Photos by Dennis Cahlo and Willy Staley.

I used to think that Army Navy surplus stores were only for paranoids who only felt safe in military fatigues, even if they were just going for coffee. Not until one of my best friends back in San Francisco started working at Kaplan’s Surplus Store on the seedy stretch of Market Street did I find out that the non-surplus goods—Levi’s, Dickies, Vans and New Era hats—are often the best deals at these stores, along with an abundance of cheap outerwear. To take advantage of these bargains but avoid the trap of the “crazy veteran” look, I went shopping at Cato’s Army and Navy in Greenpoint with Brooklyn style blogger Dennis Cahlo.

Dennis has a men’s fashion blog called Made to Measure, which he started in response to magazines that only feature suits that cost $3,000 and up. A songwriter and lifelong fashion obsessive, Dennis uses his platform to show average guys how to achieve GQ-worthy outfits on modest budgets, usually from stores like H&M, The Gap and Uniqlo.

To see what he could find at a surplus store, I brought him to Cato’s, a Manhattan Avenue institution for 35 years. Unlike most Army Navy stores, the service is beyond friendly, and the selection of clothes goes far beyond Travis Bickle jackets. With all the cheap flannels, and deals on Levi’s 511s, you might think you were at a cut-rate Urban Outfitters, with a more tolerable soundtrack. Here, three urban winter looks Dennis came up with.

Look No. 1: Here, Dennis wears a standard issue pea coat ($99.95) over a Wrangler western shirt ($19.95) and a simple grey pull-over with wood buttons ($29.95), and Lee Straight Fit jeans ($24.95). That’s Ed, the shop’s friendly owner, in the background. Here, Dennis demonstrates tip number 1: pair drabs with one vibrant item—in this case, the flannel—to make the outfit “pop.” Also, avoid clothing with large logos and camouflage at all costs—it just doesn’t send the right message to strangers. (I can personally attest to getting falsely accused of shoplifting while wearing my old camo jacket. The one upside is that, if you are in the habit of drinking beer in public, army camo jackets are totally waterproof, inside and out; if your beer, let’s say, spills while you are hiding it inside your jacket pocket, it just stays there. Beerproof pockets kept this young man from getting kicked out of on-campus housing as a freshman, so I’m not going to let camouflage get badmouthed without comment.) Total cost: $174.80.

Look No. 2: Cato’s also carries some  names—check out Dennis here in a Michael Kors coat ($129.95) over the same Wrangler western shirt ($19.95) and a Rothco olive commando-style sweater ($29.95) and Levi’s 511 skinny jeans ($39.95). Here he demonstrates another tip: “You have to really look for unique items that go against the norm a bit and mix and match to achieve a look. You don’t want to walk out of there looking like you are getting ready to go duck hunting. Unless of course you ARE going duck hunting.” Total cost: $219.80

Look No. 3: I even got in the mix, and picked out this Alpha Industries heavy winter coat ($119.95) with some Levi’s 511 skinny jeans ($39.95). The shoes were mine. This demonstrates another Made to Measure tip: “If you think you are a medium, try on a small. It will fit better.” This is me wearing the small, and I’m six feet tall when I manage to stand up straight. Who knew? Total cost: $159.90.

Finally, Dennis also points out that Army Navy stores are great for little things to add to outfits like pins, badges, bags and hats. For a somewhat twisted stocking stuffer, Cato’s carries novelty hand grenades for only $9.95. Ed can hardly keep them on the shelves, for some reason. Mention Brokelyn next time you shop at Cato’s and  you’ll get 15% off your first purchase. That’s a cheap grenade.

But the video, which also features Cam’ron, is not shot at Popeye’s—the restaurant featured on screen seems to have no name at all. Somewhat oddly, the trio raps at length in front of a place with a blank yellow marquee. You have to watch the unsanitized version on YouTube to find out that the location is the infamous/beloved Obama Fried Chicken in Brownsville, Brooklyn, as the following before-and-after shots reveal.

YouTube version

MTV version

It is possible that MTV erased the Obama Fried Chicken sign for the same two reasons networks typically pixilate brand cameos: they 1) don’t want to run afoul of copyright laws or 2) don’t want to give free advertising.

Or is it there another reason behind the yellow-out? That MTV doesn’t want to deal with the fallout from blaring “Obama Fried Chicken” across American TV screens? You may remember the local controversy surrounding the place when it first opened in March. City Councilman Charles Barron, called the eatery’s name “outrageous” saying that it plays into “racist stereotyping of black people in America” and threatened protests. The owner, a Bangladeshi immigrant, defended the name as a tribute.

