01.
A LIT MAG FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T READ LIT MAGS
The Coffin Factory, recently launched out of Park Slope by editors Randy Rosenthal and Laura Isaacman, hopes to be a literary magazine for the kinds of people who usually only read books. “We acquire stories, essays, and poems from at least a handful of more-recognizable names and publish their work alongside those of lesser-known writers, whose work we believe is as compelling and thrilling to read,” the editors explain. In their debut issue, work by literary powerhouses like Roberto Bolaño, Joyce Carol Oates, Milan Kundera and José Saramago appears alongside that of up-and-comers like local favorite Justin Taylor (who also happens to appear on page 88 of this magazine). “The high-quality design and content from writers and artists from around the world signals to our readers that each issue is worth reading cover to cover,” the editors tell us, “just as they would a book.” thecoffinfactory.com
02.
GOORIN BROS.:
THE GREAT AMERICAN MILLINERS COME TO BROOKLYN
Classic American hats have been making a comeback for over a decade now. This is a very good thing. But one must make sure to dress in a style suitable to the elegance of one’s homburg or trilby, lest (in jeans, t-shirt and a porkpie) one risk looking like the like fourth Spin Doctor. Once these sartorial shoals have been circumnavigated, a trip to Goorin Bros. in Park Slope is surely the next step, now that they’ve finally opened an outpost in Brooklyn. Though they’re a national chain, Goorin Bros. (founded in 1895) is still run by a Goorin, and they make all their hats here at home, so you can feel good about a hat that will last (we’re looking at you, made-in-Shenzhen-via-St. Mark’s fedora). 95B Fifth Avenue
03.
SURVIVING DARKNESS:
OUR FAVORITE LOCAL WINTER COCKTAILS
We hate the kind of people who say optimistic stuff like, “The days are getting longer!” when it’s the middle of January and the slush has frozen into horrid moraines of brown dreck. We just want to warm ourselves and forget… And here are four great Brooklyn cocktails that do the trick!
1-Hotel Delmano
HOT BUTTERED BABY: Fresh lime juice, Spiced Pineapple Juice, Rosemary-infused Rye whiskey, Cinnamon-seasoned Butter (pictured above).
2-The Richardson
FT. MONMOUTH: Fresh lime juice, Spiced Pineapple Juice, Rosemary-infused Rye whiskey, Cinnamon-seasoned Butter.
3-Huckleberry Bar
DOUBLE BLACK DIAMOND: 1.5 oz Chai-Infused Scotch .5 oz coffee liqueur, top with Homemade Hot Chocolate
4-Clover Club
WASHINGTON’S CROSSING: 1.5 oz. Lairds, 1.5 oz. Caramaro, 0.5 oz. Ransom Old Tom gin, 1/2 bar spoon maple syrup, 2 dashes of Angostura, 2 dashes of Peychaud’s. Stir and strain in to Nick & Nora. Garnish: orange twist.
04.
NIGHTWOOD: ROUGH-HEWN, HOMESPUN, AND BEAUTIFUL
Together, Myriah Scruggs and Nadia Yaron, both Brooklynites for the last 13 years, constitute Nightwood (Djuna Barnes represent!), a Williamsburg-based furniture-making company. Working mostly in wood, their tables, chairs, and desks evoke an earlier era in the neighborhood, with rough joinery and exposed details that echo ad-hoc loft construction; their textiles have a post-industrial, almost post-apocalyptic, homespun feel. “We have a great love of old things,” Yaron tells us, “and we wanted to recreate the look and history of old, rustic pieces that have a handmade quality and feel to them.” It’s like they squatted their showroom and filled it with furniture—and it is beautiful. 111 Grand Street, nightwoodny.com
05.
PARAVION PRESS: BOOK-LENGHT POSTCARDS?
Paravion Press “started with us simply sewing books in the back room of our bookshop in Santorini, Greece,” Craig Walzer, the company’s New York contact, tells us. “A wealthy lady who works in the business of books came into the shop one day and asked us what we planned to publish next. We said we wanted to do a series of literary postcards capturing the world’s great cities. The lady loved what she saw and told us that if we came to New York she’d fund a large-scale run of books, as long as we created a New York Series to inaugurate ‘The Cities.’ We said yes, please. So I packed my suitcase, moved to New York, and we designed the three New York editions. Then the woman wavered and vacillated and didn’t return our calls and in the end she simply didn’t pull through. But we had good books in our hands ready to print so we scraped together the cash and funded the printing ourselves. In the end I suppose we have to thank the lady for pulling us to New York, even if she did kinda screw us over.” Two of the three New York books they created are Brooklyn-focused: “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and “Boredom.” “We didn’t set out for two Brooklyn stories,” Walzer continues, “but it seems like the literary odds were rigged to push our focus to the east. First off, I was sleeping on my brother’s couch in Williamsburg when we were sifting through potentials. But come on, you can’t read New York without Whitman, and Whitman is Brooklyn, so that was a shoo-in. And then [Maxim] Gorky’s wry and twisted essay on Coney Island charmingly complemented Whitman’s transcendent tone. Two stories set on the docks, very human-eye-views. Brooklyn’s good like that.” paravionpress.org
06.
LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX OR AT LEAST TAKE A LOOK AT IT
“I feel that sex, like art, is multifaceted,” Tyler Lafreniere, founder of Brooklyn-based art mag Gypsé Eyes, tells us. “It is at the same time humorous, serious, beautiful, ugly, sad, lonely, joyful, connecting, and entertaining. Often I feel sex in art is positioned as one of these when usually it encompasses all of them. So, in an effort to create a publication which engages the reader while also making them laugh, a bit shy, and perhaps a bit turned on, Gypsé Eyes was created.” Was such an attitude lacking in art magazines? “I do feel there is a bit of a gap in this regard,” Lafreniere tells us. “Generally, I think [other magazines that deal with sex] fall into a certain category of representation. They are either porn—more recently including ironic porn—erotica, or fine art. They generally like to stay in these classifications, but isn’t porn sometimes art and art sometimes porn? And often erotica could be called porn with a higher production value and style, or art with more naked people. Regardless, in Gypsé Eyes we try to blur these boundaries.” kidswithtools.com/gypseeyes/wordpress
07.
FAKE PLASTIC TREES AND THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
“3D printing has been around for about 25 years, but until recently, to get into it, you had to spend as much as a Ferrari,” says Bre Pettis, the charismatic, bespectacled CEO and co-founder of Gowanus-based MakerBot Industries. “So we made a machine that was cheap, that we could afford. When we did it, we thought, ‘everybody should have one of these.’” Makerbot perfected their $1,299 miracle machine in 2009, calling it the “Thing-O-Matic,” and began linking customers via the “Thingiverse,” a website where users share designs (recent examples include a lightsaber-shaped chalk holder and maracas in the shape of the New Museum). The next step is getting the technology in the hands of kids, and they’ve developed curriculum for teachers to help them do it. “Just think about it—if you had learned how to invent things, and innovate, at age 11, how would the world be different today?” Pettis asks excitedly over the bleeps and whirrs of his “Botfarm,” a sci-fi fantasy brought to life. “Wonderful things are going to happen.” makerbot.com
-By Sam Polcer
08.
BROOKLYN IN A BOTTLE, LITERALLY
For $24, you can have your own test tube stuffed with a muslin cloth that’s been dirtied with bits of Brooklyn detritus and grime. “Our team travels throughout Brooklyn staining a muslin cloth with dirt, grass and water,” bottledBrooklyn co-founder Joshua Adam Brueckner tells us. Of course, the team, including co-founder Rameses Crisi, has received some hostile feedback. (The comments on a recent Times profile are nasty.) “We’ve found the critics’ response to bB a little perplexing,” Brueckner tells us. “We truly want to give back to our community.” He says the company’s supporters “appreciate the piece as conceptual art, and of course, have a flare for interesting home décor.” But also, “thanks to our supporters, the rest of the world can help make food more accessible to New York City’s hungry. Ten percent of every bottledBrooklyn purchase will go toward a vegan food donation to City Harvest.” bottledbrooklyn.com
09.
THE FACE THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND SIGNS
10.
THE MOGULS OF WILLIAMSBURG
When the White House recently ordered a print of writer-director Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, about a young woman (Elizabeth “suddenly the most famous” Olsen) who flees a cult, arthouse audiences and critics who attended this year’s Sundance, Cannes and New York film festivals nodded approvingly. Durkin, along with fellow Williamsburg residents and MMMM producers Antonio Campos and Josh Mond, is one third of the production company Borderline Films, which has garnered attention for its technically suave, unsettlingly subjective handling of hot-potato subject matter since Campos’s 2008 breakthrough Afterschool. Durkin, Campos and Mond, who met at NYU film school in the early aughts, alternate work-for-hire jobs on commercials and music videos to subsidize each other’s more ambitious projects like MMMM, which just earned them a first-look deal with distributor Fox Searchlight. Borderline is currently in postproduction on the Paris-set Simon Killer, written and directed by Campos, produced by Durkin and Mond.
