Permit # FF 193: On Thu/Fri, June 16-17, 2011 (6am – 10pm)

Filming for feature film Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, starring Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, and John Goodman is occurring today and tomorrow in Dumbo and Vinegar Hill at the following locations:

• Gold Street between York and Water Streets
• Front Street between Bridge and Gold Streets
• Hudson Avenue between Front and Plymouth Streets
• Water Street between Gold and Hudson Avenue

The film is based on a 2005 novel by author Jonathan Safran Foer.

If you have further questions you can contact their Locations Department at 718-780-6466.

All filming posts are tagged here: DumboNYC.com/tag/filming

Previously:
{Filming: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close 2, 10May2011}
{Filming: “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, 18Mar2011}

Following the prior announcement of the free Dumbo wi-fi last week, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly), and Two Trees Management today announced a new City-sponsored business incubator to support the development of technology startup businesses in Brooklyn. The DUMBO Incubator, located at 20 Jay Street – one block from Brooklyn Bridge Park – will accommodate technology entrepreneurs in the downtown Brooklyn neighborhood and across New York City over the next three years and is expected to be fully operational by the fall of 2011. NYCEDC provided a $250,000 grant to establish the incubator, the ninth sponsored by the City as part of a plan to encourage entrepreneurship within a variety of economic sectors. NYCEDC President Seth W. Pinsky and Tucker Reed, Director of Special Projects at Two Trees Management Company, announced the DUMBO incubator during an Internet Week NY panel on the City’s “Digital Corridors.”

Dumbo will be the ninth incubator in NYC and NYU-Poly signed a three-year lease for 6,440 sqft with Two Trees Management. The Incubator space will provide approximately 30 dedicated workstations, and additional co-working stations, targeted to New York City-based startup businesses and entrepreneurs across various industries, including financial services, media, green, bioscience, and fashion, with a focus on technology. Tenants will be able to access educational programming and services, such as business counseling sessions, workshops, and networking events on relevant topics. Two Trees principal Jed Walentas noted that “Many of the startup businesses in DUMBO such as Etsy, Carrot Creative, Huge, Brooklyn Digital Foundry, Big Spaceship, and SawHorse Media, which hosts the annual Shorty Awards for best Twitter content, have grown tremendously, while other digital and creative businesses continue to be drawn to our ‘state-of-the art’ community.” This is great news for Digital Dumbo and New York Digital District.

(note: Sawhorse Media is no longer in Dumbo. However, the Shorty Awards did start in Dumbo and founder Gregory Galant is still involved in the Dumbo tech community.)

Read the full press release in PDF format here (153kb).

US Senator Charles Schumer kicked off Internet Week NY 2011 this morning with a keynote speech. In his speech, he mentions Dumbo as a place for internet companies to thrive as part of the NY Digital District, and could incubate “the next Google or the next Facebook”. Last week, free wireless connectivity was made possible through a deal between Two Trees Management, Dumbo’s largest real estate developer, NYC Wireless and the DUMBO Business Improvement District.

This is what Senator Charles Schumer had to say:

“To me, the perfect example of the transformation of this sector in New York is what is happening right across the East River, in Dumbo. Fifteen years ago, Dumbo was a community of warehouses and underused industrial buildings, many of which had been languishing for decades. Now, it is one of the most vibrant mixed used neighborhoods in the city. It is a neighborhood transformed. And what is the main industry in Dumbo? Internet companies. The largest employer is Huge, a company that builds digital platforms for some of the biggest companies in the world, and has over 300 employees in Brooklyn. At the same time, there are more and more small start ups and midsized companies that have found affordable collaborative work spaces, creating exactly the sort of synergies that give rise to companies with similar growth potential. I wasn’t surprised when last week when it was announced that the first public wi-fi network in the city is in Dumbo. And I would not be surprised if the next Google or the next Facebook is born in one of these Dumbo buildings.”

Thanks to DUMBO Business Improvement District for the tip.

Dumbo Brooklyn First to Offer Free Wireless Access, 02Jun2011

Photo by Josh Derr.

[DumboNYC.com is taking a vacation.  In the meantime, take a look at some photos of Dumbo (in the DumboNYC Flickr Pool) or submit a story or event about Dumbo.  We'll be back in a few days.]

The New York Photo Festival returns to Dumbo for its fourth year from May 11 through May 15. The festival will feature over 3,000 photographs at 40 different events in 11 venues. See our interview of the festival director, Sam Barzilay and production manager Dave Shelley from last week.

