This is way better than School of Rock; over in Mr. R's class in Brooklyn, the little ones are becoming luthiers. Mr. R, Paul Rubenstein, works for Working Playground and teaches high school and middle school kids how to make electric guitars and amplifiers, a program he started 5 years ago. He tells us:"We make them entirely from scratch (except for the tuning machines) including the pickups. It has just grown since then... now we......

Wine bars are popping up all over town these days, and diners are also gravitating toward food made with local ingredients, so it makes sense that the next wave in the vino trend will be local wineries. Though a Staten Island vineyard is in the works, and the centuries-old Queens County Farm plans to sell wine from its vineyard this fall, the new urban wineries have to make do with grapes from Long Island or......

Photographs of Senator McCain at Verrazano Pizzeria by Mary Altaffer/AP Senator John McCain headed visited New York today. He stopped off to appear on The View in Manhattan and discussed a homeowner aid plan in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. And while in Bay Ridge, he went to Verrazano Pizza on 4th Avenue and 91st Street and bought a $3 slice of pepperoni pizza. He told the counter worker to keep the change from a $20,......

A pair of students at Mark Twain JHS School 239 for the Gifted and Talented in Brooklyn were a little too enterprising for their own good. They were "hauled out of class yesterday after trying to peddle a homemade chemical bomb." While the school will discipline them, they were arrested and charged with conspiracy. The two 13-year-olds (honors students!) were telling a third friend about a Youtube video (of course) of a homemade bomb made......

Forget about street furniture -- as far as sidewalk finds go, finding a metal wheel is the new finding a mid-century armchair! Restless spotted this gem in Greenpoint and reports that it's gone unclaimed for months. It's likely too heavy to throw over ones shoulder, but apparently metal is the hot commodity of sidewalk scavenging these days (he reports that people are often seen "walking from Long Island City across the Pulaski Bridge early......

At last, a gold-encrusted dessert fit for a working class budget. Unlike the $26 pancakes or the $25,000 frrrozen haute chocolate, these little sweets still have a single-digit price tag. They used to be called Tweenkees, but Brooklynite and organic culinary creator Sarah Magid has changed the name to: The Goldies. Magid tells us they're made from "organic dark chocolate sponge cake filled with organic vanillla or espresso whipped buttercream, then covered in organic......

A four-time State Assembly member representing East New York in Brooklyn was convicted of third-degree bribe-receiving and official misconduct yesterday. When a developer was interested in acquiring city land back in 2004 and 2005, Assemblywoman Diane Gordon asked for a home in a Queens gated community, worth $500,000. When the Brooklyn DA's office discovered evidence of bribe taking, they offered her a deal that would have let her off if she quit. But she ran......

Photo courtesy New York Shitty. Congestion pricing is toast, and so is Bloomberg’s “legacy,” so let’s start talking about the city’s next mayor. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz says he’s not yet made up his mind about running, but, judging from this peculiar photo, eliminating mayoral term limits must be at the top of his agenda. Or is "Marty for Life" just an innocent campaign slogan? If so, it’s a lot catchier than the one......

Yesterday Jonathan Butler unleashed the Brooklyn Flea upon the borough, and even Marty Markowitz showed up (perhaps to find replacement placemats for his wife?). Butler tells us that "While we could have asked for better weather, we couldn't have asked for a better turnout or better vibes from all the visitors and vendors." Those good "vibes" radiated out towards the local establishments as well, Andrew Tarlow tells us his Fort Greene Bonita fared well yesterday:......

Few residents of Park Slope, Brooklyn are probably aware that they share their neighborhood with a firearms company that has operated in the borough for almost a century. The Henry Repeating Arms Co. is garnering some unwelcome attention this week, however, after it was revealed that the company shipped four of its lever-action rifles with live rounds inside. The company produces around 100,000 rifles annually. The incident where loaded weapons were shipped has to do......

During a conference call with investors yesterday, Forest City Enterprises CEO Charles Ratner acknowledged that a window of opportunity had all but closed for the ambitious, 22-acre housing, retail and stadium project proposed for Brooklyn. But he also insisted that the delay – brought on by recession and dogged opposition from community groups – was just temporary: The economy sometimes alters the timeline, but we have demonstrated our ability to see these projects through to......

Yesterday morning a painted swastika was found at 800 Bedford Avenue (between Park and Flushing) in Williamsburg, it was one of five that were discovered on that block, and one of many discovered in recent weeks. The Yeshiva World notes that the last known incident involving swastikas in Williamsburg occurred just this past week, an hour prior to a similar incident in Crown Heights. Independent of that, we received notice of two other swastikas found......

A tragic scene unfolded in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn yesterday morning. A man fatally stabbed his wife and then a friend in their apartment. The Daily News points out these are the 9th and 10th murders "in southern Brooklyn since March 20." It's unclear what provoked Angel Valentin to attack. The News suggests he and friend Wilfredo Suarez had been fighting, and wife Iris Cuadrado had been breaking up the fight. The Post reports Cuadrado had......

The menu at Frankies 457 Spuntino reads like a gourmet marketplace, and placing an order amounts to trusting the chef to choose an antipasto plate full of cheeses and meats of superior quality. Lists of vegetables like broccoli raab and cremini mushrooms--usually compliments to a pasta or a meat dish--can stand alone on a plate, with sauces soaked up by the perfectly crusty bread from Grandaisy Bakery. On a recent rainy Wednesday night, the......

The daughter of Alistair Cooke testified against a man accused of taking the late broadcaster's body to be harvested for organs and bones. The Rev. Susan Cooke Kittredge said her father "would have been against" donating his body to others, "He didn't like the idea of being cut up." The other thing is that Cooke died of lung cancer which had spread to his bones, and the FDA prohibits the use of cancerous bones and......

