Brooklyn Pinup Girls
• Brooklyn:Get the borough man in your life a Brooklyn Girls calendar (right). But only if he likes white girls. [Trendy Nation via Sunset Parker]
• Chelsea: The Limelight is resurrected as retail space. So instead of a “drug supermarket,” it will just be an actual market. [NYP]
• Clinton Hill: Find all the bars, restaurants, and stores on this new neighborhood map. [Clinton Hill Blog]
• Coney Island: Will Big Apple Circus get a permanent performance space on the boardwalk? [Brooklyn Eagle via Gowanus Lounge]
• Fort Greene: If the weekend’s “Merry Gridlock” event protesting Atlantic Yards is any indication of the traffic from Atlantic Yards, we’re screwed. Good thing the vote is delayed till next year. [Dope on the Slope]
• Williamsburg: Ride your bike to the Bedford Avenue L station. With wider sidewalks and new bike racks, there will be plenty of room. [Streetsblog]
in other news
Feds to City: Get Moving
We are, apparently, in the money. Charlie Rangel hasn’t yet taken over the House Ways and Means Committee, and yet already New York is getting the means to improve our ways. Today’s papers report that the U.S. Department of Transportation has given final approval to some $2.6 billion in funding for two major New York transit projects. The Second Avenue subway — pardon us, the T line — will get $693 million of federal money. (Does this mean freelance writer Jane Everhart will get to keep her apartment?) And the East Side Access project, which will linking the LIRR to Grand Central will get $2.6 billion from the Feds, the most money ever earmarked to a mass-transit project. It’s weird: It’s almost like Washington wants to stay on our good side or something.
Long Planned, Transit Projects Get U.S. Help [NYT]
in other news
If You Spun It, Here’s How It Would Have Happened
Now that we know Judith Regan was fired from HarperCollins over a volley of anti-Semitic remarks, it strikes us that with the recent bumper crop of Great Moments in Racism — Michael Richards–gate, Rosie-gate, Mel Gibson Über alles — our culture has found a new cottage industry: Awesome excuses for Great Moments in Racism. And nearly all of them have shown up already in the Regan affair. After the jump, a cheat sheet for spinning your next ching chong.
in other news
White House Movie of the Week
Here’s the photo that ran in today’s Times of the newly refurbished White House Situation Room. Although still not as sleek and/or oppressive as its many Hollywood avatars, from 24 to Strangelove’s War Room, at least now it has LCD flat screens, better sound isolation, fiber-optic ca — wait a second. Who’s on that screen on the right? It sure doesn’t look like Tony Blair or Pervez Musharraf or Dick Cheney. Is it … could it be … yup, a quick canvass of our filmic colleagues provides a consensus: It’s Nicolas Cage. Note the thoughtful chin-gripping action — so intense. The scene, then, is one of the earlier sequences from Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center. (“God, I do hope it’s Con Air,” said New York film editor Logan Hill, before conceding it’s not.) We’re, of course, shocked that the White House would play a movie about 9/11 while showing off the new Situation Room. But ever better is this: The DVD just came out last week.
Overhaul Moves White House Data Center Into Modern Era [NYT]
in other news
Breaking: Jailing People for Speaking Out May Be IllegalA Manhattan federal jury has confirmed something you probably knew all along: It seems throwing political protesters in the slammer, instead of writing them a ticket, kinda sorta interferes with the First Amendment. The NYPD’s lock-’em-up policy, born amid the paranoia of 2001, was short-lived (it’s already off the books) and resulted in about 30 arrests, which now may mean 30 settlements for NYPD to cough up. The biggest mistake the boys in blue apparently made was committing the policy to the books in the first place: Nothing leaves a paper trail like, well, paper. The demonstrators’ side alleged that the practice had existed for years as an unwritten rule — ever since the 1999 Amadou Diallo shooting and the spate of rallies it occasioned. Lacking concrete proof, the jury didn’t buy it; if it had, the city would be looking at about 350 more settlements. Darned First Amendment.
Jury Rules Against NYPD’s Rally Lockups [NYDN]
office-party patrol
Eating — and Eating! — With the ‘Daily News’; Drinking and Dancing With ‘Star’With less than a week left till Christmas, company-holiday-party season is nearing its end. But for a last few fabulous nights, it keeps going strong — and naturally crasher extraordinaire Julia Allison is there. Last night she hit the Daily News do at the Copa and the Star shindig at Dirty Disco. Which one had a face-painter? Which one had only caffeinated vodka? Julia’s reports await.