Swoon and Chris Stain recently pasted up some new work on Franklin Ave in Crown Heights, but it wasn’t long before someone marked it up. Was the image of two women in an embrace too much for someone?

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Production of the Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious continues, with filming taking place outside today at the corner of St. Marks Ave and Franklin Ave in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. In preparation, a team of set dressers came through to give the block a slight makeover; storefronts are boarded up and a church is hidden completely. The local graffiti has been supplemented with Hollywood approved tags, which fit in fairly well if you don’t notice the lack of Blood and Crip tags or the protective plastic it’s painted on. By the looks of it, they’re staging a scene inspired by video of Biggie rapping outside a Bed Stuy grocery store at age 17.

If you want to be in the production and you’re between the ages of 17 and 35, they’re looking for unpaid extras for a few concert scenes being shot this Thursday and Friday.

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Valentine’s Day saw the return of Sky Watch, the NYPD’s friendly neighborhood guard tower, to Nostrand Ave and St. Marks Ave in Crown Heights. Stopping to take a commemorative photo, we were interrupted by four undercover cops stationed nearby, who wasted no time with niceties. “What are you, a terrorist? You look like you’re taking photographs of the officers in that secure area so you can follow them home to hurt them or kill them! Cops get death threats, you know!” Remember when last year East Harlem Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito said, “We need to build community relations, and these things send the wrong message. There should be interaction on the street, instead of towering over people.” Somehow, this doesn’t seem like the interaction she was talking about. Perhaps the NYPD could try approaching more people as humans, not as would-be terrorists and cop killers.

Some Bloods teamed up with crossed out some Crips on Franklin Ave.

Welcome everybody’s favorite NYPD watch tower back to Crown Heights. Sky Watch is now posted up on the corner of Nostrand Ave and Prospect Place. A word of caution: If you decide to be neighborly and drop off a housewarming gift, don’t rack it from the Key Foods across the street. Sky Watch doesn’t take too kindly to anybody stealing fruit baskets on its watch.

Worried about the safe, sterile, homogeneous influence of Prospect Heights creeping into your Crown Heights experience? Worry less. A Jeep Wrangler was stripped and left sitting on cinder blocks beneath the Franklin Avenue Shuttle on St. Marks Avenue yesterday, a reminder that the 16-story glass tower planned a few doors down at 540 St. Marks Ave. may be a very difficult sell.

“You need a little clarity? Check the similarity!” The NYPD is using extraordinary means to maintain control at Carroll Street and Troy Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The apparatus in question is Sky Watch, a “mobile platform for surveillance, assessment, and response.” According to one officer, the watch tower has been effective at reducing crime since it was installed in May 2006. While the Sky Watch would seem to be useful in confined environments, like prisons and special events, we think a six month installation on city streets simply pushes crime to nearby blocks. However, we did catch the contraption in action.

After this show, we totally expected Chewbacca to pop out of this AT-ST knock off.

High up on the ledges of a couple abandoned buildings in Crown Heights (formerly known as Crow Hill), these silhouettes of crows and people are so innocuous, one might miss them. However, they stand out because street art infrequently engages its location and local history so pleasantly. We look forward to more street art like this popping up in the neighborhood.

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