This year’s main exhibitions, curated by Enrico Bossan and Elisabeth Biondi (on show at the 81 Front Street Storefront) are presented under the shared rubric PHOTOGRAPHY NOW: engaged, personal, and vital. They offer distinct perspectives on a shared theme: the state of documentary photography today.

Festival Hours
Thursday, May 12 – 12:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Friday, May 13 – 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, May 14 – 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, May 15 – 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

www.newyorkphotofestival.com

Permit # FF 193: On Wed, May 11, 2011 (6am – 10pm)

Filming for feature film Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, starring Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, and John Goodman is occurring tomorrow in Dumbo near Pearl Street and Front Street. The film is based on a 2005 novel by author Jonathan Safran Foer.

If you have further questions you can contact their Locations Department at 718-780-6466.

All filming posts are tagged here: DumboNYC.com/tag/filming

Previously:
{Filming: “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, 18Mar2011}

(Photo credit: Yana Paskova for The New York Times)

Dumbo was mentioned in NY Times, with a story about Studiomates at 10 Jay Street on Wednesday, and Dumbo will be in Sunday’s paper as well.

NY Times writer Jake Mooney, who covers Dumbo, has written about the changes over the years. In his article in the National Real Estate section of Sunday’s NY Times, titled Bringing Up Dumbo, he discusses the new real estate development projects happening in East Dumbo, the former factory and manufacturing buildings closer to Vinegar Hill:

Now the next chapter is being written. In recent years, debates about the neighborhood’s future have brought about designation of a historic district and a rezoning of the eastern end, designed in part to encourage residential growth. Old commercial buildings continue to be converted, and several major construction projects are in the works, including one in the historic district from the giant builder Toll Brothers. Prices and rents in the neighborhood are among the highest in Brooklyn, and the city as a whole.

Dumbo’s indigenous warehouses have become home to advertising, design and creative companies like the online crafts marketplace Etsy, whose young workers have brought activity to the quiet cobblestone streets in the shadows of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

In a nod to Dumbo’s new creative community, Mooney speaks to creative media companies, such as HUGE, BBMG, and Etsy, and makes mention of other DigitalDUMBO and New York Digital District companies, Carrot Creative, Big Spaceship, and Brooklyn Digital Foundry.

These businesses are concentrated in buildings such as 45 Main Street, 55 Washington Street, 10 Jay Street, and 20 Jay Street. The concentration of new residential development projects in East Dumbo, such as 220 Water Street, 205 Water Street, 192 Water Street, and 37 Bridge Street, are due to the fact that most of the buildings West of Adams Street are occupied, such as 1 Main Street, 70 Washington Street, Beacon Tower (79 unit building completed in 2006), and J Condominium (267 units completed in 2007. Newly converted 25 Washington Street also got a mention.

In established Two Trees buildings near the area’s heart, like 1 Main Street and 70 Washington Street, asking prices for one-bedrooms are solidly above $1 million — closer to $2 million at 1 Main, which is nearer to the water, and occasionally below $1 million at 70 Washington. A 2,139-square-foot two-bedroom apartment at 1 Main Street is on the market for $2.2 million, and a two-bedroom, 1,384-square-foot unit at 70 Washington is listed at $1.35 million.

Read the full article for a good summary of the area’s new thriving businesses and real estate activity. Also see accompanying photo slide show.

A few past Jake Mooney mentions on DumboNYC:
{NY Times Highlights Dumbo Neighborhood Association, 04Jun2007}
{On Arty Streets, a Cluster of Hip Furniture Stores, 21Jan2007}

(Dave Shelley (Production Manager) and Sam Barzilay (Director of NYPH) in Dumbo)
by Lindsay Comstock

In 2008, the New York Photo Festival emerged in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn as the brainchild of Daniel Powers and Frank Evers. If you live or work in the neighborhood, you may have seen two others who were hired that year–Sam Barzilay (director of the festival) and Dave Shelley (production manager)–working tirelessly as they make mad dashes in and out of meetings, run between the numerous festival venues, or organize a team of volunteers to carry out production duties. Four years later, the round-the-clock work seems to have paid off. The international photo festival, termed by Shelley as “the Sundance of the photography world” is holding strong as one of the largest of its kind in the States. From May 11 to 15, it will take over the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.

Sitting down in the festival office at powerHouse Books, I had a chance to talk with Barzilay and Shelley about the nature of the photography industry. Our conversation took on a somber tone as we spoke about civil unrest, natural disasters, and the sadness wrought by the deaths of two influential photojournalists. It was also a conversation about the excitement of the transforming image-making industry and the ease with which emerging artists can now break into photography thanks to social media and the digital age.

