Here’s a random spot check of what’s open, what’s closed, and what’s open but closing early in Brooklyn today due to preparations for Hurricane Irene. Please add to it in the comments. We’d love to hear what you know about your local restaurants, bars, gyms, wine stores, etc.:
By Brooklyn Fine Goods, 261 Smith St: Open, candy tasting 1-5pm
Chase Branches: Closing at 2 p.m.
C-Town, 9th Street and Fifth Avenue: Closing at 2 p.m.
C-Town, 710 Coney Island Ave between Avenue C and Cortelyou: Open all-day, weather permitting
Duane Reade, all locations: open normal hours, weather permitting.
Read the rest of this entry »
This Memorial Day, set fire to the grill, not your wallet. Photo via Flickr's Nick Sherman.
Memorial Day is upon us, along with the inevitable pre-holiday hunt for BBQ provisions. Good news, Brokesters: we just found out that grocery store prices in NYC are actually cheaper than in the rest of the country. Team Brokelyn is here to help you maximize those savings. We’ve scoured grocery stores across the borough and compiled a price index to find which have the best (and worst) prices for your outdoor feasts. We concentrated on the basic stuff here from buns to beers. Here are the results from our price scouts: Read the rest of this entry »
Worth it? Photo from Big Red Kitchen.
Let us, for a moment, set aside the fact that if you’re a decent cook and you have decent ingredients, whatever you make at home WILL taste better than its packaged counterpart from the store. Similarly, ‘making it’ is usually a better fiscal decision than ‘buying it.’ But there’s still a gray area in the make vs. buy debate that needs to be addressed. The question needs to be asked: Is it really worth it to squeeze those 50 oranges for the Sunday brunch, or will Tropicana do? We visited supermarkets around Brooklyn to price-check a few kitchen staples. Then we explored making them ourselves and did some math. Here’s what we found. Read the rest of this entry »
Taiwan Cucumbers. Photos by Hannah Rosenblum.
Chinese supermarkets are chock-full of delicious, inexpensive stuff—that we know from many a past meal. Still, for the uninitiated, between the hustle and bustle (and often questionable English signage), the stores can seem like impenetrable fortresses. You know that fuzzy squash-looking thing is cheap, but… what to do with it? We decided to head to a couple of Sunset Park’s staple supermarkets and see what we could find, and how to use the stuff back at home. We compared the prices with those at a couple cheap non-Chinese spots (our local C-Town and Key Food). Here’s what we found: Read the rest of this entry »
Sunset Park, we just can’t quit you. As a resident of the neighborhood and surrounding area for nearly four years, I’ve been able to partake in all of its minimally gentrified goodies. It’s now no longer a secret that Sunset Park is an affordable oasis in the money sinkhole that is greater NYC, and that’s why Brokelyn keeps going back for more. And this week, the Daily News gets in on the bargains by profiling the neighborhood it its Savings in Brooklyn series. After the jump, their picks, and a few of mine. Read the rest of this entry »
According to Real Simple Magazine, even your potatoes are ripping you off. Buying a few loose spuds for your Bubbie’s latkes will cost you twice the price of a bulk bag (plus, the more latkes the better.) A fun money-saving feature on the mag’s web site also tells you say no to non-grocery items at the supermarket and yes to multi-use gadgets like the “hori hori” garden tool (part knife and part trowel), an affordable way to keep your “yard” (see also 3×5 patchy lot) in check.
Feeling the urge to call Moscow? Visit aitelphone.com, and find international rates as low as 1.5 cents/min in comparison $1.70/min at Verizon. So slap on a smile and start saving (and jeeze Louise, we can’t see the fillings in the back of your teeth–so opt for silver instead of white enamel and pay half the price for four-times the strength). For lots more of this sort of thing, check out Real Simple‘s “How to Save On…” guide.
In this week’s bag of supermarket circulars:
We know a cute gay hiker type who swears by the men’s department at Sears. We’ll have to investigate soon, but mean time Sears is offering a decent special through June 30. Spend $50 on Levi’s (and a couple of other brands) and you get $50 in “Sears Rewards Cash” by mail. What’s that? A $50 certificate that you can redeem in for more men’s clothes. You can’t use it to buy Land’s End—phooey—but worst comes to worst you get fifty bucks worth of socks, underwear and pajamas. Read the rest of this entry »
While doing the morning rounds we came across a series by Daily News reporter Denise Romano on bargain shopping in various Brooklyn neighborhoods, covering pharmacies, dry cleaners, grocery stores, barber shops and the like. We’re naturally skeptical of any list with a C-Town on it, but there look to be at least a few good tips on these pages. Click on your neighborhood and judge for yourself:
Sheepshead Bay, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Bay Ridge, Flatbush, Greenpoint, Prospect Heights, Sunset Park, Bushwick.
