• The Future of Bushwick: Last year, Bungalow Projects started making noise about a deal to build a 300,000 square foot, six story movie and television studio over Siegel Street in Bushwick. With the assistance of Mitt Romney’s old friends at Bain Capital, Bungalow Projects dropped about $50 million for the site, with construction plans for the project and a twin location in Red Hook totalling over $500 million. At one point they had to get rezoning permission for “a larger building than is typically allowed” and the deal itself closed earlier this month.

• Nearby, art logistics behemoth UOVO continues its push over the summer to open a seven story, 240,000 square foot climate controlled art storage facility at 74 Bogart Avenue for “private and corporate owners of artworks, collections of wine, and fashion archives,” which has also been called a ‘billionaire refrigerator.’ As it happens, UOVO is owned by rich guy Steve Guttman and has taken heat for union busting tactics in the past. 

• In a more positive vision of the future, Bushwick might have light rail: via a stop on the planned IBX line from Queens to Brooklyn.

• Over In Chinatown: Canal Street’s ‘Bootleg Alley’ was raided by ICE agents last week in a scene that eventually turned into a battle between protestors and agents, with a crowd of angry New Yorkers standing off against federal agents armed with machine guns. 

• Homeland Security called the raid a “targeted, intelligence driven enforcement operation”- although it was probably inspired by a post by a Turning Point USA influencer.

• The chaos apparently isn’t enough for the Trump Administration, who ordered a “purge” of ICE directors in over half a dozen cities this week, to be replaced by US Border Patrol officers in order to secure Stephen Miller’s dream of continuing dream of 3,000 immigration arrests per day. Private prison CEOs presumably approve.

• Elsewhere, our friend Andrew Cuomo entered the home stretch of his mayoral campaign by turning up the old Racism Dial. You got this, Luv Gov!

• Closer to home, Waiting for Godot-star Keanu Reeves was honored at the Bushwick Starr for his long-standing support of the theater, where he’s has been a board member since 2012. He even wore shoes!

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