Brooklyn Paper has it that the smaller, funkier Tea Lounge in Park Slope, on Seventh Avenue and Tenth Street, is to close at the end of July. And you’ll never in a million years guess what the reason is! Turns out an obscene rent hike is forcing the neighborhood hang-out to move along and make room for, most likely, a Corcoran real estate office. Where have we heard this tune before? And so the tumbleweeds......

The NY Post spoke to two Park Slope residents before declaring the new Babeland sex toy shop would be giving off some bad vibes to the locals when it moved into their 'hood. But NYMag points out the Park Slope parents, if the Brooklynian message board is any indication, are rather delighted by their future neighbor. One stroller pusher declared, "How silly of the Post. Where do they think all the babies come from?" Well,......

When ParkSlopeParents.com advertised an open casting call for the new face of Baby Gap, we're sure an emergency meet-up took place at Tea Lounge. Who would make the cut?! Well The Observer reports from the front lines of the stroller-heavy Slope, outside of Kidville on Union Street where tots recently lined up.In another city, even in another New York City neighborhood perhaps, a model search like this would bring out the momagers and mini pageant......

Leaving our local Key Food this morning, for the first time we heard the spare change guy's rendition of "Bad to the Bone" and then we turned to one of our weekend rituals: Reading the The Brooklyn Paper. Why do we love the Brooklyn Paper? Because it covers stories here way before the dailies get to them, if ever. Because of the NY Post-style headlines ("Fowl play: Fairway ducks foie gras flap" comes from today's......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: victim down an elevator shaft on 59th Street, person struck by train at 33rd on the 6, and an "EDP in a vehicle" in LES. Attention terrorists: if you're using the internet at the Park Slope Tea Lounge, the cops may be on to you. F Trainer has a nice set of pix from the Greenpoint Terminal Market-- it's like the surface of the moon up in that piece.......

Ugh. Gothamist had a long night last night. There was liquor. There were dancing girls. There might have been someone named Thomas (call me!!). Today there’s a headache, light sensitivity and dry-mouth to alarm the most devoted stoner. We need coffee and, while we’re loyal to our favorite haunts, we’re in no mood for innocuous conversation with our (rather handsome, incidentally) barista. We want a deep, almost bottomless vat of big, bold, black coffee consumed......

Earlier this week, we reported on the 92nd Street Y event where New York magazine co-founder Milton Glaser attributed the low number of high-profile female designers to the fact that women who have children and stay at home with them are less visible professionally. First, some clarification (for The NY Times’ Tom Zeller, Jr. ): the comment came during the Q&A session following lectures by Glaser, Chip Kidd and Dave Eggers. An audience member asked......

- Here's one for charter schools: Their students do better on state reading tests than other students in regular public shcools - Lynne Stewart apologizes to the judge who is sentecing her for carrying Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's messages to his followers, but blames it on being a lawyer - Testimony begins in Nicole duFresne's murder trial; her fiance, Jeffrey Sparks, said, "She was looking up. Her eyes were wide open. I knelt down......

We're not going to lie - we thought this bar was a typo. Not the Living Room, formerly of Allen Street, now on Ludlow, not another Tea Lounge in Park Slope, the newest bar within spitting distance of the cemetery is actually called the Living Room Lounge. A newly refurbished sweatshop still rough around the edges has a loft-like feel, especially with mismatched couches crowding the center of the room and chandeliers of varied......

The Daily News looked at some neighborhood cafes off the Starbucks-beaten-path in the city. They mention places in Queens (Avenue Cafe at 35-27 30th Ave. - Nutella crepes! - in Astoria and Oasis Cafe) Staten Island (Muddy Cup with books to borrow. ), Brooklyn (Greenpoint Coffe House, 195 Franklin at Green; Williamsburg's Japanese cafe Supercore, Bedford, between South 1st and 2nd; and Pask Slope's Tea Lounge, 837 Union) and Manhattan (East Village favorite, Cafe Pick......