At some point in 2009, the digital media agencies and tech companies of Dumbo realized that there are too many great products and services shifting the digital advertising and media industry concentrated in one area to ignore eachother. So in January 2009, an event, called Digital Dumbo was started to get the talent together to meet and discuss tech topics. I’ve met with several of these companies since then and chatted about projects and connected a few companies to do business together. (As a tech executive myself, I’ve hired a few of these businesses to help with some projects). Since then, a few of Dumbo’s digital community have formed a group to promote the businesses and announced Dumbo as home to New York’s Digital District (follow them on Twitter @nydd or nydd.us.) And now the Wall Street Journal featured Dumbo today announcing the area as the new Madison Avenue.

Ironic how traditional print media is elevating digital companies, but they’re also realizing that NYDD can’t be ignored. Yes, these guys are for real. The 10, 20, 30 person ‘digital shops’ are more nimble and can focus on their expertise (social media, web dev, communication, mobile/smartphone development, SEO, augmented reality, etc), rather than being a generalist. Mike Germano, president and co-founder of Carrot Creative, Michael Lebowitz, Big Spaceship‘s chief executive, and David Skokna, founder of Huge were quoted in the article. Matt Van Hoven of Agencyspy said it best- this “essentially means that everyone working at one of those places can now expect a call from some CMO somewhere. Well done, boys and girls.”

BTW, join us for next week’s Digital Dumbo. We’re sponsoring the event with The JAR Group and starting a donation program as a way to give back to local non-profits. Info and RSVP here.

(Image courtesy of Colin Murphy. Thanks Colin!)

{Mad Men, Meet the Dumbo Crew, 20May2010, WSJ}
{Dear Advertising, We’re Moving This B*tch to Brooklyn, Love Digital, 28Jan2010, Agencyspy}
{Dumbo Deserves Google Fiber, 07Apr2010, DumboNYC}
{DigitalDumbo: Work Hard. Play Hard. Repeat. Win., 26Feb2010, DumboNYC}

Filming today between 3am – 9pm in Dumbo on Adams Street between John and Plymouth Street for a Ford commercial, called “Prove it”.

Tickets for the Night Market in Dumbo last week sold out and attracted over 2,000 people to the outdoor food festival in The Archway in Dumbo, hosted by David Chang of Momofuku Restaurant. Dumbo based Kitano Pictures, a video production company was there on our behalf to cover the event. Check out the video to get a sense of how the event went:

Interviewees in order of appearance:
Barry Dobesh of Zengo
Ben Schneider of The Good Fork
Annabelle Phojanakong of Umi Nom and Kuma Inn
An Nguyen of Bep
Jonathan Wright of The Setai Hotel, South Beach Miami
Jina Kim of MyBrooklynKitchen.com
Jean Jo of the Korean Cultural Service NY
Chris Rendell of Double Crown
Ricardo Moncada of Halcyon
Danielle Chang, Founder of LuckyRice
David Chang of Momofuku and event host
Yang of Sentosa / Nyonya

Great work Danielle Chang and the LuckyRice team for making it happen in Dumbo. And a special thank you to Kitano Pictures for the video production! For more about Kitano Pictures, go to facebook.com/KitanoPictures.

Other sites that covered LuckyRice:
Metromix NY
New York Street Food
Always Hungry
Appetite for Good
DumboNYC Flickr Photo set

There will be a commercial filming on Friday, May 7, 2010 between 6am – 11pm by ‘Tempesta’ on Washington Street between Prospect and York Streets in Dumbo Brooklyn.

Filming dates: May 3-5, 2010 6am-12am

Water Street between Gold and Jay Streets
Front Street between Bridge and Hudson Ave

Anyone know what this filming of “Durago 95″ is? Or is it a misspelling of Durango 95?

[UPDATE: Other signs say "Durango 95". Also, thanks to Mediagoon, it's a commercial: "durago 45 looks like a commercial to me...on the permit the C before the number means commercial. TV is tv, MV music vid. FF-film"]

Law and Order Criminal Intent is filming on Cadman Plaza W today.

In the April 19, 2010 NY Magazine issue that listed the most ‘livable neighborhoods’, Dumbo is #19 on the list, as we posted last week. There is also an article about an unbranded neighborhood south of Herald Square, north of Flatiron, and east of Chelsea some are calling NoMad (article title Soho. Nolita. Dumbo. NoMad?). In it describes that while NoMad was a name in search of a neighborhood, but Dumbo was ‘created from scratch’, and David Walentas is the “benevolent dictator with a vision for the whole neighborhood.” Below, an exerpt of how Dumbo, as we know it today, was created.

