Brokelyn

As much as we try to bring you everything you need for the low-budget Brooklyn life, we have to admit, we’re not the only helpful brokesters in town. So we discovered while reading our weekly Yelp email, and there was one Broke in Brooklyn, a.k.a Kyle Huebbe, a real estate agent, former chef and, incidentally, Brooklyn burger king (here he is competing) who’s something of a self-appointed expert on all that is cheap and excellent in our borough. This includes the pork-and-leek dumplings $2 for eight at Kai Feng Fu, Mexican food at Tacos Matamoros nearby, and cheap beer and a BBQ at the Brooklyn Ice House in Red Hook. For pizza, it’s strictly San Remo on Cortelyou Road, where, as he puts it, there’s a “bunch of old neighborhood guys, making pizza.” Tell it, bro. Check out Kyle’s other favorites here.

Costco photo by Gene Jackson.

Is it possible to go to Costco without wondering: Is this really worth it? The crowds, the Zipcar  to Third Avenue and 38th Street, the existential despair of seeing your future in jumbo-sized cereal boxes, the inevitable 12-pound bag of frozen salmon filets you’ll never get through, the paradox of spending more to make sure you get your $50 membership’s worth.

That annual fee, of course, is the biggest question of all. Brooklyn College finance professor Charles Stone estimates that Costco prices have traditionally been roughly 10 percent less than average retail, which means you’d have to spend at least $500 a year to make your $50 back. For some people, that’s not hard to do, what with all the crap they wind up buying while they’re there.

But it just so happens that Target has rolled out a new line of “value basics” called Up & Up, which seems like a direct strike against Costco’s store brand, Kirkland. How do the two compare? Read the rest of this entry »