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 Hoyt and Bond. 6:00am this morning my wife heard..... well peeing.... she woke me up and I went to the door. I live in the garden apartment so I looked up and saw butt—thus I yelled 'HEY MOVE YOUR ASS!!!!' This was the first time in my life that I literally meant it.

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. more ›

Some 30 years after Landmarks Preservation Commission officials first explored landmarking Crown Heights, the Commission has granted landmark status to the architecturally-rich neighborhood. more ›

Manhattan State Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden today declined to issue a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that would have blocked developer Forest City Ratner from commencing demolitions within the footprint of the “Atlantic Yards” project before the legal challenge to the state’s environmental review and approval of the project, as well as a motion for a preliminary injunction, can be heard in court on May 3rd. more ›

When we first read that the Landmarks Preservation Commission was taking steps to preserve the stately mansions, row houses and churches of Crown Heights North, we weren't all that surprised. After all, the area's 19th and 20th century architectural gems span at least four distinct styles: Georgian/Federal; Renaissance/Baroque Revival; Romanesque Revival and Modern/Art Deco/Art Moderne. more ›

THEATER: The Ohio Theater is the site of two of summer's best play festivals, and the first, Clubbed Thumb's eleventh Summerworks, started yesterday with Anne Washburn's I Have Loved Strangers, "in which true prophets, false prophets, and non-prophets battle for the salvation of ancient New York." On the company's website http://www.clubbedthumb.org/ you can do some "research" before going, via various eyebrow-raising links; or you can just rely on the winning trifecta of excellent track records: of the Ohio, of Clubbed Thumb, and of Washburn herself, whose play Apparition recently showed to well-deserved acclaim. Over the next weeks, two other plays will be in the festival -- Erin Courtney's Alice the Magnet, and Rachel Hoeffel's Quail -- but each is showing for only a few days, so get under the thumb while you can. - Mallory Jensen more ›

. Then, heading uptown to the 92nd St. Y (Lexington Ave. and 92nd St.), everyone's favorite journalist-slash-novelists Tom Wolfe and Pete Hamill are sitting down for a discussion on New York: Fact and Fiction. It starts at 8PM and will cost you $25. more ›