The Daily News reports that firefighters found a pot-growing operation in a commercial warehouse on Decatur Street yesterday morning. They had just put out a fire in a building next door when "Somehow the smoke-eaters sniffed out the pot in a three-story building next door and called the cops," who then removed 80 to 100 marijuana plants. The building's super says he was clueless because the "growing area because it was chained off and padlocked."......

The police have arrested a suspect in the brutal attack and robbery of an 85-year-old woman in a Crown Heights elevator last week. According to the Daily News, Cornelius Abson "confessed and then apologized for choking and robbing Lillian France." But a police source adds, "He's sorry he got caught. He wasn't sorry when he was choking the lady." It's suspected that Abson followed France from her bank on Eastern Parkway to the apartment......

After the disturbing footage showing an 85-year-old woman who was followed into an apartment building, choked to unconsciousness in the elevator, and then robbed of her money AND cane, the NYPD is now, per Newsday, "focusing in large part on the area around Flatbush, near Prospect Park." Police suspect the same person is behind that attack as well as 11 others (the other victims are 11 women and one man); they were robbed of money......

Residents at the Wythe-Taylor Houses in South Williamsburg are sad and angry about the death of 5-year-old Jacob Neuman, who fell ten stories down an elevator shaft yesterday morning. Residents at the buildings--which are operated by the city's Housing Authority--had complained about the elevators, which had many problems, numerous times. The Post and Daily News have diagrams of what happened: Jacob and his 8-year-old brother were in the elevator when it stopped between the 10th......

The Municipal Arts Society presented some alternative ideas to the U.S. Army National Guard Bureau about the fate of Admiral's Row. The MAS hopes to show it's possible to "retain the historic buildings on the Admiral’s Row site while also allowing for the construction of a much-needed supermarket and new retail and industrial space." While six plans were presented, here's a look at how stark the visions are, by looking at renderings (created by the......

Michel Gondry may have just moved to Orient Avenue in Brooklyn, but certainly not to #59, which was briefly in the limelight when it appeared as Kate Winslet's apartment in his film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Four years after the cameras stopped rolling, The Brooklyn Paper takes a look at the house in its current state--and it's in no way ready for its next close-up.Squatters, junkies, and prostitutes have turned the vacant building......

Just after Brooklyn's two-headed turtle made it into the papers, The Daily News reports that someone snapped up the rare reptile sometime between 11 a.m. and noon Sunday, right from its window spot in Sean Casey's Hamilton Dog House shop! Casey says it's imperative he "get the turtle back fast because it requires special handling," and he'll take the it back "no questions asked." But just how did someone pull off the mid-day turtlenapping? Casey......

So about that slow news summer...did you hear about the two-headed turtle residing in Brooklyn? The Daily News reports the turtle has been in the front window of the Sean Casey Animal Rescue since earlier this month; "Casey, 27, got the two-headed turtle from a man in Florida who rescued a bunch of eggs after an adult female was killed by a car a year ago." Casey nursed the turtle, who was deteriorating, back to......

Word from Brooklyn's Cranberry Street is that the Moonstruck house (located at #19) has been sold after being on the market for just over two years. In that time it's gone from $5 million to $3.5 million; though there's no word on how much it was actually sold for, that's quite a deal for any Cher fan! Brooklyn Heights Blog notes that "the sellers of the home, architect Edwards Rullman and his wife Francesca, have......

Vintage Irving: Hey everybody, there’s a new wine bar and small plates place opening! Now you have a zillion and one to choose from – except this one’s different, at least a little; it features a cozy private tasting room where the owners plan to host sommeliers and celebrity chefs, starting with Top Chef survivor Sam Talbot, Eater reports. In the meantime, the public is free to enjoy what Strongbuzz describes as the “countryside café”......

A group of social butterflies in Brooklyn – who the Real Deal describes as having careers in "high-paying creative fields" – are banding together to start what would be the city's first "co-housing community." Like co-ops, co-housing communities make group decisions on issues like building maintenance. But here's the twist: while residents live in private homes, they share common areas for dining and cooking. The still-growing group of 25 households is eying a development site......

The third woman suspected in the Brooklyn shooting-robbery of taxi driver Enois Malbranche turned herself in this morning. WABC 7 reports Ivana Pittman, 18, will be arraigned on attempted murder charges tomorrow morning. Last Thursday, 62-year-old Malbranche picked up three women who refused to pay their $9.80 fare and shot him in the eye (with the bullet exiting the other eye). Malbranche, who is in stable condition, also said they attempted to rob him. April......

Crown Heights is up in arms about a Manhattan center for homeless men moving in. The NY Sun reports on the intake center, currently housed at Bellevue and which may move to the Bedford-Atlantic Armory Shelter. At a community board meeting this week, the residents expressed their anger, one stating: "Now that we can walk outside without getting shot, you've decided to throw sand back on our heads." Others fear the neighborhood fall victim to......

Heads up Black Sheep, your neighbors want you to STFU! The Brooklynian message board was abuzz about the Bergen Street bar yesterday when a local said they had to put up with "bad classic rock at full volume" until well after 2:30 a.m. on Monday night. A reasonable complaint – no one deserves to have their dreams invaded by the musical stylings of Foghat – but then the bad advice came rolling in: "While the......

This land is your land, this land is...well, it's The Man's land. One budding entrepreneur in Brooklyn learned that the hard way yesterday as his nearly decade-long scam came to an end. WNBC reports that Darren Miller has been using four acres of city property in East New York as a parking lot which he charged customers $200/month to use. "Hundreds of tractor-trailers and other vehicles were ordered removed Tuesday when police moved in to......

