The Best of Brooklyn The Borough

Nathan Mankse, founder of Im from driftwood.com

Either/Or with ImFromDriftwood.com’s Nathan Manske

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Nathan Manske founded ImFromDriftwood.com a little over a year ago, when inspired by the work of Harvey Milk, he began simply documenting the stories of gay people all over the globe.

June 8, 2010 Queer Life
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MetropolitanMuseum

The New 8 Million: Love, A Still Life

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I met and fell in love with the man of my dreams on my first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Later on, when I’d tell friends, they’d act incredulous. “That only happens in the movies,” they’d said, and I’d say it, too, clinging to that perfect beginning, holding it up as evidence long after everything else told me to let go.

June 4, 2010 Read Features
redhookthumb

Red Hook Beautifully Blends Modernity and Tradition

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Take a stay-cation in Red Hook. Once the city’s busiest shipping port, Red Hook feels like a small town with a shipping port and boasts great food, free art, and waterfront access, making it the perfect place to get away within the city.

June 4, 2010 Things to Do
bbf

Book It! Get Ready for the Biggest Brooklyn Book Festival

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The 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival will take place on Sunday, September 12. Big-name authors like Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Harding, Dennis Lehane and Jonathan Lethem will read and take part in panel discussions. This year, the festival has expanded and will include new, special events. Click through for details.

June 3, 2010 Read Features
picasso machinery

Picasso Machinery is Curating for the Curious

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Picasso Machinery, the monthly “happening” founded by local writers Evan Rehill and Pete Simonelli is not so secret anymore.

June 3, 2010 Brooklyn Beats, Classic, Music Profiles
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coney island

Where To Go For Sun and Surf if You Live in Brooklyn

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Break out the sunblock and bathing suits, summer is here! But before you book a ferry to Fire Island or hop on the train to the Hamptons, why not take a trip to a sandy shore a little closer to home? Click through for a round-up of the best spots to eat, drink, and hang out near Brooklyn’s beaches.

June 3, 2010 Classic, Things to Do
panto

Nathan Ward on Life on the Brooklyn Waterfront and the Death of Pete Panto

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On the afternoon of Friday, July 14th, 1939, Pete Panto left the Moore-Mack pier where he served as hiring foreman at five o’clock and headed home to his rooming house near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In his room on North Eliott Place he was shaving for a date later that evening with his fiancée, Alice Maffia, when her younger brother Michael came to the room with word that Panto had a telephone call at the corner cigar store. Panto wiped his face and made his way downstairs, but when he returned from his conversation his mood had darkened. He seemed uncharacteristically spooked as he told Michael he would be meeting “two tough mugs” or “men I don’t like” for an hour or so that night, warning “If I don’t get back by ten o’clock tomorrow morning, tell the police.”

June 3, 2010 Classic, Guest Authors
The Forgetters

The Forgetters Are Punk, Do Hamlet at Bell House

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At the Forgetters show last Thursday, Blake Schwarzenbach and bandmates ex-Against Me! drummer Kevin Mahon and bassist Caroline Paquita from Bitchin’ played a solid show at the Bell House, punctuated by short and sweet Hamlet riffs. Watch the video here.

June 2, 2010 Brooklyn Beats, Classic, Multi/Media, Music Profiles, Video
heather

On Growing Up In Hell’s Kitchen

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Writer Heather Kristin reads a story only a native could tell, live in Crown Heights in 2010. Besides being a native of this fair city, Heather is a memoirist, novelist, playwright, violinist, composer, ex-actress, former subway performer, and mom.

June 2, 2010 Authors Speak, Classic, Local/Readings, Multi/Media, The Read, Video
eggcream

Best of the Borough: Brooklyn Egg Cream Bonanza!

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Egg creams have been the more or less official beverage of the borough for generations now—but like many of the hallmarks of Brooklyn culture, there’s been a recent renewal of interest as new blood moves in and stakes a claim to old mantles. We’ve got a round up the best spots to grab a glass of this frothy beverage.

June 2, 2010 Classic, Multi/Media, Restaurants, Things to Do, Video
inyang

The Day Moby Called

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Brookln-based soul singer Inyang Bassey is taking a lifetime of friends, false starts and creative encouragement to the next level. Starting with a call from Moby. Check her out this Saturday when BrooklynTheBorough.com presents a performance of Ms. Bassey with the famed producer at Bar4 in Park Slope.

June 1, 2010 Classic, Music Profiles
school

Loss On Loan

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“Matt is impossible today,” his teacher said when she wearily passed him off to me. I could only see a 4-year-old whose large, frightened eyes were wet with tears. He looked lost and lonely and I immediately found myself wanting to shelter him. I was a 23-year-old kid myself, barely paying rent on a rundown railroad in Bushwick. This was the first real job I had landed, yet I was only a novice, an uncertified preschool librarian in Brownsville.

May 25, 2010 Featured Writers
canarsie

Catch And Release

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People tend to talk to each other out on the pier. It’s just an assembly of pilings and mortar. Walk back out onto Rockaway Avenue and strangers pass with their eyes focused elsewhere. Maybe it’s the horizon or the water itself, or maybe it’s some ancient agreement, like the Canarsies (or whoever) would put their differences aside at the fishing hole. Cuz hey— folks gotta eat.

May 24, 2010 Classic, Fiction
thenational

The National Stays Local, Scraps Fancy Video For Bare Bones

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With the recent release of ‘High Violet,’ The National have been peppered into all the weekly rags, with interviews and album reviews, all praising their newest piece of aural poetry, epic sounds that seem to make all the Brooklyn bearded-boys swoon. However, the limelight has far from poisoned them.