11.
WINTER IN BROOKLYN: MAC N’ CHEESE TO COMFORT YOU
You haven’t seen the sun in a week. You’re hungover all the time. It’s so cold in your apartment you haven’t been fully naked in days. These are sad times, friend, and you need a little comfort, in the form of food. In the form of mac n’ cheese.
DuMont’s
DuMac n’ Cheese is simple and good: macaroni, gruyere and bacon baked together. Grab a growler of beer while you’re at it (pictured above).
(314 Bedford Ave., Williamsburg)
Black Mountain Wine House
adds wild mushrooms and truffle oil to the classic gruyere version for a burst of flavor.
(415 Union St., Carroll Gardens)
Cornelius
piles on with five cheeses and isn’t shy with the lardons.
(565 Vanderbilt Ave., Fort Greene)
Thistle Hill Tavern
samples old-country flavor using fontina, smoked provolone, grana padana, pecorino, and (AND!) pancetta in theirs.
(441 Seventh Ave., Park Slope)
Moto
is a good spot to wait out a blizzard, eating nothing but their Swiss Alps Mac & Cheese: bundnerkase cheese, onion and homemade apple sauce!
(394 Broadway, Williamsburg)
Brooklyn Star
uses Velveeta, so that’s kind of awesome.
(33 Havemeyer St., Williamsburg)
12.
WORKSTEAD: DESIGN THROUGH COLLABORATION
Workstead designs architecture, interiors, lighting, and furniture from a storefront office in Red Hook, where you can get a sense of the kind of work they do: their style is modern, richly textured, and finely balanced between the natural and the artificial. (“We create a sense of place for both the objects they contain and the people that experience them,” according to the website.) But it also reflects the personal style of their customers. “We enjoy working with clients that have a passion for the way they live, and a keen understanding of their own sensibility,” Robert Highsmith, co-founder with Stefanie Brechbuehler, tells us. “We believe that the best projects come from a confident sense of collaboration. 317 Van Brunt Street, workstead.com
13.
JORDAN COLON: LOCAL FOOD, LOCAL POTTERY
Not only does Jordan Colon make wonderful, nothing-but-local food at his restaurant EAT, in Greenpoint, he’s actually gone all the way with the locally sourced philosophy and started making pottery upon which to serve it. Along with his girlfriend, Arla Bascon, Colon’s been firing plates and bowls in a basement kiln, and has shown a real talent for throwing pots (no, not that kind of throwing pots), making rough, elegant vessels that echo the simple, delicious food he serves. The only logical next step will see Colon building the restaurant’s tables and chairs from the woodlot he manages out back (and we’re only half kidding on that one). 124 Meserole Avenue
14.
FROM ORTHODONTICS TO JEWELRY
Under the name Lady Grey, Jill Martinelli and Sabine Le Guyader have been designing jewelry since 2007 out of a studio in East Williamsburg for celebrities like Beyonce, Rihanna, and MGMT. “We can tell others so much about ourselves just by the jewelry we choose to wear,” Martinelli tells us. “Throughout history, we have defined our social status, interests, and religious affiliations by what we choose to ornament our bodies with.” When someone chooses to ornament their body with Lady Grey designs, they opt for angular and unusual geometric shapes, usually made from metal. “As teenagers, we both worked in orthodontics and dentistry and that is where the ‘metal seed’ was planted,” Martinelli explains. “The techniques and tools involved in those fields are very similar to those of a jeweler, so metalsmithing came very naturally for both of us. ladygreyjewelry.com
15.
THE HOTTEST THING KNOWN TO HUMANKIND, NOW IN BROOKLYN
Jay Sheldon tasted his first Bhut Jolokia, also called the Ghost Pepper, in Kansas City. When he moved to Brooklyn after grad school to further his career as an artist, he also started up Bhut Pepper, which shares with the world this hottest pepper known to man, producing here at home dried chilis, crushed chilis, powdered chilis and packets of spicy candy. “When I discovered the Ghost chili I was so drawn to the strange attributes and taste of this uniquely shaped pepper,” he tells us. “This little fiery fruit encompasses the values which I look for when I create art or select materials. It’s definitely a source of inspiration.”
16.
