Photograph of a makeshift stop sign, since traffic lights were out, at Bergen St. and Flatbush Ave. by steuben on Flickr Yesterday afternoon, a few manhole fires caused a load of problems for Brooklyn residents in the middle of a sweltering weekend. One fire, at Smith and Dean Streets in Boerum Hill, seriously compromised subway service for the G, F, and 4 lines, not to mention affected the 2 and 3 lines. WNBC explained......

Zagat's updated Best of Brooklyn 2008 guide was released yesterday, filled to the brim with all that the city's largest borough has to offer, including 216 restaurants, 141 nightspots, 355 shops, 25 tourist attractions and more. Like all Zagat guides, this one is a complilation of surveys from the public and each entry is rated on a scale of 1-30. The guide is broken up into five sections: Dining, Nightlife, Shopping, Gourmet Shopping & Entertaining,......

Up above you have Park Slope #17 and Carroll Gardens #13, respectively. Jennifer Loeber is bringing nude photography close to home with her series that show different Brooklynites in the flesh, in their apartments. They could even be your neighbors! And her inspiration? It came from a flasher on the subway, of course: "The idea to shoot nude portraits came about as I rode the NYC subway and pretended not to notice, across the......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian struck on 87th St. and Central Park West in Manhattan, a DOA in a tree off Woodhaven Blvd. in Queens, and a burn victim on 42nd St. and Vanderbilt Ave. in Manhattan. Sidewalk chalk outline artist Ellis G[allagher] was arrested by police and held overnight as he was being filmed by a PBS crew last week in Boerum Hill. Charges were dropped the next day and Gallagher......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a water rescue off West St. at Battery Place in Manhattan, missing children on Grimsby St. on Staten Island, and a DOA floater in the Harlem River off Manhattan. New Yorkers may have just seen their water bill rates hiked 11.5% three months ago, but officials are now saying property owners can expect a rate increase of another 18% as early as the start of next year. Idle speculation......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian struck on York Ave. and Richmond Terr. on Staten Island, another pedestrian struck on 37th Ave. and Union St. in Queens, and a missing child on 12th Ave. in Brooklyn. Three teenagers were hospitalized after being stabbed immediately after school let out in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn yesterday afternoon. Two of the injured were also slashed in the face. The City is introducing a new public awareness campaign......

Earlier this month it was reported that Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams called it quits, and the big question was: will their Boerum Hill home be on the market soon? A resident of that area took the above photo this morning, apparently the house on the corner of Dean and Hoyt Streets is the home of the New Victorian royalty. We wonder if they just Googled "celebrities moving" and that's what came up. Photo......

After years of what seemed like coupled bliss, Heath Ledger proved he could quit someone as he and Michelle Williams have officially split. Sources told People Magazine that "It was rocky for awhile. They did what they could to make it work." Though it was rumored they tied the knot earlier this year in a small ceremony, the two never wore wedding bands and have refused to comment upon whether or not they are married.......

Beautiful lawns, flowering bushes, and planters with lush greenery: This morning, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden announced the winners in its 13th annual Greenest Block in Brooklyn Contest. The residential first place winner was MacDonough Street between Stuyvesant and Lewis Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant (pictured above) while first place for a business/commercial block was Hoyt Street between Atlantic Avenue & State Street in Boerum Hill (pictured below). MacDonagh Street's Greening Coordinator Wilma Atwell said, "Our hard......

The NY Times takes a look at Smith Street and the corporate companies creeping into the area and setting up shop. The most recent big announcement is that Trader Joe's is taking over the old bank on Atlantic Avenue and Court Street. How long until more big fish come to feed? Urban Outfitters originally wanted the new Trader Joe's property, so we suppose they'll be hawking "Ski Cobble Hill" T-Shirts soon enough. Just last week......

