Scrabble, as played by Eddie Guerrero's rules
posted by frimble on May 23, 2012 - 20 comments

How Brooklyn Got Its Groove Back: New York’s biggest borough has reinvented itself as a postindustrial hot spot. In City Journal, Kay S. Hymowitz walks us through a story of entrepreneurial "creative class gentrification" in NYC's most populous borough. [more inside]
posted by Sticherbeast on Jan 26, 2012 - 89 comments

15 photographs taken at the scene of the 1960 Park Slope, Brooklyn passenger plane collision. These are horrifying, view with caution. Previously. Sorry it had to be from the Daily Mail, folks.
posted by timshel on Jan 15, 2012 - 32 comments

Black and White and Hebrew All Over. The Village Voice profiles the Hebrew Language Academy, a dual-language charter school in Brooklyn. Is it a rare success story for the big-city ideal of educational innovation simultaneously serving rich and poor communities? A clever way for Jewish New Yorkers to get their kids Hebrew instruction on the states's dime? A little of both?
posted by escabeche on Aug 8, 2011 - 54 comments

"For five cents Coney Island will feed you, frighten you, cool you, toast you, flatter you, or destroy your inhibitions. And in this nickel empire boy meets girl." [more inside]
posted by zarq on May 30, 2011 - 15 comments

"Toity poiple boids / Sittin on da koib / A-choipin an’ a-boipin / An’ eatin doity woims." From Atlantic Avenue to Zerega Avenue (map), the kinds of New York City accents made famous by the likes of Archie Bunker, Jimmy Breslin and Travis Bickle are disappearing. But though you may not often hear “foath floah” for "fourth floor" in Manhattan anymore, documentary filmmaker Heather Quinlan knows you can still hear strains of the old mellifluous tones in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx, and that's exactly what she's setting out to document in her film If These Knishes Could Talk.
posted by ocherdraco on Dec 6, 2010 - 51 comments

Brooklyn to New York via the Brooklyn Bridge as shot by the Edison Manufacturing Co. in 1899. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by gman on Nov 5, 2010 - 11 comments

Once upon a time, cows were milked in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. The city dairy provided a safe, affordable source of nutrition for children in 19th-century New York, and was an important bulwark against one of the city's most insidious killers: swill milk. The dairy and its cows have disappeared, but the story of the swill milk scandals lives on. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes on Sep 15, 2010 - 28 comments

Ice Cream Club is a group in Brooklyn which meets twice a month to exchange homemade ice cream. Today's seen some media coverage, and their website provides tips and troubleshooting.
posted by Pope Guilty on Aug 5, 2010 - 29 comments

"Reading 'Our tribute to a brave little boy,' you will also find 65 cents in nickels and dimes melded to the plaque." Some mismatched bricks on an unremarkable building in Park Slope and a plaque in a hospital are the clues to an astonishing story of two airplanes, a mid-air crash, and a little boy traveling alone. [more inside]
posted by Astro Zombie on Jun 10, 2010 - 28 comments

Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal, long nicknamed the "Lavender Lake" for its copious oil slicks, has gained a new title : Superfund Site. New Yorkers respond with really cool photography. While some developers bow out in light of the recent news, other area developers, hoping for a speedy cleanup of the industrial waste and, uh ... other things ... vow to continue their plans to revitalize the formerly-industrial corridor.
posted by Afroblanco on Mar 4, 2010 - 26 comments

The Most Expensive Property in Brooklyn, New York
posted by vronsky on Jan 7, 2010 - 97 comments

Signs that point to both a tenuously emerging future, as well as the dusty fingerprints of the neglected past. Brooklyn Signs.
posted by netbros on Aug 30, 2008 - 18 comments

Want to find a bar in New York near you? Try New York on Tap's Google mashup map. Most entries have pithy homegrown reviews attached, and all entries have links to reviews from other websites.
posted by shivohum on Aug 4, 2008 - 40 comments

Working Class Cats documents the lives of gainfully employed felines in NYC. There is, of course, some controversy. [via]
posted by milquetoast on Dec 22, 2007 - 36 comments

First discovered by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1978, the Greenpoint spill has been estimated at anywhere between 17 million and 30 million gallons—three times more oil than the Exxon Valdez spill. [NY mag permalink, with ads]
posted by mr_crash_davis on Jun 10, 2007 - 40 comments

No rest stop? Try latex. From consumerist.com, a tale of... what can i say? Just a funny story. With pictures.
posted by paulinsanjuan on May 16, 2007 - 24 comments

Bike Kill 2004 - a 5 min QT clip documenting the Black Label Bike Club’s annual Bike Kill in Brooklyn, recently shown at Bicycle Film Festival 2005. These guys party hard. via in case of mishaps
posted by madamjujujive on Nov 28, 2005 - 15 comments

Bizarre child support battle in Brooklyn A Brooklyn, New York man who stopped paying storage fees for his frozen sperm after divorcing his wife has filed suit against the sperm bank, his ex, and a notary public after learning she picked up the payments and used the sperm to get pregnant. Deon Francois, who now must pay child support, says he didn't want a child and never gave consent for the use of his sperm.
posted by halekon on Jul 27, 2005 - 110 comments

The Wild Parrots of Brooklyn. "I'm amazed at how many people living on the island of Manhattan regard these birds as urban legends, just like the crocodiles once reputed to live in the sewers. But these birds are real, they're thriving and yet they're also endangered." Theories, studies, photos and an audio sample of these non-native birds, which are found elsewhere in the US, throughout the world and on film. [prior discussion, first link via memepool.]
posted by myopicman on Jul 15, 2005 - 42 comments

Brooklyn Tenant Is Charged With Murdering City Marshal "As the marshal, Erskine G. Bryce, lay injured and disoriented, the police said, Ms. Jones bounded down the steps, beat him with an aluminum rod and stripped him of his .380-caliber pistol. The attack ended, the police said, only after she splashed him with a flammable liquid, took out a cigarette lighter and set him afire." (Free NY Times registration required)
posted by dayvin on Aug 23, 2001 - 29 comments

If anyone is (or will be) in New York and have nothing else planned for this evening, may I suggest a trip to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. BMA is free on every first saturday of the month (from 5 PM - 11 PM). Today's theme for the evening entertainment revolves around their special exhibition, Hip-Hop Nation: Roots, Rhymes and Rage. There will be an outdoor dance party (at the BMA parking lot) starting at 9 PM featuring samples from 20 years of Hip-Hop music. You can also walk through their current exhibitions, of which the Robots and Space Toys seems promising.
posted by tamim on Oct 7, 2000 - 5 comments