There’s also a decent chance that director Rik Cordero was intentionally trying to create a stir. Cordero, a Queens native, is also behind a number of contentious videos including last year’s “Be a N****r Too” video for Nas, which included lynching footage and other Civil War-era racist imagery. Following are the two videos, starting with the unscrubbed version, followed by MTV’s take.

King Fish, photo by Eric Reichbaum.

Everyone in New York seems to like hidden secrets, even if they aren’t all that secret. This is because New Yorkers are full of shit. I’m no different. My current find is a fried fish sandwich at a certain fresh fish store in Bed-Stuy. The sandwich is a “secret” because it’s sold at the kind of place that looks like nothing more than a fish market (it is a fish market, but the shop’s awning and the neon window light clearly say “Fried Fish” in bold lettering). The grub itself is tasty enough, but the real hook here is the price: $3, American. That’s right, dear reader, $3—hardly enough for some Boar’s Head bodega cold-cuts—gets you one fresh sandwich at King Fish Market. And the place isn’t alone in the little-known North Brooklyn fried fish triangle.

The sandwich at King Fish Market II (950 Broadway at Myrtle Ave., 718-573-9466) isn’t fancy, mind you: just three fresh whiting filets tossed into a bubbling deep fryer and slapped on to your choice of white or wheat bread. But don’t worry about it being dry—the massive squeeze bottles of tartar sauce (I recommend lots of this), ketchup and hot sauce on the counter take care of that. Use these to dress your sandwich sometime before the fry-master places the second piece of bread atop the fish and wraps it all up in much-needed wax paper. Then… enjoy. But be careful with that first bite. I suffered a lisp-inducing tongue burn my first time there from a hidden pocket of oil lodged in my flounder filets. The flounder is $5, by the way, but it’s well worth it—the bottom-feeder is much tastier than the whiting.

King Fish Market actually has quite a variety of fish sandwiches and fish & chip combos. There are salmon sandwiches, squid sandwiches, porgie sandwiches, blue fish sandwiches, soft shell crab sandwiches and something called crab sticks, which look like—and presumably taste like—sticks of crab, though they’re made of cod. Everything is cheap and deep-fried.

The cheap fish at King is hardly the only such stuff in the area. A bit farther down Broadway, towards Gates Ave., is Angel Fish Market (1255 Broadway, 718-452-3527), where the $2.95 whiting sandwich just undercuts the one at King. Angel’s sandwich, the day I had it, consisted of two massive whiting filets barely contained by two slices of bread. Like at King, you’re encouraged to dress the sandwich yourself. Hint: the hot sauce is in what looks like a mustard bottle. There really is no appreciable difference between the whiting sandwiches at King and Angel, but the two places’ menus are surprisingly different. Angel Fish Market has fewer sandwich offerings—just whiting and porgie—but they make up for it with fancier fare like steamed lobster tail and crab legs.

One more to go. Walk down Greene Avenue, past the pawn shop, to Malcolm X Boulevard, and you’ll find Brooklyn Fish N Take (98 Malcolm X Blvd, 718-443-0470) where fish intake is the name of the game (though the “Million Man Burgers” also are worth note. Man burgers?). Fish N Take was far and away the friendliest fish joint of the three, and the most hospitable, given that it doesn’t double as a fresh fish market. Here, $4 gets you two massive, crispy fried whiting filets on a couple of pieces of wheat bread. Again, you have to dress the sandwich yourself. The fish here was both crunchier and tastier than at King and Angel. I suppose there’s a small lesson here, about maybe not eating at places that hose down the floor, but I’m not listening. For a fried fish sandwich, any of the Bed-Stuy joints is worth the trip.

Think you're the next Steve? Enter this contest and find out. Photo by Triborough.

Do you dream of going to Whole Foods and seeing your own hand-churned, grass-fed salted butter on the refrigerator shelf? Or to be featured in a New York Times trend piece? An NYC design group might help make that dream come true with their contest to find “The Next BIG Small Brand” in artisanal, locally-made food. Rooster Design Group invites “chefs, home cooks, restaurateurs, entrepreneurs and all-around culinary geniuses” to send in their food product or concept (in 500 words and some images or a YouTube clip) for a chance to win branding, packaging, logo, and web-design help form the pros. Sure you’re admitting that the widespread appeal of  your creation rests on a brightly colored design scheme, but every burger needs its golden arches, right?

The judging panel includes Eric Demby, co-founder of Brooklyn Flea; Betsy Devine, creator of Salvatore Bklyn ricotta; and Carla Lalli Music, Deputy Editor of Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food magazine; along with a few other heavyweights from the PR/food world. Creators must enter by November 30, and a group of semi-finalists will be contacted on December 4. More info here. In the mean time, I will be perfecting Bushwick Will’s Chipotle Goat Chili.

