From time to time we get complaints about Dumbo in our inbox. And by time to time, we mean daily. Some are valid, while others are misdirected anger. Some complaints have been consistent over time (7+ years) and some are new. We normally don’t like to dwell on negatives, but maybe something good can come from listing these. Here are a few choice quotes (emailed to us or as a comment on this website) grouped by topic and frequency in the past month or so.

1. Building alarms: “Any idea what’s going on with the middle of the night alarms being set off? Saw a light flashing at 2:45am in front of Foragers. This has been going on every night for weeks.” (email)
2. Filming in Dumbo: “There should be a balance here that simply does not exist. We are not just a back lot for film crews to use for free- we are a living, breathing, neighborhood that do not need these shoots invading our space.” (source)
3. Lunch/Dining options: “Please Please bring us some more decent food options. Landlords, let the food and beverage establishments come in, they will only make your properties more valuable and your tenants happier!” (source)
4. Gentrification: “I applied for an apartment at 25 Washington Street for middle income earners, but was sold out. How can one get an apartment in Dumbo that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg?” and “Why are rentals in DUMBO so damn expensive? I can’t find anything under $3000. HELP!” (emails) [Ed: Median price for rentals in Dumbo are nearly $4,300, according to Streeteasy]
5. Parking: “Parking in Dumbo used to be easy, but with construction and yuppies moving in, good luck finding a spot.” (reference) [Ed: This complaint has been consistent over time regardless of construction.]
6. Residential building management: [Ed: All of these are complaints about building management. Rather than naming names, contact your building manager.]
7. Dogs and Kids: “The number of dogs and kids in Dumbo are past the annoying stage. What’s the best building without dogs or kids?” (email) [Ed: Umm, none?]

We also get complaints about this website – “why don’t you feature us? Where’s the article about xyz? Your posts are biased.” As mentioned in the about page, this site is run by one person (not affiliated with real estate, the Dumbo BID or art galleries). “We” can’t do it without the tips and emails from you, but sometimes I cannot answer all emails. Thank you. Also the ads are served on the site to support the community. Ad revenue is recycled back into Dumbo non-profits and organizations. Guest posters are welcome!

We used to get a lot of complaints about the street construction, but once Washington Street and Water Street were completed, the complaints stopped. There are others, but if you have a constructive one that we can bring to attention to local officials, neighborhood groups, or businesses, please comment below.

Are you tired of lugging your laundry to the cleaners, especially during the cold and wet winters and muggy summers? This was the thought that SpotlessCity co-founder Sonny Bajwa had before thinking that there must be an easier way to take care of his laundry errands. So he created SpotlessCity.

SpotlessCity lets people find every dry cleaner and laundromat in their area, and schedule pickups & deliveries from the cleaner of their choice directly through the site. The pickups and deliveries are absolutely free, so customers always pay the same exact amount that they would if they dropped their clothes off at the store themselves. It’s sort of a GrubHub.com or SeamlessWeb.com for your laundry and dry cleaning.

They launched the site a few weeks ago in Dumbo, Brooklyn Heights and Downtown Brooklyn and planning to expand to more neighborhoods throughout NYC soon. We caught up with Sonny recently:

Q: Why did you decide to start in Dumbo/BK Heights?

A: Our company is based in Downtown Brooklyn and our entire team lives in Brooklyn, so we always knew we wanted to launch the service here first. When it came to choosing neighborhoods to start in, Dumbo and Brooklyn Heights were natural choices. Even aside from being the two residential neighborhoods closest to our office, which made them convenient, a number of reasons make them a great launching pad for SpotlessCity.

Dumbo is a very entrepreneurial neighborhood that is full of professionals, which means that there are many residents who need their dry cleaning and laundry done and who are willing to try out new services online. In fact, it’s not only the residents who are entrepreneurial; we found one of our first partner dry cleaners in Dumbo — a very savvy and forward looking cleaner that was excited about being part of something new.

Brooklyn Heights is another great neighborhood with a large number of professionals, but none of the people living in those beautiful brownstones and townhouses have doormen, so they could definitely use our service.

We’re planning to expand further in these neighborhoods and then throughout NYC.

Q: How did SpotlessCity begin?

A: I came up with the idea for SpotlessCity late last year after my wife and I divided up our errands and I got stuck with taking care of the dry cleaning. I noticed pretty quickly that while I was out lugging laundry down the street in the snow, she was able to handle all of her errands — like getting the groceries and ordering dinner — by curling up with her laptop and placing orders online. Naturally, I tried to trade chores, but when she wouldn’t let me, I just kept thinking, “why can’t I do this errand online too?”