MOGADOR COMES TO WILLIAMSBURG
We actually shrieked with glee when we first learned that East Village institution Café Mogador was opening an outpost in Williamsburg, a neighborhood that’s long been in need of higher-end, sit-down Moroccan food. Mogador’s French-inflected fare, taking cues from the Levant, the souk and the bistro, will be a wonderful oasis amid a desert of new American comfort food (which, we love, but still…). Here’s hoping their world-class brunch also makes the trip across the river. Latest word has the doors opening before Christmas, so here’s hoping. (Pictured: Grilled lamb over rice and vegetables.) 133 Wythe Avenue, Williamsburg
17.
THE (L)IT GIRL OF CROWN HEIGHTS
In March 2009, Penina Roth put together a reading at a new bar called Franklin Park in Crown Heights, where she’d lived for about ten years, featuring three of her close friends. “I thought it would just be a fun night for locals and my writer friends,” she told us. “But Franklin Park’s owners were impressed by the turnout—we had about 60 people—and the drink sales, so they asked me to turn it into a monthly event.” Roth (who, improbably—at least for the world of Brooklyn hipster lit—is an Orthodox Jew) broadened the author pool to include friends of friends (of friends); she promoted it with fliers around Crown Heights and surrounding neighborhoods, on internet message boards and blogs. “By our first anniversary,” she told us, “we were drawing people from all over the city who were interested in our lineups and didn’t mind traveling out to one of Brooklyn’s less glamorous neighborhoods.” Today, the monthly Franklin Park Reading Series is the borough’s premiere literary event, each month drawing big names (alumni include Colson Whitehead, Jennifer Egan, Rick Moody and Mary Gaitskill) as well as local authors (like Helen Phillips, Amy Sohn, Emma Straub and David Goodwillie) to read before crowds of 150 or more. “Writers appreciate our audience’s enthusiasm,” Roth told us. Second Mondays at Franklin Park, 618 St. John’s Place
18.
UZI: FASHION THAT’S NOT JUST FOR SKINNY WHITE GIRLS
David Ball and Mari Gustafson founded their fashion company, UZI, in Denver in 1995, but decamped for New York four years later. They “had made $10,000, which was a lot of money for Denver,” Ball told us, “but very little money here.” They bounced around offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn for years, but “each time we got priced out or they tore down the building.” Until they got to Sunset Park, that is. “Commercial space is reasonable and stabilized down here. North Brooklyn is dominated by real estate speculators that won’t guarantee more than a one-year lease, and you need a longer lease to grow your business.” They’re happy to be in Brooklyn, though. “Paris can keep haute couture and Manhattan can have its mall-ified Fifth Avenue,” Ball told us. “Brooklyn has a much more diverse mix of cultures. Fashion should be seen as more than skinny white girls in peeptoed platform boots.” uzinyc.com
19.
OVEREAT AT TGE CHINESE NEW YEAR’S PARADE IN SUNSET PARK
Brooklyn’s Chinatown too often takes a backseat to its more ballyhooed counterparts in Queens and Manhattan—but it shouldn’t. Even if you haven’t spent much time on the Eighth Avenue strip, the Chinese New Year Parade is as good a time as any to get to know your borough’s Little Beijing. This coming year (the Year of the Dragon!) the New Year falls on Monday, January 23rd, and though there’s no date yet announced for the parade, it will likely fall on the Sunday prior. Allow us to recommend the following spots along the route (between 50th and 60th streets) for stuffing your face with delicious (warming!) food.
Than Da II for any of their world-class banh mi.
(5624 Eighth Ave.)
Pacificana for classic dim sum.
(813 55th St.)
A Brooklyn outpost of the iconic Flushing noodle house, the hand-pulled house specialty at Lanzhou is amazing.
(5924 Eighth Ave.)
It’ll probably be pretty cold, so you’ll want to warm up with some noodle soup at Yun Nan Flavor Snack.
(774 49th St.)
20.
FASHION AND FOOD ARE A FEW OF OUR FAVORITE THINGS
“Well, when we were discussing what this site was about, we kept going back to the term ‘homemaker’—traditionally this was used to describe a woman who didn’t work outside the home, and therefore connotes husband/children/house but really, it applies to anyone trying to make a home. The homemaker phase starts before all that—and doesn’t preclude having a career at the same time—so we’re trying to shift the focus to those women, who may not have been considered homemakers before but definitely are.
“These new homemakers are different in their claim on the title; essentially, we’re recognizing that homemakers also include the ladies—and gentlemen!—who aren’t yet married or having children and who do indeed have a job outside the home, but are just as interested in building and maintaining a wonderful, satisfying home life.”
