School of Rock (Not The One With Jack Black) Coming to Gowanus

School of Rock isn’t just a movie from that time Jack Black was popular. For a generation of Brooklyn kids, it COULD be the place they learned to rock “from real New York City musicians that are gigging and performing.”

Or at least that’s what Mike Addesso hopes. Mr. Addesso, 29, is a drummer, former music teacher and franchise owner of the new School of Rock opening in Gowanus next month. “What is unique about us is that we are performance-based,” he told the NY Daily News. Students, age 7 to 18, “will form a group, they will rehearse once a week, and at the end of the show season they will perform at a local club.” Addesso is reaching for the stars, hoping to get the Bell House or even the Barclays Center for one of those final performances.

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Freedom Fightin' Madonna to Introduce Pussy Riot at the Barclays

Pussy riot image credit: AFP/GettyImages; Madona image credit: Jeff Vespa/WireImage. Both via rolling stone.com"I am honored to introduce my fellow freedom fighters Masha and Nadya from Pussy Riot," said Madonna in a statement, actually comparing herself to two women who spent 21 months in a Russian jail for having unpopular opinions.

The introduction Madonna refers to is the one she will give Pussy Riot at the Barclays Center this Wednesday night. The duo will be performing here in Brooklyn as part of an Amnesty International benefit concert. Amnesty International is a human rights advocacy group, well known for their work with prisoners. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot were imprisoned in March 2012 for staging a protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Madonna comes fresh off her latest round of freedom fighting at the Grammys where she assisted Mackelmore in gay-marrying a bunch of people. "I have admired [Masha and Nadya’s] courage and have long supported their commitment and the sacrifices they have made in the name of freedom of expression and human rights,” she said before hopping into her freedom fighting limo and driving off to do a surprise bit on Miley Cyrus’s MTV Unplugged performance.

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Brooklynettes On the World Wide Web!

Image via Brooklynettes.com

One of the most underappreciated things that the Nets and the Barclays have brought to Brooklyn is our very own cheerleading squad. The cleverly named Brooklynettes (see how they combined Brooklyn with Nets and made it feminine, while also adding another Rockefeller reference to Jay Z's arsenal in the form of the Rockettes?) exist not only to cheer on our favorite local basketball franchise but to cheer on our entire borough. Thats why we at FiPS were so excited to get the press release about the new redesign to their website on the internet.

The first thing you'll notice is an intro video, complete with pre-roll advertisements. If you're lucky, the pre-roll ad you see will be the one for Bay Ridge Honda starring the Brooklynettes themselves. Complete with wacky green screen effects, you'll be wowed by the slightly-higher-than-community-access-TV production values.

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What're The Borders of Park Slope, Anyway?

Over at Curbed, Keith Williams takes a look at the always changing, always contended,  borders of Park Slope. It’s a nice reminder that this battle for bragging rights and better real estate listings has been raging for over a century. 

My Park Slope was more-or-less the one in the 1981 map that remained relatively unchanged until 1993. I assume that a lot of people who call themselves natives tend to agree. Even though we all wouldn’t call that area the “no-go zone.” We’d just call it sketchy.

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Who Gives A Shit?: Does everyone in Park Slope still smoke weed?

FiPS reader Eric wrote in to ask about the weed smoking habits of the neighborhood’s residents. Specifically, he would like to know “is it true that Park Slope has a bad reputation for people smoking weed?” Eric also wanted to know if the entrepreneurs that FiPS chronicled in GOT MARIJUANA were still around.

I’m not sure if he’s a toker looking to score in Park Slope or someone looking to move in who wants to avoid pot and pot dealers. Either way, do people give enough of a shit about Park Sloper’s weed habits for it to have a reputation? People are too busy worrying about Whole Foods to be concerned about weed. Besides, Park Slope is still a liberal haven for hipsters, yuppies and crunchies. The conclusions regarding pot use to be drawn from that should be fairly obvious. Too obvious to spend our time thinking about.

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