Dating and eating converge in a new Brooklyn-based program called the Feed Me Show...and it looks like the producers need some Brooklyn singles to heat things up in their kitchen:We're looking for a few attractive Brooklyn singles who have it where it counts -- in the kitchen. No acting experience necessary, but you must have an exhibitionistic streak, cause we're going to get up close and personal on video, in a series that hits the......

A mother of three young children was fatally shot when she stopped by a makeshift shrine for a rapper who was killed last week. Police say 27-year-old Nancy Williams was hit by apparently random gunfire behind the Stuyvesant Garden Houses on Gates Avenue. Fans of rapper Leval Lyde had gathered to remember him a week four days after he was gunned down on Clinton and Fulton Avenues. A cop explained to the Post, "They were......

A Red Hook man is hospitalized with serious stab wounds after his wife was found strangled to death in their Brooklyn home. It's a domestic abuse case that reportedly tilts in the opposite direction of most. Patrick Sculley (aged 60) and his wife (aged 50) had what neighbors described as a combative marriage, with frequent public fights. Neighbors told WNBC News that they saw Pamela hit her husband repeatedly with a baseball bat and kick......

Photograph of the fire truck donated to Ladder 101 by Triborough on Flickr Members of a marching band from South Carolina were still years from entering high school when the attacks of 9/11/01 occurred, but the band arrived in New York City this week to visit a Red Hook Engine and Ladder Company that received a replacement truck in 2002 purchased with funds raised by White Knoll Middle School students and the residents of......

As the creative class has grown in Brooklyn, it has been equally growing in the East Bay area of San Francisco. The NY Times is reporting on a bi-coastal trend that has Brooklynites flocking to the Bay Area, and vice versa, as both of the locales appeal to the DIY generation of freelancers. But what's this, SFers are calling their East Coast doppelgänger ugly? One Facebook employee residing on the sunny side of the......

Students were confined to classrooms until the end of the school day yesterday afternoon after a student was badly injured in a stabbing just after noon. Police swarmed through Paul Robeson High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, looking for a student suspected in the stabbing of 18-year-old Kyle Owens, who was wounded in the neck and the chest with an unidentified weapon. Teacher and basketball coach Todd Myles helped save Owens' life by coming to his immediate......

Yesterday, the Gothamist Newsmap noted there was a "suspicious package" at the Flatbush & 7th Avenue subway station in Brooklyn. It now turns out it was a backpack that started to smoke, by way of a science project. The Daily News reports Gregory Kats, New York City College of Technology computer engineering student, was headed home to Sheepshead Bay on the B train when "white smoke began spiraling out of his backpack." A device he......

The Observer, keeping with their trend-watching, is reporting that 20-somethings are moving back in with their parents after college...that is, if the parents own prime New York real estate (aka: Brownstone Boomers). Didn't we all see this coming with The Royal Tenenbaums? One Carroll Gardens family, the Eisenbergs, have seen their three daughters return for varying amounts of time -- they are, of course, just one small section of a new generation of kids returning......

The endless debate over how to classify hipsters has been tearing this city apart for years, pitting brother against scenester, native New Yorker against arriviste, trust funder against squatter, even self-hating hipster against himself. So it's important for everyone to step back a bit and acknowledge that while we may never agree on a singular definition for hipster, like Supreme Court judges watching porn, we know it when we see it. Sure, the word hipster......

Leval Lyde, a 36-year-old Brooklyn rapper who went by the street name "Kevlar," was gunned down yesterday on the corner of Clinton Ave. and Fulton St. in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. Lyde was shot just before 5 p.m. on the street corner and declared dead on arrival at Brooklyn Hospital. Lyde had just exited Fish & Crustaceans Quality Seafood and was walking with his sandwich towards the maroon Jaguar (owned by the mother......

This month many have been fooled into thinking this house, which is in Toronto, was actually in Brooklyn, NY. While the tiny abode is nowhere near any of the five boroughs, there are some little residential gems amongst us (albeit still bigger than most city apartments). liQcity points out "The smallest house in Long Island City" on Courthouse Sq, Hunters Point (pictured), and in the past we've seen a tiny houseboat in the Bronx, the......

Barack Obama has popped up in the form of street art in Brooklyn, and AAVR Magazine points out the Grattan Street mural near the Morgan L stop. That's part of his More Perfect Union speech in the background, and yes, it looks a little bit more like Fred Armisen's Fauxbama than the real thing. Less detailed Obama murals can be found on Carlton Avenue at Dean Street in Prospect Heights (photos here and here). How......

Maggie Brown, the Myrtle Avenue comfort-food spot on the border between Clinton Hill and Ft. Greene, has become a popular attraction for nearby Pratt students and locals who pack the summer garden to sip spiked frozen lemonade. While better known for their fried chicken and ribs, we braved Maggie Brown on a busy Sunday morning, hanging in there for a 45 minute wait which climaxed with our party of five crammed into a table......

For those who can't decide between the suburban and the urban lifestyle, there's a simple solution: build a vinyl-sided house on the top of an old Brooklyn apartment building (which is way better than a trailer on Willoughby Avenue). This gem has been around for a while and is just East of Bedford on the southside of Williamsburg. While its residents most likely enjoy unobstructed city views from their rooftop abode, according to a Google......

A day of celebration for many in the area brought tragedy to the families of four babies on Easter Sunday - one in Staten Island and three in Brooklyn. While police do not suspect any wrongdoing in the Brooklyn cases, they are questioning the parents of 7-week-old Matthew Mason in Staten Island. Matthew was found unresponsive by his uncle and was reportedly two pounds lighter than his birth weight. In Brooklyn, 4-month-old Summer Pinckney was......