The festival’s two curators, Elisabeth Biondi, who worked 15 years as visuals editor of The New Yorker, and Enrico Bossan, an accomplished photojournalist, collaborated on an exhibition that engages the audience in a world view documenting truth in life. The overarching theme of the festival this year is aptly titled, “Photography Now: Engaged, Personal and Vital”. According to Shelley, this is the first year they invited only two curators, but the team is powerful. “We picked two people who actually have the force of six,” Shelley said.

The festival offers a fresh look at contemporary photography, showcasing the work of both seasoned and emerging photographers. And because the work is not for sale, it is also unhindered by the constraints of the commercial realm. The five-day affair includes an abundance of exhibits, a panel discussion and lecture series, special evening events, and a Leica scavenger hunt.

In addition to the two curated group shows, “Subjective/Objective” (Biondi) and “Hope: Between Dream and Reality” (Bossan), the festival features seventeen exhibitions. One is a show curated by Capricious magazine featuring only New York photographers titled “New York Did This To Me” at Smack Mellon gallery. Another is an innovative exhibit design, curated by Bussan, displaying Ben Lowy’s renowned iphone photos of the Middle East in retro television cabinets. Several universities and photo groups are also presenting shows throughout the neighborhood.

On Thursday night, the festival presents “Under the Bridge: Projections of a Revolution” where images of the North African uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya will be projected under the Manhattan Bridge. According to Barzilay, the aim is for attendees to experience these images in an immersive way.

On Saturday night, Slideluck Potshow XVI will project images to a large audience and attempt to rival last year’s Guiness World Record for the Largest Potluck Dinner. Attendees are asked to share a dish comprised of locally sourced ingredients.

As is the case with many arts organizations, NYPH has not been immune to the pressures of the economic recession. According to Barzilay, the largest challenge for the festival has been fundraising. He says he gets the impression that many think the festival is a corporate, profit-making venture, but it’s not. Despite the annual support from Two Trees Management, industry sponsors, and many volunteers, the festival (which has production costs of approximately $400,000) has gone largely under-funded for the last four years. “This is a labor of love,” he says. Nonetheless, no dream is too big for Barzilay. “We ask the curators to come up with the wildest ideas, and we promise to do our best to make it happen.”

And what the festival has given to the international photography community is immeasurable. Many of the photographers shown at the festival have gone on to gain gallery representation and some have even had their work displayed in museums. “We have brought many people to light”, Shelley says. And this year they are turning their attention back to local photographers, including more shows that celebrate New York.

The festival plans to honor the lives of late photojournalists and Brooklyn residents Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros who were tragically killed while on assignment in Libya. Some of their photos will be shown as part of a group exhibition and the subject will be discussed in lectures. “Because we have so many media images people forget that there is someone actually out there risking their lives for an image,” Shelley says.

Barzilay said that although it is not humanly impossible to take everything in, he hopes that the festival will plant a seed of thought regarding the source of information. “We are hoping that at the very least, people will stop for a few seconds and think. If we’ve gotten them to think we’ve won the battle,” Barzilay says.

For ticket information and an official schedule of events, visit: www.newyorkphotofestival.com.

Lindsay Comstock is a contributor to American Photo, Resource and Eyemazing magazines. More of her writing and photography can be seen at www.lindsaycomstock.com

Permit # C 177: On Wed, May 4 and Thu, May 5, 2011 (3am – 2am)

A commercial with the project name “Funky Pumpkin” will be filmed on Jay Street and Water Street on Wednesday, May 4 and Thursday, May 5, 2011. If you have further questions you can contact their Locations Department at 212-243-7706.

All filming posts are tagged here: DumboNYC.com/tag/filming

(Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Paper)

Chris Hondros, 41, of Getty Images was mortally wounded Wednesday in Libya while on assignment covering the fighting between rebel and government forces, The Brooklyn Paper reports. Tim Hetherington, the director and producer (with Sebastian Junger) of the documentary “Restrepo,” was killed in the same attack. Tim also worked with Umbrage Editions in Dumbo that put out Hetherington’s photography book “Long Story Bit By Bit: Liberia Retold” in 2009.

Chris Hondros was also a Dumbo resident who lived on Bridge Street. This is a tragic and devastating loss for Brooklyn and the USA.

{Parting Glance: Chris Hondros, NYT}
{Parting Glance: Tim Hetherington, NYT}