The Observer has an interesting piece on The New Victorians, who are apparently bringing monogomy and early adulthood back. To get a mental image, think: Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger in Boerum Hill, Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss in Park Slope and Liv Tyler and Royston Langdon in the West Village. A new breed of 20-somethings in the big city, and apparently this new regime is more into nesting than late nights. The Observer......

For those of you dreaming about brownstone Brooklyn, here's your stinky wake-up call: The "Mad Crapper" that has been leaving poop all around Boerum Hill is an actual person, versus a dog wanting privacy. Someone emailed Curbed and Brownstoner with a crazy account:I just spent my morning cleaning poop off of my stoop. For the second time in two weeks I got pooped on. This time I saw her. I live on Dean St between......

The New York Times has an interesting and somewhat melancholy article on the decline of street sports played by New York's children. Whereas there was once a time when adults had to bypass certain blocks while walking in their neighborhood, so as to not interrupt multiple games in play, a number of factors have contributed to the downfall of pastimes like stickball. Larger and less crowded apartments, both parents working, video games, air conditioning, fear......

Earlier this year, The Sun reported that AvalonBay Communities would "begin construction this summer on a 42-story, residential market-rate tower with approximately 600 units. The property will have ground floor retail, which could house the borough's first Trader Joe's market." And even earlier this year it was suspected that TJ's would move into One Brooklyn Bridge Park. Today, The Brooklyn Eagle is reporting that Trader Joe's will soon be stocking the fridges of many Brooklynites......

The flurry of rumors that surrounded the Brooklyn Inn a few months ago have largely quieted. With no breaking news stories or insider tips, we decided to wander over there to see what had actually happened to one of the most cherished bars in Boerum Hill. And here it is: They have snacks. The bathroom looks a little cleaner...oh, and there is a new register. They got rid of the ornate old one. The new......

We can't possibly choose only one music event for the weekend, so check out OhMyRockness for the jam packed weekend listings. We will say, however, that one of the openers for Snowden at Maxwell's tonight...is We Are Scientists, trying out some new tunes. Though closer to home are The Clientele and Beach House at Bowery Ballroom. Listen: Apple Orchard.mp3 - Beach House THEATER: A mysterious little two-actor, umpteen character play called The Eaten Heart concludes......

We've written a few pieces about the Khalil Gibran International Academy's attempt to find a physical home. The dual-language Arabic public school that has declared itself non-religious is, nonetheless, having trouble finding and sharing space with educational neighbors, who fear that they'll be hosting a terrorist academy. The fact that Khalil Gibran was an American-educated Christian poet seems to have drifted off into the ether of historical irrlevancy. The Department of Education initially wanted to......

READINGS: Jonathan Lethem reads from his new novel You Don't Love Me Yet. In it, Lethem leaves Boerum Hill for LA "to recount the near-fame experience of a Los Angeles alternative rock band". A girl, a boy and a band - sounds like a hipster love story to us! 7pm // Barnes & Noble [33 E 17th St] // Free Saul Austerlitz talks about his book Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video.......

When there's a $150/month rent-controlled apartment around, you better believe there's a court fight about evicting the tenant. amNewYork has a story about 60-year-old Williamsburg resident Jeannie Kraph who has been trying to fight an eviction notice for the past six months. Kraph has lived on North 9th Street for 50 years and was told she was being kicked out because of "debris, noxious odors and an ongoing roach infestation." But she believes that......

March 10: Cantina-Style: One Pot Meals Cooking Demonstration and Luncheon It's cantina time at Rosa Mexicano. Learn the ropes from Culinary Director Roberto Santibañez, as he teaches you to make cantina-style dishes including Zarzuela de Mariscos (cantina seafood stew: jumbo shrimp, clams, mussels and white fish braised with chorizo, baby artichokes and olives and served in a tomato-serrano chile broth) and Salsa en Molcajete (freshly ground roasted tomato (red) or tomatillo (green) salsa). 10:00 a.m.......

