See also: Tacos.

Open your pay stub, take a look at your hourly rate and then put yourself in some perspective: do you earn more than $9.50 an hour? If so, then you do better than the average retail worker in NYC, according to a new study reported in the New York Times today. The average for just Brooklyn is only $8.50, and the study is none too encouraging about the state and security of low-income jobs, with this cheery squib from reporter Steven Greenhouse: “Guaranteed work hours are no longer the normal and just ‘getting on the schedule’ has become the reward for job performance.” Yikes. So it’s MLK Day and maybe you’re a retail worker feeling particularly interesting in social justice issues, so, what the hell, if you’re game, tell us: what do you make? You can be anonymous in the comments if you want, but maybe we can rout out the better retail jobs? For anyone who’s never had a retail job in NYC, here’s a picture of a magic dog instead.

HAS ANYONE SEEN MAH PAYPALZ?

Drunk shopping is how you end up with three bags of chips and a cheeseburger in your purse in the morning, or how you find yourself binging on the As Seen on TV rack at the Walgreens (I dont’ want the Pasta Boat. I NEED IT). Apparently, according to The Times today, drunk shopping could be getting more dangerous for your wallet. In its latest is-this-actually-a-trend? piece, reporter Stephanie Clifford says online retailers may be targeting your tipsy sensibilities to entice you to buy buy buy in between all that online crush stalking you do post-drinking. “Post-bar, inhibitions can be impacted, and that can cause shopping, and hopefully healthy impulse buying,” says Andy Page, the president of Gilt Groupe, which is starting more late-night sales to catch this proverbial fish in the whiskey barrel. Not that we didn’t know those flash sales were hazardous anyway.

That's a whole lotta ring for $28 on Gilt Groupe. Or is it?

In cased you missed it, the Times style section had a good piece comparing flash deal sites like Ideeli and Gilt to other retail discount sites — and guess what! — the flash sales aren’t always such a bargain. Reporter Stephanie Rosenbloom compared prices on a Kate Spade tote bag, a navy dress by Decode 1.8 and Bjorn leather flats and found that the items were actually cheaper elsewhere:

Boxed wine: almost as good as unlimited juice.

Isn’t that like asking if you want to buy premium tickets to a bum fight? The Times today is on the tip about boxed wine gaining in stature as an environmentally rad alternative to traditional bottles — even, finally, for Real Wine Snobs. Though an undulant pouch of vino may seem like the lowest class receptacle, the Times reassures that the bag and spout solve a problem of oxidation that vintners have been struggling with for millennia. So naturally, now that the Grey Lady has slapped the bag, you’ll see a run on it at liquor stores. But their best of the box runs up to $90. Yikes! If only there was some scrappy little blog that gave you a rundown of the best $20 boxes. Wait, we’re that blog! Check out our roundup of the real best of the (affordable) box. Wine snobs welcome too.

Joe Scarborough hails the iPad as 2010′s big story, but NBC’s Brian Williams has a different take in this hilarious video, in which he names The New York Times’ “discovery” of Brooklyn as last year’s number one news event. The anchor parodies the Times’ breathless awe over crossing the bridge and — *gasp* — discovering people here do and make things. “There are open air markets, like trading posts in the early Chippewa tribe, where you can make beads at home and then trade them for someone to come over and start a small fire in your apartment that you share with nine others,” Williams says as the others guffaw wildly. Did he exaggerate the Times’ fetishizing coverage for effect? To find out, we linked Williams’ transcript to the Times articles behind it:

WILLIAMS: I, however, am going to go a bit differently. I think the media story of the year, in 2010, was the NYT’s discovery of Brooklyn. Once a day, there’s a story about all the riches offered in that borough. There are young men and women wearing ironic glass frames on the streets. There are open air markets, like trading posts in the early Chippewa tribe, where you can make beads at home and then trade them for someone to come over and start a small fire in your apartment that you share with nine others. Artisanal cheeses. For sale, on the streets of an entire American borough. It’s been fascinating to watch the paper venture over the bridge. Venture through the tunnel. Go out to the outer reaches. The outer boroughs of the city. All different sections of the paper.

They are making grilled cheese sandwiches in the streets. There are roving wagons that will make you a – Brooklyn. Yes….it’s just a fantastic….it’s like Marrakech over there.

I’m leaving here to get to an artisanal market that just opened up today. It’s a flash artisanal market. The newest thing.

(Transcript via NYTPicker). And all those stories are just from 2010. What will The Times discover about Brooklyn in 2011?

SJP actually grew up poor and describes herself as sometimes “super-frugal” in this really interesting interview in the New York Times from 2000, just as Sex and the City was becoming the phenom that paid for Jennifer Connelly’s old house. And anyway, gossiping about Matthew and Sarah is totally free, making it one more item to add to our list of things that still make Park Slope as good as anyplace else to be broke, even with a couple more millionaires living in the midst. The other reasons:

1) You can save on grocery bills by nursing your entire family and nobody will give you a second look.

2) The food at the CHIPS soup kitchen rivals Rosewater’s on some nights and the Franciscan nuns are hella cool.

3) Fence fashion. We know someone—a great dresser, even—who plucks all of her clothing off of fences in the Slope on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Maybe SJP will toss out a few crumbs herself.

4) No job? Start a blog. Type Park Slope Blog into Google and you get more than 2 million hits, but still unclaimed URLS as of Monday 3 a.m. include: TheStraightSlope.com, NoSlopeRadio.com, SlopeOpera.com, SlopeScum.com (that’s a goodie–if you don’t grab it quick, FuckedinParkSlope will). Also up for grabs: ParkSlopeDad.com and ParkSlopeMom.com. How are they still available?

5) If you can’t afford organic food for your kids, send them to the tot lot with a McDonald’s bag and watch the fruit-juice-sweetened, non-GMO snacks fly their way.

6) Free shows every night—inside the Richard Meier building. (Yes, some people call it Prospect Heights, we call it Upper Park Slope North.)

7) Pizza. Every slice from Flatbush to the Prospect, Fourth Avenue to Prospect Park West, ranked here by surface area, weight, and other key factors.

8 ) Up to four hours a day of free childcare at the Park Slope Food Coop—or 28 hours a week! You’re not supposed to leave the building…

9) The Qi Gong massages at Sunshine Best Body Work (4 Park Place, 718-783-1268.)

10) Really nice kids’ things for sale on the street (below).

11) What’s your reason?