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reality tv
shut up, brooklyn
Real World: Brooklyn Could Be in Boring Old Downtown
Last week we posited that the new Real World: Brooklyn would be filmed in Williamsburg, but suggested that the infamous hipster paradise that is the McKibbin "dorms" in Bushwick would be a better environment. Well, it looks like MTV is, in fact, not listening to us. The Brooklyn Paper is reporting that the show is going to be filmed in downtown Brooklyn. Well, allegedly. The producers admitted to looking at a large apartment building called the BellTell Lofts (ooo, lofts! hip!) in the decidedly ho hum Brooklyn business and fancy courtroom district. More »
stroller derby
Park Slope Hate Reaching Critical Mass
So yesterday the Times weighed in on everyone's most detested yuppie mecca, Park Slope. Today, the new issue of Time Out New York piles on! "Websites like Gawker and Curbed crackle with anti-Slope invective, hurled at the twin bugaboos of the 'Stroller Mafia' (pushy, indulgent yuppie parents) and the bleeding-heart 'People’s Republic of Park Slope' (headquartered at the Food Co-op)." Update: Via email from Maureen Shelly: "Hi Ian. I'm the EIC of Time Out Kids. Just wanted to point out that the Park Slope piece you turned up is from last year — not the upcoming June issue. Our piece was also by Lynne Harris, who penned the Times story. I guess she felt she had more to say on the subject." More »
Magical Brooklyn
'NYT' Explores Park Slope Hell
"To its detractors, Park Slope is both haunt and hatchery of New York’s smuggest limousine-liberal yuppies. It is, if I may further summarize the bad publicity, overrated and hypocritical. Its glorious brownstone blocks and jaunty cafes are awash in carpetbagger entitlement, ruled by snarling 'Stroller Nazis.' The neighborhood is a ground zero of all that is twee and lame. It is, God forbid, the suburbs." Well done. But what do the anonymous blog commenters have to say, New York Times? More »
Foxy Brown Pleads Guilty to Cell-Phone Menacing
How does one go about "menacing a neighbor with [a] cell phone," as the AP reports of Brooklyn rapper Foxy Brown? The AP does not explain. The fight started with Foxy "blasting her car stereo" outside the building. (This scuffle is not to be confused with last year's fight with a manicurist.)
goodbye, brooklyn
Are Celebrities Done With Brooklyn?
Brooklyn "power couple" Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany are leaving the neighborhood. Their beautiful Prospect Park West mansion (see pic, above) is on the market for $8.5m (they paid $3.5 for it back in 2003). They'll be fleeing to a fancypants penthouse in TriBeCa. So, is everyone going to just abandon Brooklyn? First it was Michelle Williams and the late Heath Ledger (though she kept their Boerum Hill brownstone, she spends most of her downtime in LA, he spent it in Manhattan), and now these well-respected "boho" "artists." Thank God we've still got Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, and Keri Russell. And I think M.I.A. lives somewhere in Bed-Stuy. But, they'll probably leave too. More »
everyone is friends
Rick Moody Pies Dale Peck
Dale Peck has become so much less angry since he scored that $3 million book deal! The novelist and critic—whose Friendster profile was once described as "incredibly anti-corporate and anti-consumer," who famously hated things much more than most reviewers do these dark days, and who was slugged by Stanley Crouch because of it—recently allowed himself to be pied by Rick Moody. Moody was once described by Peck as the worst writer of his generation. But at a fundraiser the Montauk Club last night, it was all fun and games and pieing. [NYT]
shut up, brooklyn
Even if the Brooklyn Literary Scene is dead, or as Colson Whitehead put it, annoying and irrelevant, there still are a lot of writers kicking it in the borough of churches. In today's New York Observer, Fort Greene's own Doree Shafrir made an extensive list of the Brooklyn literarati, including neighborhood listings. Not to sound like an asshole, but even I didn't know about some of the writers and editors on the list. The Observer's non-college educated readership will be totally lost. More »
Gawker Stalker For The Ultra-Literary Set
Even if the Brooklyn Literary Scene is dead, or as Colson Whitehead put it, annoying and irrelevant, there still are a lot of writers kicking it in the borough of churches. In today's New York Observer, Fort Greene's own Doree Shafrir made an extensive list of the Brooklyn literarati, including neighborhood listings. Not to sound like an asshole, but even I didn't know about some of the writers and editors on the list. The Observer's non-college educated readership will be totally lost. More »
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deep questions
Is 'Home Buying For Hipsters' Actually Just For Tools?
