Brokelyn

Great news, parade-wave practitioners: the deadline to enter the 2010 Miss Brooklyn contest has been extended due to a surge in entries from Brokelyn readers after our item last week. Yep, the pageant is now allowing entries through March 7. So if you’re seriously thinking about pursuing this path to scholarship money (probs $1000) and free stuff galore (see “sponsors”), here’s advice from reigning Miss Brooklyn Keelie Sheridan, a 23-year-old Manhattan Beach student who’s been living in Brooklyn for the past five years. Turns out Keelie’s one of us: she buys her clothing at the Salvation Army in Sheepshead Bay. Read the rest of this entry »

Red lips have been the perennial go-to since Cleopatra. Perhaps that’s because anyone with enough nerve can really rock a true red—it gives contrast to the fair and pop to the dark-skinned. In winter, being swaddled in bulky coats and hiding hat hair becomes a statement with a properly-hued pout. Here, reviews of five lipsticks available at our local Duane Reade, rated with a little help from a crimson-lipped friend. Just go easy on the eyeliner, in the name of all that’s holy! Read the rest of this entry »

Random fashiony photos courtesy of Peachfrog.

Don’t feel bad if Fashion Week has you pining for your own runway moment—for the next week, you don’t have to leave Brooklyn to get glammy. Starting on Saturday, quirky designer discounter  Peachfrog (136 N. 10^th St.), is throwing an all day fashion-show-cum-rock-concert in their Williamsburg boutique. It all starts with free beer and pizza at noon and then gets rolling at 4 p.m. with sets from Canada’s Dinosaur Bones and New York’s own The Fire and Reason, followed by dance troupe Cuban Soul on II. At 7 p.m. is a fashion show featuring Peachfrog customers dolled up in merchandise from the floor by the shop’s in-house stylist. It is Brokelyn policy not to argue with free beer and pizza. Read the rest of this entry »

We personally can’t vouch for Cristina’s hairdressing talents, but she and her beauty-school sisters are looking for some guinea pigs hair models willing to submit to their newbie stylings for free to $15. She lives in BK, but the school is in lower Manhattan. Here’s the deal:

My school is holding some events and I (and my fellow stylists!) need models. We are taught by excellent instructors in a beautiful, extremely clean studio using professional product lines. We workshop with lead stylists from the top salons in the city. (You know, those ones where people pay $600 for a haircut?) Every step of every service is heavily supervised from start to finish. And it is really, really cheap. Here’s what we need: Read the rest of this entry »

We’re not big fans of Rite Aid for all kinds of reasons (mean manager at the one near our place, cooler NY-centric branding at Duane Reade) but far be it from us to stand on principal when there’s a BOGO sale on makeup going on. That’s retail-speak for buy-one-get-one-free—on all Revlon and Almay products through Saturday (Jan. 16). On all L’Oreal items and assorted things from Maybelline, Cover Girl and Physicians Formula etc., it’s buy one, get half off the second. Nowhere in the store was the dead-lady grey nailpolish that all the fashion chicks are wearing (Chanel, right?), but those seductive yellow tags got us wondering: Which drugstore cosmetics are any good? Everyone knows cheap mascara is legit, but how about foundation and moisturizers? Do you have a favorite? Our very glammy friend Sheryl, the Bitchcakes weight-loss blogger, swears by Covergirl Outlast and L’Oreal Lipfinity. And if you can’t trust someone who rides a century without smearing her lipstick…

Tyler Sussman and A.J. Block of the Didge Project, featured on Well+Goodnyc.

Whenever we find out about a promising new blog that has to do with Brooklyn, affordable anything, or a combination of those two, we feel the need to pass along the info. So here’s Well+Goodnyc, a new site dedicated to helping New Yorkers find accessible ways to feel, as the name suggests, well and good. Though the blog covers all of NYC, it has some fun Brooklyn-related items already. Currently, their top story is a feature on the adorable lads behind The Didge Project, a healing-through-didgeridoos org that we’ve been meaning to do something on. (Can someone PLEASE bring didge yoga to Brooklyn?) Read the rest of this entry »

Suggested styles only. Image courtesy of Weird Things Moms Do.

Considering the high cost of grownup haircuts these days, this seems like quite a bargain. There’s a touted hairdresser in Park Slope who charges $50 for an adult cut—and does kids’ hair for free. So we read on the extremely useful BK parenting blog, A Child Grows in Brooklyn. Blogger Karen Connell says former Soho stylist and Brooklyn dad Louis Radcliff did a “rockin’ ” job on her hair—along with her two kids’ heads, all for fifty bucks. This impossible deal was confirmed by a commenter who says Louis is “amazing.”  See A Child Grows for info on how to get an appointment, and if anyone else knows of any other great cheap haircuts, please let ‘em rip here in the comments because everyone’s always asking us.

Reader Dina is looking for a Park Slope or Prospect Heights alternative to Devachan—the  curlcentric salon in SoHo. “I have tried so many places, but few deliver,” Dina writes, adding that so far she’s been happiest with Kim at Medusa. We’ve recommended Jeffrey at the Beehive (though a commenter disagreed) and heard good things about wave management at SlopeSuds, but would like to put this to our spiral-tressed sistren and brethren. Anyone?

For some women (not me), getting glammed up for free at a makeup counter is a regular ritual. Most department stores provide the service gratis—along with sales pitches of varying intensity—as a way to move product. And even though I’m the type of gal whose eyes glaze over at the word “foundation” (unless we’re talking philosophy or construction), I also love free stuff—in my vegetarian years, my most painful trial was free samples of salami. So I decided to hit up the Macy’s at Fulton Mall three times, putting my usual undone look aside to find out how three different makeup artists might reimagine me. Read the rest of this entry »

Emily and Farrah-Emily. Photos by Stefan Tonio.

Just a reminder that today is Farrah Hair Day at one of our favorite beauty spots, the Beehive Salon in Williamsburg, where you can get a Farrah Fawcett blowout for $50. That sounds like a lot, and yeah it kind of is, but not when the salon is giving half of it to Sanctuary for Families, a New York state group that helps victims of domestic abuse. You may be broke (and you may not be) but that’s no excuse to 1) neglect good causes and 2) not have Farrah Hair. Read the rest of this entry »