FRIDAY
8pm (+ 2/4)

8pm (thru 2/5): multiple playwrights collaborate on one work without knowing what others are doing at piper mckenzie’s dainty cadaver. the brick, $10.

8pm: buried alive! = deborah kaufman’s intimate performance staged on a tabletop with sets constructed entirely of matchboxes. observatory, $12.

9pm: blurghlesque, a burlesque tribue to 30 rock, a sexy tribute to liz lemon, jack, kenneth, tracy and all the rest of the tgs gang, with comedy by jena friedman and jessica delfino. matchless, $5.

SATURDAY
4pm: novelist and macarthur fellow colson whitehead reads from his new post-apocalyptic novel zone one, which follows new york’s clean-up job of removing zombies to make manhattan inhabitable again. bpl, free.

5pm: brooklyn museum’s target free first saturday celebrates black males defying stereotypes with discussions, a talk with author carla peterson, a fashion showcase, music from afro-punk band game rebelion, violinist daniel bernard roumain, and dj stormin’ norman, more free.

6pm: the bed-stuy bar crawl includes a free drink from four bars, small appetizers, free stuff from yelp and a copy of the latest not for tourists brooklyn guidebook. $25 (must purchase tickets by midnight fri).

9pm: the folks at secret formula have formulated a grease sing-along and 50s dance (with spiked punch, of course) including shout outs, drinking games, trivia, a costume contest and dance-off, more. bell house, $10 adv, $12 dos.

10pm: the rub classic hip hop dance party rubs one out one last time at southpaw before the venue closes at the event moves to the bell house, $10

11pm: nerds + burlesque = nerdlesque. followed by strip operation! the brick, $10.

SUNDAY
1pm (every first sun thru march): a licensed psychotherapist and garden guide leads a special ‘chase away the winter blues‘ tour of the brooklyn botanic garden. free with $10 garden admission.

3pm (thru 5/26): brooklyn’s truffle theatre company performs shakespeare’s a midsummer night’s dream in the mezzanine of 61 local (cobble hill), $5 for super bowl sunday (reg $15).

6:30pm SUPERBOWL!

listings brought to you by the skint. Follow: @theskint.

Ghenet means "Yes, I'll sleep with you but not until you wash your hands" in Ethiopian. Photo by Serious Eats.

Dear Serious Eats web site, we hate slideshows, unless they’re celebrity plastic surgery photos. Love, Brokelyn.
Formatting quibbles aside, check out Serious Eats’ list of 10 modestly priced Valentine’s Day restaurants, which include three in Brooklyn (Olea, Cafe Moto and the “sensually” utensil-free Ghenet). There’s also one in Staten Island (the ferry’s romantic, even if mac and cheese is NOT.) Down at Broketown HQ, we’ve been debating the merits of acknowledging Valentine’s Day at all, with single dudes some of us staunchly opposed and married breeders others looking for any excuse to break out the bubbly and cupid-festooned Joe Boxers… ROAR! Whatever your plans (we’re actually curious, so feel free to pipe in), these places seem worth a visit at some point. Or are you single dudes down on restaurants altogether these days? [via Serious Eats]

If this game isn't the bane of your existence like it is for Dave, check out some of these events.

Real talk: I will be avoiding bars on Super Bowl Sunday this year because I hate both teams and there’s a guarantee I would get beat to death by at least one, if not both, fanbases. You, however, might have a rooting interest besides “the field imploding like in the new Batman trailer,” but no TV and no interest in watching a glitchy Internet broadcast. Lucky for you, Brooklyn is home to many bars that off affordable ways to cater to your readiness for some football, from free wing buffets to cheap drinks to vegan parties to a super mustache bash. 

SUPER GUIDES
Check out our guide to cheap football bars, combining our picks with reader favorites; if you need a nosh to calm your nerves, lots of spots in our free bar food roundup are game-friendly. Staying in? Don’t forget our super-scientific study of the best value for cheap beers before you fill the fridge. But if you’re still a disgruntled Jets fan, pound some beer and shot specials.

WILLIAMSBURG

South 4th Bar, 90 S. 4th St.: Even though everyone knows mustaches go better with baseball and hockey, this Williamsburg café/bar (cabar?) is inviting everyone with a lip caterpillar to show up to their Super Bowl Mustache Bash. It includes $15 pitchers of Kelso and Blue Point Toasted Lager, a $5 Bloody Mary bar and $4 Jamesons. The bar is also making sure there’s something to absorb all that alcohol with rolling food options starting with pizza at 1pm, chips and chili at 3 and a 6-foot party sub showing up at 6.

