As much as people in Brooklyn like to complain about their neighbors—loud noises, kids, dog poop, the fact that other people exist—we can't wait to see the brouhahas that will undoubtedly ensue when people start raising chickens in their backyards because it's some sort of hip, vaguely ironic gesture:
The news that Albee Square—the rather sad indoor mall at the center of downtown Brooklyn's outdoor Fulton Mall—is going to be razed and turned into a ginormous office/condo building is exciting, we suppose, for all those urban redevelopment reasons. But no one's talking about the issue that's really going to affect the populace for years to come. Fulton Mall just got its Forever 21! $9.90 T-shirts! $17.80 "dressy tops"! Forever 21 is what every girl who's too poor to live in Manhattan needs—and now they're going to tear it down? They'd better have a plan B at hand. As it were.
Since the latest season of Laguna Beach was a total bomb, it's perhaps not surprising that MTV is looking closer to home for its newest series. Quoting from a Brooklyn Tech newsletter: "MTV's newest soon-to-be hit show is Brooklyn. The premise is to paint an accurate picture for America of what life is like for the average Brooklyn high school student." Okay, we admit we're more than a little excited. Scenes from the Fulton Mall! Exclusive barbecues in Prospect Park! Prom at the Brooklyn Marriott!
The idea is to serve, protect, and not round off the corners of your head or the edges of your beard. Payot intact, the newest member of the NYPD, a dyed-in-the-wool Hasid from Williamsburg named Joel Witriol, will be "on the job" starting New Year's Eve, keeping the city's transit system free of goyim-induced danger as you scurry off to shul. No word yet on whether he'll be riding the Hanukkah caravan in Union Square next holiday season, but given recent events, we're thrilled to see a touch more diversity on the force.
The I Heart Brooklyn Girls pinup calendar traffics in some lovely, half-naked stereotypes of various Brooklyn neighborhoods at different points in history—Miss Bay Ridge (1985) looks like she's auditioning for Warrant's "Cherry Pie" video and Miss Williamsburg (2002) looks like a Suicide Girl—though some of the images perplexed us. Why does Miss Ditmas Park (1905) look like a high-class hooker? And more important, why is Miss Park Slope from 2017? Is she some kind of Dov Charney fantasy of what the tots of Park Slope will look like when they hit puberty? Ew.
We get a lot of invitations for random book parties here at Gawker HQ, but an email that came through our tips line about Brooklyn dreamboat Jonathan Lethem's new collaboration with photographer Kate Milford inspired enough interest for us to send newly-minted editorial assistant Heather and her trusty photog sidekick Kate on an inter-borough mission to check out the scene. In Brooklyn. Peruse our gallery of bookworm joy here, or sample Kate's full gallery here.After the jump, Heather comes to terms with wasting a perfectly good Thursday night "partying" with toddlers and quasi-literary types.
Perhaps you've been following the story of the so-called Batcave, the abandoned building at Third Ave. and Third St. in Brooklyn, right by the Gowanus Canal and across from the to-be-built (once those pollution issues get settled) Whole Foods, where teenaged squatters had been living until the Daily News shined an unwelcome spotlight on them? Well, it turns out that squatters—bless their tattooed hearts—also know how to get online, and they're none too pleased at how they're being portrayed, no sirree.
In addition to its 430-car parking lot, the new Gowanus Whole Foods market will feature "unique Brooklyn touches like egg-cream and gelato stations," according to yesterday's press release. We're sure Jonathan Lethem was thrilled to hear it. Jesus H., what's next, we wondered? Razing Fulton Mall and replacing it with a bunch of chic boutiques with tongue in cheek names like "Ghetto Fabulous" that sell $500 oversized gold hoop earrings?
For, like, three seconds a few months ago, we were nervous that Heath Ledger and fam had packed up from their Boerum Hill lovenest and had escaped to the more celeb-happy confines of Los Angeles. Now, however, we have been assured that all is right in the world. GO Brooklyn reports that Ledger and GF Michelle Williams bought a place in LA, but it's really just a "one-bedroom treehouse." (Huh?) He also said:
From the neighborhood rag the Brooklyn Papers comes news of a very special instructional course in taxidermy, held at Park Slope's Union Hall bar:
The reader who sent us this photograph tells us, "Whilst taking a smoke break from my favorite watering hole, Spuyten Duyvil, I noticed this ad plastered on to no less than seven telephone poles".