Jill Cataldo, a coupon shopper extraordinaire featured in the article, and author of the syndicated column “The Coupon Queen,” uses her blog to track weekly deals, find coupons and, ultimately, help shoppers create that great confluence of savings: the store + manufacturer’s coupon combination. It’s simple: find a supermarket deal on Kraft Lunchables—for $2, let’s say—then bring in a $2 Lunchables coupon from Kraft, and… free Lunchables. Oh, to think of those many money-wasting years of heeding warnings like “Not Valid with Any Other Promotion.”

Much of the article is an account of  Barney’s own hard-core coupon-using maiden voyage, during which she puts the “Catalina” to some new-found use. The Catalina, as Barney learns from her coupon coach (we should all have one), is that future-use coupon that often pops out at the end of your purchase. Clever couponers, will, instead of waiting until their next trip to the grocery store to cash in on these savings, use them immediately. How is this possible? As Barney tells it, make your first purchase, get the coupon, move the divider back on the conveyor belt, put down another bunch of items and start a whole new purchase right then and there.

Catalinas and coupon combos are two of the strategies you’ll find for extreme savings. But Barney’s article ends on a mixed couponing note: yes, you can save a bundle, but it can take a lot of work, among other annoyances. Those wanting to experiment on their own can scan the circulars or sites like Coupons.com, SmartSource.com, Moneywisemoms.com and Supercouponing.com. Maybe next time you’ll wind up with frozen creamed spinach for pennies on the dollar.

The author sets out on his girlfriend's lady bike. Photo by ST Tonio.

My girlfriend’s bike is a piece of crap. It’s heavy and slow, and the front brakes rub against the front wheel, which makes it even slower, and seemingly heavier. The gears don’t shift, and the brakes are unreliable. She really needs a new bike, but neither of us is going to buy one any time soon.

The trouble is, repairs to older bikes can add up quickly, and you can effectively total your bike just by getting it tuned up. This model was a hand-me-down from her mother’s college days (!), so I wasn’t about to spend a bundle on it.

So, my plan—okay, my freaking miserable Brokelyn assignment—was to find out how little I could spend to make the bike more road-worthy. The miserable part: riding this beast to eight different bike shops in four different neighborhoods to get the answer.

WILLIAMSBURG
To eliminate as many variables as possible, but to allow each shop to solve the machine’s problems in its own way, I simply asked for the cheapest tune-up that would make the bike safer and easier to ride.

I started out in Williamsburg by visiting both B’s Bikes (262 Driggs Ave.) and Bicycle Doctor.

B’s Bikes was the cheaper (and friendlier) option, with a $60 tune-up that included bottom bracket, drive train and headset cleaning, wheel truing, as well as hub, derailleur and brake adjustments. Essentially $12 per repair, as the mechanic explained. He did not specify whether I could break the tune-up down to those individual repairs, but it seemed possible.

The guy at Bicycle Doctor (133 Grand St.)—it may have been the doctor himself—wanted $70 for the tune-up, which included more or less the same repairs as B’s Bikes, and he recommended another $30 in new parts, including new brake and derailleur cables. He let me know that he could do a whole lot of work on the bike and replace parts, but I would still have a piece of shit bike on my hands, and I would be $100 poorer. I appreciated his honesty, and I probably should have stopped there, but my mission was not yet through.

Next, I slogged over to Park Slope to see if a fancier neighborhood might yield a cheaper bike shop. This apparent paradox is true for wine shops, so why not bike shops?

Dixon's mural. Photo by Timothy Vollmer.

It wasn’t true at Brooklyn Bicycles (375 9th St.). The young salesman took a good look at the bike and recommended I get the “deluxe” tune-up, in which they clean out the drive train, true the wheels, and adjust, lube and clean “everything” for $85. A better bet, pricewise at least, turned out to be Dixon’s (792 Union St.), where the mechanic quoted me $30-$40 to true up the wheels, and adjust the brakes and the rear derailleur. He decided that the front derailleur was a lost cause, and that the bottom bracket and headset didn’t really need cleaning.

FLATBUSH
Still in search of a deal, I headed off to Brooklyn Bike Center (673 Coney Island Ave.) There, I was told a tune up would cost me $50, plus maybe $6 for a new derailleur cable if the current one couldn’t be adjusted. I trekked still further South, flying through red lights on Flatbush Avenue to Larry’s Cycles (1854 Flatbush Ave.), where they also quoted me $50 for a full tune up (brakes, derailleurs, cleaning, wheel truing) without even looking at the bike. It was nice to know that I had trekked from the Queens border, damn near to the Atlantic Ocean to find out what I could have found out with a phone call. So, I continued back the way I came, huffing and puffing up Flatbush, hoping that I don’t get killed by an off-duty cop, or, more likely, by someone making a U-turn across all four lanes of traffic, which seems to be the thing to do in South Brooklyn.

