La Bouillabaisse: That new French bistro in Red Hook, across the street from IKEA and connected to Annabelle's bar (formerly Lillie’s), has just opened. As reported back in June, the restaurant is the baby of Neil Ganic, who won a following through previous iterations of Bouillabaisse on Atlantic Avenue in the ‘90s. Besides serving the bar crowd next door and in the backyard, Ganic’s menu features his old signature dishes like a poached-pear–and–blue-cheese salad, according......

Last year Red Hook venue The Hook shut down, leaving the unique space empty. Luckily, some new folks came in, slapped a new name on it and have reopened the place this weekend. The name, Hello Brooklyn, might not roll off the tongue quite as nicely, but let's see what they have in store for 18 Commerce Street. The 6200 sq. ft. space will host "live performances, unique corporate events, video/photo shoots, and private engagements."......

So that Red Hook IKEA seems to be doing quite well, thank you. McBrooklyn has an amusing account of check-out lines lasting well over an hour at the Swedish retailer this weekend: "We were so far back there was no way to even tell if we were in a cash only line or a credit and debit only line. People were getting pretty grumpy, let me tell you. A woman jumped ahead of us in......

Looks like The Real World's latest cast has finally settled in to their Red Hook digs. NewYorkology spotted the seven strangers as they left their new residence at Pier 41, "they were heading toward Sunny’s, but instead made the turn, map, toward Van Brunt, with the Ikea straight ahead down Beard Street." They can have their IKEA; just stay away from Sunny's! Anyway, this could very well be their first Friday night in town...you've all......

Since moving into a Brooklyn Heights apartment occupied by author H.P. Lovecraft in the '20s, a pair of roommates have been having some weird experiences. A picture "mysteriously leaped off" the wall, the hammer used to hang the picture disappeared, a Ouija board seance really freaked everybody out, and a humming noise has gone unexplained. One of the tenants, Nellie Kurtzman (daughter of famous Mad Magazine founding editor Harvey Kurtzman), tells the Post she doesn't......

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......

While MTV is keeping mum on the whereabouts of the upcoming Real World Brooklyn location, the borough is all wise to the fact that they're setting up camp in Red Hook (after not moving to Carroll Gardens or Downtown's BellTel Lofts). The Brooklyn Paper asked some residents how they felt about their new future neighbors, who will reside at Pier 41 at 204 Van Dyke Street.“I’d rather have another Ikea,” said John Varonian, who has......

Yesterday’s notice about the long-overdue return of the Red Hook ball field food vendors elicited comments from disgruntled eaters who were disappointed by the new carts, which limit the vendors’ cooking space and caused massive, hour-plus lines. Commenter sofabait seems to reflect a growing consensus that the new Health Department oversight has changed things for the worse: “The exhaust fumes from their constantly idling trucks totally killed my appetite. Not sure if that is better......

As promised, the beloved Latin food vendors returned to the Red Hook soccer fields this weekend, over a month and a half later than usual. After nearly getting evicted from the park last year, the vendors had to spend thousands of dollars to buy new carts and other equipment to meet the Health Department’s requirements. According to Eater, Cesar Fuentes, leader of the vendors association, called the DOH-mandated changes "a financial and emotional burden… [But]......

From a source who was over at the Pier 41 building in Red Hook earlier today, where the latest Real World cast is rumored to be moving, word of "progress" on the cast's living space comes in: "They're building them a cabana, and a sand pit right now." They also tell us that "somebody also did a short film shoot the other day down the block from the Pier 41 building, permitted/blocked off streets, possibly......

Carroll Gardens, you totally got Punk'd...the seven newest Real World strangers won't be moving to your quaint little neighborhood after all, instead they'll be moving to Red Hook. So says the latest rumor, which claims "construction of a make-shift apartment has begun on the upstairs end of Pier-41 (204 Van Dyke Street) as of last week. The space had most recently been used a few years ago when it was built-out as a bar/night club......

The Red Hook Latin street food vendors will finally be returning to the ball fields this weekend after a three month delay that has left some of the 13 merchants drowning in debt. The Brooklyn Paper has it that some have spent over $35,000 to purchase new stands and satisfy Health Department inspectors, who threatened to shut the vendors down last year until a huge public outcry forced the city to reconsider. But was it......

There'll be an opening reception tomorrow night (at 7:55 p.m.) for photographer Miru Kim's Naked City Spleen show at Gestarc Gallery in Red Hook. The work is part of Kim's ongoing series of photographs that depict her nakedly exploring abandoned subway stations, tunnels, sewers, and even the now-demolished sugar refinery in Red Hook. Now all she needs is a shot of herself in the IKEA cafeteria. Also on view is a film and video installation......

The Brooklyn Paper talks to a number of people about the inevitability of more national, big box and chain retailers coming to Red Hook. One commercial real estate broker says, "There are a lot of large parcels of land that are owned by single landowners [and] it’s favorably zoned.” So, will the death knell be a Wal-Mart...or an Olive Garden?......

Red Hook seemed eerily quiet on Saturday, as we checked out the traffic flow on Columbia and Van Brunt Streets on the West Side of the neighborhood. Any prediction of overwhelming weekend gridlock seemed not to be panning out-- except for one Ikea bus ferrying people from Boro Hall, the scene seemed as quiet and bucolic as any summer weekend in years past. Indeed, maybe even quieter, as people who'd normally be out at......

