3, she said. Then there was the Mellomatics show on Thursday night at the Brooklyn Bowl.

By Pat Baker

Thursday, October 01, 2009

By Cara Buckley, NY Times

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Robert Stolarik, NY Times

For all the inroads made by hipsters in Greenpoint, Brooklyn's northernmost neighborhood, it has retained much of its Old World Polish character and working-class grit (probably because its subway is the much-loathed G train). It's a great place to fill up on tasty, shockingly cheap Polish food — kielbasa, pirogi and bigos, the cabbage and meat stew widely considered Poland's national dish — and to poke about the arty boutiques and bars that have sprouted on the side streets off Manhattan Avenue, the main commercial vein. To eat and explore, take the G train to Nassau Avenue or Greenpoint Avenue, and if you are really keen, print out a Polish primer from the local blog, greenpunkt.com.

1 P.M. Arrive hungry. Greenpoint is swimming in Polish restaurants, many bedecked in red and white, the country's national colors, and known for their heaping platters. Try the unobtrusive Restauracja Relax, 68A Newell Street, (718) 389-1665. Its setting is starkly fluorescent, but its offerings are delicious and cheap. Dinners are about $6.50 ($6.35 for the pig hocks platter — yum!). Most come with a side; the beets and fried cabbage are especially good. The pirogi are, too.

2 P.M. Fight post-feast torpor with caffeine and sugar at the Peter Pan Donut and Pastry Shop, 727 Manhattan Avenue, (718) 389-3676, a 58-year-old institution with a near-rabid fan base. Find a seat at the S-shaped counter, and get a $1 coffee, or a $1.95 egg cream, and a Red Velvet Cake doughnut, for 90 cents. The most popular doughnut? ''The jellies are really big,'' said one waitress, ''because they've got black raspberry filling, not just plain grape.''

3 P.M. Escape Manhattan Avenue's bustle and wander a block west to Franklin Street, lined with boutiques and handsome brick homes. Check out the lovely apparel, accessories and leather goods at Hayden-Harnett, 211 Franklin Street, (718) 349-2247. Also visit Kill Devil Hill, 170 Franklin Street, (347) 534-3088, a curios and antiques shop that began a line of menswear, BS Mercantile. The specialties are items from the 1850s to the 1950s — vintage silk hosiery, a Handy Hannah hair dryer — or as Mark Straiton, a co-owner, said, ''from Industrial Revolution to industrial decline.''

4 P.M. Head to the water. Greenpoint hugs the East River, but access is sharply limited; that should change with a planned waterfront park at the west end of Greenpoint Avenue. In the meantime, the city has opened on that site the WNYC Transmitter Park, a work in progress sprinkled with wood chips and picnic benches and separated from the water by chain-link fences and razor wire. Construction of a fishing pier, gardens and a playground, and the waterfront access, are scheduled for spring. The park, which sits across from Stuyvesant Town, has one of the more underwhelming views of the Manhattan skyline, but it's worth a gander.

5 P.M. Cocktail hour! Pop into the 68 Restaurant, 68 Greenpoint Avenue, (718) 389-6868, which adjoins Coco66, a bar/pool hall/performance space; both share an airy, gorgeous former chocolate factory. 68's potent specialty drinks, half price from 5 to 8 p.m., are named after 1980s cartoons like Rainbow Brite, Thundercats and He-Man. The last involves tequila, mint, pineapple juice and fresh lime.

6 P.M. Hungry again? Slip into Karzcma, 136 Greenpoint Avenue, (718) 349-1744, where the waitresses wear dirndls. Regulars swear by it. ''Excellent,'' said one diner, as he dug into a mushroom-topped pork chop, served with potatoes and salad for $8. Round out your meal with a pint of Zywiec, a popular Polish beer.

Slide Show Greenpoint

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Linda Lenny

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Jimmy Durante said ''The Secretary of State called me''. He said, ''Jimmy, We need you for an important mission. Do you know anything about foreign relations?''

I sezs ''Foreign relations? Of course I know about foreign relations,

Why I got 15 relatives livin' in Brooklyn!''

