Letters From Here

FAT CAT, 75 Christopher Street, West Village; (212) 675-6056, fatcatmusic.org.

NANCY WHISKEY PUB, 1 Lispenard Street, TriBeCa; (212) 226-9943, nancywhiskeypub.com.

PLUG UGLIES, 257 Third Avenue, at 21st Street, Manhattan; (212) 780-1944, plugugliesnyc.com.

THE DIAMOND, 43 Franklin Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn; (718) 383-5030, thediamondbrooklyn.com.

THE WHISKEY BROOKLYN, 44 Berry Street, Williamsburg; (718) 387-8444, whiskeybrooklyn.com.

BURNSIDE, 506 Grand Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn; (347) 889-7793, burnsidebrooklyn.com.

THE DRAM SHOP, 339 Ninth Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn; (718) 788-1444, dramshopbrooklyn.com.

Places to play shuffleboard (bar version) in New York City

Handy advice:

We have talked about this before, particularly in how to get to JFK from Brooklyn. (The appropriate answer: the LIRR from Atlantic Terminal. Unless you’re in Greenpoint. In which case, you take the E train. The A train is okay but only if you’re right on top of it. You’re better off taking a car service from most anywhere in Brooklyn to Atlantic Terminal and hopping the train.)

And from almost anywhere in Manhattan, the appropriate way to get to JFK is to take the LIRR at Penn Station to Jamaica.

The only time on a weekday that you should take a car to JFK is between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.. On weekends, you can take a car prior to 10 a.m. And never take the Belt, even though that seems like it would be faster. It never is!

Other than that? Take a car to the LIRR, and then enjoy the nice train ride. Also don’t listen to the “only fly out of LaGuardia” apologists, that airport is terrible.

Lengthy (and uneven) story examines gentrification in Crown Heights. I was interested in a longtime local’s comments zeroing in on bikeness:

“Let me tell you something. I’ve lived here thirty-seven years, and now I start to see white people moving in. And I’m telling you the truth now, I start to feel like…‘But why are all these people moving in? And I think to myself, ‘Ah shit!’ The changes around here’—the police start to change; all this other shit, all these bicycle things, bicycle stands. All these changes the last two or three years, and I say, ‘But why?”

a new book from Aurora Wallace, a professor in the department of media, culture and communication at New York University, who deconstructs the phrase “media capital” to explore New York’s cityscape.

Her book was inspired by a poem, but news buffs and urban planners alike will appreciate her “Media Capital: Architecture and Communications in New York City” (University of Illinois Press; $25 in paperback), which explores the landmarks — a few still surviving — that media moguls built to validate their dominance.

By Robert Sietsema

By Dwight Garner

Aamanns-Copenhagen, in an airy, white-walled space in TriBeCa, is a restaurant serving Danish staples like herring and smørrebrød (dense, buttered brown bread with assorted toppings), as well as a kind of Danish cultural center.

Many in the industry are concerned for the future of fashion in New York City. Fashion is an industry that thrives on proximity, for both innovation and production. Often compared to an ecosystem, the world of fashion design depends on access to suppliers, wholesalers, sewing and cutting rooms, prototypes, and samples, as well as to the city’s retail networks, media outlets, the creative energy of other designers, and local fashion schools. Major fashion designers credit their careers to the Garment District, where a young entrepreneur can use these resources to start a small line with minimal capital, something that mass production in China doesn’t allow for. But asking rents in the area are rising, and nearby development is bringing more office, residential, hotel and retail use, much of it non-fashion related. Many see these real estate pressures as threatening the efficiencies and vitality of the Garment District.