Are the evicted squatters of Orient Avenue lashing out? One local wrote in to FreeWilliamsburg to describe their terrifying experience on the street (where parts of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were filmed, and where Michel Gondry himself just moved). She reports back: "On Thursday evening at 7:30 pm I was walking home along Orient Ave., listening to my iPod, when I was approached by a guy with a steak knife in his hand.......

Yesterday we got a rare opportunity to take a look inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard, during the annual Brooklyn Navy Yard Arts Open Studios day. Dozens of artists opened their workspaces to the public, and in between visits, we got to snap some pictures of the southern three-quarters of the yard. With over 300 acres, many streets, and a huge number of buildings of all shapes and sizes, it's hard to get a handle on......

Aging hipsters, have you been wondering what your next move will be when you outgrow your skinny jeans and youthful neighborhood? The Brooklyn Paper gathers you'll probably still be "too cool" for the Brownstone set, but point you over to the micro-neighborhood of Greenwood Heights, "tucked between overpriced Park Slope and undervisited Sunset Park." Located just below the future hipster resting place hotspot of Green-Wood Cemetery, it's currently a growing community of "creatives, freelancers and......

Roadside tacos have become a common Williamsburg fixture, with Endless Summer parked on Bedford, El Diablo behind Union Pool, and the Authentic Mexican taco truck on the southern edge of McCarren Park. Now La Superior gives Mexican road food a stationary kitchen, dishing out teeny tacos high on flavor, homemade salsas, gorditas and flautas—both staples of the street—and much more. Portions are tapas-sized, so order extra, and start with the ezquietes: roasted corn kernels cooked......

Ah DUMBO, the little neighborhood that could. The NY Post takes its turn at looking at "the priciest Brooklyn neighborhood," and the pioneers who purchased real estate there before anyone else. In 1998, before the average price per sq-ft was $917, Craig Burd bought a place when there was "no grocery store, no drugstore, no dry cleaners, nothing" (now there's like one of each of those things!). First Burd spent $260,000 on a 1,260-sq-ft abode......

The police arrested Tiana Browne, 15, in connection with the murder of her 16-year-old cousin. On Tuesday afternoon, Browne's aunt Marva Braithwaite returned to her home in Crown Heights to find her daughter Shannon stabbed to death. Browne was found in her cousin's clothes and sneakers, apparently taken after she stabbed her 18 times. Browne also took Shannon's MP3 player, cell phone, and camera. The Daily News reports that "As a good Christian woman, Marva......

Getting inspiration from the Ghost Bikes around town, a 26-year-old female artist has hung a handmade sign on the corner of Meserole and Humboldt in Brooklyn. This is her first piece of street art, and it reads: "A woman was raped by a stranger on this block. Please protect your friends, lover, sister, daughter, mother, grandmother, niece, cousin, neighbor, the woman you hear call for help late one night. 1 in 6 women in......

The family of the disturbed man who fell to his death after being Tasered by police will likely sue the city, surprising no one. Famous civil rights lawyer Ron Kuby is now representing relatives of Iman Morales, whose funeral service was held yesterday in Greenwich Village. Kuby tells the Daily News, "The first thing the family is focused on is burying their son. But the city has already acknowledged what any idiot on Earth could......

A woman returned to her Crown Heights home and made a devastating discovery: Her 16-year-old daughter was lying in a pool of blood, stabbed in the face and neck. Shannon Braithwaite was pronounced dead at the scene yesterday afternoon. WCBS 2 reports the teen, who had the day off for the Rosh Hashanah holiday, was waiting for her mother to return home, "so they could cash her final paycheck from her summer job at the......

Last night, Shariffe (also known as Lamont) Peebles was shot in the back and left arm. The 13-year-old had been walking home with friends near P.S. 298 when someone in another group opened fire on Glenmore Avenue in Brownsville--as many as five shots were heard. His mother told the Daily News her son didn't know his attackers and aunt Pam Harris said, "They shot him without a motive." Harris also told the Post that her......

Funeral services will be held Thursday for the disturbed man who fell to his death last week after being Tasered by police. The NYPD's entire Emergency Service Unit was retrained today on proper Taser procedures, although police Commissioner Ray Kelly says the man's death was a mistake in judgment, not a product of poor training. He tells Newsday, "We think the training they receive is sound. We're human beings. Sometimes we make mistakes. Reporters make......

Has the saga of the Eternal Sunshine crackhouse ended? The abandoned residence, used in the Michel Gondry film and located at 59 Orient Avenue in Williamsburg, had recently turned into a squatter's paradise--something neighbors were not too keen on. The Brooklyn Paper is reporting that the druggies and prostitutes residing in the house and lurking in neighbor's yards, have departed. The paper is patting themselves on the back, saying that once their "reporter questioned building......

The police released a sketch of a man claiming to be a Department of Environmental Protection inspector as he shakes down elderly people in Brooklyn. The suspect has apparently struck six times since August, telling victims that he will shut off their water if they do not pay. He is described by NY1 as a "dark-skinned man in his 40s or 50s," 5'6"-6' tall who wears a button-down shirt, tie, dress pants and a black......

Marina Gavrielova's husband makes about $98,000 a year as a limo driver and owns a nice house in Jamaica, Queens, where the couple resides with their three children. But according to prosecutors, Gavrielova duped various city, state and federal agencies into believing she was single mom living in Brooklyn, earning just $200 a week at a nail salon. With her husband posing as her landlord, Gavrielova, a licensed cosmetologist, allegedly bilked the system out of......