By Joyce Cohen, NY Times

Friday, July 10, 2009

Chester Higgins Jr.The NYT

Jessica Suarez and Mark Sussman live in an owner-occupied building.FOR two uneasy years, Mark Sussman and Jessica Suarez lived in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Two years ago, after living with a roommate in Greenpoint, they moved to the place in Bushwick, a five-minute walk from the Morgan Avenue stop on the L train. The one-bedroom, with an office space, was an affordable $1,300 a month, later rising to $1,339.

Instead of renewing the lease for a third year, the couple began hunting for a well-maintained one-bedroom elsewhere in Brooklyn, preferably near a train station. Their ceiling was $1,400 a month, which they knew was low.

Their luck turned when Miss Suarez encountered a listing from Annie Santiago, an agent at Kline Realty in Williamsburg, who had two well-kept railroad apartments available in Greenpoint.

One was in a great location on Graham Avenue, for $1,375. But the floor was sloped and the tiny bathroom had a small stall shower. The other, near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, was $1,450. It had a bigger kitchen and bathroom, and a layout more dumbbell than railroad. They liked the fact that the landlord, Joseph J. Bedigian, who owned both buildings, lived downstairs.

The ground floor once housed a pharmacy, said Mr. Bedigian, who grew up next door, where his brother and his mother still live. A block nearby is named for his other brother, Carl J. Bedigian, a firefighter killed on Sept. 11.

They moved in April. The walk to the Graham Avenue L train stop clocks in at 12 minutes — longer than they intended, but it's a pleasant walk.

They are thrilled to have such a helpful landlord. Mr. Bedigian has already added bookshelves

By Jeff VanDam, NY Times

Saturday, December 20, 2008

WHERE is the Northside Williamsburg of lore?

James Meese

Various institutions in North Brooklyn's eccentric waterfront neighborhood are disappearing — even some of the recent additions to an enclave that once housed the borough's industrial giants.

And the wrinkled newspapers and Tolstoy turkey sandwiches for the literary-minded at Read Cafe on Bedford Avenue — they, too, are out of the picture.

Instead, the Northside neighborhood has firmly entered the Age of the Condo. Rising with efficiency, even in the sad reality of this economy, apartment buildings cluster in bunches, outfitted with the kind of luxury furnishings one would never find inside the neighboring vinyl-covered row houses.

The Sub-Zero refrigerator/granite countertop crowd has opened a front among the young and hip, and the result is friction.

''There's still that raw appeal,'' said Silvia Fuster, 34, an architect who moved with her husband and baby daughter, Clara, into a $741,000 1,000-square-foot loft on North Third Street this fall. ''Anyone who lived in Williamsburg 5 or 10 years ago probably thinks it's a joke for me to even say that. But it has that raw depth to it. It's not all touched up.''

KLINE REALTY'S Linda Williams

Town houses pop up occasionally, many costing less than new two-bedroom condos (though perhaps not in impeccable condition). Three-story houses start in the $900,000 range, said LINDA WILLIAMS,an agent at KLINE REALTY.

Rentals are widely available, Ms. WILLIAMS said. Large one-bedrooms rent for around $2,500 a month, two-bedrooms for about $3,000.

THE COMMUTE

Getting to Manhattan is a quick trip via the L train at Bedford and No. 7th; the next westbound stop is at 1st Ave. and 14th St. It's not uncommon for rush-hour travelers to let a train or two go by before finding one with space to stand in.

By NY Times

Friday, December 19, 2008

290 Powers St., Brooklyn

3 story, wood, 2 family; primary unit: 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, dining room; other unit 1 bedroom, 1 bath; in each: original tin ceilings. 20'X100' lot, taxes: $1,673; listed at $669,000, multiple bids. Broker: KLINE REALTY

By Drew Toal, Time Out New York

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Illustration: Ana Benaroya

TREASURE MAP EQUIPPED

''I saw a ton of places through a ton of brokers and ANNIE [SANTIAGO] from KLINE REALTY in Brooklyn was my favorite. She is the holder of the keys to the last treasures of Williamsburg.

Photograph: Christian Hartman

KLINE REALTY'S ANNIE SANTIAGO

When you walk down Graham Avenue with her, she is greeted like a head of state by all the neighborhood people. We would walk into a place and she'd tell us who had lived there and what they did. When we entered a building, she made a point of introducing us to potential neighbors, to give us a chance to suss each other out. Now that's a broker!''

