The way the fashion-industrial complex is frothing over the Missoni Target collabo that drops in stores on Sept. 13, you’d think that Coco Chanel herself had risen from the grave to design a honeymoon line for Kim Kardashian.
From the preview photos, this ambitious collection does look pretty zig-a-zag ha (especially the bike), but then, they all do. Seriously, have you ever seen a Target collaboration that looked as good in real life? The Rodarte stuff looked like goth skating dresses. Anya Hindmarch’s squeaky patent pleather bags didn’t whisper Anya Hindmarch so much as scream Target. And so on.
You’d think that a budget blog would be all over these high-low fashion smashups, but allow me to air a petty grievance: they’re patronizing. Read the rest of this entry »
We'll be brief: buying a 9-pack saves you dough. Photos by Aulistar Mark.
Underwear. All men have been forced to throw a pair in the trash due to the waistband wearing out, holes becoming too big for comfort, or the skid marks too deep for even Oxiclean to get white again. For men with a particularly active crotch lifestyle, you can’t be bothered to go shopping every time a pair goes kaput. The answer: economies of scale! I traveled around Brooklyn on a quest to find a discount underwear goldmine. Read the rest of this entry »
This pool is on sale for $19.99, regularly $34!
Nuts be to the hyper retail world, they who force Santas in our faces long before the first pumpkin even shows up, and they who so callously abandon this young summer in favor of advertising the dreaded fall season (the words are too depressing to say, but rhymes with “hack to drool”). Their loss is your gain: even though pencils and notebooks are making their way to the front of the store, there’s plenty of time left for fun under the sun. We went digging in Target Atlantic Center today and found clearance sales of 50 percent off or more on fun harbingers from slip-n-slides, to dragon pools to water guns and bubble machines! It’s not even mid-July yet: plenty of time to make your own rooftop waterpark party. A sampling: Read the rest of this entry »
Produce at Target. Photo courtesy of The Midwood Blog.
You may or may not have heard that the Target in Flatbush has produce now, and it appears likely that the Atlantic Center store is soon to follow. We’ll use any excuse for a Target run, and bananas and apples are certainly less dangerous than the forthcoming Missoni collabo. Our big questions, of course: is the produce any good, is it cheaper than the local supermarket, and if so, is it worth a trip?
To find out, I first went to the two markets nearest my Greenpoint apartment: Key Foods on McGuiness Boulevard and the Associated on Manhattan Avenue, chosen here to represent the average Brooklyn supermarket. I recorded the prices of 10 common fruits and vegetables, then went to Target to compare. Read the rest of this entry »
Falling prices landing soon?
Like professional soccer, Budweiser American Ale and turning off your car alarm, megaultrahyper retailer Walmart has never really caught on in New York City. But don’t think they’re sitting there in Arkansas saying to themselves: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Target Town.” News came out this week that Walmart is planning yet another New York City invasion, and this time they could land on the shores of Jamaica Bay at the new Gateway II shopping center, reports Crain’s New York.
Walmart (whose total square footage of its stores is larger than Manhattan, btw) has attempted a few other incursions into the city before. But every time they try to crack the city, community and labor groups rise up in protest and block the way. Community leaders in Jamaica Bay are already vowing a fight too, but maybe they should save their energy. Because even if Walmart does come to Brooklyn, that doesn’t mean Brooklyn will come to Walmart. Read the rest of this entry »
RIP, he of the 10-inch-heel stilettos worn by Lady Gaga. (These are NOT on eBay.)
