Party Like It’s 1897, Bitches!

Oh my god, they’re actually baking their own bread:

Brooklyn, fiercely proud of its independence from Manhattan, is an expanding frontier for the Do It Yourself movement — resourceful residents are baking bread, raising chickens for eggs, keeping bees for honey or simply renovating brownstones themselves.

Economic Slumpwatch: College-Educated Brooklynites Resembling Hillbillies

Making bathtub hooch:

Lance is not a hillbilly. He’s a quiet-natured young professor at a local college. Rousseau, Diderot, Hume, and Kant inhabit his bookshelves. Predictably, he’s erudite on even the topic of moonshine, explaining that Brooklyn hooch differs from that produced in, say, Tennessee because the mineral content of the water used for distilling alters the spirit’s flavor.

Lance isn’t the only local expert. New York City moonshiners are giving the spirit a new identity. Today’s urban moonshiners are sophisticated. But some of their palaver still has that country flavor. Take Tim. He describes his moonshine as “slightly sweet” with a “vanilla nose” and “a light taste of corn.” His final verdict is as country as cornpone: “It’s pretty smooth going down, but then you get a sunburn from the inside out.”

Sure, The Vestigial Office Of The Borough President Might Soak Up Precious Municipal Resources . . .

. . . but it also serves as a creative outlet for five of the most enthusiastic boosters in the city . . . is a useful stepping stone for higher office . . . produces official maps? . . . oh, and of course the best thing about the vestigial office of the borough president is that it provides plenty of good copy for those always entertaining beep-in-your-bonnet pieces in the New York Post:

They get chauffeured to the office, hobnob at community barbecues, attend ribbon cuttings and concerts, and — in the case of Brooklyn Beep Marty Markowitz yesterday — attend canine weddings.

Markowitz was actually supposed to officiate the nuptials of Jack, a puggle mix, and Penny, a miniature poodle, at a benefit for the Brooklyn Animal Foster Network in Prospect Park. But when he sniffed the media was around and might mock yet another of his pointless public appearances, he fled like a frightened poodle.

Do Not Pity The Poor Squirrel; Rather, Let An Alleged Band Of Homeless Poachers Eat Them And Rid The Park Of The Scourge (Pigeons, Too, Now That I Think About It)

This seems like a win-win sort of thing but whatever:

Cops have busted a group of oddball poachers in Prospect Park — a band of vagrants that was trapping and eating ducks, squirrels and pigeons.

. . .

“This is a dodgy group,” said [a park-goer], who spotted one of the men catching a pigeon while his friend started a fire. “They are the most threatening people in the park.”

The disheveled — and possibly homeless — tribe in question uses “makeshift” fishing poles and traps to catch the critters, then grills them over the fire, according to park watchdogs.

Plan First, Ask Questions About How To Pay For It Later

I’m surprised they even got this far:

A build Williamsburg’s largest waterfront park has stalled — perhaps permanently — because the city doesn’t have the cash to buy the land.

City officials dropped a bombshell on community leaders last Thursday, revealing that they had no money and no timetable to buy several private properties off Kent Avenue and N. 11th Street surrounding the 28-acre Bushwick Inlet site.

Infuriated community leaders accused Mayor Bloomberg of revoking the city’s long-standing agreement to build parks at the edge of the East River in exchange for rezoning most of the waterfront for luxury high-rises in 2005.

Maybe they should have just called it a “pilot project”.

Location Scout: Bushwick Inlet Park, Citistorage Records Center.