Bushwick is the new Williamsburg (sort of gentrified and over-priced but all your friends live there), so even if you don't live in the McKibbin Lofts you should go to the second annual Bushwick Film Festival, kicking off tonight at Goodbye Blue Monday. Founders Kweighbaye Kotee and Laree Ross will be on hand to "bring independent filmmakers and audiences together to form a collective consciousness inspired by edgy and original works." The three-day event will be showcased at GBM, The Market Hotel, and Lumenhouse, with the full schedule here. Go, because it's a chance to see filmmakers who have grown up in the community, instead of the usual showcase for the collegiate set who couldn't afford LES digs.
David Beckham named his kid after it. Why not Starbucks? And so it is, meet The Brooklyn, the newest thing to sip at everyone's least favorite McCoffeeshop, inspired by high school girls with too much free time.
So what are the special ingredients? Well, you take a vanilla bean frappuccino, and then add … more sugar. Sure, it's 40 cents more ($4.90 for a venti) and 20 more calories (620!) than your standard frapp, but there's celebrity factor: Denzel Washington and John Travolta reportedly sampled the bev while filming The Taking of Pelham 123.
Said Park Slope resident Tanya Mikula, who has nothing else to live for: "It’s the latest craze. Everyone’s talking about it."
Ah yes, The Booklyn: June 2008's plastic neon sunglasses.
So, new reports say that Real World: Brooklyn may not be all skinny jeans and hip hangs in Williamsburg like the whole world expected. According to an article in today’s New York Times, the show’s producers are looking further south, to downtown Brooklyn, for the new home of seven strangers picked to have their lives taped. Turns out even the locals think that might be a bad idea:
Ever since a couple weeks ago when we saw some dick in McCarren Park do a bump in front of a baby, we've known it was time to get the hell out of Brooklyn. The plan was to become LES clichés at the end of the summer, but we're now left with no choice but to emigrate as soon as Craig's List and our friend Kat's truck give us the go ahead. The TV people have learned to exist in daylight like human beings and they're coming this way!
Producers are giving Park Slope the star treatment with a pilot by the same executives who brought "Sex and the City," starring Sarah Jessica Parker, and "Melrose Place" to TV.
According to industry sources, Darren Star, who created those smash shows, has teamed with Sony and NBC for a proposed series about a group of affluent characters who live in the upscale Brooklyn neighborhood.
Sue Kramer, the writer currently at work on the series, calls the program a "dramady. As you can no doubt imagine, Kramer is a Park Slope resident herself, so it's little wonder that she says shit like this: "Park Slope has so much juice, just like Manhattan. It's got a lot of pizzazz and energy." Our guess as to what the TV incarnation of Park Slope won't have a lot of: black people, whose pizzazz and energy are frequently overlooked by Darren Star.
Union Hall is a fine Park Slope bar. We've enjoyed many a beer there. But we’ll say this: It’s the kind of bar people from Manhattan who don’t usually go out in Brooklyn visit and say something like, “I go to Brooklyn. I went to Union Hall that one time after we went to Al Di Là. Gotta love the Bocce.”
Actually, do you need to love the Bocce? Wii Bowling would take up less space, and really, it appeals to the exact same demographic.
But anyway, in an attempt to maintain its Brooklyn cred, Union Hall has banned Park Slope babies.
That sounds like a good thing. But the fact that Union Hall needs to make such a ban speaks to a larger problem with that bar.
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We were all about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah back when they became an internet sensation in 2005. Two and a half years and a million other next big things later, we still dig them. Every so often we'll see a member of the band jogging around Prospect Park or getting on the train at 7th Avenue and Flatbush. The brush with low-level fame makes us feel so self-righteously Brooklyn that we briefly consider a move to Astoria.
Whether you think CYHSY is overhyped or that they were deserving of all that praise, you must admit, they give bad interview. CONTINUED »
Not too long ago, Mike Huckabee was just a fat governor from Arkansas.
One hundred pounds, a New York Times profile and a Chuck Norris endorsement later, he’s posed to win Iowa. The guy whose border control policy is “two words: Chuck Norris” has a 5% lead over Romney according to the Des Moines Register poll. He’s picked up 17% since the last Iowa Poll two months ago.
If irony is as popular in Iowa as it is in Brooklyn, maybe we’re just one America after all.
