"I'm in my 40s, I've lived in Brooklyn for 15 years," the victim in a brutal attack near McCarren Park told us today, "and nothing like this has ever happened to me. I've lived in Williamsburg for probably about ten years total." Last week the man was viciously slashed by a young Hispanic man wielding a broken bottle with such ferocity he had to get 37 stitches and 8 staples to his head. more ›

Police are looking for a "very young" Hispanic male aged 16-20, between 5'4" and 5'7", who brutally attacked a man in McCarren Park last week—beating his victim with a shattered bottle so badly he needed 37 stitches on his face, eight staples in his head and skin grafts on his left nostril. Take a look at this video, maybe you've seen him? more ›

Kickball players, rejoice: City Councilman Stephen Levin is putting $930,000 towards fixing the constantly-flooded McCarren Park. One softball player tells DNAinfo, "It's a nuisance, but it's also become a part of the landscape. People ride their bikes through it, kids are dying to play in it and the parents are like, 'Don't go in there!' because it's so dirty," and reveals she and her friends call it "Hipster Lake." Another park visitor's dog "sat vomiting after slurping up a fetid puddle." more ›

Vagina tree may be dead, but McCarren Park now has an amenity that will allow parkgoers to gape at genitals anywhere they please: Wi-Fi. The Brooklyn Paper called it "glitch-free" on Friday, so that means less time nursing your $4 cup of coffee and getting the stink eye from your barista when "Congratulations, you've won!" randomly blares out of your laptop. more ›

Parts of McCarren Park are being overtaken by drunk homeless people who poop in public and scare the neighborhood children—and it's no laughing matter. The Brooklyn Paper today picked up the story that New York Shitty's been covering for months, giving it a glib little treatment pitting "neighborhood nannies" against "liquored-up vagabonds" who stink up the children's playground in the park. But the real issue here goes way beyond just poop, says Heather Letzkus of NY Shitty. more ›

McCarren Park: Where dominatrixes take their slaves for recreation, where ladies in bikinis and drunken Polish men proudly sunbathe, and where "hipsters" funnel their parents' hard-earned money into the multi-billion dollar Turkey's Nest empire. Also: where women strip naked and start throwing punches during softball practice. Yes, over Memorial Day weekend, members of the Williamsburg softball league got quite an eyeful from a woman described on their website as a "crazy bitch" or, "CB" for short: more ›

Oh, here's SFW video documenting an area dominatrix's ordinary afternoon in McCarren Park with her slave, who wears a leash and curls up at her feet to serve as an ottoman for her aching gams. When that grows tiresome, she commands him to clean her boots and slaps him around a little bit—you know the drill. You'll be relieved to see that the gentleman in question is NOT New York Representative Anthony Weiner, ha ha. And you'll also enjoy the expression of red T-shirted gentleman sitting to their right, as well as the completely blase expressions on the faces of all the the REAL New Yorkers on the left. more ›

Help! Do you know this dog? Would you like to know this dog? This adorable little guy, who is apparently very friendly, was found on May 6th near the McCarren Park Dog Run. more ›

The Bad Old Days have returned to McCarren Park. According to the Brooklyn Paper, there's been a "crime wave" in the area, with 15 incidents occurring over the past 3 months—including two recent violent incidents. The paper reports that last Saturday at 8:30 p.m. a woman was raped in the park's bathrooms after meeting a man on the corner of North 12th Street and Bedford Avenue, and on June 18th a gunman fired at random at 1 a.m. Neither have been caught; the North Brooklyn Parks Administrator says they're now hiring a park enforcement police officer. more ›

The Trustocorp crew—who when last we checked in were filling stores with fake products like Banko$ (eat the rich) cereal—are back with a new public service sign. It reads: Don't Feed The Hipsters, and is appropriately placed in McCarren Park, where kickball season just began. But let's presuppose someone ignored this warning and did feed the hipsters, what do you think they like to eat? (Asking for a friend.) more ›

Is McCarren Park getting an expansion? An advocacy group is currently attempting to convince the city that it should, by way of closing part of Union Avenue (between Driggs and Bayard). According to the Brooklyn Paper the group would ideally like to see that stretch of street closed off to cars permanently. more ›

