Website with platform temps for the L train

Am I the last person to know about the genius website L-Degrees.com? When it's miserably hot -- like today, for instance -- you can torture yourself even more by checking out how hot it feels on each of the L train subway platforms. So, right now, as I'm writing this post, it feels like 108F at 14th Street. You can practically feel the sweat dripping down your back just thinking about it. 

Click to read more ...

Hotel Le Bleu is up for sale!

If you have $12 million to spend and are in the market for a Park Slope hotel, now is your chance: Hotel Le Bleu on 4th Ave between 3rd and 6th Streets is for sale. The price includes the building and the ground beneath it. Independent operators run the 48-room hotel on the first seven floors of the building and the Rooftop Restaurant & Lounge on the eighth and ninth floors. The 99 year lease with the hotel operator guarantees a check coming to the new owner once a month.

Hotel Le Bleu opened five years ago, one amongst a handful of such family-friendly hotels that sprung up at that time. Before then, there were no decent places nearby for relatives and friends to stay over (except for your place, of course). Brooklyn has also seen an increase in tourism, creating the need for more local lodging.

Click to read more ...

Who Gives A Shit: Air Conditioning

It's hot. It's Africa hot (turns out it does get this hot in Brooklyn). We recently received this note from longtime FIPS reader @aeclearwater about her conflict over using an air conditioner:

Ok, it’s hella hot in Park Slope. And I’m trying to get used to it. But being originally from Maine makes me bad at heat, and living in Park Slope makes me puritanically willing to suffer to do the “right thing” for the planet. Never, in my 29 years, had I purchased an air conditioner. For a few reasons: First, I'm made of flesh — not ice — and I will not melt. Second, in winter I like to think back to the discomforts of summer and remember that all the seasons have drawbacks (except fall, which is perfect). And most importantly, third, air conditioners are like kryptonite for environmentalists. Those stores in midtown that are blowing ice cold air out the front door in an attempt to refrigerate 34th street? They might as well be melting glaciers with blow torches. Not only do air conditioners directly heat the area around them with their exhaust, but they are also full of weird chemicals and they consume an ungodly amount of energy (see: your Con Ed bill).

Click to read more ...

Whassup: You Deserve This Edition

via google+

So, Brooklyn has bacon cronuts. That is a thing that is true. Gothamist calls them the best cronut-knockoffs around. And they have bacon on them. And Nutella (!). And they're in Brooklyn. SHOVE THEM IN YER FAAAAAACCE. For breakfast, lunch and dinner. Do it. They can be purchased for consumption and/or humiliating, almost-sexual worship at Le Petit Bakery in Ft. Greene. Because Brooklyn, bacon cronuts are your right. Welcome to Whassup: You Deserve This Edition:

* Thursday, July 18: "Enter the Dragon," BK Bridge Park (DUMBO): Brooklyn Bridge Park has a new summer movie series (sponsored by the SyFy network, which I still think is a stupid name). The theme is tourist-worthy cities, and today's entry takes you to Hong Kong to watch Bruce Lee kick every single ass so much. Takes place on the Harbor View Lawn, with a genuinely awesome view of the Manhattan skyline behind the screen. 6pm, FREE.

* Thursday, July 18: 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' Bandshell: Spooky cabaret theater artists The Tiger Lillies take on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's classic poem of high-seas curses and big, blatant metaphors. Taste the salt brine in the air and feel the scurvy in your bones. Then buy a Six Point at the concessions stand. 6:30pm Doors, FREE ($3 suggested donation).

Click to read more ...

This just in: Park Slope Moms are trend setters. Birkenstocks are in. I repeat: Birkenstocks are in.

Image via whowhatwear.com

The huge leather sandals that make ones feet look three sizes larger are no longer seen in Berkely, CA and Park Slope alone. This hippie footwear is now shuffling down 5th Ave, paired with Zara silk pants or haute couture dresses. Go ahead, google it. I know it's hard to believe. 

I could argue that the fashionably forward are delusional from all this heat and think that these fat summer sandals are valuable beyond their undeniable comfort. Perhaps even those from the fashion community can get one too many blisters from strappy sandals. Or Birkenstocks got a new PR manager.

Click to read more ...