In Fort Greene, there's a neighborhood listserv in Fort Greene called FG Kids; like every other Brooklyn-based listserv and message board, FG Kids has become a battleground for the fate of this mid-gentrification neighborhood. As the following email thread shows, there's a war between law-abiding, drug-fearing Brooklynites and their activist counterparts, culminating in the ultimate question that plagues neighborhood associations near and far: would you rather your stoop be occupied by tough-talking stoners or friendly crackheads?

• Boy reporter Gabe Sherman bids farewell to the Observer, leaving Off the Record a little more empty and the comics a little more funny. [NYO]
• Only in the hipper enclaves of Brooklyn can one live in a non-residential building, refuse to pay rent, and not be considered a freeloading squatter. That said, we're still completely jealous. [VV]
• Paris Hilton ignites a low speed car chase, gets off with a warning. [TMZ]
• Project Runway has elevated Parsons' status and made Tim Gunn into some sort of molassess-throated demi-god. [Inside Higher Ed]
• Toby Young will bash Vanity Fair at any chance he gets. Even if it means doing a podcast. [CultureCatch]
• A CVS in Ocean City is almost as frustratingly retarded as any Duane Reade in Manhattan. [Muk Report]
• Bids on a photograph of Kimora Lee Simmons kissing Oscar de la Renta start at $625 — having Anna Wintour in the background jacked up the price. [Animal]
• Just because: Pat O'Brien's girlfriend's blog. If you remember Betsy being "so motherfucking hot," this may have some degree of relevance to you. Or not. [B for Betsy via TWS]
• New York just has, like, this vibe, you know? Like this positivity and DJs and shit. [NME]

• Beer king Pete Coors gets a DUI; in an era of corporate corruption, it sure is nice to see an executive who really loves his product. [Denver Post]
• If you're going to have a complex, might as well develop it in your infancy: pictures of Suri Cruise aren't worth half as much as those of Shiloh. [TMZ]
• At 7 PM tonight, a pompous clusterfuck will descend upon Soho House. Worse than usual, we mean. Here's your guide to understanding why the fuck Toby Young's book party is so random. [Eat the Press]
• Leonardo DiCaprio films at old mob haunt in Brooklyn; borough's celebrities-are-here arrogance grows 37%. [NewYorkology]
• A handy guide to the MySpace profiles of all your favorite D-list reality stars. [Jane]
• Speaking of D-List, agent Roger Paul revels in the joys of managing Screech. What's not to when the guy's packing 8-inches of hot geek meat? [NYP]
• The rules of office restroom etiquette: "Dancing in front of the auto-flush to the tune of 'Material Girl' playing in your head wastes water and will summon your boss to the bathroom like a beacon. Don't." [The World According to Tom]
• How not to gracefully accept that you didn't get the job. [PR Differently]
• The Post knows there's only one way to cover the "bartha bartha" explosion on East 62nd Street: by focusing on the hot girl who was tragically injured. A video of her almost getting killed? Even hotter. [NYP]

Stephen Sakai, the former bouncer accused of enforcing a gunfire-based door policy at currently for-sale Opus 22 in Chelsea, may have a slight history of accelerating others' mortality. The New York Times reports forthcoming indictments against Sakai for three previous murders in Brooklyn, revolving around Sakai's bouncing at Opus 22 and Sweet Cherry, a waterfront strip dive in Sunset Park. The now-closed Sweet Cherry is described as "a dark place that maddened neighbors, prosecutors and city officials for years." Of the three Brooklyn victims, one was a bouncer-runner at Sweet Cherry, another a customer of the same club, and the third was another bouncer at Opus 22. Various bizarre statements from Sakai about the Brooklyn deaths (now disavowed) include his admitting to shooting the bouncer-runner "in the cheek or the leg or maybe someplace else." For more spacey criminal confusion, see Sakai's account after the jump of what happened at Opus 22, when he allegedly opened fire into a crowd outside the club, killing one and wounding three.

It looks like Paul Newman's posh right-turning Grand Prix racing won't likely make it to Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field. Which means local hoons looking for consolation must return to the idea of a turning steadily left at the proposed NASCAR track on Staten Island. The first SI public hearing on the track ended in something of a fracas, where a city councilman was reportedly placed in a tender headlock by an angry union worker (a NASCAR official dismissed the headlock as "a hug for the TV cameras"). The takeaway: one less reason to ever go near Staten Island, bringing the total well into the negative hundreds.

The New York Sun, with what's got to be a bit of foreboding given its own tenuous existence, takes a look at Brooklyn, where a number of borough-centric magazines have failed to thrive. Pegging the piece on the closure of The Brooklynite, reporter Leon Nayfakh notes that:

• Completely unsubstantiated but nonetheless interesting: Are Jay-Z and Beyonce officially over? Does Jigga prefer the less-bootylicious Rihanna? Will Beyonce's dad resolve the issue with a shotgun? [Social Rank]
• Like an udder on a thick-lipped cow, Anderson Cooper milks his interview with Angelina Jolie, airing tomorrow night. He clarifies that People's $4 million Shiloh fee did not include a guarantee that he'd get first interview; rather, Jolie picked the Coop because she knew he wouldn't try to do her. [360 Blog]
• It's Christmas in June: Danny Meyer's ShackCam goes live! Updated every 5 seconds, it's the ultimate tool in planning your meal schedule. May it bring all of Manhattan together and working towards organizing dining, so as to forevermore avoid intolerable lines. [Eater]
• One of Brooklyn's beloved Jonathans writes an open, overwrought letter to Frank Gehry; if all the Jonathans would combine their powers, they could create a Super Letter, so strung-out that not even the most hardened developer could look away. [Slate
• What if Brokedown Palace involved a pair of jeans? [Wired]
• You can now purchase a clear cube full of authentic NYC garbage. Just goes to show that if you package a turd properly, someone will buy it. [NYC Garbage]
• GMA kisses Prince's boots, builds him a fortress. [OAN]
• Edward Champion ups the Okrent cocksucking metaphor to slightly uncomfortable, albeit satirical, levels. [EdRants]
• Performance art on a Monday morning is simply unacceptable. [Animal]
• Crackheadz Gone Wild: New York features raw, uncensored footage of local drug addicts on spring break, going crazy for Mardi Gras beads. [Metro]

Bad news: Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz — the jovial Kings County booster whose accomplishments include installing a "Leaving Brooklyn, Oy Vey!" sign at the Williamsburg Bridge — suffered what we're told was a heart attack over the weekend or this morning. (His office is saying only that a stent was installed.

From craigslist:

On July 8, Brooklynites Caroline Fisher and Dave Kerpen intend to get married behind the home plate of the Brooklyn Cyclones' Keyspan Park. This blessed union will be brought to us by the Lord, as well as Smirnoff, 1-800-Flowers.com, the Broadway Mall, Avroc, Grandma's Secrets, the Cyclones, the Red Carpet, and the Wedding Plaza.

This just in from that place just over the Brooklyn Bridge:

Avenue publisher Manhattan Media annouces today their plans to publish Our Town Downtown, a spin-off of ancient uptown mainstay Our Town. Oh, good — we were just recently lamenting that there weren't enough free newspapers blowing around the streets these days.

North Brooklyn may have warring Hasidim and an army of ironic-t-shirt-wearing dudes with the exact same haircut, but in the ongoing battle for edge the South has a powerful new weapon in its arsenal: bees. And not just any bees, brunch-interrupting bees. As blogger The Apiary documents (in words and pictures), popular Park Slope restaurant Sotto Voce suffered an attack of winged fury this weekend, forcing the neighborhood's population of hip lesbians to wheel their titanium Maclaren strollers elsewhere, lest little Milo and Madison suffer a sting. Laugh if you must, Williamsburghers, but be forewarned: Once the Southerners train these suckers to attack, you're never going to be able to go to Union Pool again. We're scoring this one for the South.

A headline in today's Metro:

We know how it goes. You have an amusing little conceit — say, a battle brewing between north and south Brooklyn. You know that it's sort of true, and that it's also sort of bullshit, and you're intrigued by the intellectual exercise of spinning it into an argument you can sustain for, oh, maybe 2,000 words. How clever!, you think, as do your colleagues and friends. But here's the thing, which we all forget: Exercises like this hurt innocent people. Pity the poor Californian, set imminently to move eastward for a new writing gig in New York, whose flummoxed plea arrived in our inbox last night:

Finally, there's a little something to put a crack in Brooklyn's charming veneer of being some sort of tree-lined gentrification utopia: the Observer reports on the divide between North and South, wherein Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Bushwick hipsters have aligned against those from Fort Greene to Park Slope. The edgy Brooklynites to the north have the assymetrical haircuts; their southern counterparts buy their denim at Saks. In the end, they're all some variation of hip, and both think they're smarter than the other side:

Vigilant anti-Ratner organization Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn announces today the formation of an Advisory Board, full of celebrity superheroes willing to fight the crime, injustice, and the Nets Stadium. Notable Brooklynite members include Rosie Perez, Steve Buscemi, Jonathan Lethem, Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams, Jhumpa Lahiri, and the Prince of Park Slope, Jonathan Safran Foer. In the release, Williams recovers from her Supporting Actress loss to chase the glory of Best Random Spokeswoman:

Is that all there is to a fire? That's the question facing developer Joshua Guttman, owner of the Brooklyn waterfront properties involved in this week's marshmallow-toasting party. According to The Post, "[r]ecords culled by fire and police investigators show Guttman's properties in Brooklyn have been involved in at least five other fires since 1992." The Times, on the other hand, focuses on Baruch Singer, a "controversial figure in New York's real estate world" involved in a failed attempt to purchase the properties early this year. Singer's property-management style is said to include "overcharging tenants, refusing to make repairs, and using two pit bulls to scare unwanted tenants into leaving." Whether or not this represents some hitherto unknown murky underbelly of Brooklyn real estate, the lesson is clear: Give Bruce Ratner whatever he wants. Vicious dogs and torch jobs are nothing compared to an avalanche of fliers.

Profound — and, granted, profoundly inconsequential — sociomediacultural thought of the day:

We know this has been around a bit already, but we couldn't resist noting the anti-Bruce Ratner Passover Haggadah ("for an Atlantic Yardseder") that's been circulating for the last few days. Because, hey, if this doesn't say, "Oh no, we're totally not a bunch of barely sane kvetchers," we don't know what does.