20 Bayard, that big hubristic building on the edge of McCarren Park in Williamsburg filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday, The Real Deal reports. Are there no hedge funders left who want to live above a blindingly-lit soccer field, 10 minutes from the L train? The building, which was prominently featured on Top Chef, is "nearly full" of owners or renters, but North Development Group apparently owes more than $10 million to more than 50 creditors. The creditor with the largest unsecured claim? A Brooklyn plumber who just saw $325,000 worth of labor go down the crapper, along with the rest of the condo market. (Which kind of takes the fun out of the requisite Nelson laugh.) [Via Curbed] more ›

One Greenpoint mom is riled up after coming face to face with evil corporate sponsorship at this past weekend's Pumpkin Fest in McCarren Park. She tells Miss Heather: more ›

We play tennis at McCarren Park a couple of times a week, so it's exciting to see someone trying to do something about those ridiculously busted old courts, which the Parks Department charges $100 a year or $7 an hour to use. But the folks involved with the McCarren Tennis renovation group aren't just demanding that the badly cracked courts get a long-overdue resurfacing, they've got much bigger plans. Those familiar with the park know that on weekends, the big concrete lot next to the courts is occupied by a crowd of, um, spirited softball players. Well, these fellows will be mighty interested to know that their tennis-playing neighbors have their eye on that lot, and are campaigning to have it turned into more courts! There is no way that happens without a riot, despite the fact that the entire area was originally devoted exclusively to tennis "once upon a time," as Brownstoner notes. We'll be sure to share that interesting bit of history with those softball gents this weekend, particularly the individual who inexplicably yelled, "HAMBURGER" over and over again for more than an hour during their game last Sunday. more ›

Over the weekend the Mormons were out in full force, cleaning up your sinful refuse at McCarren Park. The Brooklyn Paper got up early to steal some souls with their camera, bragging that they "managed to capture it on film!" They report back saying that 100 youthful members of the Church of Latter Day Saints were picking up trash and raking leaves before the rest of us woke up at the crack of noon thirty. The paper talked to some of the late-rising locals; one 22-year-old Jessica Weinschenk said, “I guess it’s not that weird because religious people do stuff like that. And hey, it’s cool if someone wants to clean our park for us." Way to go Weinschenk. Unsurprisingly, only one non-Mormon claimed to have ever cleaned up for a community, and of course it was part of Burning Man (he told them "when you leave you have to spend four hours cleaning up after yourself"). It's not surprising that the Church descended on Williamsburg, which the Parks Department identified as being the park most in need of maintenance within all five boroughs. more ›

Last time we checked in on the McCarren Greenmarket, it was begrudgingly moving to a concrete-heavy spot on Union Avenue between Bayard and Driggs, but now the NY Post reports that the market got a little upgrade, and will be moving to Driggs and North 12th this October. The move is being made after the Parks Department was concerned about how damaged the grass was becoming at their current location of Bedford Avenue and Lorimer Street. CB1 Parks Committee member Dewey Thompson told the paper, “It is a terrific transition step towards permanently demapping Union between Driggs and North 12th and a perfectly suitable use for the street, especially considering the fact that, for years, the Greenmarket, while offering the community much-needed fresh greens has been crushing some of the highly endangered green grass in the park." Some vendors are concerned with losing money due to less pedestrian traffic, so everyone go buy some apple cider donuts and pumpkins this fall! more ›

Did any of these people ever even see Fame? You wouldn't know it by looking at the outfits they chose for the costume contest that was held last night in conjunction with a screening of the classic 1980 film. This all went down in McCarren Park, where one would wager the audience had way more interesting 80s vintage incorporated into their daily attire than they did for the event. Cut-off tees? Jean shorts? Yawn. Check out the contestants, the winners and the disaffected hipsters, above. more ›

Confirming the worst fears of many hipster analysts, long-simmering tensions between rival cardboard tube factions erupted into full-scale war on Sunday, with many women and children caught in the crossfire. Photojournalist Katie Sokoler risked grave injury to bring us these shocking photographs from the front lines; she reports that the casualties were innumerable, and only one young girl (photo 2) emerged triumphant from the cardboard carnage, smiting her foes with pitiless cruelty: "The guys were scared of her, she had no shame in aiming for the crotch." Sokoler also reports that the remaining survivors "helped to clean up and recycle the cardboard after the event." more ›

Having worked tirelessly to end global warming, nuclear proliferation, and that horrible Guinea worm disease, hipsters can at last enjoy a well-earned childish diversion. This Sunday the Seattle chapter of the Cardboard Tube Fighting League (yep, it exists) will be hosting a tournament! Everyone's invited to dress up like knights in cardboard armor and smack each other around with tubes, which will be provided by the organizers. (No outside tubes are permitted, to prevent contestants from causing any non-ironic injuries with doctored tubes.) Afterward, everybody will not get laid. more ›

