Brokelyn

Getting everyone to the airport is tough, even for modern families.

Traveling for holiday weekends can be especially hard, and expensive if you have a whole family to ship to the airport. Did you know that car services could charge you extra for a car seat? Isn’t that like paying extra for safety? For your holiday weekend travel needs, A Child Grows In Brooklyn put together this fantastic price guide for getting you and your kids to the airport. They compare local car services, daily and hourly parking, and public transportation to JFK, Newark and LaGuardia. So Brokelyn mommas and poppas, this one’s for you. Major props, A Child Grows. But if you’re staying in town, don’t forget to keep an eye on our car-service price checks for Cobble Hill, Williamsburg, Park Slope, Ditmas Park and Bed-Stuy.

Photos: saying goodbye on Moe’s last night [FG Patch]
How to NOT get hired at Vinnie’s pizza [Gothamist]
Win tickets to the Book of Mormon [the skint]
Whole Foods Brooklyn construction (sort of?) underway [Brownstoner]
Video catches “mystery engagement” in BK Bridge Park [Village Voice]
Urban Design Week collecting your ideas for a better city [UDW]
Gas prices have cabbies clamoring for fare hikes [Daily News]
Hailing a car service on the street to remain illegal, for now [NYT]
Journalism and horticulture top list of most useless college degrees [FishbowlNY]

With subway lines sputtering, we’re always on the watch for new ways to find that cheap late-night trip home. Taxi-sharing’s a nice idea but a) it takes a village to make it truly cheap and b) the city-run version hasn’t made it across the bridge quite yet. So, where to look next? The App Store (obvs), for one of the latest necessary additions to your very existence. This one? Weeels is the name, and livery cabs the game. Read the rest of this entry »

In case you don't find this beaut for your trip, you've got a few options. Photo from NewYorkShitty.

This week, our roving car-service eye honed in on Bedford-Stuyvesant. The rates here are pretty steady for the different companies, aside from some JFK-bound spikes and dips. Also, unlike car services in some of Brooklyn’s other parts, Bed-Stuy’s companies seem particularly averse to pets and car seats.

We gave the hypothetical starting point of Classon Ave. and Lafayette Ave. and asked for quotes to the following three destinations: 1) Bedford Ave. and N. 12^th St. in Williamsburg, 2) Surf Av.e and W. 8^th St. in Coney Island and 3) JFK Airport. Read the rest of this entry »

Baby's night out on Smith St.? Could run you $10 extra getting home.

This week we turned our car-service lens on Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. The area as a whole is pricey, with a trip to JFK invariably above $40 (why, we have no idea). And things get even more expensive when babies or pets are involved.

We gave the hypothetical starting point of Smith St. and Atlantic Ave. and asked for quotes to the following three destinations:  1) Flatbush Ave. and Eighth Ave. in Park Slope, 2) Delancey St. and Allen St. on the Lower East Side and 3) JFK Airport. Read the rest of this entry »

Good luck finding one of these in upstate Brooklyn. But how do car services rate?

We’re on to the third stop of our ride through Brooklyn car service price-checks: Ditmas Park/Kensington. Some interesting results this time: While the rate to JFK was pretty constant—it seems like there’s a set borough-wide rate to that place—the prices for another of our destinations varied quite a bit: by more than 40 percent from the lowest quote.

We gave the hypothetical starting point of Cortelyou Rd. and Argyle Rd. (in the heart of Cortelyou’s happenings), and we asked for quotes to the following three destinations: 1) 9^th Street and Prospect Park West in Park Slope, 2) Metropolitan Ave. and Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg and 3) JFK Airport. We called each car service within a 20-minute span on an early weekday afternoon, and we also compared rates with those of a metered yellow cab. Here’s what we found: Read the rest of this entry »