If you missed your chance last year to fly to Cali and compete on The Price is Right, you’ve probably been in a blue funk since, trying to find your own prices at the bottom of bourbon bottles. But now’s your chance to sober up and make Bob Barker proud by showing Drew Carey Todd Newton what for. The Price is Right Live! Vegas show is coming to White Plains on May 29th as part of its national tour. So this is the closes you might ever come to spinning the big wheel, and you might be able to spin it for free. (more…)
Carpingo is Brooklyn’s car sharing community. Cars by the hour or day, available 24/7.
Just a reminder folks….
We have teamed up with Carpingo to give one lucky reader a Friday-through-Monday car share and a $500 gift certificate* to the Inn at Lake Joseph, a beautiful upstate retreat near Forestburgh, New York. Finally you and your honey can flee the concrete jungle for grass, trees, and a body of water that isn’t the Gowanus Canal.
Carpingo is New York City’s only home-grown hourly car sharing company. Their service is easy – reserve a car online for when and where you need it, and it’ll be there. No lines, no paperwork, no office hours – just unlock and drive. Cars are available by the hour or the day, 24/7. Carpingo will even cover gas and insurance.
So get out of those pajamas and enter our contest by submitting your email below, and as usual – earn extra entries by following/liking/retweeting and referring friends! It’ll be the perfect way to usher in the warm weather and support a great new local business.
*Applicable to room rate only. Gratuity and taxes not included.
What’s better than drinking for free? Sex? Depends. A transcendent live music experience. Eh, take it or leave it. But opportunities to drink for nothing don’t just fall out of the trees. One did fall into our email box though. Williamsburg’s The Woods just got a new, possibly stuffed, possibly alive, fox, and they’re giving away a $500 bar tab to the person who can give it the best name. However, there’s a catch: you can only drink that $500 away during their weekday happy hours from 4-10. And you have less than a month to get through your tab. (more…)
The Gate 321 Fifth Ave. at 3rd St.
Park Slope
718-768-4329
What is it: Park Slope’s original ale house with a huge beer selection.
Why we love it: When you first enter the Gate you wonder where the bartenders went – turns out you couldn’t see them behind the row of beer taps. Their selection is enormous and they have a beer for any craving you may have, whether hoppy, light, malty, or stout. The bar is peopled by friendly locals and there’s almost always a pup or two sitting happily in the warm interior. When the weather’s nice, the porch is the place to be – if you can find a seat. (more…)
Maybe you’ve seen a too much Walking Dead. Maybe you’re one of those urban preppers with a bug-out bag in the closet. Or maybe you’re sensible and actually taking precautions for the obvious impending zombie apocalypse. Either way, you’re going to need to feed your fleeing body as the hordes of the undead ungentrify Brooklyn. Stockpiling Clif bars seems necessary, but at $1.50/bar, totally bank-breaking. And you know there won’t be any left at Trader Joe’s once the looting starts. So we’ve taken a stab at making our own homemade energy bars, or what we call Caloric Living-dead Invasion Food (CLIF) bars.
We searched around for an easy, no-bake option (who’s going to have an oven in the woods of the Adirondacks?) and found a great, flexible recipe over at Hammertown, which is where we’re headed when the plague comes. Let’s see if it’s worth it. You can uh, also make them for some quick energy while you go on hikes or ride your bike. (more…)
Carpingo is Brooklyn’s car sharing community. Cars by the hour or day, available 24/7.
Spring is almost here and you’ve totally missed all your chances to get out of the city: ski trips fell through; snow-shoeing plans cancelled for lack of snow; or maybe you find it impossible to get out of bed on the weekend before the sun sets at 4 p.m. We’ve got just the tonic for those hibernation blues: a weekend trip to the country!
We have teamed up with Carpingo to give one lucky reader a Friday-through-Monday car share and a $500 gift certificate* to the Inn at Lake Joseph, a beautiful upstate retreat near Forestburgh, New York. Finally you and your honey can flee the concrete jungle for grass, trees, and a body of water that isn’t the Gowanus Canal.