—Johnny Rauberts

By Joyce Cohen, NY Times

Monday, April 21, 2008

One of our deals is on the front page of the NY Times Real Estate Section.

After all, we've covered ALL Real Estate in the area since 1981. That's why they call KLINE REALTY, The PROFESSIONALS.

By Joyce Cohen, NY Times

Sunday, April 20, 2008

ZEB STEWART wasn't interested in finding a new home. He was happy where he was, on the parlor floor of a two-family row house in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, with two fireplaces and a backyard. It was ''like a little French country home,'' he said, renting for $1,800 a month.

Mr. Stewart, 36, who does sculpture, metalwork and furniture design, was interested in studio space. For several years, he had put his artistic inclinations aside to focus on work. (He and his business partners own two bars in Williamsburg.)

Mr. Stewart, a native of Petaluma, in Northern California, had come to New York in 1995, following his girlfriend at the time. He worked as a cameraman, but missed working with his hands.

'I felt it was time to get back to the language of materials,'' he said.

He became a carpenter, working on the construction of high-end restaurants, but found himself disagreeing with his employers. He wanted to do things his way. ''I realized I had an opinion and an aesthetic,'' he said.

So he and a business partner built UNION POOL, a bar in Williamsburg. In January, he opened HOTEL DELMANO, with its handcrafted interior.

While finishing up HOTEL DELMANO, Mr. Stewart began hunting for studio space or, better still, a live-work space suited to his needs.

In winter, surfing the Web site Craigslist, he saw an advertisement that seemed odd, yet intriguing — a 2,500-square-foot apartment in Bushwick, plus a studio, renting for $3,500 a month. The price seemed high for the neighborhood.

But, digging into the Web site of KLINE REALTY, he was hypnotized by the picture of the property, a little Italianate castle of brick and terra cotta. The agent, LINDA WILLIAMS, took him to see it. The moment he walked in, he knew he had tripped on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Mr. Stewart had lived in Bushwick before, shortly after his arrival in New York, in a Thames Street loft near a coffin manufacturer and a meat-processing plant. When he left, he told himself, ''I am never coming back to Bushwick.''

And yet, ''believe it or not, Bushwick lured me back,'' he said. ''The Bushwick lure.''

This area, however, was somewhat more developed. The castle was tucked away on one-block-long Belvidere Street. It had a front apartment, a cobblestone walkway and a stable in back.

The owner, Jay Swift, a stone sculptor and marble worker, said he had bought the building, the former office of the William Ulmer Brewery, in the late 1980s. At that time, the lamp factory next door was using it for storage.

Other potential tenants were groups of roommates who ''wanted to put in walls and really change it, and the owner didn't want that,'' said Ms. WiILLIAMS of KLINE REALTY.

''Zeb is the man I knew I wanted there,'' Mr. Swift said. ''I could tell when he said: 'You know, after dinner you are really tired and want to work on a project or generate a drawing? I have to get in my car and park the car. Now, I can walk to the back and work.' ''

Mr. Swift lowered the rent to $3,000 a month.

Zeb said ''The timing wasn't great''. But he said he knew he would never find such a great place again, ''so I just added it to the huge pile of stuff I was doing at the time.''

In January, Mr. Stewart moved to his new home. Taking over such a huge space by himself, he said he found himself wondering: ''Who cleans up back here; who is in charge of all this stuff? And it's all me. Doesn't this place come with a bunch of elves that take care of the courtyard and stuff?''

His new home seems to demand a name. His friends have taken to calling it the Bushwick Castle or the Belvidere Estate. Mr. Stewart likes to refer to it as ''the office,'' which is chiseled on the facade in big block letters.

His monthly outlay is slightly higher than before. ''I knew the impact on my quality of life would make up for the financial side of it,'' he said.

Though he couldn't imagine he would ever return to Bushwick, ''there are still incredible places available in the middle of nowhere,'' he said.

''In real estate they say location, location, location,'' he said, ''but maybe there is an alternative or another reality, which is if the place is truly amazing, you can overcome the location.''

