It’s the season for giving, especially to the needy, and there’s so much more you can do than throw change in the Salvation bucket or drop a few cans of creamed whatever at the local food drive. Why not go for the charity glory and don a full Santa suit for the kids, or better yet, [...]
Reserve now: five free art tours of Brooklyn this weekend
The Williamsburg Art & Historical Center.
It’s only Monday, but we wanted to tell you about a Brooklyn-wide gallery hop that Marty Markowitz has put together for this weekend. Five free buses will be doing loops around our artiest neighborhoods (Bay Ridge? OK cool), every hour on the hour from 1 to 6, on [...]
NYC guide to getting rid of all your old crap
Sunday is America Recycles Day, and here at Brokelyn, we’re celebrating 1) with a guilt trip and 2) a list of all the places to dump your stuff, other than a landfill.
Aspiring Jonathan Lethems, here’s your chance
From National Novel Writing Month to NYC’s First Independent Bookstore Week, November is building an identity as a month in celebration of the written word. And now, WORD bookstore in Greenpoint is inviting scribes young and old to express their love of our fair city in sentence form. Simply [...]
Enter to win our tote-bag giveaway
Photos by Eric Reichbaum.
How cool is this? To demonstrate the many things that can be made from a plain old t-shirt (in this case, an exceptionally attractive one), Park Slope-based writer and craftmistress Megan Nicolay has made a tote bag from one of our Brokelyn 1.0 t-shirts, and we’re going to give it away to [...]
Can I save money by switching to a no-contract cell provider?
Each week or so, our Dear Penny column investigates the answers to reader questions about saving money in Brooklyn. Send your stumpers to DearPenny@brokelyn.com.
On purely economical terms, yes, make the switch. The idea behind no-contract providers is that they offer unlimited talk, text and web for one flat monthly fee. Metro PCS (
Surf’s up in Rockaway! Here’s what it costs
The author surfing in Rockaway
The equipment isn’t cheap, but the ocean is free. Hurricane season means bad swimming but good surfing, and the city’s prime surf spot is just a subway ride away. Take the Far Rockaway A Train (not Lefferts) to Broad Channel, then transfer to the S shuttle to Beach 90 Street. The [...]
Bed Stuy/ Bushwick, Carroll Gardens/ Cobble Hill, Clinton Hill/ Fort Greene, Park Slope/ Prospect Heights, Sales & Deals
This weekend: take the penny-pincher’s pilgrimage
If you’re reading this blog, you like a bargain. So you won’t want to miss the deals at the first ever Brooklyn Hajj this weekend, an effort to promote established and emerging businesses in the borough.
Don’t be dissuaded by the pseudo-religious jargon and oddball branding—this is one of those events where you buy [...]
A couch-surfing tour of Brooklyn
Squirrel is jittery and lean, with a look of confusion on his face. “Do you know the Rainbow Family?” he asks. “I’m part of the tribe. You can call me Squirrel. It’s my Rainbow name.” For a student of couch surfing, Squirrel is an intriguing character study, but the encounter ends as a [...]
A beginner’s guide to open-source software
In recent years, open-source alternatives to bread-and-butter applications like Microsoft Office have become novice-friendly and in some cases, better than their commercial counterparts.
