It turns out there is no news in New York City currently that does not relate to hipster grifter Kari Ferrell! Semi-celebrities and prospective hookups are sending us her ridiculous lies! We're programmed to care.

It's a crazy new hipster character fond of criminal and sexual hijinks! Let's meet Kari Ferrell, the 22 year-old tattooed Utah girl who scammed her way through hipster Brooklyn. Sex, lies, cancer, and bands, yea!

[A Brooklyn street is buried in snow as a big storm sweeps through the Northeast this morning; image via AP]

Wonders a tipster, "I know that Gawker posted about The Selby covering [Williamsburg Brit-It girl] Peaches Geldof's apartment... but did you guys notice how it's no longer there? Think it has anything to do with lovely husband Max [Drummey] not being anywhere in the photos/any trace of him in the apartment? Or is it just due to the fact that no bone can stand Peaches?" Hmm! (Come visit our rabbit warren, Mr. Selby—we promise we'll have plenty of boy-toys on hand.)

“'Brooklyn girls know where they are going and how to get there — we have drive, ability, creativity and a toughness that is ultimately true inner strength rather than false bravado,' said Monica Byrne, co-owner of Tini wine bar and Home/made Bklyn, both in Red Hook." That's according to the Brooklyn Paper—whenever we want to know about trends, there's nobody we trust more than the owner of a gentrifo-winebar and a store selling "unique antique, artisan crafted and new contemporary items to adorn your home and your body." Meanwhile, elsewhere in Brooklyn, some girls are late to their pants-optional "home offices" because maybe half a bottle of beer was spilled on the keyboard the night before and quite possibly they spent the morning prying out the keys with a flathead screwdriver.

Not that you actually ever go there, but Coney Island will change forever this weekend when the Astroland amusement park finally closes once and for all. Now you can look forward to not buying a bunch of condos with beach views there in a few years.

["Dawson's Creek" actress Michelle Williams with her daughter in Brooklyn yesterday; image via Bauer-Griffin]

Outer borough trend alert: People in Brooklyn are all riding scooters! The Vespa dealership in Clinton Hill is raking it in, allegedly because the rising price of gas, cost of parking, and traffic jams are making car ownership less and less appealing. Plus zipping around on a shiny Italian two-wheeler is obviously the perfect way for Brooklynites to express their innate superiority to everyone. [The Brooklyn Paper; see also Vespa owners]

For Park Slope couples like Maggie and Peter, Paul and Siri, and Jonathan and Nicole, it was always such a schlep to go into Manhattan every time you were in the mood for some love beads, or you'd worn out your ball gag, or mislaid those nipple clamps. But salvation has arrived! Claire Cavanah, the proprietress of Toys in Babeland on the Lower East Side and author of the definitive Sex Toys 101, will tomorrow open the doors to Babeland on Bergen Street. The old people are already complaining, but the lesbians will be thrilled!

The Times deployed its investigative resources to dig into the very important rumors that Real World: Brooklyn would be shot downtown rather than in, say, Williamsburg or Park Slope, and nudged the story a bit closer to confirmation. The owner of the downtown BellTel lofts seconded show producer MTV's earlier confirmation of negotiations, and this time there was no mention of other, white borough neighborhoods as alternatives to downtown. PR genius Ronn [sic] Torossian, who represents the developer of BellTel, tried to spin MTV's interest as a big validation for the neighborhood. But then the Times went talking to some of the locals, and they started asking why the cable network wants its fresh young stars getting mugged and so forth:

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.

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."

"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?

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.)

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.

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.

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?

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]

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.