Like "cool," "hipster" is a multivalent word with no set definition but many different meanings. But from a real estate developers' perspective, if you live in Brooklyn, have read a Jonathan Lethem book or have gone to Studio B, you qualify. Sorry! Even so, no real hipster admits to being one. That's worse than saying you want to be cool. Which makes Home Buying For Hipsters — a monthly real estate advising meet-up with ties to the Corcoran Group — so perplexing. What tool would show up to their event tonight, which is aimed at a demographic no one would acknowledge being a part of? More »
Brooklyn: Naughty
Is it possible that Brooklyn is really "the naughtiest place in the country"? A porn site called Naughty America says it is, mainly because the majority of its subscribers come from BK (kicking Chicago's ASS). So they're bringing five porn stars to a bar in Williamsburg in order to congratulate the borough on its kinkiness. Obvious question: are total porn site subscriptions a good measure of how "naughty" an area is? You could argue the opposite. [Brooklyn Paper]
maps
New York Is Full Of Poors (Like You)
The United Way and the Community Service Society have just released a slew of demographic maps of New York City, which handily answer the question: Are The Poors in your hood? Pictured, the household income map (click to enlarge), which is perhaps most surprising for revealing that Williamsburg, despite its yuppie influx, is still broke, along with HOT HOT NEXT BIG THING neighborhoods like Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, et al. After the jump, neighborhood-specific maps of the city showing unemployment rates, immigrant populations, and "disconnected youth" who aren't working, in school, or concerned about you very much. More »
Literature?
We Are All Just Wittle Babies
"All the Sad, Young Literary Men has too many men, none of whom is particularly sad, literary or, for that matter, interesting." That's The L Magazine's Jonny Diamond on N+1 editor Keith Gessen's first novel. The interesting bit is how Gawker, you dear commenters, and the scribblers of Magical Brooklynism fit into the equation. "Gessen has rightly and eloquently lamented the impoverishment of intellectual discourse in 21st-century America, particularly in a New York literary scene that prefers whimsy to gravitas, adolescence to adulthood and typography to teleology." (Yeah, Gessen and his privileged band of bores are the answer. Okay, I'll stop.) "And if lit journal-cum-publishing house McSweeney’s has come to stand (albeit unfairly so) as shorthand for this particular style of whimsy-sotted, Brooklyn-born preciousness, then online media gossip Gawker has served as its natural enemy, employing snark and irony to interrupt the daydreams of thousands of Michel Gondrys and Miranda Julys." Sounds good. But it isn't! More »
open caption
"He's Going to Introduce Me to Some Prostitutes!"
[Vogue editrix Anna Wintour with fashion designer and former hooker-dater Marc Jacobs at an event at the Brooklyn (hey that's where I live!) museum; image via Queerty. Another image after the jump.] More »
corrections
This is Not a Crack House
Last week, annoyingly one-named reporter for The New York Times, Toure, wrote about his middle class guilt and snitching to the cops about a crack house on his block. The article was illustrated with this photo of some handsome residences in Toure's neighborhood. But, oops! More »
shut up brooklyn
Touré Has Lost Any Possible Street Cred
Fort Greene is not gentrifying fast enough! At least that's the experience of cultural critic and dude about town Touré. The single-named author was living right across from a crackhouse on South Oxford street in Fort Greene, only a block away South Portland, Time Out New York's most desirable place to live in 2006. But even with a sushi place on the next corner, there was still a crack house across from his apartment. After a bout of black liberal guilt, Touré tried to get the po-po to clear the streets, but they ignored his calls. We don't judge Touré's conflicted anti-neighborhood crack house stance—since the advent of Google Maps, Mole Edition, we are all snitches now. [NYT]
atlantic yards
The Economic Downturn South Brooklynites Have Been Waiting For
Hey, so about the economy. It's not that good. And the overzealous real estate market is partially to blame. As consequence, overzealous realtor Bruce Ratner has admitted that the crisis will slow down his Atlantic Yards project. Go to any bar in south Brooklyn and start hating on Atlantic Yards and you'll be talking about developing, not destroying Brooklyn in the morning. Still, it must be said: the part of downtown Brooklyn that Ratner wants to destroy is a dump. Of course it's dubious that a Nets stadium, which Ratner wants to start construction on this year, will make the area any nicer. [NYT]
Good News
"Red Hook Ballfield Vendors Get 6-Year Permit"—South Brooklyn hipsters and Mexican immigrants rejoice. [Curbed]
"Red Hook Ballfield Vendors Get 6-Year Permit"—South Brooklyn hipsters and Mexican immigrants rejoice. [Curbed]
a bridge too far
