Hundreds attend Flatbush ribbon cutting for new Hobby Box flagship
Large crowds formed for the opening of Hobby Box’s new flagship store at 2600 Flatbush Ave. on Sunday. The store specializes in sports cards, memorabilia, trading card games and collectibles. Yoni Sarfaty, 38, and his brother and business partner, Sammie Sarfaty, 36, own the store. “They want to be mainstays and partners in the community … to give back to the community wherever they can partner.” Photo: Loretta Chin/Brooklyn Eagle
Happy Wednesday in New York City, where we’re in for quite a doozy today.
Keeping with our tradition of breaking Brooklyn’s most closely guarded stories, we must report that today is quite hot. Real temperatures are expected to reach 102° in some areas, with heat-index values climbing as high as 107°.
But we may get a slight reprieve from the worst of the heat forecasts in the form of an unlikely ally: wildfire smoke. You may notice a slightly yellow-orange tinge to the sky today as smoke from wildfires in Minnesota and Ontario drifts into the New York airspace, potentially lingering for several days.
The bad news is that state officials are issuing an air quality health advisory due to potentially dangerous conditions. The good news is that the smoke blanket is expected to block some of the sun, potentially reducing temperatures by several degrees. “These forecast highs could be cooler than we’re currently forecasting,” Brian Ciemnecki of the National Weather Service told Hell Gate. “I think a lot of that will depend on how much smoke we actually see.”
Of course, the smoke only makes it more unsafe to spend extended periods of time outside. New York’s public libraries will be handing out free KN95 masks throughout the day.
In other news, the city council is set to hold a hearing on the proposed ban on Central Park’s carriage horses today, which also just so happens to be National Celebration of the Horse Day (not to be confused with National Day of the Horse on Dec. 13). Clearly it’s kismet, though which side it favors depends on who you ask.
NYC’s Health and Emergency Management departments have issued a joint alert on the possibility of deteriorating air quality in the city due to fine particulate matter, PM2.5, from spreading wildfires in Canada.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld NYC’s congestion pricing toll.
Anger over a plan to convert a family shelter into a facility for unvetted single men has prompted local leaders to schedule a protest for Thursday night.
The economy and workforce stand to lose in the yearlong moratorium on data centers, according to the Construction trade association.
Currently occupied by a Panda Express and other commercial uses, a four-story property at 423 Fulton St. was sold for $9.5M.
A robber stole around $900 from two seniors in Clinton Hill on Monday during a gunpoint stickup.
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Our World In Photos
Photo: Alessandra Tarantino/AP
ROME — ‘Think Beatles’ melody for “HELP” and use the word “MELT”’: An ice statue representing a farmer, one among the categories of workers most at risk from the rising temperatures, melts in front of Rome's ancient Colosseum, during a protest organized by the environmental group Greenpeace, Wednesday, July 15, 2026.
For more pictures like this, see Our World in Photos.
Why Bay Ridge, the ‘small town in a big city,’ is the go-to destination for community celebrations and civic engagement
Artist Vic Cantone’s satirical illustration from the 1970s welcoming all to “our” Bay Ridge, from Brooklyn Paper.
The neighborhood at the southwestern tip of Brooklyn, originally known as Yellow Hook for the yellowish soil along the waterfront, has a long and storied history.
From its early days as a Lenape settlement, indigenous people who lived in much of what is now New York City before European colonization, to its years as a seaside destination and the opening of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in 1964, Bay Ridge has always been unique.
It has been a longtime focal point for civic engagement and community celebrations, reflected in enthusiastic participation in parades, festivals and street fairs.
Attorney, newspaper columnist, institutional figure in the Bay Ridge community and civic organizer Chuck Otey spoke to the Brooklyn Eagle about why he believes the neighborhood is so vital.
“There is no neighborhood quite like Bay Ridge,” he said.
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The Mini
Cartoon Sketchbook
By Dave Granlund
For the Road
Happy Birthday Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker!
On this day in 1926, the Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON — The three women members of the House of Representatives are now trying to break a ten-year jinx against their sex. They are all striving mightily for re-election this fall to the 70th Congress, in the face of a tradition that no woman, since the first was seated in 1916, has served more than one term in Congress …”
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