Etsy represents the best and worst of the world’s creativity, or lack thereof (old doesn’t equal kitschy). With the magic of the internet, you can buy original handmade crafts and vintage treasures from all over the world. It’s a beautiful thing, but we at Brokelyn want to support our local artisans—especially those who go beyond the Scrabble tile cufflinks, things with owls on them, and stuff made out of tree bark that have become ubiquitous at craft fairs everywhere. With V-Day a week away, but really just because, we scoured Etsy for some Brooklyn-made merch that caught our fancy. 
6 cool Brooklyn-made things on Etsy
Faux Girl Scout cookies at Family Dollar: eat em or weep?
Girl Scout taste-alikes at Family Dollar, photo by Tom Sullivan.
If you love Girl Scouts as much as this ex-fat kid, you know that nothing quite beats the anticipation of that first bite of Thin Mints or Samoas, fueled in part by their only-once-a-year availability/hairy-nosed wombat level of rarity in our fair borough. (As of this writing, they go on sale exactly 27 days from now, according to this cookie countdown stopwatch.)
Enter Family Dollar. A few days ago, an Instagram photo of several boxes of cookies from everyone’s favorite discount store chain went around Twitter (Thank you @KateHarding.) While not legit Girl Scout cookies per se, the cookies on the box looked an awful lot like the Tagalongs, Thin Mints, and Samoas that I have an inappropriate obsession with/hoard shamelessly in my kitchen pantry/stress eat on a regular basis.
The perfect Valentine’s gift for tree huggers
Not the actual tree.
Screw it, we’ll just go all out for Valentine’s Day stuff today, even though us singles think it’s about as real a holiday as the Verdukian Holiday of Mouth Pleasures: You could spend tons on an overrated restaurant, followed by weak cocktails, followed by, I don’t know what you couples are into these days, flowers or something? Lame. Step up the game this year by putting all that money in one place and dedicating a whole tree in Prospect Park to your lurver, which will help replace all the ones destroyed by storms last year. For $75, you can plant a sapling as part of the restoration project; for $100, you can contribute to a communal Arbor Day Tree, which also gets you an invite to a special planting ceremony on April 27. Each one gets you a special Valentine’s Day certificate, but orders have to be in by noon on Feb. 9 to ensure you get it in time. Visit the park’s site for ordering details. Then maybe your partner will make like a tree and … oh never mind.
[via Windsor Terrace blog]
You (yes you!) can sell your stuff at Walmart
Are you good enough to make Sam's Choice?
Let’s say you’ve got some awesome handmade product or clever new invention and you’ve been trying to figure out which Brooklyn craft market is the best place to introduce it. That’s a lot of work, right? Wouldn’t it be better to skip that whole process of finding a local fanbase and go right to the hyperglobalmegacorp level? Mega retailer Walmart (currently the only thing still more controversial here than “shit ____ say” videos) is offering to give your product the American Idol treatment with its “Get on the Shelf” online campaign. The top three most popular things will be sold through its website, and the grand prize winner gets carried in physical stores. Perhaps you’re thinking, “but Tim, if I win, does that mean I’ll be staying up all night making batch after batch of home-brewed salsa to meet Walmart’s demand like some sort of artisanal sweatshop?” No! They’ll give you help scaling up production, which means you can ship that crap off to China and watch the fat profits of a hyperglobal economy roll in! Last day to enter is Feb. 22.
BK Hardware price smackdown, Lowe’s vs. Home Depot
It’s been a while since I’ve shared a frugal food find here, and there’s a reason. Even The Brokavore doesn’t live by day-old bread alone, and a pesky need for shelter recently led me to become a first-time homeowner. Which means I’ve been spending a lot of time battling basement leaks and sucking on plaster dust instead of searching out dollar tacos.
Buy a home and like it or not, before long you’re going to find yourself darkening the automatic doors at Lowe’s or Home Depot. With one of each within a mile of my South Slope home, I’ve made many a grudging trip to both. And given my natural gift for parsimony (though gift is maybe not the word Mrs. Brokavore would use), having two competing big-box behemoths within easy reach led me to wonder: which is cheaper?
Win a $1,000 spending spree on Fifth Ave. in Park Slope
This is fun. If you buy something at a Fifth Avenue merchant through Feb. 14, you get a free raffle ticket to win a spending spree of up to $1,000 on the Slope’s best shopping strip. That sounds like a mighty fine way to spend an afternoon, maybe even two. Participating places include a whole bunch of shops, restaurants and bars we really like, with the noteworthy absence of Bierkraft. Here’s the list of Fifth Ave. venues where you can pick up a ticket, and All About Fifth has the details on the giveaway.
Report: Brooklyn is world’s 5th most expensive place for clothes
Apparently, they haven't heard of Fox's.
So there’s this site called Xpatulator that runs cost of living comparisons of the 950 cities/regions worldwide where someone might move to from somewhere else. They just came out with a worldwide cost of living report, and there is one especially curious data point about Brooklyn.
Our borough is not only home to the Man Bun, but the world’s fifth most expensive place for clothing. It is pricier to buy clothes only in Minsk, Manhattan, Belarus (all areas) and Sao Paolo. Paris is #39. London is #82. Moscow, where they wear fur socks and underwear (don’t they?) is #21. And sorry, Giorgio, lowly Milan is way down there at #264.
Price check: Brooklyn art supplies
How much does it cost to make this? Sketch by Brad Pearson.
Pearl Paint is widely held as the artist’s go-to retailer for supplies at decent prices, but that store is in Manhattan, and we are not. I wanted to find the best art supply stores here in our very own borough, so I decided to do a cost comparison of the items I use most myself, from five local shops. The products were Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph technical pens (individual), Prismacolor markers (individual), Higgins India ink (1 oz.), and the cheapest, crappiest pencils and brushes each store carried.
Have we mentioned how much we love Amazing Savings?
Amazing Savings mock antique kitchen tools, $1.99.
Back when we started this blog way back yonder in 2009, one of our first posts was on the wonders of Midwood’s Amazing Savings, where you can get all kinds of books, toys, dishes, small appliances, crafting gear, gift wrap galore for super cheap. We just went back to the Avenue M location after a decent spell away, and it’s actually gotten better. Now that it’s in a bigger space, there’s more of the stuff we want (kids’ books, brand-name toys, fashion-fun shopping totes, adorable crockpots for one) and less of the stuff we don’t want (unrecognizable kosher dry goods; under-the-sink necessities.) How good are the prices? We did a comparison shop.
Beyonce’s questionable $45 Obama shirt
Yes we can ... put crazy crap all over a shirt.
Hey, it’s politics Friday at Brokelyn! Beyonce, the honorary first lady of Brooklyn, has designed this shirt to raise money to help Barack Obama keep his job when he goes up against that guy who likes to fire people. The design is … interesting. It looks kind of like it was made by the kids who signed my shirt at 5th grade field day (“Good luck this summer! K.I.T. Barry!”) But, whatever, she’s had The Most Important Baby of Our Time to gestate! Would you ever wear this thing? What if it were a Beyonce designed sweater vest instead?