Fashion Week begins today, and Alexander McQueen is dead. The British designer killed himself at age 40, days after the death of his mother. This is sad for a whole bunch of reasons, one of them being that his runway shows in Paris every year were deliciously twisted spectaculars. (Last fall’s featured a taxidermized menagerie, and McQueen took his bow in a bunny suit.) When not dressing Sarah Jessica Parker, Lady Gaga (see shoes, left) and gazillions of other celebs, McQueen also did more accessible collabos for Puma and Target. We wanted to mark his death with a Brokelyn-style fashion retrospective. Here’s some of what you can buy from Alexander McQueen (no authenticity promises) on eBay today: Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
Two days after its debut, is it still possible to shop Anna Sui’s Gossip Girl-inspired line for Target? Not online. With the exception of a few oddball sizes that no one wants or can fit into and a few styles that are … dare we say … lesser choices, the web site is pretty much picked clean. So we went off to check the racks at two of the Brooklyn stores this afternoon to see what, if anything, was still available. Read the rest of this entry »
Remember when it seemed like New York’s Topshop store took forever to open? If you’re a Gossip Girl fan or a fashion person, you’ve been waiting equally long for Anna Sui’s Target line to drop—and it lands in Brooklyn stores on Sunday. You can see four of the looks, based on characters Serena, Blair, Jenny, and Vanessa at Target.com/AnnaSui. (This is Jenny, but we’re Serenas, thanks for asking!) From afar these ensembles are kinda cute, but don’t listen to us ’cause we got suckered into buying one of those Anya Hindmarch bags at Target a couple of years back, along with every editorial assistant in NYC, and we’ve never worn it since because it’s more Target than Anya. (Update: we just saw the full Anna Sui slideshow on The Cut and are upgrading our rating from kinda cute to very cute.) If you have to get one of these dresses right this minute, there’s a special only-in-NYC popup store today and tomorrow, at 54 Crosby St. at Spring from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. both days. Or head to the Brooklyn stores starting on Sunday.
Do you have any of that noppy crunch?
Soon, the days when you could justify buying that big 2-liter bottle just marked “SODA” that was like $2 cheaper than Pepsi will be gone. Yes, even the lowly generic brands many of us rely on to squeak through under budget at the grocery store are getting pricier. Consumerist points us to this WSJ story that shows stores have caught on to us crafty consumers and are raising the prices of private-label goods: 5.3 percent on nonperishables and a huge 12 percent for perishables. Meanwhile, name-brand prices have only gone up 1.9 percent and 8 percent respectively. They still cost 29 percent more than the store-brand stuff on average, but the gap is closing in many areas: Target’s Archer Farms almonds cost 37 cents per ounce, a penny more than Planter’s version, for instance.
The nut (sorry) of the issue here is that you, the consumer, have become loyal to your Archer Farms, 365 Everyday Value or Key Food brand mustard, and the stores think you should pay for your loyalty. So tell us: do you have a favorite generic brand? And will rising prices make you go back to the big boys?
The way the fashion-industrial complex is frothing over the Missoni Target collabo that drops in stores on Sept. 13, you’d think that Coco Chanel herself had risen from the grave to design a honeymoon line for Kim Kardashian.
From the preview photos, this ambitious collection does look pretty zig-a-zag ha (especially the bike), but then, they all do. Seriously, have you ever seen a Target collaboration that looked as good in real life? The Rodarte stuff looked like goth skating dresses. Anya Hindmarch’s squeaky patent pleather bags didn’t whisper Anya Hindmarch so much as scream Target. And so on.
You’d think that a budget blog would be all over these high-low fashion smashups, but allow me to air a petty grievance: they’re patronizing. Read the rest of this entry »
We'll be brief: buying a 9-pack saves you dough. Photos by Aulistar Mark.
Underwear. All men have been forced to throw a pair in the trash due to the waistband wearing out, holes becoming too big for comfort, or the skid marks too deep for even Oxiclean to get white again. For men with a particularly active crotch lifestyle, you can’t be bothered to go shopping every time a pair goes kaput. The answer: economies of scale! I traveled around Brooklyn on a quest to find a discount underwear goldmine. Read the rest of this entry »
This pool is on sale for $19.99, regularly $34!