By NY Times

Thursday, January 24, 2008

22 Judge Street 3-bedroom, 1-bath, prewar, 2-story wood-sided house; dining room, renovated kitchen and bath, original tin ceilings and wide-plank pine floors, antique slate patio, full basement; 16-by-64-ft. lot; taxes $1,650; listed at $695,000, 1 week on market (broker: Kline Realty)

By NY Times

Thursday, January 10, 2008

476 Union Avenue

3-family, 3-story, prewar brick house; 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, eat-in kitchen, high ceilings, oak floors in each unit; full basement; 25-by-100-ft. lot; taxes $4,580; listed at $1.2 million, 6 weeks on market (broker: Kline Realty)

By Participation Marketing UK

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Participation Marketing UK

Posted: August 29th, 2007 under User Experience, Creative, Quality.

By NY Times

Thursday, December 20, 2007

GREENPOINT $749,000

113 Beadel Street

5-bedroom, 2-bath, legal 2-family prewar brick row house; finished basement; 20-by-90-ft. lot; taxes $2,272; listed at $849,000, 10 weeks on market (broker: Kline Realty)

Sunday, December 02, 2007

2007

By thisisbroken.com website

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

A reader submits an advertisement seen in Brooklyn, New York:

I saw this ad for Kline Realty posted around the neighborhood which made me laugh.

My favorite part of the ad is - ''Just type in klinerealestate.com and when it comes on, turn up the volume and fasten your seat belt or you'll jump up and start dancing.'' Posted in Advertising , Just for Fun

Comments:

Actually, a web site with a noisy flash movie without mute or pause button IS broken. Definitely. Posted by: Cimddwc at Feb 23, 2007 3:16:03 AM

Wow. This ad scares me. Using the word sexy to describe a real estate company's website. I never saw it coming.

This must be some site, as I've never found myself wanting to dance over a website. I have to check this out. Posted by: Haggai at Feb 23, 2007 8:03:40 AM

Very interesting website. Although if I hadn't already known it was an ad for a real estate company I would have thought it was an ad for Brooklyn. I liked the Bond-esque silhouette of the woman dancing halfway through the video. Totally not in keeping with the tone of the rest of the video. Anyway, I'm glad it's posted in just for fun. I would hate to think that this was meant to be taken seriously. Posted by: lefty-chef at Feb 23, 2007 9:26:52 AM

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I don't know, I rather enjoyed the film. While I'm not sure I would call it ''sexy'' there was nothing really wrong with it. And besides, I suspect that there is no shortage of real estate brokers in New York City so it isn't unreasonable to have a gimmick.... in short, Not Broken.Posted by: VHoratio at Feb 23, 2007 9:27:26 AM

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*coughjustforfuncough* Posted by: Fuzzy at Feb 23, 2007 1:42:22 PM

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Yeah any website that has sound on the homepage is Broken, or unsolicited sound... really irritating when researching products/software at work and having the computer all of a sudden talking or playing music, when I forget to mute the speaker… Posted by: Infinity306 at Feb 23, 2007 9:25:33 PM

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The 'hood? That is one of the worst places to put slang in.

They are really trying to hard to sound street-like. Way to hard. Posted by: st33med at Feb 23, 2007 9:59:59 PM

By Brownstoner, Forgotten NY

Thursday, April 12, 2007

My Web Site

By Nicholas D. Kristof, NY Times

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

For those readers who ask me what they can do to help fight poverty, one option is to sit down at your computer and become a microfinancier.

That's what I did recently. From my laptop in New York, I lent $25 each to the owner of a TV repair shop in Afghanistan, a baker in Afghanistan, and a single mother running a clothing shop in the Dominican Republic. I did this through www.kiva.org, a Web site that provides information about entrepreneurs in poor countries — their photos, loan proposals and credit history — and allows people to make direct loans to them.

Mr. Abdul Satar had borrowed a total of $425 from a variety of lenders on Kiva.org, who besides me included Nathan in San Francisco, David in Rochester, N.Y., Sarah in Waltham, Mass., Nate in Fort Collins, Colo.; Cindy in Houston, and ''Emily's family'' in Santa Barbara, Calif.

With the loan, Mr. Abdul Satar opened a second bakery nearby, with four employees, and he now benefits from economies of scale when he buys flour and firewood for his oven. ''If you come back in 10 years, maybe I will have six more bakeries,'' he said.