The 19-year-old woman arrested for allegedly shooting a taxi cab driver in the face last week has pleaded not guilty to charging including attempted murder and attempted robbery. April Pierce, being held on $150,000 bail, claims her two other companions shot Enois Malbranche; one of them, Erica Belgrave, surrendered to police on Monday while the cops are still looking for the third suspect. Malbranche, who told the NY Times that the women robbed him before......

Earlier this year Williamsburg resident Misha Calvert found herself being arrested for stealing two 40-oz Colt 45 bottles at a bodega in the neighborhood. Embarrassing! The 25-year-old took it in stride and somehow successfully pitched her own community service idea to the judge: a Mr. and Miss Williamsburg Pageant. No, really. FreeWilliamsburg reports that it'll all go down at Supreme Trading on September 5th, and there's still time to order your Bedford Avenue scarf, iron......

Photograph by vermilionink on Flickr It's that time of year again, when, with a regularity that rivals the swallows' return to Capistrano, the operator of the Astroland amusement area on Coney Island stares into her future and beholds a murky void. The tradition, which dates all the way back to 2007, is deeply troubling for Carol Albert, who has no idea whether developer Joe Sitt will renew her lease on the land that Astroland......

Bob Dylan will be playing to a sold out crowd at Prospect Park tonight, and while some ticket gouging is going on at various online outlets, you can probably hear the mumbling of the folk legend outside the perimeter of the venue for free. Will Dylan be returning to one of his old stomping grounds? There seems to be some uncertainty about him living in Brooklyn Heights. While he alluded to spending time there (allegedly......

What's the craziest thing you've ever encountered underground? Try to trump this Park Slope family's disturbing, X-rated experience; Gowanus Lounge reports that they (kids and all) ran into a man being orally pleasured on the steps of the 15th Street F Station in Brooklyn. "As we entered the turnstile, I looked up towards one of the staircases, and saw a man sitting on the stairs receiving oral sex from a woman whom I recognized from......

Eric Davis, the twenty-year-old man who fell through a broken sidewalk subway grate in Bed-Stuy on Friday morning has told his story to the Daily News from the confines of his bed at Kings County Hospital, where he's convalescing after plummeting ten feet into a filthy shaft: "I don't feel like it's bad luck ...because I survived. The one thing I did [was] I made sure I didn't bump my head. The lady paramedic made......

The Times took Red Hook's temperature this weekend, almost two months after the dreaded IKEA -- the first in New York City -- reared its ugly blue head on the Brooklyn waterfront. And contrary to all the hand-wringing, the paper finds that the big box "turned out to be less annoying than people thought." A worker at the Van Brunt Street cafe Baked says, "Everyone was talking about it before. But now, no one......

The police arrested a 19-year-old woman for shooting a taxi driver in the face last Thursday. Enois Malbranche, a 62-year-old driver, is still in critical condition; Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Malbranche was "shot in one eye...The bullet exits the other eye." Malbranche had picked up three women at Flatbush Avenue and Fulton Street, but at Lafayette and Franklin Avenue, he stopped when they wouldn't pay the $9.80 cab fare. That's when April Pierce allegedly......

Last year 43% of readers voted that that NYPD's Sky Watch was useless. Now Animal New York reports on the retractable 20-foot-tall watchtower and now it's popping up in more and more neighborhoods (they name Crown Heights, Harlem and DUMBO as a few). More recently one of the temporary watchtowers has been erected on Graham Avenue and Moore Street, which they pinpoint as "the Bushwickish section of Williamsburg." Allegedly this one is for some robberies......

Enois Malbranche, a 62-year-old cab driver, who was shot in the face yesterday morning, is in stable condition at Kings County Hospital. His son told the Daily News his father will probably lose his right eye. Malbranche was shot in Brooklyn when he got out of his cab to confront three women who refused to pay a $9.80 fare. The Post says he was attacked one of the women, while the News says police are......

Women in heels and skirts know to steer clear of sidewalk subway gratings, as do most people averse to fetid gusts of air from beneath the city’s streets. But sometimes when you’re rushing down a crowded sidewalk, you take your chances. And sometimes you fall in, as happened this morning to a man who crashed through a subway grate at the corner of Willoughby Avenue and Marcy in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The victim was rescued and taken......

Police say that in an attempt to investigate a stolen Mustang, the suspect gave chase, hitting a police officer whose gun "accidentally discharged." The incident occured around 8 p.m, at East 55th Street and Clarkson in Brooklyn; the suspect died at Kings County Hospital. According to the NY Post, the police had run the Mustang's plates and discovered it was taken from a NJ auto dealership. A leiutenant and another officer, "in uniform in an......

A yellow cab driver was shot in the face around 6:15 a.m. while at the intersection of Lafayette and Franklin Avenues in Brooklyn, a few blocks away from Pratt. He was taken to a hospital (either Kings County or Woodhull), and he is reportedly expected to survive. No arrests have been made, but the detectives are on the scene and are searching for evidence near the cab. Update: Now the police say 62-year-old Enois Melbranche......

After calls from the NYPD and a critically injured 9-year-old boy's family for help, two neighborhood teens turned themselves in for a Monday night shooting in Crown Heights. Luis Gonzalez, 19, and Jonathan Frazier, 18, were arrested and charged. The police say the gunfire between Gonzalez and Frazier started because of a third teen, Franklin Gillepsie, who is friends with Gonzalez. Per the Daily News, Gillepsie "was beaten up at a block party at the......

Did you hear that UK retailer Top Shop is coming to town this fall? Before they cross the pond, however, Williamsburg is Dead points out that they have some tips on how to dress for the McCarren Park Pool Parties (where they've temporarily set up shop). Apparently nothing says a sweltering New York summer in a concrete pool like a nice warm woollen beanie! The store arrives in town, by the way, about a......