May 24, 2010 Brooklyn Beats, Music Profiles
Best Coast

Design Me A Cover, Brooklyn

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Find me a Polaroid and I’ll find you a Brooklyn band using it as cover art: a cursory look at this potential trend and a call to action.

May 21, 2010 Brooklyn Beats, Classic, Music Profiles
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candycoated

Williamsburg Gallery Exhibits A Candy Coated Metamorphosis

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Kyoung Eun Kang’s Happy Birthday is a stunning, disturbing piece, a reflection upon the messiness of birth and life and runs through June 13, 2010 at A.M. Richard Fine Art, in Williamsburg.

May 20, 2010 Art n' About, Classic, Multi/Media, Photo, The Art
tomatoplantsatdusk

Breaking Brooklyn’s Eco-Apartheid

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An astounding 1.4 million New Yorkers live in households that have trouble putting food on the table. This new series will address hunger and healthy food solutions done locally to address hunger and obesity right in our backyard.

May 20, 2010 City Politics, Classic, Environment
brightlights

Bright Lights, Big Star

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This essay by Heather Kristin is the first in our non-fiction series The New 8 Million, chronicling the lives of New Yorkers in their own words. Besides being a native of this fair city, Heather Kristin is a memoirist, novelist, playwright, violinist, composer, ex-actress, former subway performer and new mom who is currently writing a memoir about growing up in New York City. Here is an excerpt.

May 19, 2010 Classic, Featured Writers

Summer Interiors: A Pastel Pad On Flatbush

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There are flowers blooming everywhere we go and bikes hitting the pavement to Prospect Park so that must make it time for a new installment of Queer Interiors, featuring a lovely home or two every season for that special sneak peak urban dwellers crave. This round features talented baker, proud Brooklynite and cute cyclist Jason Schreiber, who has a gem of a space to hang his hat. He gave us the low down on his not-so-bachelor pad for our summer edition of Queer Interiors, so check out Jason’s eye for design – homemade or otherwise – which makes this a delicious space.

May 18, 2010 Queer Space, Real Estate
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band

“So I Gotta Find a Brooklyn Band I Like?”

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Brooklyn The Borough debuts a new weekly column with a nod to local trio Knight School and the great state of Indiana.

May 17, 2010 Boroughing, Brooklyn Beats, Music Reviews
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national

Is The National’s High Violet Only Good Because It’s Not Bad?

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Brooklyn’s The National release their fifth LP entitled High Violet on 4AD this week, kicking it off with a series of events planned for the High Violet Annex in Manhattan leading up to a sold out show at BAM on May 15.

May 13, 2010 Brooklyn Beats, Classic, Music Profiles
strange_powers

Magnetic Fields Documentary Screens at the Bell House

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Brooklyn Arts Council presented Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields at the Bell House on May 10 before a nationwide theatrical release later this year.

May 13, 2010 Boroughing, Brooklyn Beats, Classic, Film, Music Profiles
shameless

Shameless Photography Made Me Feel Like A Pin-Up Goddess

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Back when it was still supposed to be as chilly as it has been these last few days, this reporter took a trip to the studios of Shameless Photography, where owner – and we think part time magician – Sophie Spinelle gave me a full makeover for a photo session as my usually-hidden alter ego: the pin up girl.

May 13, 2010 Fashion, Multi/Media, Video

Iggy Pop at the Music Hall Was Twitterific

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Everything we know about Iggy Pop we learned from Twitter.

May 13, 2010 Brooklyn Beats, Music Profiles
goodwillie

Video: Live Reading From American Subversive

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Author David Goodwillie reads from his novel American Subversive at the Franklin Park Reading Series in Crown Heights.

May 11, 2010 Authors Speak, Boroughing, Classic, Local/Readings, Multi/Media, The Read, Video

BKLYN Designs Weekend Is Christmas for Creatives

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BrooklynTheBorough.com stopped into the BKLYN Designs in Dumbo over the weekend to check out some of our borough’s most forward thinking design companies.

May 11, 2010 Art n' About, Classic, The Art
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cswift

Designer Christopher Swift Creates New Brooklyn The Borough Logo

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A few weeks ago BrooklynTheBorough.com began its search for a new logo to grace its pages and we were lucky enough to find just the right fit with a design by Christopher Swift.

May 7, 2010 Featured Artists, Multi/Media, Photo, The Art
Franz Nicolay

Franz Nicolay’s Creative Populism

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Franz Nicolay, multi-instrumentalist and genuine showman goes solo after serving time with just about every Brooklyn band of note. This is a very good thing.

May 5, 2010 Boroughing, Brooklyn Beats, Classic, Music Profiles
americansubversive

American Subversive: An Excerpt

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So here’s the thing: I live in Manhattan. I realize this admission may count as blasphemy in these parts, but I spend what seems like several night a week in Brooklyn, and well, there’s nothing like an outsider’s perspective to keep people honest. I also write about Brooklyn a great deal, in both my fiction and non-fiction, so why don’t we start there and see what happens.

May 5, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Guest Authors

Freddy’s Last Hurrah

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On Thursday April 29 at Freddy’s Bar, small magnetic LCD lights ascended rapidly from the hands of patrons, fixing themselves to the historic tin ceiling – a glowing, colorful metaphor for how this 70 year old establishment might soon be moving on.

April 30, 2010 Bars, Boroughing, Brooklyn Beats, Classic, Music Profiles