I ran the idea by some friends, started doing research and talking to dry cleaners. Pretty soon, we got a team together and raised some seed money. Now we’re proud to welcome everyone to SpotlessCity!

Q: What are the challenges you are or will face in growing SpotlessCity?

A: When trying to launch a lean startup, every day brings new challenges that we have to figure out how to tackle! I’ll share a couple –

First: getting our message across to customers effectively. Explaining our concept has been a little trickier than we thought, perhaps because it’s new. Some people confuse us with “Internet dry cleaners” — companies that have swapped a brick-and-mortar storefront for a website. They’re essentially dry cleaners on the Internet competing with local dry cleaners.

We don’t compete with local dry cleaners, we partner with them. In fact, we don’t actually do any dry cleaning or laundry. We’re more of a SeamlessWeb of dry cleaning and laundry. Our mission is to help local dry cleaners connect with their customers online, and let people choose a dry cleaner and schedule their pickup and delivery online.

Second: communicating with some dry cleaners. Earlier this year, we hit the streets and started talking to dry cleaners to get feedback on our idea and whether it was something they’d be interested in signing up for. We learned pretty quickly that a huge number of New York dry cleaners are originally from Korea and weren’t interested in talking to what they perceived to be door-to-door salesmen (I guess that’s what we looked like!).

After getting the cold shoulder a few times, we stopped and recruited a Korean-American friend to come out with us on our research trip. Before we knew it, he was chatting it up with the dry cleaners in Korean, shaking hands with them, and we got all the feedback we wanted.

Congrats to Sonny and SpotlessCity on their launch. If you want to try out their service, you can get 10% off their dry cleaning and laundry with this code: DumboNYCReaders (valid until 1/31/2012 + pickups & deliveries are ALWAYS free). Also see BrooklynHeightsBlog’s article about them.

Episode 9: Sarah Walko (www.sarahwalko.com and triangleworkshop.org)
Directed by David Castillo
Produced by Blue Barn Pictures, Inc. for DumboNYC on vimeo

In this episode of Crossing Dumbo, Blue Barn Pictures interviews Dumbo based artist Sarah Walko, artist and Executive Director of Triangle Arts Association. She was awarded a scholarship during graduate school, and as part of it, she took an internship at Triagle. “The focus of Triangle is about process and experimentation over product. The emphasis is not on what is the actual thing that comes out of that but it’s about the entire journey. All of that together under one umbrella is art.” Isn’t the journey what life is about?

Crossing Dumbo, a web series of video portraits of artists, entrepreneurs and residents in Dumbo Brooklyn. This is a collaboration between DumboNYC and our talented friends over at Blue Barn Pictures. Different directors from Blue Barn Pictures, a creative content agency, bring their own approach to each interview to create a distinct profile of the person being interviewed and place them within the Dumbo community. Blue Barn Pictures truly love what they do and support the community in a positive way, and for that we’re grateful to have them be a part of Dumbo.

{DumboNYC.com/category/crossing-dumbo/}

If you haven’t subscribed to Brooklyn Magazine and you’re a fan of Brooklyn, I recommend it for the articles. In the latest issue (Winter 2011), there’s an article about Brian Leth, Vinegar Hill House’s executive chef since 2009. We love the fresh ingredients in the dishes there, so it makes sense that writer Aleksa Brown follows him one day from the farmer’s market to the restaurant to watch him create one of his signature dishes, day boat hake. Vinegar Hill House is one of our favorite things around Dumbo. Dinners are well known, but they have an excellent brunch on the weekends too.

Brooklyn Magazine also has a “Neighborhood Power Rankings” piece. There are more than 20 neighborhoods in Brooklyn, but they also mean this to be a fun tongue-in-cheek way to show what’s going on in certain neighborhoods. Their disclaimer: “A 100 percent true and scientific analysis based on various and sundry criteria.”

They said this about Dumbo in this issue: “The repaving of Washington Street with new Belgian blocks is finally, finally finishing up, but now Phase II begins: more street work on Front Street near York, and the demapping of Anchorage Place to enlarge the Pearl Street Triangle.”

 [+]

Ok, go subscribe at Brooklyn Magazine.