It’s not impossible, of course, to create a neighborhood from scratch. David Walentas famously did it in Dumbo. “But Dumbo was unique,” he says, “totally different from other neighborhoods that have gone through transformation and gentrification in the last 30 years.”

Walentas, who is 71, started Two Trees Development in 1968. He bought buildings in Soho in the early seventies and Noho shortly after. Then Walentas asked his staff, “Soho, Noho, what’s next?” Someone told him “Dumbo.” Walentas said, “Where the fuck is Dumbo?” He decided to pay it a visit.

What he found was a largely vacant district of warehouses and factories on the Brooklyn waterfront, zoned for industrial use. He bought eight buildings, 2 million square feet, for $12 million, in 1981. “I got lucky. No one else wanted it. I bought the whole neighborhood.” It took seventeen years for him to persuade the city to rezone the area. After that, he assumed the role of “benevolent dictator,” as he says, “with a vision for the whole neighborhood.” He lured stores like Jacques Torres Chocolate and West Elm by offering them a few years’ worth of free rent. “That way, we created the neighborhood. We could give space away because we had so much, it didn’t matter. And it made my other properties more valuable. If you only owned one building, you would never do that. If you own one building, you take care of one building.”

It was a rare experiment in SimCity-style neighborhood building, but it worked, right down to the goofy name. Most people assume Walentas invented the acronym Dumbo (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass), but it predates him. “I loved it, but my lawyers and consultants said, ‘What are you, crazy? No one will ever want to go there.’ So they came up with ‘Fulton Landing.’ I said, ‘Fulton Landing? That sounds like it’s on the Ohio River. That could be fucking anywhere.’?”

Also, read how Dumbo got its name, in our 2007 story.

Filming on Thursday, 4/15/2010 between 3am – 9pm in Dumbo around Adams and Front Street. It looks like a Walgreens ad shoot. Walgreens became the largest drugstore operator in NYC last Friday as the company completed its $623 million buyout of Duane Reade. Walgreens said it plans to keep using the Duane Reade name. Maybe they’re filming in Brooklyn to show how they’ve branched into NYC.

(Photo courtesy of tienmao).

New York Mag published their “Most Livable Neighborhoods in NY” article today. (Might also be the ‘bloggiest’ article since it’s mentioned in many real estate and neighborhood blogs). The list of 50 neighborhoods are a quantitative index of the 50 most satisfying places to live. However, according to Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, the writer of the article, while they were based on “objective statistical dimensions” and “you’ll find that it’s fairly easy to slot any of 15 or so neighborhoods into the top position, and any of 40 or so of the 60 that we evaluated into the top ten.” Data is based on housing cost, housing quality, transit/proximity, crime, schools, green space, food/restaurants, health and wellness, shopping and services, diversity, “creative capital” and nightlife.

So where’s Dumbo? Dumbo is #19 on the list (paired with downtown Brooklyn) and ranked high in shopping and services (#5), creative capital (#1), transit (#11), and housing quality (#12). In the NYMag piece, he writes: “Dumbo supplies the art galleries and waterfront access but is expensive; Downtown Brooklyn provides the stadium-seating multiplex and public-transit hub, but is high in crime and bereft of nightlife. This area received the highest score of any (95 points) in our creative-capital category: People in the arts constitute about 20 percent of its workforce.” Housing quality is defined as “historic districts, code violations, cockroaches” but it’s difficult to quantify that in an urban center where quality can vary from building to building.

Silver writes on his blog that “Not to encourage gentrification, but if I were buying property as an investment right now, I’d look toward places that are cheap relative to those qualities that take the longest time to upgrade or repair — particularly transit lines, and to a lesser extent greenspace and the quality of the housing stock. That might mean places like Long Island City and Sunnyside (Queens), Prospect Heights and DUMBO (Brooklyn), Washington Heights (Manhattan) and perhaps even some portions of the South Bronx near the train.” Not sure if I would characterize Dumbo as an investment as it avoided the real estate bust (prices are still as high as they were in 2008), but with developments in the Brooklyn Bridge Park and downtown Brooklyn, Dumbo may be an investment in the upcoming years. Do you think the article got it right?

New York is being invaded by 8-bit characters in this short film. Destruction originates in Dumbo, the NY Digital District (naturally). PIXELS is Patrick Jean’s (onemoreproduction) latest short film, shot on location in Dumbo and in New York.

(via Gizmodo)