Since we've still got the old bus shelters in our neighborhood, we were interested in the rider reactions to the new shelters article in the NY Times City section. The new shelters started to be installed late last month, and there are 10 new steel shelters in each borough so far. By 2011, there will be 3300 new shelters. Some riders had some suggestions about placement of bus schedules, while others wondered if there will......

Yesterday, Curbed reported that black squirrels had moved to Boerum Hill. We had noticed them in the Bronx a few years ago, and their presence in Brooklyn suggests that squirrels must know how to take the subway. Anyway, as cute as they may seem, this story, via reader Rachel, freaks us out. In Russia, a squirrel pack "gutted" a dog, and when people came, the squirrels scattered, each taking a bit of the dog......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery in Coney Island, a Police motorcycle MVA on 54th Street and Park, and a Homicide on Nostrand in Bed-Stuy. The Christmas lights have started going up in Dyker Heights-- and Janelle and Gowanus Lounge have pix. Or go in person: the best lights are on 84th Street between 12th and 11th Avenue. Canadian black squirrels have begun invading Boerum Hill. Soon there won't be any jobs......

It’s a common phenomenon in Brooklyn: a chef creates an ambitious restaurant only to later downscale it to a more casual place in hopes of better capturing the neighborhood market. We’ve seen it happen at Cucina/Tempo, Minnow/Bar Minnow, and Luce/Bar Toto. This scenario recently played out again on Smith Street, along Boerum Hill’s restaurant row. The space used to be a somewhat far-reaching (for the area) Japanese restaurant called Taku, under chef Adam Shepard. But......

Yesterday, two pedestrian fatalities were noted on the Newsmap - one in Brooklyn and one in midtown Manhattan. The Brooklyn incident involved an elderly woman trying to cross 65th Street near 23rd Avenue at 11AM when she was hit by a van. Then around noon, Pedro Rodriguez, was crushed by a box truck's rear wheels on 44th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Rodriguez, who worked as a housekeeper at the Algonquin Hotel down the......

Pizza may be one of humankind’s oldest recipes. The idea of taking a flat disk of dough and baking it quickly with a little topping is an ancient one. Versions appear in cuisines around the world. There’s focaccia from Italy, socca from France, naan from India. But one often overlooked cousin is zaatar bread, a snack usually associated with Palestine, Israel, and Lebanon. Plenty of falafel joints around town serve zaatar bread, but often it’s......

A 75 year old Staten Island man was killed by a minivan yesterday afternoon on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Hoyt Street. Alvaro Fernandez, who would chat with his friend Augustin Abreu on the Hoyt Street Market and Deli's bench, was hit when a minivan tried to make a right turn from Atlantic Avenue. The minivan was rear-ended by an ambulette and jumped a curbed and crashed into the deli's building. Then the......

An unidentifed 26-year-old was shot down by the NYPD in Boerum Hill this morning after he attacked two women with a knife. Responding to "several frantic 9-1-1 calls" police arrived on the scene, identified by the AP as "Brooklyn's restaurant row," shortly before 9 AM this morning. What they found was a 32-year-old woman being held, by a man she didn't know, with a knife pressed to her throat. When officers ordered the man......

In suburbia’s conquest of New York, Subway and Quizno’s lead the culinary front, spreading almost as rapidly as Starbucks. But a quiet band of outsiders is fighting the good food fight, on the fringes. These are the shops that specialize in bánh mì, the French-accented Vietnamese sandwich that inspires cultish devotion among its fans (see The Porkchop Express). The latest reinforcements have risen up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Boerum Hill. First there was Hanco’s......

Everyone loves that old summer classic: corn on the cob. But too many years of the sub-par supermarket variety, simply boiled, can ruin your taste for it. Enter the new corn on the cob, in its gussied-up Mexican incarnation, elotes. Also called esquites, this is guaranteed to renew your passion. Most important, in this version, the corn is grilled, preferably over charcoal. Then it’s rolled in a good coating of crumbled cotija cheese (grated Parmesan......