BENSONHURST'S PREMIER NEWS BLOG

Here at Bensonhurst Bean, we’re constantly amazed at the sheer amount of celebrities who spent their formative years in Bensonhurst. Among them is New Utrecht High School graduate, as well as the originator and first host of Candid Camera, Allen Funt, who would have been 98 years old today.

The classic television program’s catch phrase, ‘smile, you’re on candid camera,’ continues to be part of America’s pop culture vocabulary.

According to an article in today’s Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Funt, the young phenom that he was, graduated from New Utrecht at 15. And like a true renaissance man, the brainiac also kicked some tuchus as a member of Cornell University’s boxing team.

From the Eagle:

Funt began an early radio career when he worked with Eleanor Roosevelt on her radio commentaries, and also was a gag man on the radio show “Truth or Conse-quences.”

He served in the Army Signal Corps during World War II at an Oklahoma base. One day, reading the “gripe column” in the army newspaper Yank, he thought of recording the gripes of servicemen for broadcast. The original idea didn’t work. The servicemen were too self-conscious at the microphone, and the format was flat and colorless. Funt developed a new idea — recording their spontaneous gripes with a hidden microphone. The result was hilarious, and that provided the spark for a new radio idea when the war ended.

After Word War II, Allen was host to radio program Ladies Be Seated, in addition to the precursor to his famous TV show Candid Camera, Candid Microphone.

After a stroke in 1993, Funt’s son Peter took over the show.

Allen Funt died on September 5, 1999, at his home in Pebble Beach, California, at the age of 84.

With the chilly weather of fall upon us, I often think of the Circle Line Cruises that travel, from pier 83 on 42nd Street in Hells Kitchen, up the Hudson River to Bear Mountain for Oktoberfest.

It’s always quite a shock to go from being solicited by panhandlers on the urine soaked streets of Manhattan to hearing Bavarian Oom-pah music amidst the rugged terrain and colorful autumn foliage of the Hudson Valley.

In honor of getting drunk and eating (let’s not kid ourselves), plus just having some plain old fashioned fun in like nature and stuff, Colleen brings us little links of heaven in the form of scrumptious, fried, beer battered sausages.

Colleen’s Beer Battered Sausages

Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour + flour to dredge
1 egg beaten
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup of your favorite beer
1 package of 6 sausage links
corn or canola oil to fry Click Here To Discover The Secret To The Kind Of Gratuitous Cooking That Gives Paula Deen The Vapors

Here we have a photo similar to one taken earlier this year.

In this version, we’re looking northwest from the Midwood side of the Avenue N Station, which sits on the McDonald Avenue El, part of the Culver Line served by the F Train.

You can see Washington Cemetery, as well the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan peeking out from behind the hills of Greenwood Cemetery and Brooklyn Heights.

We always look forward to cooler, drier weather, along with the increased visibility and more majestic views that come with it.

A Gradall operator leveling the road bed in preparation for track installation at the Bay Parkway N-train station during last weekend's construction work. Photo by Metropolitan Transportation Authority / Leonard Wiggins.

This weekend, the MTA is shutting down a significant portion of the F-line to advance the Culver Viaduct Rehabilitation project to its next phase. This means no Manhattan trips for southern Brooklyn riders without either taking a shuttle bus, or backtracking to Coney Island to take the D-, N-, or Q-trains.

The subway diversions for the weekend of September 17-18 begin Friday night/Saturday morning at midnight and continue until 5am on Monday, unless otherwise noted.

Affected train	Weekend service disruption
	Manhattan-bound D-trains run on the N-line Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue to 36th Street. For service to/from the affected stations, use the Coney Island-bound D-train and switch directions at 62nd Street-New Utrecht Avenue or Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue. Coney Island-bound trains skip 71st Street (all times until October 28). D-trains run local from 36th Street to DeKalb Avenue.
	There are no trains between 18th Avenue and Jay Street-Metrotech, in order to advance the Culver Viaduct Rehabilitation project to its next phase. Free shuttle buses will operate in three sections: (1) local stops between 18th Avenue and 4th Avenue-9th Street, (2) local stops between 4th Avenue-9th Street and Jay Street-Metrotech, and (3) an express stopping ONLY at 18th Avenue, Ditmas Avenue, Church Avenue, and Jay Street-Metrotech.
	Normal service. Guess they had to give us a break somewhere, eh?

Bensonhurst Weekend Subway Alert is a weekly look at the diversions affecting travel on the D-, F-, and N-lines through Bensonhurst and the rest of Brooklyn on the way to Manhattan. For information on diversions on other lines or beyond Brooklyn, refer to mta.info or Subway Weekender. Information is provided by the MTA and is current at the time of publication, but is subject to change.

(image by Butch Dill/ AP via Daily News)

With college tuition increasing at an almost exponential pace, debt-burdened students have one more thing to look forward to after graduation.

Bankruptcy.

According to a new report by the Institute for Financial Literacy, as mentioned in the Daily News, bankruptcy filings by college graduates have increased 20% in the last five years.

From Daily News:

“There’s this mythology out there that if you go to college and you get a degree, you’re going to do financially better,” said Leslie Linfield, the institute’s executive director. “I think this data is starting to erode at this myth.”

Last year, personal bankruptcies rose to 1.5 million, according to government data.

While bankruptcy filers are becoming better educated, they’re also increasingly well-heeled. The percentage of filers making more than $60,000 jumped 66% in the past five years, the survey showed.

Linfield explained the trend by pointing out the large number of white collar employees – a group that traditionally had more job security than workers in blue collar sectors – who have been laid off in recent years.

Increasingly, positions held by college graduates in some of America’s largest corporations are being outsourced abroad.