Carpingo is New York City’s only home-grown hourly car sharing company. Their service is easy – reserve a car online for when and where you need it, and it’ll be there. No lines, no paperwork, no office hours – just unlock and drive. Cars are available by the hour or the day, 24/7. Carpingo will even cover gas and insurance.
We know how it is. Sometimes you bought too many groceries at Trader Joe’s or have to move that kayak that’s been lying in your hallway since May. You just can’t do it without a car. But why bother with the hassle of alternate-side parking and mooching friends who “forget” to offer gas money? Sign up and you’ll not only get access to a car whenever you want, you’ll support a Brooklyn business that partners with great NYC organizations like Rooftop Films, St. Francis College Athletics, and Gotham Girls Roller Derby. With Carpingo, your money stays local even if you’re on the move.
So get out of those pajamas and enter our contest by submitting your email below, and as usual – earn extra entries by following/liking/retweeting and referring friends! It’ll be the perfect way to usher in the warm weather and support a great new business.
*Applicable to room rate only. Gratuity and taxes not included.
Brass Taxes was created to make taxes suck less for freelancers, artists, and other nice people.
You’ve made it to New York, you’ve learned the subways, suffered through the indignity of retail, and landed a few gigs as a writer/comic/barbershop quartet singer. You can finally say at parties (without a sense of dread that someone will ask for proof) “My day job is my dream job.” You’re a freelancer, finally. Shouldn’t you file taxes like one?
Rus at Brass Taxes thinks so. He started in New York as a freelance video editor, writer, and performer. To make ends meet, he took a job with a tax preparer and discovered a startling truth: there was a whole lot more that he could have been deducting as part of his freelance career. “I found out I had been short-changing myself; I had been living so tightly. I never went out and had an appetizer,” Rus says of his leaner days.
Rus started helping his freelance friends with their returns and realized he had a knack for it, as well as a unique perspective. “I’m an outsider in this business. I was a freelancer who learned taxes.” When it comes to filing returns, that empathy can amount to a lot of money for you.
Most professional tax planners won’t take the time to figure out everything you can deduct. “Our taxes are messy. I think the kind of taxes we have and the kind of people we are can be annoying to traditional tax planners,” Rus says. Instead of sighing and rolling his eyes when you show up with receipts for improv classes, Rus sits down with you and figures out all of your legitimate freelance expense deductions.
And it’s worth it. Instead of taking three-plus hours of your time and $100-plus for TurboTax, you give all your tax documents to Rus, talk about what you do, and, presto, he comes back with a fully-filed return and mucho bucks for you.
Even if you’re not making that much money freelancing now, you can still deduct lots of things on your road to self-sufficiency. Writing classes? Yep. Notebooks filled with sitcom ideas? No prob. Trips to the Met to improve your graphic design skills? You bet. Rus knows what will fly with the IRS and what won’t, so head on over to the Brass Taxes website and check out his process.
If you’re still wary of spending money on a tax preparer, we’re giving away one free tax prep with Rus, a $200 value! Opt in to Rus’s mailing list and you could have your 1099 woes swept away by a kindred freelance spirit. For more chances to win, follow Rus on Twitter, like him on Facebook, tell your friends, or retweet the contest. (Oh, and if you file your taxes with Rus now and win the contest later, he’ll refund your money.)
A seething bed of labor unrest that has nothing to do with PJ Carlesimo
Now that we are rounding the final corner of the winter of our discontent, let us celebrate John Steinbeck’s 111th birthday with a labor conflict at the Barclays Center. According to the New York Daily News, about 120 construction workers at the oft-maligned arena have found themselves in dubious battle with their union, SEIU 32BJ. They’re paid far less than their Madison Square Garden counterparts and are threatening to stop paying dues if that doesn’t change. (more…)
Join our email list