In case you've ever considered allowing any sort of production to use your residence as a set, here's a story: Adam and Leah, a couple in Brooklyn Heights, allowed Martin Scorcese and company to occupy their ground-level apartment in a brownstone for a scene in the altogether-awesome The Departed. Their place was used as the apartment of the love interest, which gave Adam and Leah the enviable distinction of having had Leonardo DiCaprio dry hump on their property. On the downside: Adam's collection of vintage magazines had been tampered with, and his 1972 issue of Playboy went missing. The couple eventually found the mag...under the bathroom sink. You can hope all you want that it was Leo "borrowing" that Playboy, but you just know it was the pimple-faced lighting assistant who rubbed one out.
• Guess who's back on the sauce? Mel Gibson, that's who. There's no way he could get through the high holidays sober. [Scoop]
• Contrary to reports, Madonna did not adopt a baby boy in Malawi, nor does she ever feel the need to stoop to that Jolie bitch's level. [People]
• Cobble Hill! Park Slope! Grups! Coffeehouse turf wars! We hate Brooklyn! [Brooklyn Papers]
• Promoter of overpriced social functions turns to promoting overpriced charity water. [NYSun]
• NYC Google office functions as mid-90s-flashback goatee farm. [PSFK]
• The Times' Freemason Article Quota is satisfied. [Animal]
• It's our third O'Donnell mention in a single day, but Rosie's totally up in the Pope's grill. God forbid, literally. [WND]
• Crystal meth: untapped marketing tool. [Towleroad]
• For every question you ask Warren Beatty, he'll take 15 minutes to answer. This doesn't reflect his thoughtfulness so much as his senility. [The Reeler]
• Suspected Project Runway cheat takes to MySpace comments boards for his self-defense. [Blogging Project Runway]
• Every time a model falls, and angel gets his wings. [TMZ]
• Willie Nelson and friends have been issued misdemeanor citations for posessing about 1.5 pounds of weed and 1/5 of a pound of mushrooms. And this surprises you not in the least. [Billboard]
• Bono tells the fashion crowd to "take your fucking finger food and fuck off." Which at least implies that someone was actually eating. Baby steps. [OAN]
• Did you miss the Brooklyn Book Festival? Aren't you lucky. [Galleycat]
• Cheers to the Times for throwing in a good old spoiler for fans of The Office. [NYT]
• It always helps to have your wife working in your favor on Amazon. [Greatest Living Poet]
• Greenwich Village reaches boiling point; gay teens and cranky old potheads to throwdown before November. [WaPo]
• Robert Hughes would like to thank radical Islamic terrorists for removing that "great ugly scaleless box of a thing" from the New York skyline. [The Australian]
We're going to go for one more bite of the apple on that 9/11 photo story. It's been previously established that Thomas Hoepker took a photo of Brooklyn hipsters acting in a potentially douchebaggy way on the day of the terrorist attacks. Frank Rich weighed in at the NYT, saying that they weren't callous, just American. David Plotz of Slate disagreed, declaring them not douchebags but citizens engaged in discussion. One of the photo subjects, a Brooklyn artist, popped up to say that, yeah, that's exactly what they were doing, and had Hoepker looked a little more closely, he would have realized that. Now Hoepker himself emerges, rather articulately discussing the ambiguity of the photo itself. At this point we're inclined to believe that the person who comes off the worst in this scenario is Frank Rich, who used the image to promote his political agenda, but our view may change when Slate publishes the next few installments in the series ("I Published That 9/11 Photo," "I Wrote That New York Times Column," "I Flew That Plane Into The Tower," etc.). We'll keep you posted.
Yesterday we asked you whether the young hipsters in the "taboo" 9/11 photo above were callous douchebags or concerned citizens; a slight majority of you opted for douchebags. As it turns out, one of the subjects got in touch with Slate. Walter Sipser, a Brooklyn artist (because, you know, of course) disputes both the "callous" characterization and the accusation of youth (dude's 45). You can read his statement here and decide for yourself; we're just going to say that, looking at those frames, we've decided that our original dichotomy may have unnecessarily suggested that the two options were mutually exclusive.
The story so far:
Recipe for September 16 Brooklyn Book Fest:
You want yer meta, do you? So here you go. Photog Atomische contributed the above shot to the Gawker photo pool on Flickr, depicting New York Times photog Marilyn K. Yee capturing the bloom on that stinky Brooklyn corpse flower everyone's (well, "everyone's") talking about. After the jump, enjoy Yee's actual vulval photo taken during the session above.