Our sources are telling us that Apple has purchased the building that currently houses the Salvation Army located at 176 Bedford Avenue (on the corner of Bedford and North 7th) in Williamsburg. Rumors have been floating around for a year as to where the company may set up shop in Brooklyn (with most guessing it would be Downtown), and more recently it's been rumored that it would be in the new Edge complex. In the......

Police have arrested a homeless man for allegedly raping a woman in her Bay Ridge apartment last week. The suspect is identified as Ralph DiMassi, 39, who, according to the Post, is on parole for robbery. The Post adds, DiMassi "was ratted out by a pal arrested on Staten Island for shoplifting." The friend said DiMassi "did something bad to a woman in Bay Ridge last week." The victim had been hit with a screwdriver......

The police released a statement saying that the Tasering of a Brooklyn man who then fatally fell from a ledge seemed to have broken NYPD guidelines. Chief department spokesman Paul J. Browne said an airbag had been called to catch the victim, Inman Morales, but the lieutenant who issued the order for another officer to stun the man did not wait. Morales, 35, who was apparently distraught as he stood naked on his fire escape......

A naked man standing on a fire escape and, later, a storefont, fell to his death after a police officer stunned him with a Taser. Based on video (below) and witness reports, Iman Morales, 35, was wielding a fluorescent light bulbs at cops who tried to get close. According to the Post, Morales was yelling from the fire escape at 491 Tompkins Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant. When police asked him to come down, he "climbed down......

Have you heard? Everyone is so excited about the new Trader Joe's coming to town! Brooklyn's first branch of the grocery store opens up this Friday, and if you thought that in a city like New York it would take a little more than reasonably priced organic milk to get people excited, then you'd be wrong. OTBKB has a source deep inside the establishment who reports back that the Court Street store's opening will include......

A rendering of the lobby of Cassandra Cinema. Except for the avant-garde Ocularis screenings in the old Galapagos, North Brooklyn has been a dead zone for movie theaters for years. Why, just the other day the Greenpointers blogger could be heard begging the world to open up a movie theater near her: "I know it will take you years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I promise you I will go every Sunday......

Photos by Jen Carlson/Gothamist. Artist Kylin O'Brien is painting giant monsters around town for the NYC public school kids in a collaborative effort titled The Monster Project. "Still in its early stages, the monster project is launching its first huge public creatures at the 12th Annual Art Under the Bridge Festival" this weekend. Two of the monsters in the DUMBO area are pictured above, and before you start grading--keep in mind that the creatures......

Williamsburg art rock quintet TV on the Radio has just released their third full length album, Dear Science. It's an upbeat, danceable departure from their last opus, Return to Cookie Mountain, but listen closely to the lyrics and you'll find them as troubled as ever with life under the Bush occupation. Of course, main lyricists Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe are smart enough to favor the evocative over the polemical, and it continues to work......

This weekend the Daily News explored the idea of Brooklyn as a luxury destination, with one area resident saying it's "a little difficult for people to live like they used to" in the borough—what with all the pricey places popping up. However, the paper also takes a look at the opening of Brooklyn's Trader Joe's, opening on Friday. One Carroll Gardens local says of the Court Street store, "This is going to be cool. The......

Sycamore: A Flickr user named Finstr took this atmospheric photo at the opening night of Ditmas Park's newest bar. The opening of yet another bar in Brooklyn hardly merits mention, but Sycamore's a bit unique in that it's located within a flower shop. Or rather, one walks through a flower shop on the way in. Or you could also just buy your flowers and leave. Flatbush Vegan went all the way with the thing, though,......

The I Heart Brooklyn Girls calendar has been around for a few years now, each time changing its theme (last year Coney Island served as the backdrop throughout the 12 months). Coming up in 2009, the girls take on some pinup looks from the 40s and 50s in a "Women at Work" theme. They tell us, "this project offers a new crop of foxy, feisty femmes from Brooklyn, but is fashioned after images made popular......

Photo by Tien Mao. There's nothing quite like walking hand in hand with the one you love on the Brooklyn Promenade, gazing across the East River into Manhattan, watching the sunset, and remembering you have to pay your Verizon bill. The Brooklyn Paper reports that one man is so angry about the glowing Verizon logo affixed to the equally uninspired building, that he's "vowing to ramp up the fight." Brooklyn Heights newcomer Richard Brown,......

Earlier this year we looked at the $1 Victorian Flatbush home; since then the area has earned a This Old House Top 12 Places to Buy title, and filled the role of "The Hamptons" on Gossip Girl. Could the neighborhood be Brooklyn's next diva? Take a look at some of the gorgeous houses in the very un-city like setting. [via Mercurialn's Flickr]......

Those seeking a Brooklyn abode on a budget are doing so in the borough's far south and east corners, The Observer is reporting. "In the second quarter of 2008, the median home sales price for Brooklyn was $525,000 ... of the 3,766 homes sold under $525,000 in Brooklyn so far this year nearly half are within the 10 neighborhoods of Sheepshead Bay, Kensington, Flatbush, Gravesend, East New York, Clinton Hill, Bay Ridge, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Williamsburg and......

One of the (many) new venues taking root in Gowanus will be opening its doors this week. Back in June we checked in on the progress of The Bell House (run by Union Hall and Floyd owners Jim Carden and Andy Templar, along with Union Hall booker Jack McFadden). To recap, there will be a huge bar in the performance space as well as a front lounge bar, and an entrance to each will be......

It seems like just yesterday that Marty Markowitz was standing there in his Hawaiian shirt, announcing the borough's first Trader Joe's. Now, the Brooklyn Paper reports it will be opening in the landmark Independence Bank building as soon as next week! September 26th, to be exact. "The supermarket will open at 9 am and the festivities will feature giveaways, live music," and of course, more Markowitz. But be warned winos, this location at the corner......