Mr. Abdul Satar said he didn't know what the Internet was, and he had certainly never been online. But Kiva works with a local lender affiliated with Mercy Corps, and that group finds borrowers and vets them.

The local group, Ariana Financial Services, has only Afghan employees and is run by Storai Sadat, a dynamic young woman who was in her second year of medical school when the Taliban came to power and ended education for women. She ended up working for Mercy Corps and becoming a first-rate financier; some day she may take over Citigroup.

''Being a finance person is better than being a doctor,'' Ms. Sadat said. ''You can cure the whole family, not just one person. And it's good medicine — you can see them get better day by day.''

Small loans to entrepreneurs are now widely recognized as an important tool against poverty. Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his pioneering work with microfinance in Bangladesh.

Web sites like Kiva are useful partly because they connect the donor directly to the beneficiary, without going through a bureaucratic and expensive layer of aid groups in between. Another terrific Web site in this area is www.globalgiving.com, which connects donors to would-be recipients. The main difference is that GlobalGiving is for donations, while Kiva is for loans.

A young American couple, Matthew and Jessica Flannery, founded Kiva after they worked in Africa and realized that a major impediment to economic development was the unavailability of credit at any reasonable cost.

''I believe the real solutions to poverty alleviation hinge on bringing capitalism and business to areas where there wasn't business or where it wasn't efficient,'' Mr. Flannery said. He added: ''This doesn't have to be charity. You can partner with someone who's halfway around the world.''

By Mike Lupica

Saturday, February 10, 2007

NYC Apt. hunting woes for the 21st Century

excerpt...Contrary to this unbridled spew of vitriol, I'm not here just to badmouth my experience with Realtors, even though only one of the 10+ brokers we eventually did the dance with wasn't completely ineffectual. (Her name is ANNIE, (at KLINE REALTY) and she shows buildings in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. She didn't actually find us an apartment, but she returned our calls, she didn't lie to us, and she snapped her gum like a champ, so ANNIE was a-ok by us.)

The more I've replayed those weeks over in my head, the more clearly I've realized that I might not even have minded the trauma so much if the brokerage system didn't seem so eerily structured to purposely waste my time. Our must-haves really weren't unreasonable: a clean apartment with a decent-sized kitchen in seven possible neighborhoods scattered across multiple boroughs.

''What's this, now? You say you don't have anything like that to show me today? It's OK, really. Maybe we can try again tomorrow. Here, have a Snapple. Maybe call ANNIE for some help understanding this.'' The true culprits aren't the Realtors anyway, it's the horrific housing market and the hopeless jumble of machinations that feed into it.

Hey Mike, was it Annie at Kline Realty?

Posted by: MuRT!? | February 05, 2007 at 06:01 PM

Saturday, January 20, 2007

View of New York looking Southwest from Green Point

In 1638, the Dutch West India Company secured a deed from the Canarsie Indians for the Bushwick area, and Peter Stuyvesant, chartered the area in 1661, naming it ''Boswijck,'' meaning ''little town in the woods'' or ''heavy woods.'' [2] Its area included the modern day communities of Williamsburg in 1827 and Greenpoint. Bushwick was the last of the original six Dutch towns of Brooklyn to be established within New Netherland.

The community was settled, though unchartered, on Feb. 16, 1660 by fourteen French and Huguenot settlers, a Dutch translator named Peter Jan De Witt[3], and Franciscus the Negro, one of the original eleven slaves brought to New Netherland who had worked his way to freedom. The group centered their settlement around a church located near today's Bushwick and Metropolitan Avenues. The major thouroughfare was Woodpoint Road, which allowed farmers to bring their goods to the town dock. [6] This original settlement came to be known as Het Dorp by the Dutch, and, later, Bushwick Green by the British.

At the turn of the 19th century, Bushwick consisted of four villages, Green Point, Bushwick Shore, later to be known as Williamsburg, Bushwick Green, and Bushwick Crossroads, at the spot today's Bushwick Avenue turns southeast at Flushing Avenue. The English would take over the six towns three years later and unite the towns under Kings County in 1683.

