Single Men of Park Slope: This Is You

Image credit: Emily Niland via The New York ObserverThe New York Observer has compiled a list entitled Eight Guys You Might Meet in Brooklyn: Read This Before Dating One. ‘The Brooklyn male is an elusive specimen’ it coos, using the word elusive quite wrongly, and promises to be a guide for ‘the next time you find yourself out in the Brooklyn wild with a hunger for a man-(child).’ How exotic and infantile we are, apparently! The archetypes are each assigned a neighborhood, the premise being that the neighborhood will dictate what kind of date the person will be (the locales listed are mainly in the grip of gentrification by the way – other Brooklyn neighborhoods apparently don’t merit inclusion).

What you can probably guess is that the Observer’s archetypes are fairly predictable and to a large extent interchangeable. The list in question is mostly just descriptions of ‘a guy’ peppered with some local bar names, which I suspect were randomly chosen from the Whatever Seems Popular on Yelp Guide to Brooklyn. There’s one unique example that stands out however, and it’s the entry for Park Slope.  Apparently, fellow men of Park Slope, according to Ms. Mooney our archetype is The Gamer, the weirdo above who looks like Beavis and Butthead’s guidance counselor.

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Cool or Not Cool: Jonathan Safran Foer Writing For Chipotle

Image via ChipotleThere are tons of authors in Park Slope, as we know, but Jonathan Safran Foer and his wife Nicole Krauss have been our local literary darlings for some years now. This popular pair can polarize people like any successful authors, but they’ve certainly become neighborhood fixtures (that is, until someone springs for their brownstone with its astonishing backyard and they decamp to Carroll Gardens, as their plan is rumored to be). What’s had people in the neighborhood talking over the last week is that JSF’s next addition to his literary canon will be printed on fast-food packaging. Yep, the stridently vegetarian author of Eating Animals will be writing for Chipotle, a company which serves up well north of 100 million pounds of delicious meat a year.

As a recent piece in Vanity Fair recounts, Foer was in Chipotle having a burrito and was struck with such an acute sense of boredom (no book, newspaper, or smartphone apparently) that he was inspired to contact the CEO of the company about getting a gang of prominent writers together to contribute pieces to be printed on the chain’s packaging, and in doing so providing an opportunity for customers to take in some skillful prose. For example, his first piece, The Two-Minute Personality Test, is a battery of philosophical questions including ‘What is it about death that you’re afraid of?’ (not being able to get more chips and guacamole obviously, nom nom nom). He’s actually managed to enlist nine pretty awesome other people to the cause, including writers as diverse as Toni Morrison and Judd Apatow. All of the writers were paid by the way, but Chipotle won’t tell how much. Those who like to rend clothes and gnash teeth about writers becoming corporate shills may commence doing so…now.

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Worth it? Two-fer Cocktails Across BKLYN This Summer

Image via bklynpassport.comSummer is fantastic. Despite the sweltering subway platforms and high electricity bills, people are simply happier when the weather is nice. You meet your friends for poolside sangrias, Coronas at Jacob Riis Beach, steins in high-spirited biergartens or just some bad chardonnay out of a plastic cup in The Park. Yep, the summer season with all its jubilant imbibing is upon us. Whenever I want a professional cocktail though, it’s still the only city commodity whose sticker shock hasn’t really worn off: 12 bucks and up still makes me wince. Luckily there’s a company out there looking to put a little extra shine on my summer but still keep some cash in my pocket.

This is the Brooklyn Passport. No, we’re not seceding, it’s a promotional item that gives you two-for one drinks at 20 bars across Brooklyn for the duration of the summer, from Labor Day to Memorial Day. I first read about this in the Village Voice, and what they neglected to mention, which rather dampened my initial rush of enthusiasm, is that you can only use the passport once at each bar (‘Only one special per venue!’ their website cheerfully declares). Dammit.

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[My Favorite Park Slope…] Store That Sells Things

Image via Park Slope StoopThere are many stores in Park Slope that sell things. The Brooklyn Superhero Supply store sells some fun and unique things. Matter sells some other things, but they tend to be really expensive things. Items of Interest sells some arty things that are supposed to make you feel things, and Housing Works sells other people’s things.

If you really are in need of a thing to fill up that gap in your life, however, go to Sterling Place, which is a boutique with two Slope locations...nowhere near Sterling Place. They have a fine selection of things in stock and the staff can tell you all about the things they found in an attic somewhere and helpfully marked up. Do you want ‘Brooklyn art glass,’ decoupage tea trays, vintage rocking horses, twee stationery or gold-plated razors? This place has the things for you!

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Cool or Not Cool: Prospect Park’s New Sound Track

Image via ny1.comThere’s no way of getting around it, the LeFrak skating rink in Prospect Park is flat out ugly; it looks like some sort of brobdingnagian Mobil station. It provides a service to the community however, and despite Olmsted twirling in his grave it’s nice to have that swath of the park open again. For those not so familiar with Prospect Park, the peninsula is an Italianate (read boot-shaped) spit of land that juts out into Prospect Park Lake, and it’s a lovely, tranquil spot to look at Duck Island and feel the breeze.

Last Saturday, I was casually chilling there with Katy Perry. I didn’t invite her, but her voice was wafting over the water from the rink’s thundering speakers. Have you FIPSers noticed this? Should we mute the skating rink, or is it worth sacrificing a modicum of peace and quiet in the hope that some happy little shits might exercise a little more vigorously with some pop to help them along?