Even the most committed brokavore has an achilles heel. Schmancy ice cream, farm raised this or that, deep-fried anchovy skeletons. Mine is coffee: oily, aromatic, dark roast, whole bean, utter, hopeless snobbery. I’m so pathetic I recently bought a junky little milk frother to elevate the experience. But after running out of the good stuff for the first time in my adult life this week, it was time to suck it up and embark upon a long-overdue Brokelyn taste test: supermarket coffees. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s a random spot check of what’s open, what’s closed, and what’s open but closing early in Brooklyn today due to preparations for Hurricane Irene. Please add to it in the comments. We’d love to hear what you know about your local restaurants, bars, gyms, wine stores, etc.:
By Brooklyn Fine Goods, 261 Smith St: Open, candy tasting 1-5pm
Chase Branches: Closing at 2 p.m.
C-Town, 9th Street and Fifth Avenue: Closing at 2 p.m.
C-Town, 710 Coney Island Ave between Avenue C and Cortelyou: Open all-day, weather permitting
Duane Reade, all locations: open normal hours, weather permitting.
Read the rest of this entry »
This Memorial Day, set fire to the grill, not your wallet. Photo via Flickr's Nick Sherman.
Memorial Day is upon us, along with the inevitable pre-holiday hunt for BBQ provisions. Good news, Brokesters: we just found out that grocery store prices in NYC are actually cheaper than in the rest of the country. Team Brokelyn is here to help you maximize those savings. We’ve scoured grocery stores across the borough and compiled a price index to find which have the best (and worst) prices for your outdoor feasts. We concentrated on the basic stuff here from buns to beers. Here are the results from our price scouts: Read the rest of this entry »
Worth it? Photo from Big Red Kitchen.
Let us, for a moment, set aside the fact that if you’re a decent cook and you have decent ingredients, whatever you make at home WILL taste better than its packaged counterpart from the store. Similarly, ‘making it’ is usually a better fiscal decision than ‘buying it.’ But there’s still a gray area in the make vs. buy debate that needs to be addressed. The question needs to be asked: Is it really worth it to squeeze those 50 oranges for the Sunday brunch, or will Tropicana do? We visited supermarkets around Brooklyn to price-check a few kitchen staples. Then we explored making them ourselves and did some math. Here’s what we found. Read the rest of this entry »
Taiwan Cucumbers. Photos by Hannah Rosenblum.
Chinese supermarkets are chock-full of delicious, inexpensive stuff—that we know from many a past meal. Still, for the uninitiated, between the hustle and bustle (and often questionable English signage), the stores can seem like impenetrable fortresses. You know that fuzzy squash-looking thing is cheap, but… what to do with it? We decided to head to a couple of Sunset Park’s staple supermarkets and see what we could find, and how to use the stuff back at home. We compared the prices with those at a couple cheap non-Chinese spots (our local C-Town and Key Food). Here’s what we found: Read the rest of this entry »
Sunset Park, we just can’t quit you. As a resident of the neighborhood and surrounding area for nearly four years, I’ve been able to partake in all of its minimally gentrified goodies. It’s now no longer a secret that Sunset Park is an affordable oasis in the money sinkhole that is greater NYC, and that’s why Brokelyn keeps going back for more. And this week, the Daily News gets in on the bargains by profiling the neighborhood it its Savings in Brooklyn series. After the jump, their picks, and a few of mine. Read the rest of this entry »
According to Real Simple Magazine, even your potatoes are ripping you off. Buying a few loose spuds for your Bubbie’s latkes will cost you twice the price of a bulk bag (plus, the more latkes the better.) A fun money-saving feature on the mag’s web site also tells you say no to non-grocery items at the supermarket and yes to multi-use gadgets like the “hori hori” garden tool (part knife and part trowel), an affordable way to keep your “yard” (see also 3×5 patchy lot) in check.
Feeling the urge to call Moscow? Visit aitelphone.com, and find international rates as low as 1.5 cents/min in comparison $1.70/min at Verizon. So slap on a smile and start saving (and jeeze Louise, we can’t see the fillings in the back of your teeth–so opt for silver instead of white enamel and pay half the price for four-times the strength). For lots more of this sort of thing, check out Real Simple‘s “How to Save On…” guide.
In this week’s bag of supermarket circulars:
We know a cute gay hiker type who swears by the men’s department at Sears. We’ll have to investigate soon, but mean time Sears is offering a decent special through June 30. Spend $50 on Levi’s (and a couple of other brands) and you get $50 in “Sears Rewards Cash” by mail. What’s that? A $50 certificate that you can redeem in for more men’s clothes. You can’t use it to buy Land’s End—phooey—but worst comes to worst you get fifty bucks worth of socks, underwear and pajamas. Read the rest of this entry »
While doing the morning rounds we came across a series by Daily News reporter Denise Romano on bargain shopping in various Brooklyn neighborhoods, covering pharmacies, dry cleaners, grocery stores, barber shops and the like. We’re naturally skeptical of any list with a C-Town on it, but there look to be at least a few good tips on these pages. Click on your neighborhood and judge for yourself:
Sheepshead Bay, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Bay Ridge, Flatbush, Greenpoint, Prospect Heights, Sunset Park, Bushwick.