Nuts be to the hyper retail world, they who force Santas in our faces long before the first pumpkin even shows up, and they who so callously abandon this young summer in favor of advertising the dreaded fall season (the words are too depressing to say, but rhymes with “hack to drool”). Their loss is your gain: even though pencils and notebooks are making their way to the front of the store, there’s plenty of time left for fun under the sun. We went digging in Target Atlantic Center today and found clearance sales of 50 percent off or more on fun harbingers from slip-n-slides, to dragon pools to water guns and bubble machines! It’s not even mid-July yet: plenty of time to make your own rooftop waterpark party. A sampling: Read the rest of this entry »
Produce at Target. Photo courtesy of The Midwood Blog.
You may or may not have heard that the Target in Flatbush has produce now, and it appears likely that the Atlantic Center store is soon to follow. We’ll use any excuse for a Target run, and bananas and apples are certainly less dangerous than the forthcoming Missoni collabo. Our big questions, of course: is the produce any good, is it cheaper than the local supermarket, and if so, is it worth a trip?
To find out, I first went to the two markets nearest my Greenpoint apartment: Key Foods on McGuiness Boulevard and the Associated on Manhattan Avenue, chosen here to represent the average Brooklyn supermarket. I recorded the prices of 10 common fruits and vegetables, then went to Target to compare. Read the rest of this entry »
Falling prices landing soon?
Like professional soccer, Budweiser American Ale and turning off your car alarm, megaultrahyper retailer Walmart has never really caught on in New York City. But don’t think they’re sitting there in Arkansas saying to themselves: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Target Town.” News came out this week that Walmart is planning yet another New York City invasion, and this time they could land on the shores of Jamaica Bay at the new Gateway II shopping center, reports Crain’s New York.
Walmart (whose total square footage of its stores is larger than Manhattan, btw) has attempted a few other incursions into the city before. But every time they try to crack the city, community and labor groups rise up in protest and block the way. Community leaders in Jamaica Bay are already vowing a fight too, but maybe they should save their energy. Because even if Walmart does come to Brooklyn, that doesn’t mean Brooklyn will come to Walmart. Read the rest of this entry »
RIP, he of the 10-inch-heel stilettos worn by Lady Gaga. (These are NOT on eBay.)
Fashion Week begins today, and Alexander McQueen is dead. The British designer killed himself at age 40, days after the death of his mother. This is sad for a whole bunch of reasons, one of them being that his runway shows in Paris every year were deliciously twisted spectaculars. (Last fall’s featured a taxidermized menagerie, and McQueen took his bow in a bunny suit.) When not dressing Sarah Jessica Parker, Lady Gaga (see shoes, left) and gazillions of other celebs, McQueen also did more accessible collabos for Puma and Target. We wanted to mark his death with a Brokelyn-style fashion retrospective. Here’s some of what you can buy from Alexander McQueen (no authenticity promises) on eBay today: Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
Two days after its debut, is it still possible to shop Anna Sui’s Gossip Girl-inspired line for Target? Not online. With the exception of a few oddball sizes that no one wants or can fit into and a few styles that are … dare we say … lesser choices, the web site is pretty much picked clean. So we went off to check the racks at two of the Brooklyn stores this afternoon to see what, if anything, was still available. Read the rest of this entry »
Remember when it seemed like New York’s Topshop store took forever to open? If you’re a Gossip Girl fan or a fashion person, you’ve been waiting equally long for Anna Sui’s Target line to drop—and it lands in Brooklyn stores on Sunday. You can see four of the looks, based on characters Serena, Blair, Jenny, and Vanessa at Target.com/AnnaSui. (This is Jenny, but we’re Serenas, thanks for asking!) From afar these ensembles are kinda cute, but don’t listen to us ’cause we got suckered into buying one of those Anya Hindmarch bags at Target a couple of years back, along with every editorial assistant in NYC, and we’ve never worn it since because it’s more Target than Anya. (Update: we just saw the full Anna Sui slideshow on The Cut and are upgrading our rating from kinda cute to very cute.) If you have to get one of these dresses right this minute, there’s a special only-in-NYC popup store today and tomorrow, at 54 Crosby St. at Spring from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. both days. Or head to the Brooklyn stores starting on Sunday.