By The New York Times

Monday, December 18, 2006

1985

2005

178-180 Woodpoint Road, Brooklyn

Number of bedrooms: 3

Number of full bathrooms: 1

Weeks on market: 4 weeks

Legal 2-family, 126-year-old 2-story wood-frame house being used as a 1-family; 2 fireplaces, original moldings and detail, 25-by-49-ft. lot and adjacent 25-by-64-ft. lot; taxes $950; listed at $999,000. Broker: KLINE REALTY.

By Brooklyn Access Cable tv

Monday, October 30, 2006

Suzy gets interviewed by Brooklyn Community Access Television as the Authority on the Williamsburg Greenpoint area. CLICK HERE

By The Brownstoner

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Buyers agent in Williamsburg/Greepoint?

hi, I'm looking to purchase a 2-3 family home in the greenpoint/williamsburg area. Can anyone recommend a good agent?

Thank you, Kevin, kevin@velourmusic.com

Posted by: Brownstoner at February 1, 2006 8:47 AM

I had a wonderful experience with a broker named PAUL at KLINE REALTY. I bought a home in Williamsburg about 4 years ago. The market was a little kinder and gentler back then in terms of pricing.

PAUL from KLINE was straight forward, patient, very professional and very knowledgeable. KLINE REALTY knows Williamsburg and Greenpoint inside and out because they have been in this area for many many years - way before it was sexy to do so. They have a unique historical perspective that I appreciated.

I also use KLINE REALTY to find tenants when I have a rental unit available in my 4 family home and the tenants that they have matched us with have also been a dream - no kidding.

Honestly, I don't work at KLINE REALTY or have any sort of association with them other than being a very satisfied customer. Good luck in your search for a home.

Posted by: ainslie at February 19, 2006 11:14 AM

By Melanie Neilson Junceau, Greenpoint Gazette

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Christmas at Kline Realty

KLINE REALTY is celebrating its first fifteen years of doing business in the area. Visitors to the office at 599 Lorimer St., are greeted by the quietly exotic decor, paintings, antique kimonos, and a congenial, businesslike atmosphere. The KLINE REALTY office is also home to an impressive archive of local maps and historical photos of the area.

In every way, KLINE REALTY is a neighborhood institution, poised and ready to embark on the next fifteen years.

In 1990, Suzy Kline opened the office with two assistants and a strategy: to concentrate on properties in one geographic location, Williamsburg and Greenpoint. She already had ten years experience as an industrial broker, and was the first woman industrial broker in the region. As a longtime resident with a genuine love of the area, her decision to locate the business here was a natural decision. It was a struggle at first, but Suzy and her staff pursued available commercial and residential spaces in the area and went on to find customers for these properties.

Suzy Kline was determined to follow her dream: ''I combined two loves, the independence and freedom of having my own business, and a lifelong love of buildings and their histories.''

This was once upon a time, when Williamsburg and Greenpoint were home to a solid, residential neighborhood where Italian, Latino, Polish and Hasidic communities thrived, not the center of frenzied real estate activity it is today. Despite all the construction, these communities continue to maintain their unique identities.

KLINE Brokers appreciate the depth of culture here and genuinely care about the community. The entire KLINE team boasts a long-term relationship with the neighborhood and most are long-time residents.

KLINE REALTY at fifteen is a firm which has truly come into it's own. When people ask what's great about the neighborhood, they hear about the great food, safe streets, good neighbors, and they also hear about the older businesses and small town feel. KLINE REALTY gets a lot of credit for fostering good relations between the long time residents and the newcomers. An appreciation of the neighborhood and respect for what's always been here have been strongly held values at Kline since the beginning.

With this anniversary, KLINE REALTY turns a big corner, ready to embark on the next fifteen years.

By Shelley Preston, 11211 Magazine

Friday, October 01, 2004

Suzy Kline has never been in the military but beneath a white blouse appropriate for the owner of her own real estate business she wears a dog tag. Dog Tags were issued to her and her fellow classmates in the eighth grade to acknowledge that atomic bombs were being tested 75 miles away from their Las Vegas school. She used to sit on her front steps to watch the mushroom shaped clouds laced with uranium incinerate the Nevada sky. Kline has worn the tags ever since.

''I figure that if a disaster occurs, at least they will know my blood type,'' she jokes.