Due to an unexpected increase in shipping through the Port of New York, the city now lacks the necessary number of dry-docks to service barges in need of maintenance, according to a recently released study by the SUNY Maritime College. The findings were announced by the city's Economic Development Corp. just as the new IKEA in Red Hook opened. The parking lot at IKEA was controversially built over one of the city’s last remaining “graving docks,” which can accommodate larger ships....

Her debut album appeared just six weeks ago, but this summer’s already shaping up to be a big one for Santogold (myspace), the suddenly red-hot pop/dub/hip hop fusion artist from Brooklyn (by way of Philly). She’ll be headlining Central Park Summerstage, opening for some of Coldplay’s dates in the U.S., and joining an ad campaign for the 100th Anniversary of Converse sneakers (The blitz kicked off recently with a new song she made with with......

The exhaustive coverage of today's Red Hook Ikea opening here and elsewhere around the web was the inevitable climax of a perfect storm of storylines: Rough-edged neighborhood with a lot of history gets another turn in the spotlight – or are those cross hairs? Has Red Hook now sacrificed too much of the charm that made its sleepy waterfront streets so appealing to artists? Or is the arrival of big retail business just what the......

While shoppers' enthusiasm for the new Brooklyn Ikea has been well documented today, opinion was decidedly mixed among residents who skipped the festivities at the new 346,000 square foot store. Jennifer Cohen, a Red Hook resident for the last eight years, voiced the most common concern, that the neighborhood's streets and buses would be overly taxed by thousands of shoppers descending on the store, which is far from the subway. According to Cohen, the B61......

Six of the twenty-two acres of land that Ikea occupies in Red Hook have been turned into a park and waterfront esplanade, built by the big box retailer as a deal-sweetener for their wary neighbors. You don’t need to buy any Swedish meatballs to hang out by the water, and the free Water Taxi service arranged by Ikea might make it an appealing weekend destination in its own right. But shoppers should be aware that......

After nearly six years of controversy, construction, worry and anticipation, the first Ikea in New York City opened in Red Hook, Brooklyn this morning. By the time the doors opened at 9:00 a.m., hundreds of shoppers had gathered on line outside the popular Swedish retailer. A festive atmosphere prevailed without any of the community dissent that had threatened to stymie the project from the beginning. Instead of demonstrations from neighbors worried about the incoming wave......

Opening tomorrow as a counterpoint to the Red Hook Ikea kick-off is a photography exhibit at the Brooklyn Public Library that chronicles the disappearing industrial sites along Brooklyn's waterfront. Called "Twilight on the Waterfront: Brooklyn's Vanishing Industrial Heritage," the photographs are the work of Nathan Kensinger, who has compiled an impressive body of work over the last five years by sneaking into dilapidated properties around Brooklyn. The series vividly documents the accidental beauty of decaying......

Full map here. As the world waits in hushed anticipation for tomorrow morning’s grand opening of the Red Hook Ikea, many eager shoppers are agonizing over the best route in and out of the relatively inaccessible neighborhood. So Ikea has been making a big effort to lure customers and appease locals fretting about the traffic with some complimentary transportation alternatives:New York Water Taxi is operating free ferry service from Pier 11 in Manhattan directly to......

With the 346,000 square foot Ikea poised to open in Red Hook Wednesday morning, the Times fans out into the neighborhood to measure public opinion about the big Swedish store, which has come into being after vocal opposition from some local residents. The most commonly-voiced concern is about the traffic that will clog Red Hook’s streets; estimates vary from a few thousand visitors on weekdays to more than 14,000 cars a day on weekends. Some......

Starting Monday morning at 9 a.m., excited consumers will begin camping out in the parking lot under the Red Hook IKEA in anticipation of the new store’s ribbon cutting – or rather, log cutting, which is how Swedes open something according to Curbed. Now why would anyone be crazy enough to camp out for days just to shop at a store that anyone will be able visit to whenever they want? Besides walking away......

The folks at Porkchop Express have an informative Q&A session with Cesar Fuentes, the Executive Director of the Red Hook Food Vendors Committee. As enthusiasts await the opening of the new ballfield stands, the good news is that all the same vendors will be returning with their Latin culinary delights. The bad news is that not all of them may get it together in time to return for this season, and the new operating costs......

Red Hook residents who used to party at Lillie’s bar on Beard Street may be surprised to discover that right next door to the decadent nightspot was an elegant restaurant waiting to be born. What was previously storage space has been thoroughly overhauled into a French bistro called La Bouillabaisse, which owner Neil Ganic (Petite Crevette) hopes to have running in time for the June 18th grand opening of IKEA, conveniently located across the street.......

Over the weekend, hungry visitors to the Red Hook ball fields were disappointed to find that the famous Latin American food vendors were nowhere to be found. Back in March the Parks Department bent to considerable public outcry and dropped its threat to evict the longstanding vendors, instead granting them a six-year permit. But it seems the permit approval process – which requires equipment upgrades estimated to cost $15,000 to $30,000 – have delayed......

D.W. Young's A Hole in a Fence, the documentary which focuses on Red Hook, has been floating around for a while and is coming back to town this week -- just before the new IKEA opens its doors in the 'nabe. In 46 minutes Young explores the hurdles the neighborhood is facing and "the complicated issues of development, class and identity facing the city's most populous borough." Young urban farmers and graffiti writers are followed......

Roughly six years have passed since the controversial Red Hook IKEA was first proposed, further dividing an already fragmented community. Next month the 346,000-square-foot store, the first IKEA in New York City, will finally open on Beard Street, and, you guessed it, the community is still divided. John McGettrick, co-chair of the Red Hook Civic Alliance, insists IKEA is a waste of 22 acres of prime waterfront property and will create a traffic nightmare on......