Matt Torrey’s, 46 Bushwick Ave.: While the Giants still won’t return my calls about setting up a charity to donate  $100 for every Eli Manning interception (129 in 121 career games!), you can put that selfish attitude to shame on Sunday. Matt Torrey’s is making a dent in the fight against leukemia and lymphoma by asking for a $10 donation (suggested)  for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. In exchange, you get access to three big screen TVs, chips and dip, wings and your first well drink or draft beer for free.There’s also the promise of raffle prizes and Super Bowl boxes for you degenerate gamblers.

Brooklyn Bowl, 61 Wythe Ave.: No specials here, but if my fervent hope for the worst Super Bowl of all time comes true, you’ll feel extra smart for choosing to watch the game at a bowling alley, where at least you’ll have a distraction. If you and your friends are particularly terrible at bowling, you can make bets as to whether your scores will best the over/under of 55 points between the Giants and Pats. Though if you do bowl a 54, man do you suck.

Wildflower: The vegan pop-up shop will host a Super Bowl party on Sunday at 379 Union Avenue. The fare will be … vegan, and the party starts at 5:30 p.m.

COBBLE HILL

That's a fact of life.

The Brazen Head, 228 Atlantic Ave.: The official bar of Trader Joe’s lunch breaks is bringing linebacker-strength hits with four TVs showing the game, two kinds of  free chili (carnivore-friendly and vegetarian), plus their $1 off drinks for the whole day. During the game, all draft beers will be $5, so if I were you, I’d start praying for a penalty-filled mess of a game that goes until the last second of overtime.

Angry Wade’s, 222 Smith St.: It’s Brooklyn’s unofficial Red Sox bar, so this must be the perfect bar for you to show up to in your Michael Strahan jersey and loudly moralize about Rob Gronkowski’s dalliance with a porn star and Tom Brady fathering a bastard child. The beating would be totally worth it though, for the promised outdoor barbeque, wall projection of the game and the chance to win a raffled off snowboard.

BED-STUY

Vodou Bar, 95 Halsey St.: No, it’s not a place angry Jet fans are gathering to stick pins in a collection of Giants and Pats dolls (that place is called “my living room”). Instead, it’s a Bed-Stuy bar promising to get your bloodlust primed with free wings between 5 and 6:30, plus a special Super Bowl happy hour and menu.

PARK SLOPE

The Rock Shop, 249 Fourth Ave., Park Slope: This bar/venue invites you all to come on down and root for the Giants. So you won’t find me there, despite the allure of a free wing buffet at kickoff, $4 Stella Drafts, $5 Jameson drinks, $5 Stolli drinks and $3 cans of Modelo and Rolling Rock.

What did we miss?

Free course means you won't sink your budget.

If you’re thinking of taking a photo class but unsure if you’re really up for the whole shebang, take the chance to test drive one this weekend. Brooklyn Creative is offering a free sample of its 8-week digital photography class on Saturday. From 11-1pm, you can get a taste of the basic level digital photography course, which BK Creative says is “great for anyone who wants to discover the foundations and potential of digital photography.” The Dumbo center is also extending its Groupon deal through a special code that can save you more than 50 percent off a course, and will soon be offering wo-hour, $5 skill classes on Fridays, so stay tuned for moe about that.

Attn all the single ladies (and, uh, dudes).

Brooklyn, we work hard. TOO hard, apparently, to get sumpin’ sumpin’ on the side. The Daily News this week looked at newly released Census data that seem to indicate all of us busy ass hustlers in the borough are too focused on paying rent to worry about getting your romantic life in order. The paper quoted experts who said Brooklyn’s socioeconomic diversity means these results are not surprising. “They are beginning their careers and postponing marriage,” CUNY sociologist Richard Alba told the News.“They tend to concentrate in the same neighborhoods,” which means Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick, the area that has the most balanced cluster of both single men and women. Hm, not really surprising. Editorial comment below. 