Now 40 years later, the tag is a symbol of survival. Kline has spent a lifetime waging battles in the name of autonomy. She chose to remain single and pursue life on her own while many women of her generation felt uncomfortable setting aside husband and kids to follow their independence. As the first women to sell industrial real estate in Brooklyn and Queens, and after a stint as a locksmith, she has fought to prove that she can do a man's job in a man's world, while retaining every bit of her femininity.

Kline can now claim victory, for she is exactly where she wants to be. She has owned and managed her own business, Kline Realty in Williamsburg, for eleven years. The ornate tin ceiling and the wooden floors in her office reflect the original modest designs commonly found throughout Williamsburg. In two neat rows, mismatched antique desks and a hodge-podge of leather chairs accommodate her staff.

Kline's office in the back is decorated with ornate Asian kimonos and photos she took in Costa Rica. On the walls of the conference room, antique photographs of people rescued from thrift stores in the area; portraits of couples and families in period dress stare absently from the photos as nameless members of history.

''I have no idea who they are. Some day I would like to find out,'' Kline muses. She likes the mystery and romance of the pictures, and the warm nostalgia they offer for the way things were.

As Kline sits behind her desk, the smoke from her Marlboro Red curls up from her fingers and disappears near her head where the thin gray plumes blend into the color of her hair. When she stands to shake hands, it is surprising how tall she is: six feet, in fact. Relaxing back down in her chair she lets her cigarette smolder into ash as she begins to talk.

In 1990, Kline opened Kline Real Estate with two assistants and began aggressively marketing real estate in Brooklyn. Kline's strategy was to concentrate in one geographic location. She considered Williamsburg and Greenpoint her turf, and insistently pursued both industrial and residential spaces in the area. It was ''a total struggle at first, but I hustled. No one was as aggressive,'' Kline says with a throaty laugh. ''I'm just a bulldog.''

Kline doesn't exactly look like a bulldog, with her long and lanky limbs and neat, dutch-boy haircut, but her presence is bold. Because of Kline's height, she can meet eye to eye with most grown men (if she's not indeed looking down on them). Along with her wide grin and hearty laugh, Kline would never be called a wallflower.

Kenn Firpo, who has sold real estate in the area since 1983, and has known Kline for 20 years, describes a determined professional mien, ''She gets her commission because she knows her sellers and she knows the area.''

Before Williamsburg and Greenpoint became the center of hip-dom, Kline planted herself here years ago because she's always had a genuine love of the area. Remove the newer, shinier veneer from Williamsburg and you are left with a solid, residential neighborhood where Italian, Latino, Polish and Hasidic communities thrive. Kline, who has lived in the area for 40 years, understands and appreciates the depth of culture and community, and eyes the recent bustle on Bedford Avenue with wry acceptance.

Kenneth Cory, who owns the Orlando Funeral Home next door to Kline's office, credits the good relations between the old residents and the new ones in the area to Kline.

''She is a neighborhood person. She wants to do right and gets the right kind of people in the neighborhood,'' he said, ''ones who respect what's always been here.''

Cory adds that he enjoys seeing the influx of younger people in the neighborhood, although, he jokes ''it doesn't exactly help my business.''

Although Kline's s success is solidified, she wasn't always at the top of the heap. For years, she went about trying to find ways to make a living without compromising her independence.

Originally from Duchess County in upstate New York, Kline's mother divorced her father and began to roam around the country taking young Suzy with her. Kline had already been in eight different grammar schools when her mother, ending a second marriage, remarried Suzy's father and they settled down in Las Vegas.

After spending the longest stretch of time of being in one place, the family left Las Vegas and Suzy finished high school in New Hampshire. It was there that she was enticed by a girlfriend to move to Park Slope in Brooklyn. She soon found work as a secretary, but didn't like being under someone else's thumb and longed to be her own boss.

In 1964, after years of hopping from job to job, Kline found herself in a recruiting office looking for the next gig. She was offered a choice between working as a typist for the non-profit organization Big Brothers or working at MetLife.

''Someone told me that at MetLife, they would ring a bell letting you know you could go on coffee break,'' says Kline with a look of exaggerated horror on her face, ''so Big Brothers it was.''

