Outings
Red Hook
The Shadow Monster, Saturday, Oct. 16
This weekend you can see lightning-strike victims, a corpse dumping ground, a half-naked Bushwickian and a battle for water rights in Michigan all in the same place. It’s the Red Hook International Film and Video Festival we’re talking about, a two-day showcase of shorts and features, Brooklyn-centric documentaries, fiction and experimental films hosted by Red Hook’s Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. Best yet, it’s all free, and that includes the popcorn and Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pie. 
THE RAFFLE OF THE CENTURY
Red Hook
Photo by Annie Wang
Few foods say luxury like lobster. And no other lobster has the neighborhood-born cachet of Red Hook Lobster Pound’s. The Pound’s only about a year old (just like us!) but already it’s a Red Hook staple and a major player in the borough’s food-truck explosion. We had to get our claws on a little something for our birthday raffle (sorry, Sizzler, maybe next year). The result: a $50 gift certificate that’ll bring in quite a catch.
Food & Drink
Red Hook
Photo by Ultraclay
This is the latest in our series on the venues featured in the Brokelyn Beer Book. With the constant buzz of MTA cuts, show your love for B61, a well-stocked Red Hook bar and its namesake bus line… which you might need to get home.
B61
187 Columbia St. at Degraw St., Red Hook, 718-643-5400
Food & Drink
Red Hook
This is the latest in our series on the venues featured in the Brokelyn Beer Book. Brooklyn Ice House in Red Hook is the perfect out-of-the-way destination for this first weekend of spring.
BROOKLYN ICE HOUSE
318 Van Brunt St. between Pioneer & King, Red Hook, 718-222-1865
Shopping
Red Hook
The author boards the bus. Photos by Eric Reichbaum.
Ikea is practically its own sovereign Swedish colony on the banks of the Gowanus Bay. So it only makes sense that the store has its own intricate system of transit involving everything save for aircraft (so far, at least). But which mode of transport is the best for you? And by that, of course, we mean: which one is the cheapest? Herein then we lay out the specific costs of all the different ways to transport your Ektorp or Aspelund back to your apartment so you can choose smartly, and not fall into the fjord of poor decisions.
Sales & Deals
Red Hook
Atlantis, Red Hook’s second-largest furniture retailer, will be closing the retail half of their business on Sunday, September 27. Before everyone gets up in arms about Red Hook’s largest furniture retailer putting Atlantis out of business, let it be known that Beatrice, Atlantis’ owner, is only closing her retail outlet to focus on the upholstery and decorating side of things. Her new workshop will be located just around the way, at Screwball Studios (188 Lorraine St).
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.
Sales & Deals
Red Hook
Like us, our frugal friends over at the design blog Bromeliad must have gotten the Ikea flyer last week detailing a few of the items that cost less this year at the Swedish retailer than last. Bargains include the Malm six-drawer chest ($149 last year; $129 this year), the oddly-named-for-a-sleep-surface Sultan Fidjetun queen-size memory mattress ($349 last year; $249 this year) and the ubiquitous Lack table, pictured, ($15 last year; $7.99 now.) The table comes in eight colors, and if you don’t look too closely at the ingredient panel, it’s pretty swell as is (especially in pairs). But Bromeliad rounds up a host of stylish ways to pimp your Lack: veneer it, mirror it or cover it in mosaic tile, among others. And while you’re nosing around this wonderful blog (sort of a mom-and-pop version of Apartment Therapy, check out another genius post: a DIY, very faux, zebra skin rug made with vinyl fabric and Sharpie. Fun.
Red Hook
From Dumpster swimming pools to a truck farm… how kooky is Brooklyn this summer? The locavore crowd is all atwitter about a vegetable garden growing in the back of a 1986 Dodge Ram, planted by Brooklyn filmmakers Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney as an experiment to show all the crazy places you can grow your own food. (Also excited is one Red Hook insalate caprese lover who’s been helping himself to their car-vest: “Some kid from the neighborhood keeps eating all of our basil,” Ellis told today’s Daily News.) As it happens, there’s more to growing a pickup garden than dirt, water and seeds, and you can click the photo to see videos that show how the duo achieved a mobile bounty of broccoli, arugula, tomatoes, parsley etc. The boys even have a CSA, where you can pay $20 for a “completely unknowable amount of truck-fresh produce,” which may well amount to an arugula leaf and a parsley sprig if this project continues to grow in popularity. Here’s hoping.
Sales & Deals
Red Hook
A Brokelyn favorite hobby is scanning those wet circular bags that wind up on your stoop once a week because they contain all sorts of useful information that nobody else bothers with: Twelve-can packs of Coke and Pepsi are always on sale and Fairway always has a killer meat deal (this week: sirloin for $3.99/lb). This week’s packet from Park Slope also has an Ikea insert. On sale this weekend only: the Ektorp sofa in Leaby red is $349 instead of $599. Not bad. Plus, free breakfast for fathers on Sunday. That’s a nice offer, but dragging Dad to Ikea on Father’s Day is a little like going camping for Mother’s Day. Go on Saturday instead.
Outings
Clinton Hill/ Fort Greene,
Red Hook,
Williamsburg/ Greenpoint
Mullane's photo by Anna Jacobson.
You walk in a bar some nights with more gainfully-employed friends, and the first thing you do is open your wallet to count the bills. All the while, of course, you consult the price list and try to calculate that perfect (maximum) drunkenness/dollar ratio. Best to head off the math problem altogether by going to one of the many bars around the borough that offer beer-and-shot bargains. Here, a few of our favorite value-meal combos.