FORT GREENE
I had my best luck in Fort Greene, of all places. Bicycle Station (171 Park Ave.), is a friendly neighborhood outpost in the no-man’s-land tucked between the BQE and the Navy Yard. The guy said a tune-up would run me $45, plus the cost of new brake pads. When I entered the shop he was in the process of flirting with a customer, and I bolted before he could tell me the price of the brake pads. Some things are more important than money.

Bespoke Bicycles, photo by Robin Lester.

From there I pedaled over to Bespoke (64-B Lafayette Ave.) where the friendly mechanics didn’t quote a flat price on the tune-up, but instead looked at the bike and told me which specific repairs would need to be done. They said they could do a few minor tweaks to the bike (brakes, derailleurs, chain cleaning) for just $18. If I wanted my wheels trued, it would be another $15, but they said it wasn’t really necessary.

What did I learn? That the definition of “necessary” bike repairs can be highly subjective, and that crisscrossing Brooklyn in search of the most affordable diagnosis will only make you loathe a hated bicycle even more. For my girlfriend’s sake and mine, I may wind up skipping the tune-up altogether and just putting the money toward a better bike. But that that’ll be another story altogether.

Lomzynianka, photos by Rosanna Chan.

We asked you for ideas. And you came through—with dozens of them. So many inspired cheap dates, in fact, that selecting the winner of our Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway ticket giveaway was tougher than casting a Tony vote for best sound design.

We really liked Lee’s suggestion to see some live Jazz at the Inkwell Café in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, where $5 gets you in the door, and there’s no drink minimum. “Just lean back on the couch for a snuggle while all that good music rolls over you,” Lee writes. Nice.

We also dug the idea from Anna, who suggests a free kayak trip [here's a link to free canoe tours] on the Gowanus Canal; not only will the toxic water be a conversation starter, she points out, but you will have your date in a swimsuit right off the bat. (No, Anna did not post her phone number, guys.)

Props to Cassie, who suggested going to Wombat on Grand in Williamsburg on Tuesday night for their $13 lobster dinner. Better still, though, was Cassie’s third suggestion, and the winning entry: a trip to Greenpoint’s Lomzynianka restaurant (646 Manhattan Ave. at Nassau Street):

It’s a tiny little Polish restaurant off the Nassau G stop and the food is a-mazing. The decor is kitchy, but oddly romantic . . . it’s intimate and there’s no loud music playing. It’s BYOB and the huge Polish platter is only $7.50 – you can easily get away with spending less than $20 for a dinner for two!

In fact, said platter is the most expensive thing on the menu (typical—am I right, guys?), leaving plenty of singles in your wallet to hit the bodega up the street for a half-liters of Okocim or Zywiec beer.

As it happens, this place is something of a favorite around here. Cassie’s Polish platter comes with pierogi, kielbasa, stuffed cabbage, bigos (Polish stew) and potatoes, but take it from us: the boiled beef in white horseradish sauce is much better than it sounds. But don’t order “veal cutlet in Hungarian style” expecting paprika—it’s breaded, fried, and served with American cheese and a slice of tomato on top. Just like in Hungary.

But don’t shy away from Lomzynianka on account of its oddly named dishes, because your date will think you worldly and savvy for knowing about such an authentic little hole in the wall in an area so over-saturated with intentionally cool things. As Cassie points out, part of Lomzynianka’s charm lies in its kitsch factor—its walls covered with what could only be described as Polish papel picado, and a large, worried-looking deer head on the wall.

After dinner, Cassie writes:

…take a long walk up Manhattan Avenue and go to the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory on Commercial Street (the strawberry is the best I’ve had). Enjoy your ice creams while walking back down beautiful Franklin Street!

That really does sound like a winning date. Thanks to Cassie and all of our readers for all your ideas, and to Season of Savings for sponsoring the giveaway, which included $100 gift certificate to Tony’s Di Napoli restaurant in Times Square. Everyone else, we’ll see you at… whatever it’s called!

Beatrice will be “lightening her load” for the remainder of this week, with a closing sale. Lighting, art, and mirrors are 50 percent off, and all furniture is 20 percent off. In case your apartment is in desperate need of vintage mongolian lamb stools to go with your zebra print bar, you’re in luck!

The sale only runs from 11 to 7, Thursday through Sunday, when Atlantis will shut its doors for good. Atlantis, 351 Van Brunt St., 718-858-8816.