Heath Ledger, currently in the spotlight for his role as Joker in The Dark Knight, has also posthumously anchored down his Brooklyn presence in a new nautical-themed bar. The designer behind it, John McCormick, also designed one of Ledger's Manhattan hangouts, the Beatrice Inn. Down by the Hipster first reported the Greenpoint bar (located on the corner of Lorimer and Bedford) and has now followed up with some photos of the joint. They note that......

The Brooklyn Paper reports on a 7-year-old cat that was trapped in a narrow shaft in a Carroll Gardens apartment building, three floors below where it was supposed to be. It took over two weeks to get it out, but that's not was garnered the story so much attention. Turns out Rumi, the cat, was just fine, but Chris Muth, the cat-sitter, landed in a mental hospital during the ordeal! His medical records were brandished......

Further evidence that Top Chef contestants are staying at one of the fabulous new Williamsburg condos at McCarren Park was obtained this weekend when production assistants were seen loading cameras and equipment into 20 Bayard. A laminated sign on the dashboard of one of their vans read "Magical Elves," which is a production company that often works for Bravo. The fifth season of the popular reality show is being filmed in New York, but......

Newsday is reporting that beloved coal-oven pizza institution Grimaldi’s was shut down today by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. The paper's website has it that the Brooklyn restaurant was seized because of over $150,000 in tax warrants. Agency spokesman Tom Bergin told Newsday that Grimaldi's has been in a dispute with tax officials over allegedly unpaid state sales and withholding taxes for two years. And yet... we swung by Grimaldi's......

Earlier this month news of Brooklyn Bowl opening in Williamsburg started to spread. The bowling alley, located over by The Gutter and right next to the Brooklyn Brewery, is also a venue, and has promised to offer up some grub once they open in the fall. So far former Wetlands owner Peter Shapiro and manager Charley Ryan, who are opening the joint, have been hush hush about the dining options at the place, but now......

The Daily News exposes a flasher in Park Slope, or at least points out that there's one prowling the streets. That's right, a sexual predator is creepily stalking stroller central. The paper reports that a "man exposed himself to a 14-year-old girl after pushing his way into her apartment building two weeks ago," saying he had something to show her as he chased her up the stairs. The man fled when the teen's family heard......

New York Loft Hostel is open for business and invites you and yours to "live like a hipster king"! The 1912 "original loft type building" offers up a pool, jacuzzi, 2000-sq-ft garden, bunk beds galore and wifi. But what's a hipster king without a hipster queen? The building is separated into male and female quarters; Curbed notes that "there's a 14-bed female dorm, 20-bed male dorm and a 22-bed mixed dorm." The loft is......

MTV has once again invaded Brooklyn; earlier this year the network dissected the Todd P scene, and last night they were right back at it, filming at the Market Hotel (or Harket Motel, which it has more recently been called). Reports say that a sign greeted show-goers last night saying, in short, that "MTV is filming and can use your likeness in all media that exists, or may exist in the future, and by being......

For the love of all that is crafty and thrifty: Brooklyn's beloved Flea is in danger! NYMag reports that "the large church on Vanderbilt & Lafayette along with some FG residents are meeting this week to try to shut it down." This is their third meeting addressing the topic, and each meeting has grown in size and support. Yikes! Jonathan Butler, organizer of the Brooklyn Flea, confirmed the problems and told us the following:At this......

Police officers shot a man in the shoulder earlier this morning. A woman has complained her ex was violating a protection of order and was armed. WNBC reports, "He fled from police, ducked between several cars and when he emerged it appeared he had a gun," so an officer fired. And according to WABC 7, the victim, who is expected to recover, "reportedly has numerous domestic incident reports lodged against him by this woman and......

A 41-year-old man was arrested in a hit-and-run incident that has left a 9-year-old girl in a coma. Saturday night, Nacirema Brown had run into Rockaway Avenue when a tan Nissan Maxima hit her. Witnesses told the girl's mother the driver got out of the car to yell, "You stupid little bitch!" before driving away. Police, who found the car on Park Place near Eastern Parkway, charged the suspect with leaving the scene of an......

By last night, power was restored to most customers in Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Borough Park and Park Slope who were hit by outages. All residents in those neighborhoods were asked to conserve energy by not using air-conditioners and other power-sucking appliances as "4 of the 12 big feeders...malfunctioned," due to "overheating or overloading." Con Ed worked throughout yesterday to return power to all but a few residential and commercial customers were still without power......

This morning around 4 a.m. there was another shooting in Williamsburg's south side. This one took place at South 2nd and Roebling Streets. As of 5 a.m. the 90th Precinct was still on the scene and doing an evidence search. One week ago, there was a shooting in the area as well, which left one man dead. Last weekend's incident happened on the same night that more machete stabbings occurred in the neighborhood.......

Polie say an 11-year-old boy was fatally struck by a hit-and-run driver early this morning in Brooklyn. According to the AP, the incident occurred on East 42nd Street in Flatbush and police "determined that the boy, Rondell Grant Jr., had been hit by one of three cars that fled the scene." The boy was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital; police are continuing their investigation. Update: The police reportedly arrested a 19-year-old with leaving the......

It's gonna be a scorcher today, the first day of Williamsburg Walks -- where the neighborhood creates a pedestrian-only zone on Bedford Avenue between Metropolitan and North 9th Street. Metro reports on a local artist who will be on hand that may be feeling the heat a little bit more than others. Yvette Helin dresses in all black, depicting the walk symbols one might see on a traffic sign; today she'll be a pedestrian crossing......

