Photo by Adam Schneider
We’re always looking for ways to help out, even when no one actually asks us for it. Posting recently on Park Slope Parents, Inha asks where to find an “honest, reliable mechanic” for her down-and-out car. A fellow PSPer, “omatokai” chimed in with this favorite in Prospect Heights:
Nok Auto repair on Saint Marks Ave between Underhill and Washington in Prospect Heights! The owner is Rohan, and he is a real stand-up guy… The shop is even nice and clean. You just get zero of that feeling that you’re being hosed. I used to loathe having to see a mechanic. Very pleased to have found Rohan / Nok.
We hope that’s working out for Inha, but there must be plenty more “honest, reliable” mechanics out there—for those of us with cars, that is. Where do you go for your brakes, shocks, tune-ups and tree-holes?
This is some underwear that you can buy online (but it's not the author's).
Have you ever looked around your room and wondered what you could sell for some extra/much needed cash? Did you look in your underwear drawer? Maybe you need to.
The used-underwear trade is a flourishing industry where sellers can make up to $75 a pair, and routinely between $15 and $30. By sellers, I mean average women (some very average) who are selling their skivvies to pay bills or even buy wedding gowns. Don’t ask me how I know this. But if you’re interested in earning a couple hundred bucks a month for doing something you’re probably already doing for free, here’s what to sell and where to sell it. 
Dead Horse Bay, photo courtesy of Brit in Brooklyn. (Click photo for more.)
Whenever we Brokelynites want an out-of-the-way vacation destination, we just pop over to our little secret Mediterranean island for cabana boys and mai-tais.
Seriously? We’re lucky if we can afford a trip across the GWB, but we’ve been tipped off to a site that could transform even a Jersey-cation from a mall tour to a chance to see the antenna that sparked the Big Bang Theory or the fabled Gates of Hell.
Tracie Howarth, an Etsy success story. Photo by Patrick Fagan.
Success can come in many ways these days: a promotion, a new job, finally paying off your roommate for dropping her blowdryer in the toilet last summer, finding $20 in your jeans on laundry day; or, by our standards, getting four retweets in the space of twenty minutes (it’s the little things that count). For crafty entrepreneur Tracie Howarth, success has translated her successful Etsy jewelry making business into a real brick-and-mortar storefront in Billyburg.
Luckily, you don't need all this space to home brew
St. Patrick’s Day is almost here, and your choices to celebrate probably involve drinking of some kind, either by sneaking a cup o’ brew down to the parade or by going to the bar and ordering the drink-and-shot combination with a politically volatile name. Or, instead, you can commit to learning the art of brewing yourself, to save some cash next year, and to feel like your drinking habit is also a productive one.
Tonight, the folks at Brooklyn Brew Shop are giving away free home brew kits and other beer-related schwag for YOU if you can pass a test of craft beer trivia. The shop crew will be holding down The Double Windsor in Windsor Terrace from 7-9 p.m., where they will host beer trivia, and give away free 1-gallon homebrew kits, including ingredients for black & tan, grapefruit honey ale and new juniper- and coriander-spiced “Bel-Gin” Strong.
The Brew Shop opened in 2008 to help city folk brew their own beer in apartment-sized batches. Practice trivia question to get you ready for tonight: What has two thumbs and loves free beer schwag?
Find out how Emily Farris got a huge room in Windsor Terrace for $200.
We’re down in Austin for SXSWi interactive this week, on a panel called The Broke Diaries. (Thanks for inviting us, Nichelle!) One of our fellow misers is Emily Farris, the lifestyle editor of the Kansas City Free Press who used to live in Brooklyn and now rents a room in Windsor Terrace for $200 a month. Better still, she found this crazy deal on Craigslist.
Here’s a pic of her ridiculously spacious room, and how she wangled it:
I am a hypocrite. I didn’t start out that way, but Blippy, the latest oversharing service, has turned me into just that. As the editor of a social-media news site, social media evangelism—in all of its many incarnations—is my game. But there’s something about this new consumer voyeur service that makes me feel just a bit… icky. Blippy launched at the beginning of the year and the service lets users share their online purchases from merchants like iTunes, Netflix, Amazon and quite a few others. Blippy stores users’ credit card information; users can compare notes, retweet the info and spam the feeds of their so-called friends on Facebook. I had to see this thing, so I signed up. But it was a move I will most assuredly come to regret.
This is the latest entry in our series on the venues featured in the Brokelyn Beer Book. Pacific Standard in Park Slope is the bar for all your indoor, rainy-weekend needs: big-screen basketball, board games, Sunday night pub quiz.
PACIFIC STANDARD
www.pacificstandardbrooklyn.com
82 4th Ave., between Bergen & St. Marks, Park Slope, 718-858-1951
What it is: Diversion-heavy bar, heavy on the West Coast microbrews and cask ales, also host to trivia nights, poetry readings and other special events.
So, you still plan to grow your own food. Now that we’ve convinced you it’s possible and provided the quick & dirty intro on schedules, temps, etc., it’s time to talk about seeds. Working from seed, as opposed to an existing plant, takes the process into your hands earlier, which will help you save down the road. Select your seeds carefully, and after first harvest, you can collect new seeds from what you’ve grown. In a few years, you cut industry out of the process altogether. And the controlled conditions of a cozy apartment are ideal for sprouting these tiny incipient fruits and veggies. Here’s a starter course on the seeds you want, the ones you don’t and what to do with them.
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