The Census data do not mean that everyone in Brooklyn is blue balling/whatever-the-female-equivalent-of-blue-balling is all the time. It means that we don’t marry or settle down right away because we’re either not that interested in it, not that worried about it or just don’t have time in between gigs and jobs and assignments and school to commit to full-scale relationships. It does not count that kinda-casual hookup person you end up going home with again at 3am when the only people left in Rosemary’s are the crusty old locals, or the one night stands, or the friends with benefits, or whatever permutation of 21st century relationship you might have.

Listen, I just got back from a week in San Francisco where you can actually feel a different degree of hormones in the air: you know that thing in New York where everyone walking on the sidewalk looks at everyone else up and down to size them up? And occasionally you get the smile or the hungry eyes? That doesn’t happen there.

Several friends and local experts in SF bemoaned the dating scene: too few girls, too few datable dudes, that sense that people just don’t socialize in public as broadly as they do here and, perhaps most of all, the fact that the bars close two hours earlier (last call was 1:20 at one place!) — the crucial two hours when lots of totally awesome hookup decisions are often made.

In summary, we have it lucky here, so run with it while you can. Hell, who wants to settle down when there’s just so much fun stuff to do and so much of the world to be conquered? Now, back to work with you.

Can you get your flirt on? Photo via Flickr's Nylons and Cake.

The good thing about going to a flirting workshop is that it’s probably a pretty damn good place to pick up a date, especially for you, the person who’s bad at flirting, because you’ll be in a room with other people who suck at flirting, which means your attempts to pick them up will be even more aww-dorable. Tonight, Babeland is holding a mini workshop on flirting to give you tips on eye contact, body language, suggestive conversation starters and tips for taking it a step further. The workshop is only about 20 minutes long, but, think about it: you’re in a flirting workshop. In a sex shop. A week before Valentine’s Day. If you can’t hook up there, you probably need to go back to remedial sex ed.
7pm tonight at Babeland Brooklyn, 462 Bergen St., Park Slope.

[via the skint]

Brokelyn on Tumblr: It's a Tumblast!

Hello internet users! Because we know our Brokelyn Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter accounts weren’t enough, Brokelyn is now on Tumblr! Why should you follow us there? We’ve put together a list of five reasons.

1. Musings. Our Tumblr is team Brokelyn’s hyperactive sensory appendage on the cerebral cortex of our main blog. That means quotes, photos, reblogs and more things you won’t find on Brokelyn proper. 

2. Filters. Our tumblr provides links to our top stories, so if you’re more of the skimming type, follow us to be exposed to only the biggest items of brokevestigative journalism. But stay up with our regular site for everything else!

3. Fashion. We will regularly post our thrift finds, crazy sales discovered on the spot, cross-bridge sample sales, street style and other breaking gems that don’t merit a full article. Also, every Wednesday, anticipate gratuitous picture of a Brokelynite – spearheaded by two of the most stylish ladies on team brokelyn and inspired by the forever-meme GPOYW (look it up).

4. Voyeurism. Our Tumblr features behind-the-scenes Brokelyn: more of a lens into who our contributors are and how we live. Here we’ll boast about our day-to-day, satiating our deepest urges to share (like we do on Twitter. But with more pictures).

5. Tell us your cheapest, darkest secrets. Our tumblr has an anonymous ask box. Don’t have the time to write an email or require more than 140 characters in a mere tweet? Ask us on Tumblr! Whatever your heart desires.

You can keep up with it here on the Brokelyn Tumblr!

Follow Caroline: @shadood (who also Tumbls at Broadist.

Bed-Stuy, drink or die. Photo by Clay Williams.

Bed-Stuy is on the rise and for the most part it seems to mostly be a good thing (depending on who you talk to) as cool new restaurants and bars get added to the nabe made famous by Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. But don’t take my word for it: This Saturday, our friend and photographer-about-town Clay Williams and friends are hosting a bar crawl through the Stuy: for $25, you get a free drink at each of four bars, small appetizers, swag from Yelp and a 2012 edition of the Not For Tourists Brooklyn guidebook, which sounds like more than $25 worth of stuff. You can buy tickets online through midnight Friday. See the full list of bars below.

Your hosts: Clay Williams (@Ultraclay), Alisha Miranda (@makeshiftalisha) and Nicole Taylor (@foodculturist), and the official hashtag is #bedstuycrawl. The event is co-sponsored by Yelp, Scoutmob and Not For Tourists.