Taryn Kapronica, stage name Bettie B. Goode, may be the sickest air guitarist in the region, but the Brooklynite's title has come with a hefty price: her toe. The Daily News says the winner rocked her U.S. Air Guitar Championships Brooklyn Regional performance at the Music Hall of Williamsburg so hard that her toe bent backwards and was later amputated! She told the paper that: "By the time I hit the ground and looked down,......

After the discovery of Mark Schwartz and Christina-Maria Petrowski-Schwartz, shot dead in their Brooklyn home's bedroom, investigators appear to be eying people who were close to the couple. The couple's usually aggressive German Shepherd did not make a peep during the killings and was tied up in the backyard. The Post reports that "$180,000 [was] missing from an escrow account," and that the couple had a "falling out [with] a one-time business partner of the......

A Brooklyn TKTS – the discount Broadway and Off-Broadway ticket booth – was recently unveiled at MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn at the corner of Jay Street and Myrtle Avenue. Though it won’t be open on weekends like the Manhattan TKTS locations, it will give Brooklyn playgoers the edge on weekdays, when it opens a full four hours ahead of the Times Square TKTS, which is currently operating at the Marriot Marquis while the new......

The 22-year-old man who was shot in Brooklyn last weekend, an incident that left a gruesome mess at the bus depot on Broadway and Roebling, has died. The Brooklyn Paper reports that the altercation leading to the shooting began at Williamsburg's Festa del Giglio, and witnesses say the scuffle resulted in Williamsburg resident Richard Duran getting shot in the face. "The gunmen — who onlookers suspect were gang members — sprinted off," however, the shooter......

From a source who was over at the Pier 41 building in Red Hook earlier today, where the latest Real World cast is rumored to be moving, word of "progress" on the cast's living space comes in: "They're building them a cabana, and a sand pit right now." They also tell us that "somebody also did a short film shoot the other day down the block from the Pier 41 building, permitted/blocked off streets, possibly......

Just in from the newswire, there's a "suspicious death" being reported at McCarren Park Pool, allegedly at the building that serves as an entrance. The person was found "DOA by event staff" earlier this morning. Last night Twelve Ophelias, a play centered around Hamlet's Ophelia coming back to life, was staged there; the night before there was a screening of The Virgin Suicides. All in all, a dark week for McCarren. Thus far, multiple calls......

A Marine Park husband and wife, who worked as divorce attorneys, were found dead, shot multiple times at close range in their bedroom. Their housekeeper found Mark Schwartz, 50, and Maria-Christina Petrowski-Schwartz, 48, yesterday afternoon on East 33rd Street. The Post reports that the police are investigating it as a double homicide, but "detectives had not entirely ruled out the possibility that it was a murder-suicide" (the murder weapon was not found). The Daily News......

Galapagos has officially set up shop and opened their doors in DUMBO, though a full schedule isn't planned to go into effect until September. The beautiful new space, located between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges on the corner Water and Main Streets, can hold 175 seated and around 230 standing. Director Robert Elmes told us that the new arts space will continue to focus on the cultural ecosystem by hosting "theater, dance, performance art, cinema,......

Has MTV's The Real World faked out Brooklyn? First they're all but confirmed to move into Downtown Brooklyn's BellTell Lofts, with rumors of a Carroll Gardens residence quickly disappearing, but now an intern says the show "may not even film there because they were having some issues with the BellTel Lofts building with the location at 116 Third Place in Carroll Gardens as the backup." Residents beware! The Real Deal all but confirms the Carroll......

The 12-day, 121st annual Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and San Paolino is currently in full swing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Every year the area around the church (at Havemeyer and North Eighth Street) is turned over to a traditional Italian-American street fair in the evening, with kiddie rides, amusuments and food. On Sunday there was the spectacular “Dance of the Giglio,” during which, according to Giglio USA, a five ton platform bearing a......

The NY Post reports that "felonious assaults were up 21 percent as of July 6, compared to the same time period in 2007" in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. On the topic of the recent stabbings, the article quotes a 17-year-old student from the area who claims much of the violence is from "warring youth gangs, largely Hispanic, [who] cross a Brooklyn-Queens Expressway line of demarcation and prey upon each other." The Saturday stabbing was......

An officer with a history of false arrest is being accused of more of the same by a 40-year-old grandmother in Sunset Park. Monica Gonzalez tells the Daily News she was walking four blocks from her apartment to the E.R. during an asthma attack at 2:30 in the morning last November when she was arrested by Officer Sean Spencer, who claimed she was holding a condom and approaching vehicles with another woman. (Gonzalez's lawyer never......

Word is that Michel Gondry has made the move to Brooklyn (his previous apartment was in the East Village). The director reportedly purchased a house on Orient Avenue in East Williamsburg, and while Curbed notes that a house from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was also on Orient Avenue, this isn't the one the director purchased -- that house was sort of a fixer-upper! Gondry has some celluloid ties to the borough aside from......

Last night around 8:45 p.m., police officers patrolling in Bedford-Stuyvesant killed a man who fired at them. They had seen the man, per WNBC, "running down the street with a gun in his hand." When they asked him to stop, he fired instead. According to the Daily News, he fired at least four rounds: Once after they tried to stop him and then three more times when his exit was blocked (he tried to run......

Photo of mating horsehoe crabs from Citynoise.com It's that time of year when love at the seashore blossoms, and hordes of initially alarming-looking horseshoe crabs scuttle up onto the beaches of Jamaica Bay to procreate in the sands. The species is approximately 450 million years old, and they look like something from a dinosaur film strip. Despite their tails that look like barbs and alien appearance, horseshoe crabs are completely harmless. Every summer, under......