Kline enjoyed working as a liaison between kids and community volunteers and moved her way up to Recreation Director for the organization. Although the work was rewarding, she was having a difficult time making ends meet. That's when a friend named Lenny Osser offered to teach her locksmithing. Osser told her, ''I just trained my first Chinese, so I might as well train a woman,'' she recalls.

Being a locksmith was physically demanding work, but Kline managed to lug the sixty pounds of tools that were required for the job and learned how to drill into steel doors and concrete doorframes. ''It wasn't easy, but if the drill flew out of my hand I would catch it by the cord and keep going.''

She made up her own flyers and would distribute them to high-rise buildings throughout the city. She never mentioned that a woman would execute the service. ''When people called, they just thought I was the secretary, and I let them think that until I came and knocked on their door.'' Although Kline proved she was capable of the job, she grew bored with a business where she never saw the same person twice

After a brief stint selling jewelry in Texas and Louisiana, she moved back to New York City where she received a B.S. in Human Services Administration. Three years later Kline switched gears in an effort to make a more substantial living and began working for Brachocki Real Estate.

It was there that she met John Belo, a customer of hers, who also happened to be one of the owners of the industrial real estate firm Kaplon-Belo. In 1981, industrial real estate was still a male only field. Kline remembers Belo calling over at Brachocki and asking to speak with one of her male co-workers. When she learned that Belo was trying to gauge his interest in selling industrial real estate, Kline told him that she was interested. ''He told me, 'not a woman, not a woman!,' but I pressed him and he said (reluctantly), 'well, talk to [Dick] Kaplon, he's in charge of hiring.'''

Kaplon was more receptive to the idea and asked Kline if she had a car with air-conditioning. Replying that she did, Kline gained the honor of becoming the first woman in Brooklyn to sell industrial real estate in the New York area.

Despite Belo's apprehension, Suzy proved that she could do more than just hold her own. By the time she left the company, she was responsible for selling and renting many industrial properties in Brooklyn.

After more than eight years of working for Kaplon-Belo, she made the last step towards true independence when she opened Kline Real Estate. Now with her own office and six employees working for her, it seems that most of Kline's battles have been won.

There is a picture hanging near Kline's desk that shows her standing in the middle of a huge warehouse. Here, her six-foot stature is not out of place framed between the industrial size vent ducts and the concrete floor.

She seems oblivious to the photographer, who captures her clutching paperwork to her chest and looking up into the vast ceiling with a small private smile. She seems completely at home.

By Suzy Kline to Crain's NY Business

Friday, March 01, 2002

When I moved to Greenpoint in the late 1960s, I lived in a top floor apartment over Sisters & Brothers Store on Manhattan Ave; a 5 room railroad flat with a magnificent view of the East River and Manhattan. It only had two electrical outlets, two tiny closets and I had to brush my teeth in the kitchen sink, but for $44.40 a month I put up with the inconvenience.

My Saturday morning ritual was to go up the west side of Manhattan Avenue, stopping at George's Variety Store (founded 1938 and still there), and all the discount stores ending at John's Bargain Store by St. Anthony's Church. Than I would come back down the east side of the street, picking up my groceries at Associated, my butter at Dutch Dairies, where they still cut it off the slab to order, and my meat at Sperling Butchers, (3 pounds of chopped meat for $1).

One thing you couldn't get was decent women's clothes, though Aron's had lots of dusty peek-a-boo bras, crotchless panties and garter belts in their window.

When I started my Real Estate business in 1990, I opened my office in what we call ''The Italian section'' near the L train where the boundary between Greenpoint & Williamsburg is blurred. I decided to specialize in the Greenpoint/Williamsburg area, and to answer all of the neighborhood needs, from industrial through residential. It was a particular pleasure to encourage the artists to come over here and fill all the empty lofts we had. I gave them a tour of Manhattan Ave. which would include the Polish Restaurants, where you can still get a big dinner for $4.00. And I always bragged about this being the safest neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Now the neighborhood which we always called ''The Garden Spot of the World'' and a ''Pocket of Polonia'' is even more interesting and you can buy decent clothes. But I miss seeing the sexy underwear.

Suzy Kline

KLINE REALTY

599 Lorimer St.

Greenpoint/Williamsburg

Tuesday, January 01, 2002