Well, here are four words we never thought we would type: Save the G-train?

Brooklyn's straphangers, known to love the looping line as much as they hate it, are now rallying in support of the G: District Leader Lincoln Restler has organized a petition to keep the MTA from cutting off full Church Avenue-to-Queens service. Nearly 1,200 have signed the online petition, which began Sunday. The move comes as communities continue to feel the effect of MTA cuts -- which resulted in the loss of two subway lines, 36 bus routes, and 570 bus stops in the last several years.

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A man has robbed five Brooklyn and Queens businesses at gunpoint, and cops want your help bringing this jerk to justice.

Police say that he began his crime spree on Sept. 25, around 12:15 a.m., when he stormed into a Greenpoint Dunkin Donuts at 356 McGuiness Boulevard, shot a gun, and fled with cash.

The suspected perp then hit a Williamsburg Capital One Bank, located at 185 Broadway, on Oct. 18.

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Hey, New Yorker! Yeah, YOU! Now you finally have good reason to be that asshole -- you know, that guy or gal who doesn't want to give directions. It could be dangerous!

Cops say the four scumbags pictured here are preying on the city's good Samaritans -- they'll stop and ask you for directions and rob you while you're distracted.

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Elected officials like to be cheerleaders for affordable housing. But that doesn't mean they're always cheering for the same thing. For some Brooklyn pols speaking out this week about the Broadway Triangle -- the 31-acre parcel of city-owned land on the border of Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant, where gentrification tensions are high -- there is, shall we say, a lack of consensus on the best path to produce affordable housing.

Yesterday we reported on a group of advocates and electeds rallying at City Hall to criticize the city's plan and praise a recent state Supreme Court decision that bars the city from moving forward with its housing development. The opponents of the city's plan, with support from City Councilwoman Diana Reyna and Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, argue that the current proposal would promote segregation by giving preference to those living in the whiter parts of north Brooklyn. The courts agreed last week, saying the project would perpetuate discrimination and granting the city a preliminary injunction barring the plan.

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Mayor Mike Bloomberg awkwardly walked past a press conference on the steps of City Hall this morning as advocates criticized him and called on the city to change its housing plans for Brooklyn's Broadway Triangle.

The group of advocates and residents, with the support of two electeds, had rallied today to urge the city to support inclusive affordable housing in the Broadway Triangle, a plot of city-owned land in north Brooklyn at the heart of the borough's gentrification tensions. Along with arguing that the city's plan violates the federal Fair Housing Act, the group came to City Hall today to celebrate a state Supreme Court decision last week that granted a preliminary injunction barring the city from moving forward with its housing development on the border of Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant. The decision argued that the city's plan would perpetuate discrimination.

"We want to send our city and our mayor a message about perpetuated segregation in Brooklyn," said Juan Ramos, chair of the Broadway Triangle Community Coalition, glancing to his left as the mayor walked around the press conference and up the steps of City Hall. "And what is that message? That we don't accept segregation in Brooklyn."

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courtesy of Sarah Baker

Lincoln Restler on the night of his election to the New York State Democratic Committee last year.

Last year, Brooklyn politics-as-usual got a shakeup via the election of glasses-sporting 27-year-old Lincoln Restler to a State Committee seat as the District Leader for Williamsburg and the surrounding environs. Restler and the New Kings Democrats, a grassroots lefty organization in Brooklyn, took on crooked Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Vito Lopez and won, showing that with the right amount of effort and door-knocking, an upstart can get voted into local elected office.

The Voice wrote about NKD a bit last year during that election cycle. Recently we heard from Sarah Baker, a NKD organizer who's now involved in a new project down in D.C. with other young Brooklyn political minds. She and Carlos Odio, an Obama campaign veteran, are running the Candidate Project, whose goal is basically to replicate Lincoln Restler's success all over the country by recruiting progressives to run for local elected positions (the political establishment in Washington now being seen as something of a lost cause). Odio is the director of the project and Baker's title is digital director. Yesterday they launched the 2,012 for 2012 initiative, which will attempt to get 2,012 regular people elected to local offices in the 2012 cycle. Brooklyn hipster-pols are going national!

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Creative Commons via Bitchcakes

Burrrrrp!

Have no fear, Williamsburg lushes. Even though the Turkey's Nest, the Bedford Avenue drinking hovel made famous by its take-out margaritas and bathtub-sized beers, has been shuttered since last Wednesday, the old-school bastion of neighborhood degenerates is, in fact, not out of business!

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Don't come between a security guard and his breakfast. The New York Post reports of a struggle earlier this morning between a masked assailant and a security guard outside of East Williamsburg's Late Night Deli on Metropolitan and Olive Street (the Post incorrectly reported it as Oliver St, which is on the Lower East Side and has a fairly decent Chinese place).

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Mathieu Lefevre

Gothamist has an interview today with the mother of Mathieu Lefevre, the 30-year-old Brooklyn artist from Canada who was hit by a truck and killed in East Williamsburg while biking last week. Lefevre's mother, Erika, said that the family was told to go to the NYPD Accident Investigation Squad, and the detective there never returned their phone calls. Police decided there was no criminality in the incident, but didn't directly tell the family:

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According to police, a 30-year-old man was struck and killed by a truck on Meserole Street and Morgan Avenue last night around midnight. Cops have determined that the man was biking alongside a flatbed truck that made a right turn; as the truck turned, it hit the biker. His identity hasn't been revealed yet, pending family notification.

Police canvassed the area and found the truck parked on Scholes between Morgan and Bogart. They say the investigation is ongoing.

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