Episode 8: Stefan Killen (stefankillendesign.com and pinholeny.com)
Directed by David Castillo
Produced by Blue Barn Pictures, Inc. for DumboNYC on vimeo

In this episode of Crossing Dumbo, Blue Barn Pictures interviews Dumbo based artist Stefan Killen, a graphic designer and pinhole photographer. Pinhole photography involves a handmade pinhole camera, a small cardboard box wrapped in black plastic and electrical tape without a lens. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box. The smaller the hole, the sharper the image, but the dimmer the projected image. Mr. Killen says, “There’s a quality of chaos and messiness in pinhole photography that I really like.” Growing up in Zurich Switzerland, Mr. Killen says, “the Swiss half of me is a graphic designer, and has to have everything to the pixel. The other half of me is American, artistically inclined, and loves pinhole photography for the messiness in it.“

Crossing Dumbo, a web series of video portraits of artists, entrepreneurs and residents in Dumbo Brooklyn. This is a collaboration between DumboNYC and our talented friends over at Blue Barn Pictures. Different directors from Blue Barn Pictures, a creative content agency, bring their own approach to each interview to create a distinct profile of the person being interviewed and place them within the Dumbo community. Blue Barn Pictures truly love what they do and support the community in a positive way, and for that we’re grateful to have them be a part of Dumbo.

{DumboNYC.com/category/crossing-dumbo/}

Occupy the Brooklyn Bridge

6PM: I’m sitting in my office working hard to meet a deadline. I was already distracted during the day writing for the occupy movement I support of freelancers who aren’t represented in the labor market, so I was working late. As I’m singing to myself, I begin to hear screaming at one moment, then cheering. At first I figured my partner’s music was just loud, but the cheering continued. I then thought it was coming from a boxing match down at Gleason’s gym right under me but, they are ususlly louder that the cheering I was hearing.

Chanting

7:30PM: The screaming and cheering turns to chanting. With so much time haing passed and the noise becoming organized I realized I wasn’t hearing things and ran to the window. Sure enough right outside on the Brooklyn Bridge hoards or people were marching chanting "Outrage Outrage Outrage!" They bore flags and held up their cellphones as lighters singing "Change when do we want it, Now!"

Bridge Takeover

As the earthquake that rocked us here in Dumbo over the summer I go on Twitter (the people’s news network) to verify the march on Brooklyn Bridge. #OccupyBrooklynBridge. It was offical! I tweeted "#NYC is a big place filled with parks we’ll find another spot to #occupy."

After trying to record from the office window I realized that it wasn’t enough; I can’t tell my children I stood in a building snapping images. As an artist it is my duty to be in the mix and as a citizien my duty to participate in democracy. I ran out the office with my iPhone ready to join the movement.

Welcome to Occupy Brooklyn Occupy Dumbo

As I made it up Washington Street to join the march, the police shouted at those who weren’t on the Bridge to get away, get back & stay off the block. It seemed like Dumbo wasn’t allowed to join from the bridge walk exit. But, that didn’t stop us. Dumbo gathered on the other side of the street still under the bridge, shouting "Welcome to Occupy Brooklyn FINALLY." "Occupy Dumbo!"

It was a sight to see. Helicopters flew as low as the tenth floors near the Dumbo, Washington Street apartment buildings. News 12 plotted their plan of attack for coverage on the Brooklyn side. A man shared the view with a friend via Skype. Urban sound stage’s camera man tried to keep his camera steady and children from Dumbo waved at marchers offering them a warm welcome. Dumbo’s citizens weren’t going anywhere and the police left us alone as were cheered and chanted "Occupy".

Occupy Spirit

Some might think that Dumbo is hardly a neighborhood that needs an occupy spirit but the reality is Dumbo does need it. We have it all, in Dumbo we have small businesses about to be evicted, large global businesses taking over floors but not hiring freelance and job applicants, we have the ghetto, working class, middle class and the F’n lap of luxury all in 5-7 blocks.

Dumbo is a picture frame of NYC. We see what the occupy movement is about every single day. It is great that occupy has visited our door steps. Are we going to unite in support, Dumbo?

Post written by Danii Oliver, Interactive designer and developer. CDO of DAMN Digital Studio, an Interactive Agency in Dumbo Brooklyn.

Reader “epc” posted a great recap of yesterday’s Transportation Town Hall meeting worth reposting here. For those who attended, please add any other comments. It would be interesting to see how State Senator Daniel Squadron, Assembly Member Joan Millman and Council Member Steve Levin work with the MTA and DOT on the issues that were raised by residents:

Interesting meeting. Honestly impressed to see Millman and Squadron show up in person for this as well as the staff from MTA and DOT. Not so impressed that no one appeared from our local council member’s office.

Maybe 50-60 people (about 30 seated, plus a lot standing across the back and side).

Biggest issue was the routing of the B25 down Main Street, both in terms of number of speakers as well as time spent discussing the issue.

