Park Slope
In a 17th-century stone farmhouse, holiday shopping, done differently
Among the eight or so tables set up throughout the second floor of the building—which is part community function-house, part information center about Brooklyn's role in the history of the Revolutionary War—there was a lot to be engrossed by: art tomes, pocket-sized poetry books, aged reference guides, religious tracts, cheesy paperbacks. More
The Brooklyn state of mind: Kind to indie bookstores
"In Park Slope, especially, people will go out of their way to patronize a family-owned pharmacy than a chain, and that worldview applies to most retail business by those that live there." More
The 'Times' gets the baby boomer joke, finally
Who is The New York Times anyway? Is he or she a liberal? A centrist? A rich person (and if so, old money or new?) A middle-class scrapper? A tireless advocate for justice, or an obsessive about organic food or $3,000 shoes or crime in public housing? Of course it's all of these things and nothing. More
In two meetings, one of them quite heated, neighborhoods confront the half-billion dollar Gowanus Canal cleanup
The sediment is full of harmful polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) left behind by local industries, which would be dredged.
Well, they had explained it before in a 550-page document called a "feasibility study" released last month. But that explanation, especially with its environmental safety implications and near half-billion-dollar price-tag, needed explaining. More
(1)Wandering Kiwi Liam Finn takes up residence in Brooklyn, slays it
"I realized that I had gotten used to playing live and moving around and being stimulated," the multi-instrumentalist told me. "Being in one place and being isolated was probably like going cold turkey off a drug, which was adrenaline. I was afraid I was missing out on the life I had created over here touring I’ll Be Lightning. Ultimately, I’ve felt a lot more at home just being here for the past few months." More
The pretty executioner in Libya is farther away than the rapist in Park Slope
Each day, the New York tabloids vie to sell readers at the newsstands on outrageous headlines, dramatic photography, and, occasionally, great reporting. Who is today's winner? More
(1)Flatbush Avenue freakout: How a race-baiting hoax hooked Bobo Brooklyn, briefly
The former Royal Video storefront wraps around Brooklyn's bustling Flatbush Avenue, where it marks the boundary between Park Slope to the south and Prospect Heights to the north, right where the broad commercial thoroughfare busts diagonally through the perpendicular intersection of Sixth Avenue and St. Mark’s Avenue, both picturesque streets of brownstone homes and limestone apartment buildings.
And it's here that, for a moment, it seemed like a longstanding perception that racial tension in the increasingly gentrifying area might break the surface and spill out, a thought that tantalized the city. More
An open letter to Jhumpa Lahiri from a young writer
You proved that Indians—specifically Bengalis—could make it as writers in New York, legitimate popular authors, even if we specialized in a particular subset of Indian culture. For a lot of people, your writing smacked them upside the head and awoke them to the fact that the Indian subcontinent isn’t just a large singular mass; it’s a perfect storm of eclectic languages, rituals and people. Your writing also alerted them to the fact that India is kind of a wonderful mess. More
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