The city needn’t be a blighted blacktop jungle where the only thing that grows is broken dreams. Under the cover of night, Todd Bieber planted an urban vegetable garden in Brooklyn in an abandoned patch of ground next to a parking lot. The harvest he reaped was more than just the tomatos and squash: anonymous passers by added water to it on a regular basis, and neighborhood folks spontaneously donated seeds and tomato stands. Here’s his story of how his garden grew, flourished, became salsa that he donated to the Armenian church that owned the patch, and then compost. [More]
brooklyn
Brooklyn Restaurant To Try "Pay What You Want" Model
By 10.20.11
The restaurant business is incredibly risky, especially in a city like New York with its fickle diners and over-the-top overhead costs. But that’s not stopping a restaurant in Brooklyn from going ahead with plans to try out the whole “pay what you want” model for a month. [More]
Scammed For Sympathy On The Street
By 10.17.11
It was a horrible story. A man approached Liza on the street and said that he needed $6 because his mother had just had a stroke behind the wheel of a car and he was short on cash to pay for the tow truck while she was taken to the hospital. It was also a lie. [More]
Con Ed Piles On Late Fees, Won't Accept My Bill Payment
By 8.23.11
Shay’s last Con Edison bill keeps going up due to late fees. “So pay the bill!” you might say. Well, he’d really like to, but the company won’t let him pay online, as he always has. [More]
Judge Tosses Gorilla Coffee's Suit Against NYT For Posting Workers' Walkout Letter
By 8.16.11
A popular Brooklyn coffee shop’s lawsuit against the New York Times just got chucked. The paper’s City Room blog had reprinted the letter penned by eight employees who simultaneously quit over working conditions, and the owners of Gorilla Coffee felt that the Times’ action was defamatory and an “intentional infliction of emotional distress.” A judge disagreed. [More]
Tips On Haggling From The Particular People At The Brooklyn Flea Market
By 5.24.11
The Brooklyn Flea Market at Fort Greene is full of curios and hidden treasures curated by a heterogeneous band of impassioned vendors. You can, and should, get money off the asking price but you’ll have to muster up the courage and convince the person working the table you’re worthy of a bargain. Ying Ying Li made a beautiful video interviewing both the sellers and buyers in this bazaar to glean some tips: [More]
How (And Why) A Pack Of Twitter Vigilantes Recovered A Stranger's Stolen Laptop
By 5.13.11
A guy was able to hunt down his laptop after he lost it by using a program that gave him remote access to it, tracking its location and taking screenshots of the person who was using it. He even got the guys name after watching him log into Skype. Problem was the laptop was in New York City and the owner was traveling in Canada. So he began live-tweeting his predicament and the Twitterverse rose up and rescued his laptop. [More]
Man Gets Lead On Laptop Thief Using Dropbox Program
By 3.24.11
Ryan believes he has a lead on who stole his laptop thanks to the Dropbox filesharing program that was installed on his computer. Turns out his laptop could be just up the street from him right now. But what does he do with the IP address he got from Dropbox? [More]
Protected By Cops, Emergency Locksmith Rips Woman Off For $613
By 1.19.11
A woman blogs that she found herself locked out of her apartment because her keys were getting stuck and the lock wasn’t working. So she called an emergency locksmith who arrived 15 minutes later, drilled off the cylinder, replaced it, and presented her with a bill for $613. When she refused to pay, the locksmith called (what were presumably) the cops. When they arrived the said, “Pay the man now or you’re under arrest.” [More]
Duane Reade Infilitrates Williamsburg By Adding A Beer Bar
By 1.14.11
When Duane Reade announced it wanted to open a store in the hip poseur enclave neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, it faced stiff opposition from locals and bloggers who feared it would destroy the area’s charm and drive a nearby local pharmacy out of business. So the pharmacy chain bought over the natives with beer. [More]
Keeping Brooklyn's Bees Out Of The Red Dye No. 40
By 12.1.10
Remember those bees in Brooklyn that were pumping out a bright red honey thanks to the presence of a nearby maraschino cherry factory (and its vast amounts of super-sweet HFCS colored with Red Dye No. 40)? Well that factory is now working with bee experts to figure out a way to keep the buzzers out of the syrup without calling the exterminator. [More]
Gorilla Coffee Sues New York Times For Posting Worker Walkout Letter
By 11.30.10
Gorilla Coffee, the coffee shop where eight employees jointly quit over protests about working conditions, is suing the New York Times for publishing their resignation letter. The Times reporter and the eight ex-workers were also named in the suit, which claims the epistle was defamatory and caused them to lose business. [More]
Brooklyn Bees Now Producing Honey With Red Dye No. 40
By 11.30.10
Honey bees are the epitome of DIY all-natual wholesome food goodness. But don’t try to tell that to beekeepers in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn whose bees have been putting out a glowing red secretion, complete with Red Dye No. 40. [More]
Camel Wants To Give Hipsters Cancer With Brooklyn-Branded Cigarettes
By 11.11.10
Showing just how much they have their fingers on the pulse of 2006, the folks at Camel have decided to come out with packaging for their cigarettes that tries to cash in on the hipster cachet of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. [More]
Start A Co-Op Preschool
By 9.29.10
Preschools can be a giant chunk of change, so some parents are banding together and forming their own unofficial co-op preschools. Tuition is minimal and mainly goes to paying the teacher (that they get to choose), and they save on overhead by rotating the location between different family’s homes. There are definitely some considerations to figure out. People who’ve done it before advise: [More]
Scammer Flips Free Kitties For Profit
By 9.21.10
A Park Slope woman who gave away her kittens on Craigslist was later shocked and aghast – a common affliction among Park Slope residents – to see the buyer posting an ad trying to sell the very same kittens, even though her ad said that if the buyer wasn’t going to keep the kittens themselves, they were to return them to her. Turns out the woman she gave them to is a serial “cat flipper.” [More]
Government Wipes Out Geese Population In Brooklyn To Ensure Airplane Safety
By 7.13.10
In what has come to be known as “Sully’s Revenge” (by me, just now), wildlife biologists herded about 400 geese from Brooklyn’s ginormous Prospect Park into cages last week, then “took them to a nearby building where they were gassed with lethal doses of carbon dioxide.” [More]
Do New Stadiums Really Give Back All They Get From Taxpayers?
By 6.15.10
Are new stadiums, like Citi Field, the new Yankees stadium, and the proposed new Nets stadium/Atlantic Yards project, really worth the oodles of public dollars, tax breaks, and the hundreds of residents displaced, their land seized under eminent domain? Stadium Status is an awesome new 20 min documentary by the Internets Celebrites that examines the issue and has come to a firm “Nahhhh” as its conclusion. [More]