Urban Outfitters is “coming soon” to Boerum Hill. There’s no need to get all ironic t-shirt about this development. Even if their book selection is a depressing reflection of the tastes of twenty-somethings, most of their clothes are fashionable and not too expensive.
Yeah, we'll say it: We shop at Urban Outfitters and we like it. We might be tools, but at least we’re honest tools.
[Photo Credit: BK 11201]
Leaks, mold and drainage problems are a small price to pay for great architecture. At least that’s Frank Gehry’s defense.
Still, M.I.T. is suing Gehry for problems with its Stata Center. The $300 million building was completed in spring of 2004.
This Gehry design lasted three and a half years before it was deemed so fundamentally flawed it demanded a lawsuit; can't wait for the Nets Stadium in Brooklyn.
Every week a bunch of cultural stuff happens. Here are some thoughts related to that. -raronauer
This Wednesday, aspiring Top Chef judge and Times critic Frank Bruni visited Moim, a Korean restaurant in Park Slope.
Bruni gave the place one star, writing, "Moim does a tempered, tweaked version of Korean cooking that’s still rarer — still more of an exciting discovery — than you’d expect."
But central to Bruni's review is Moim's location in the heart of the wilds known as Brooklyn.
No one needs a fresher on how Brooklyn has changed in the past ten years; everyone knows that there are good meals to be had in the outer borough. Being surprised that Brooklyn has good food is like being impressed by an articulate black man.
CONTINUED »
Last night, we had a hankerin’ for some Castlin’, and headed to our local White Castle on Atlantic Avenue and Grand Street. Apparently they turn off the ice machine because people come in to take ice.
That’s right, people are stealing frozen water.
Recent studies show that working out won’t help you lose weight. So why go to the gym? To check people out, of course. But New York Sports Clubs are just as diverse as the city itself. Each gym is like a little litmus test of neighborhood’s population. This week, we investigate all the variety New York Sports Clubs have to offer.
[Full disclosure: After working out at innumerable NYSCs, we think Cobble Hill has the most attractive clientele. Our preference for people who exercise in raggedy University of Chicago t-shirts might make this write-up biased.]
Except for a few old folks who invested in the neighborhood early, most of the members of the Cobble NYSC on Pacific and Boerum Place are under thirty. These are the people who write your newspapers, proofread your novels and curate your galleries. They are the over-educated working class of New York.
Need proof? Last night, more channels were tuned to PBS’s broadcast of the British documentary 49 Up than to Dancing With the Stars.
CONTINUED »
Page Six throws out this blind item today:
Which recently separated star had his sidekick secure two young ladies to join him for a wild night back at his new bachelor pad?
Let's go to the way back machine. Page Six also reported three weeks ago:
Our spies…spotted [Heath Ledger] leaving the Beatrice Inn in the West Village early Sunday morning, looking for a fresh catch. “He wasn’t drinking, but he was there with his friend,” we’re told. “The friend chased two girls as they were leaving and gave them Heath’s address. He told them to meet at Heath’s new apartment in SoHo.”
Heath, forget about what all this gallivanting is doing to Michelle. Think about what picking up two women in SoHo is doing to Brooklyn's self-esteem.
Like their relationship, Heath and Michelle’s effort to assimilate in Brooklyn is over. One or both of them is leaving their Boerum Hill town house; the picture above was taken in front of their house and sent to Gothamist.
They may have enjoyed the reasonable rents and casualness of Brooklyn, but they’re still not U-Hauling anything.
Don't you just hate it when you're sitting in one of those hip (but totally laid back!) internet cafes in Williamsburg, sipping your chai tea with your unlaced Converse sneakers up on the thrift-store Ottoman, discussing Nietzsche and last night's Modest Mouse concert with your dreadlocked unemployed neighbor,* when suddenly it hits you: time to hop on the L, stand with all those Manhattan posers, and catch the Jitney to your parents' sick East Hampton pad?
Well, never fear! The Jitney is (finally) here, to cater to your oft over looked hipster/heiress needs.
As the NYO reports, the Hampton Jitney will commence making BK pickups later this year, thanks to the diligent efforts of Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz. But how will free penthouse recipient, Natasha Agrawal, deal with this unfettered access to her parents' Hamptons estate? With a Pucci swimsuit, oversized sunglasses and lots and lots of therapy.
*Who's also a countess.
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