The B25 also figured in discussion about where to layover the buses (on Fulton or in a new space on Front (I’m guessing under the Bridge but this wasn’t clear to me).

The parking fiasco on York at Front also figured prominently.

Some issues raised by residents from Vinegar Hill about additional bus capacity towards Bridge/Gold streets.

Other issues: two-way Furman means lack of legal drop-off/pickup space for 8 Fulton. Lack of enforcement of no-parking/no-standing on Main Street and around Fulton Landing. Accessibility of buses, train stations. Some sort of connecting tunnel between the York Street station and High Street stations.

Someone asked about the BQE rehab and the DOT rep responded that they were awaiting a response from the NYS DOT on the issue. I know from the meeting I attended in the spring and ensuing reports I’ve read that there simply is no funding at all at the state or federal level to rehab the cantilever (my understanding is that the recently finished rehab was paid for out of the Clinton era(!) highway funding bill). Unless the state can assess a toll on the BQE, which it is currently prohibited from doing (I guess Federal law), the funding is a major stumbling block for anything other than a nice paint job.

I’m sure I’ve left out other issues people raised, feel free to add them. I wanted to ask about adding stop signs and lowering the speed limit on Water Street. Perversely now that Water Street is even, traffic flies down it from Main to Fulton (perhaps with a cursory nod to the stop sign at the bend by River Cafe).

Thanks Ed for the recap!

Jam On Dumbo’s Halloween Parade
Monday, October 31, 2011, 4pm

Meet in front of Bubby’s at the corner of Main and Plymouth Street. Come in costume and bring an instrument. ‘Let’s make some noise as we march through Dumbo to kick off the neighborhood’s trick-or-treating festivities!’ Jon Samson of CoCreative Music (www.cocreativemusic.com) will be leading Jam On DUMBO’s Musical Halloween Parade.

The parade is also a fundraiser that will raise money for Jam On DUMBO’s free Summer Family Music Festival and our 2012 community outreach programs with the League Center and PS 307. To donate or become involved with the organization, please contact alisha@jamondumbo.com.

There are also two events, Dumbo Halloween at The Shops (145 Front Street) on Friday for the adults and on Monday for the kids.

Come have some beer and wine, and network with the independent shop owners at The Shops. The event will feature Leysha-P and Widy, two emerging R & B artists.

Participating Shops will offer 10% Off
Date: Friday, October 28, 2011
Time: 6pm – 9pm

Trick Treat Kids at The Shops
Bring your kids in costume to trick and threat at The Shops. Come in costume and receive a discount. The Shops will have treats for the kids.

Date:Monday, October 31, 2011
Time: 4pm – 7pm

There are many other Halloween events in Dumbo. For participating businesses on Halloween, check out the list at dumbo.is. Photos from last year’s Dumbo Parent’s Organization party under the Archway.

B25 Bus (Photo by Jane Kratochvil)

State Senator Daniel Squadron, Assembly Member Joan Millman and Council Member Steve Levin invite you to a Transportation Town Hall for DUMBO, Fulton Ferry Landing and Downtown Brooklyn. Join in for a discussion about ongoing transportation issues in our neighborhood, featuring representatives from the MTA, the NYC Dept. of Transportation, and NYPD’s 84th Precinct.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 7:30pm – 8:30pm
55 Washington Street, Room 216 Brooklyn, NY
RSVP to belinda@danielsquadron.org

Dumbo has been talking about yesterday’s discussion of new parking signs, and the B25 Bus Route on Main Street. If you have opinions on the tour buses on Old Fulton Street, York/Front Street redesign, lack of parking, enforcement (or lack thereof)?

Have your opinions heard!

Drivers, please note there’s a new ‘No Standing’ sign on York Street at Front Street. This sign went up last week and cars have been ticketed and towed. One of our readers wrote in:

Wanted to alert you to the new No Standing sign at the bottom of York Street at the corner of Front. I parked at the bottom of the street Friday night and was towed promptly at 7am on Saturday morning. I talked to a neighbor who said the sign went up on Monday (to the best of his knowledge).

The new No Standing sign is quite a ways away from the restricted area (because there is a hydrant and a driveway in between) and there is no sign at the very corner, so if you are on “auto pilot” when you are looking for parking in the neighborhood, there is no way you are going to see the new signage. In addition, the sign is on the far side of post, making it nearly impossible to see unless you are standing right in front of it.

In other parking news, the parking meter pay system (made by Parkeon) have been installed to replace the individual meters. The cost is $0.25 per 15 minutes.