There's not a lot to add commentary-wise to this video, which is a German report on the Brooklyn kickball league. Hipsters, Germans, a Beavis and Butthead quote... it's well worth your 6 minutes and 43 seconds. more ›

The Greenmarket held at McCarren Park is about to get a lot less green. The Brooklyn Paper reports that the the Parks Department will be relocating it from the park to the concrete of Union Avenue. Holding it at the park has caused damage to the grounds, with the farmers’ set-ups, as well as the high traffic of customers, turning grass into dirt. A Parks Department spokesman told the paper, “The grass is in very bad condition over there—very brown and compacted—so we’d like to spruce up that area by re-seeding the park’s entrance." The sellers are not enthused, however, saying, “We’re located at the most-trafficked area in this park. Moving us would disconnect the market from the rest of the park. It may be the end of this market." However, the new proposed location of Union Avenue between Bayard and Driggs isn't really that far away from their current locale. more ›

With summer almost upon us, the scourge of the ubiquitous ice cream truck jingle is back to torment New York again. But instead of letting it drive them barking mad, one group of concerned citizens in Brooklyn is taking action against the incessant, insipid jingles reverberating on all sides of McCarren Park. They've put up signs decrying the noise pollution, and formed a Yahoo Group to share and document their noise complaint calls to 311 and the local precinct. To us, they're heroes standing up for mankind's basic right to enjoy the park without resorting to military-style executions. But Miss Heather at New York Shitty, which spotted the group's signage over the weekend, speculates that the campaign is being run by arriviste condo dwellers who ought to just "get over it." And Roy Edroso at the Voice sardonically wonders whether they'll also "protest the crack of softball bats, the sizzling of outdoor grillers, and peals of childish laughter." We suspect these two have never been treated to a non-stop Kool Man "Pop Goes the Weasel" marathon outside their apartments. It is as maddening as it is illegal, and even the non-condo Inwood crowd agrees. more ›

The Brooklyn kickballers have a new opponent this season: twenty freshly planted baby trees! The Brooklyn Paper reported yesterday that the leafy obstacles were planted as a part of Mayor Bloomberg's Million Trees program, and affect all three kickball fields. Allegedly the city chose that spot in order to restore the area to Gilmore Clark’s 1936 design. They told us about how in the past "McCarren Park was decimated by the Asian Long Horn Beatle crisis and lost more than 50% of it's tree canopy coverage." more ›

The music has stopped at McCarren Park Pool, the hipsters have moved on to other concrete pastures, and it looks like crooks have been taking advantage of the area. The Brooklyn Paper has two accounts of recent muggings, reporting that "a thug shoved a woman and stole her purse at around 2 am...he threw her to the ground and warned, 'If you don’t stop struggling I’m really gonna hurt you.'" That same day someone attacked a 63-year-old man, demanding, in Polish, “Give me money.” When the man refused he was left with a black eye, but the police now have that suspect in custody. Looks like we're going back to Vigilante times, kids, at least until 2011. more ›

Brooklyn kickball team Los Pirates Mechanicos (pictured) are down one man as of yesterday; Lawrence Jackson (better known as Lance) was arrested for carrying around a rusty pirate sword (also pictured) in Macy's. Unsurprisingly, the NYPD took it for a weapon, not a recreational sports prop. more ›

Crafty kite enthusiasts, start your wind-powered engines: the Williamsburg Kite Festival is back for another year of G-rated good times. Make your own or bring a store-bought flying machine; the fest will be setting up at McCarren Park tomorrow, May 17th. Here's what to expect:

The public is invited to attend this colorful, daylong festival of kite flying, crafts and games for all ages, which for the past 3 years has supported arts in education and fostered kinship within the diverse neighborhoods of north Brooklyn.

Another week, another free summer concert series announced. One of the most enjoyable ways to spend a summer Sunday in the city in the last couple years has been out at McCarren Pool, with the competitive dodgeball, slip and slides and sweet, sweet music. The lineups for these shows have never disappointed, but this year seems to be bigger than ever. There has been some growing speculation that this might be the last year for the Pool Parties, and recently released plans for the pool added to those concerns. Regardless of the future, they're all go for 2008. Enjoy it while you can. Among many, many more, The Breeders, MGMT, The Hold Steady, Liars, Black Lips and Deerhunter are all confirmed. Dates and complete lineups to come. more ›

more ›