Generally Speaking: Week of January 10

Brrrrr! Baby it’s cold outside

If you look at the guy in corner of the photo we took of some of the girls taking the frigid plunge this past New Year’s Day at Coney Island, our column headline this week may fit him to a T!

Other New Year’s Day celebrants joining the annual Polar Bear Club swim included City Councilmember and Park Sloper Brad LanderCraig HammermanTom McCarthy and Community Board 10 member Larry Stelter who has been taking Polar Dips since 1990.

Stelter, a city architect, is also an author and vice president of the Bay Ridge Historical Society. Craig is a member of the Society of Old Brooklynites, and McCarthy is a bank vice president and past president of the Cathedral Club of Brooklyn. We snapped some of the hearty bathers from the edge of the beach with only about an inch of water swirling at our sneakered feet. However, it was Bay Ridge shutterbug and photography professor Deborah Mattlack who caught Larry Stelter in his swimming trunks.

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One of the big local social events of the New Year will be taking place on Saturday, January 26, when the Bay Ridge Community Council holds its annual luncheon at the Bay Ridge Manor.

The afternoon bash will honor the presidents and heads of organizations affiliated with the council. In addition to area elected and appointed officials, past BRCC presidents and civic award recipients are invited. Renee Dorsa is the current president of the council which was founded over six decades ago.

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Bay Ridge Democratic District Leader Kevin Peter Carroll is probably one of the first Democratic district leaders in the entire city to endorse former Bay Ridge City Councilmember Sal Albanese for mayor.

Albanese was interviewed this past week on the daily NY1 political show, “Road to City Hall,” which is hosted by former Daily News columnist and attorney Errol Louis. Of all the potential Democratic mayoral candidates, Albanese is the only one that is a first generation immigrant.

With not much recognition outside of Southwest Brooklyn and maybe parts of Staten Island when he ran unsuccessfully for Congress against then-incumbent Susan Molinari (R) — and pretty much out of local political life for a dozen years or more — it would be a heavy lift for him to get serious citywide exposure.

He’s also getting into the race late, which may handicap his fundraising efforts. His candidacy also begs the question, is he a stalking horse for one of the other major candidates or simply a dark horse?

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Dem District Leader Carroll won’t be hopping a jet to join President Barack Obama for his inaugural parade, swearing-in ceremony or one of the fancy balls on January 21. But he is inviting his supporters, political allies and friends to his Bay Ridge residence from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. to watch the proceedings on TV and toast the president’s second term.

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At the New Year’s reception for Fort Hamilton Army Garrison Commander Eluyn GinesDilia Schack joined a group of her constituents on a bus trip to the Capitol to see former New York State Assemblymember Hakeem Jeffries sworn in as a freshman representative in Congress by House Speaker John Boehner.

Jeffries’ new Eighth Congressional District now also encompasses part of the 46 A.D., which includes Brighton Beach, Coney Island and Gravesend, and then swings across Brooklyn, covering East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Clinton Hill.

We also learned from Schack that both she and co-leader Mark Davidovich have endorsed William Thompson as their candidate in the Democratic mayoral primary. While he was at the reception too, we didn’t get a chance to ask recently re-elected Assemblymember Alec Brook-Krasny whether the scuttlebutt we were hearing that he just might be running for the City Council this year is true. Of course, that was contrary to an earlier denial at the Assembly debates sponsored by the Bay Ridge Council on Aging at the Fort Hamilton Senior Center last October.

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To reach Ted General via the Internet, his e-mail address is:

General@Journalist.com