Brokelyn

You too can make a taco book! Via acherryontop.com

One problem with Brooklyn is that there just isn’t anywhere to learn things. Fortunately, Brooklyn Skillshare and BIG THINGS, a Bay Area arts and culture blog, are joining forces for BIG CITY: Brooklyn, an afternoon of workshops to learn you a thing or two. If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to make a confetti egg (or what one is), bookmaking or how to properly hold a Japanese tea ceremony, experts will be there to share their knowledge. If you think learning things is for nerds, you can still show up to browse the pop up art shop featuring local artists. It all goes down on Saturday from 10:30am to 3:30pm at LaunchPad, 731 Franklin Ave. There’s a $5 requested donation, and while they say no one will be turned away, come on. Don’t be a cheapskate.

Get on the cute bus. Via Flickr's Daniel Roode.

Valentine’s Day is just like any other day, except that everyone’s heart gets a whole lot cuter! No matter if you’re single or coupled up, the most important thing to remember is to keep it cute the whole day long! Lucky for you, Brooklyn is one of the cutest towns around, and Brokelyn’s made you a list of all kinds of cute things to do on Valentine’s Day, ya lil’ cutie.

Then there's this problem.

Press a button and it’s done. Single-serve coffee machines are delicious, easy, and a sure sign of your upward mobility. But The New York Times is blowing the foil lid off the terrible truth: those little plastic cups factor out to about $50 or more per pound. Apparently, single-serve coffee is one more devil spawn of Starbucks. The Times writes:

“Americans under the age of 40 are thinking about coffee pricing in cups,” said Ric Rhinehart, executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. “If you asked my mother how much coffee cost, she would have told you that the red can was $5.25 a pound and the blue can was $4.25. If you ask people in their 20s and 30s, they’ll say coffee is $1.75 to $3.75 a cup.”

Of course, it follows that anyone charging $175 for a coffee maker will probably rip you off on the coffee itself, especially when they pack it in tiny, excessively wrapped, proprietary containers. Consider it the Gillette safety razor of coffee. Here’s the Times’ full story.

VCR nostalgia is a thing, even if some of us consider VCRs to be among the worst technologies ever made obsolete, right up there with pagers and Windows 97. But whatever weird fetish you have for glitchy, jumpy movies — or maybe an art project that involves these things — this Craigslister has three working VCRs and about 30 tapes to give you. Might we suggest an art exhibit called something like “Tracking tracking: The Fuzzy Line of Mortality?”

You should choo-choo-choose to go to this!

If all the rest of these ideas for taking your sweetie out/finding someone to at least Band Aid over your shattered heart for V-Day have failed you, we’ve got one more big chance: our friends at the skint are presenting this Sunday’s special Tell Your Friends (With Benefits) Valentine’s Day show at the Bell House, and we have a pair of tickets to give away! The show is hosted by Liam McEneaney, and features Wyatt Cenac of The Daily Show, Hari Kondabolu (Jimmy Kimmel Live, Comedy Central Presents) and Ashok Kondabolu (of Das Racist), Jessi Klein (Best week Ever, Saturday Night Live) and Victor Varnado (writer for Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O’Brien), with musical guests Bridget & The Squares. Plus, the first 100 people get a free Robicelli’s cupcake!

The best for your buck? Photo via Yelp.

The best dollar slice in all of New York City is Percy’s Pizza at 190 Bleecker St. in the Village, or so says the NY Post, who lauds it as a “tasty thin slice that crackles when you bite into it … Not too salty, not too greasy, it’s lightly sauced and not overwhelmed with cheese or sugar.” Of note, before going super cheap-o in December, the space was an outpost of South Brooklyn Pizza, which charged a ludicrous $4 a slice (I don’t care how good your damn tomatoes are), but it didn’t catch on amid the nabe’s other cheap eateries. The Post also reveals the ingredients to make the average eight-slice pizza cost a mere $4, so Percy’s is banking just 50 cents a slice. What say you, Brokesters? Is it worth a trip into the city? Do you have a favorite $1 slice in Brooklyn? It’s hard to beat those beer-and-a-whole-pizza deals. [via the skint]

This freebie is so good, you might lose your head.

This description of a bunch of leftover special effects supplies doesn’t mean much to those of us not in the movie/heavy makeup engineering biz, but an industry insider informs us the stuff is handy “if somebody out there was making a zombie movie, or needed to make an exploding head, a la Scanners, they could use this.” The ad says it comes with everything you need for casting and making molds and latex pieces, including  2 pounds of Algiform brand alginate slow compound, 7-10 pounds casting plaster and 1 gallon of Alcone brand liquid latex, flesh color. So there you go! Explode heads, for free!

Is there a better way? Via Flickr's Abecedarium: NYC.

A reader at real estate blog BrickUnderground asks a question on the mind of so many of us who cart our dirty undies five flights of stairs and four blocks every week (well, at least once a month): why can’t i just install my own damn washer and dryer under my landlord’s nose? The expert’s answer is, like anything in New York, complicated. Short version: yes, you could do it, if your pipes can handle it, but if they can’t, you’ll likely be boned before the rinse cycle. And if you do install one, you probably won’t get evicted unless you cling to it Charlton-Heston style. She recommends a high-efficiency machine that uses less water so it’s less likely to overwhelm the plumbing. You might even win an exception from your landlord based on disability, which can include difficulty traveling to the laundromat or severe allergies, though “allergy to watching daytime Telenovelas” is probably not an acceptable reason.

Oh... yes! Photo courtesy of Frankie's Spuntino.

There’s a giveaway at Frankies Spuntino, but sadly, it isn’t a 7-course “Foodie’s Dream Threesome” with messieurs Castronovo and Falcinelli. The Carroll Gardens Patch reports that Sweet ‘N’ Low (based in the Navy Yards) is giving away dinner for eight to a Brooklyn couple married for an increment of five years (heh?) with the best love story. From the Patch:

Couples who will have been married for 5, 15, 25… (you get the idea) years in 2012 are asked to submit their love story in 300 words or less with a photograph to:

Stadium starts to look like stadium [Patch]
Wrap up your hot dog [The Local]
Brooklyn’s post-artisanal age [Atlantic Wire]
Megabus, mega problems [DNAInfo]
NYT seeks cheap labor [Romenesko]
Men more desperate [Gothamist]
If you will it, it is no dream, dude [Guardian]
Powerball surprisingly power-less [The Awl]