The Struggle Bus Episode 7: A Dab of (Talk About) Bisexuality, Why It’s Never Too Late To Start Over Even Though It Always Feels Like It Is, and Dealing with Jealousy and Control in Relationships (No Matter Where You Live)

Listen to Episode 7 Subscribe On iTunes In this episode: The Zin is in and the shoes are off (literally). Sally talks about her first ever Christmas and Kate’s eventful (not in a good way) New Year’s Eve. Next up, Kate and Sally respond to a young single parent who wants to explore a new […]
(via The Struggle Bus)

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Paying Guests” by Sarah Waters

Honesty is the best policy, we’re often told, and the story (possibly apocryphal) about George Washington and the cherry…

Reconsidering Elvis Presley

Somewhere in the sun-dulled suburbs clinging to Memphis, bleached yellow by the low, bright winter light and dotted by…

Lance Loud: The First Real Boy On The Sun

In 1973, I was unarguably a child, arguably pre-sexual, and extraordinarily curious about the world around me.  I was…

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “How to Think About Exercise” by Damon Young

Exercise: you know it’s good for you, often you do it, and usually you acknowledge how good you feel…

Tell the Bartender Episode 50: Filing Solo

Listen to Episode 50: Filing Solo Download From iTunes Here In this Episode: Frankie joins The Bartender to talk about when she first realized that maybe you shouldn’t answer the door when you live alone. Even if it’s the lead paint inspector. Then Liz tells a very touching story about what she learned from her first love. It also involves a filing […]
(via Tell The Bartender)

Is Brooklyn Heights What Manhattan Used To Be? Ethan Hawke Thinks So

Actor/Brooklyn Heights resident Ethan Hawke says that Brooklyn is what Manhattan used to be in a Manhattan Magazine profile.
(via Brooklyn Heights Blog)

432 Park Avenue: Harry Macklowe flips off New York City

432 Park Avenue (center in the photo above) claims the title of tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, and second tallest building (after the new One World Trade Center) in New York City, but if measured by roof height the tallest. It’s described by its architect, Rafael Viñoly, as designed around “the purest geometric form: the square.” Not only is the building’s horizontal cross section a square, but all the windows are squares.  It dominates the midtown skyline with the grace of a colossal headless Pez dispenser, or upraised middle finger (the photo above was taken from Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park). Aaron Betsky admires its “relentlessness”; I demur. Betsky also celebrates how 432 Park “represents the transformation of this and every other city into a place for the wealthy to live and play” as if driving out struggling artists and other relatively impecunious but creative people, and the inexpensive infrastructure that supports them, constitutes progress.

With bad luck, we may be subjected to more Viñoly designs, like 125 Greenwich Street, all of which will end up being pieds a terre for billionaires, with perhaps a few lower floor, smaller apartments going to mere multi-millionaires.

Viñoly discusses his design philosophy in this video. He plays piano well.

The developers of 432 Park are CIM Group and Macklowe Properties. Harry Macklowe is a developer whose company was once fined two million dollars for reckless endangerment resulting from the rapid night-time demolition of two buildings. Macklowe compares 432 Park to the Mona Lisa.
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

A Visit from St. Grohl

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the hall Not a creature was stirring, except for Dave Grohl.…

Check Out this GoPro Video of the Dyker Heights Christmas Lights

YouTube user and Redditor “Wing L” posted this video of the Christmas light action in Dyker Heights. See what…