Yesterday, in the comments section of a Bensonhurst Bean story on increasing poverty rates, reader Joe123 made several astute points.

Joe informed fellow readers that his job, which he attended college to qualify for, is being eliminated and subcontracted to an Indian firm at the end of the year.

While Joe’s student loans have fortunately been paid off, he also stated that his lack of employment security has led him to stop making non-essential purchases.

He blamed our current economic predicament, in part, on short-sightedness by upper level management, who have a fiduciary responsibility to make money for investors.

Joe’s comments also made mention of a vicious cycle that can be created as large numbers of people, who are either uncertain about their future or deep in debt, spend less – further lessening the demand for new products in an already stalled economy.

“Companies have to maximize shareholder profits by law and there are only two ways to do this: increase sales or decrease costs,” Joe told Bensonhurst Bean. “Sales are down because people are either too burdened with debt or too worried about their job.”

Are you or someone you know a college grad who has had to declare bankruptcy?

Please feel free to share your story, or suggestions on improving the economy, in the comments below.

Below is a press release from Rep. Jerrold Nadler:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, reintroduced the Senior Citizenship Act of 2011 in order to help elderly immigrants become citizens.  For many older immigrants without extensive knowledge of the English language, the current waiting periods and exams required for citizenship have proved onerous.  This legislation would take into account the difficulties particular to older immigrants in regard to waiting periods and exam requirements for citizenship. Continue Reading »

Pete Hamill (from petehamill.com)

If you happen to be available and/or broke this Sunday, New York’s largest free literary event awaits.

The Brooklyn Book Festival takes place this Sunday at Borough Hall (209 Joralemon Street) in Downtown Brooklyn, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Authors who will be making an appearance include Larry McMurtry, Terry McMillan, Jennifer Egan, Eoin Colfer, John Sayles, Joyce Carol Oates, Craig Thompson, Walter Mosley, Adrian Tomine, Amitav Ghosh, Jean Valentine, Jules Feiffer, Senator Joseph Lieberman, Rachel Hawkins, Sam McBratney, Jacqueline Woodson, Jhumpa Lahiri, Mo Willems and the man who inspired this humble blogger to try his hand at writing (okay, blogging), Pete Hamill.

While all events at the festival are free, anything happening in the confines of Borough Hall’s courtroom or Saint Francis College’s auditorium requires tickets.

Tickets for each event are distributed one hour in advance at information booths set up on the plaza in front of Borough Hall.

You can peruse through a list of the festival’s programs here.

If you plan on using mass transit, make sure to check out tomorrow’s edition of Bensonhurst Bean’s Weekend Subway Update to make sure you get there with minimal aggravation.

Brooklyn Borough Hall is located at 209 Joralemon Street, between Court Street and Boerum Place in Downtown Brooklyn

Could one of our local bi-borough Congressmen be aiming for Al Sharpton’s spot on MSNBC?

The above series of videos, posted on Youtube by repmichaelgrimm, features Representative Grimm co-hosting an episode of CNBC’s Squawkbox. The topic? Jobs.

Rep. Michael Grimm represents New York’s 13th Congressional District, which includes all of Staten Island. In Brooklyn, the 13th District includes parts of Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst and Gravesend.

(from cheezburger.com)

Yesterday, News 12 Brooklyn reported that drivers in our neighborhood say they’re ‘confused’ by city parking rules for muni-meters – those annoying new parking meters that spit out teeny-tiny paper receipts.

One of the good things about the meters was that they were supposed to allow minutes left on a receipt from one spot to be used at another.

However, a local assemblyman told reporters that area residents who tried to carry over the muni-meter minutes have instead been issued parking tickets.

Assemblyman William Colton says that the DOT even went so far as to tell motorist advocacy groups that it’s legal to transfer the minutes, provided there is time left on the meter, leading many to assume doing so is within the rules.

From News 12:

But Colton says that during the past few months, his office has received numerous calls from drivers in Bensonhurst who have gotten parking violations for doing just that.

Bensonhurst Bean visited the DOT website and was unable to find any mention of the allowance on a page which lists the rules for muni-meters.

Colton has requested the DOT to make an announcement clarifying the law.

If any readers out there work for DOT or NYPD traffic enforcement, please feel free to give us the lowdown on the true muni-meter rules in the comments below.

Assemblyman William Colton represents Assembly District 47, which includes Bensonhurst, as well as parts of Gravesend and Midwood.

(from nytimes.com)

According to the New York Times, the U.S. Census Bureau reported yesterday that 2.6 million people fell below the poverty line in the United States last year.

That brings the number of American living in poverty to 46.2 million, which is the highest it has been in the 52 years since the bureau first began publishing the data.

The Times included the observation of Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard – who pointed out that Americans’ incomes have not stagnated for this long since the Great Depression.

From the Times:

“This is truly a lost decade,” Mr. Katz said. “We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”

The bureau’s findings were worse than many economists expected, and brought into sharp relief the toll the past decade — including the painful declines of the financial crisis and recession —had taken on Americans at the middle and lower parts of the income ladder. It is also fresh evidence that the disappointing economic recovery has done nothing for the country’s poorest citizens.

The report said the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line last year, 15.1 percent, was the highest level since 1993. (The poverty line in 2010 for a family of four was $22,314.)

As far as the long term health and happiness of our readership, this might very well be the most relevant topic we’ve ever discussed at Bensonhurst Bean, so we want to hear from you.

How has the economy affected you and your family? Have you had to take pay cuts or forgo an expected raise? Are you or a loved one out of work? Do you know someone who has lost a manufacturing or IT job to overseas outsourcing?

Feel free to add your own two cents about possible solutions or mistakes you feel the government has made in addressing the economy. Please just try to avoid the typical Democrat versus Republican partisan name-calling.