Duane Reads! An example of how to not suck at corporate Twitter.

We’re suckers for rooting for the little guy, even if, in this case, the little guy is a ubiquitous chain David taking on an even more suffocatingly ubiquitous Goliath. Local, mostly beloved, sometimes begrudged, 40-year-old drug store Duane Reade overtook Walmart in the number of Twitter followers on Monday, 321,009 to 312,026. What does this mean!?! Probably nothing much, other than it’s a nice stick in the eye to the hyperglobalmega retailer, which still continues to be thwarted in its efforts to get a gun-peddling toe in any of the five boroughs. The company can take some pride in this, as Walmart has thousands of stores nation-wide, while Duane Reade has fewer than 300 stores in just the NYC area. But the news also gives us a lesson for companies that we can call How Not to Suck At Social Media. (more…)

Beacon’s Closet: Friendly people, but I can help myself just fine, thank you. Via WSJ.

This is going to sound like the first world-iest of first world problems, but it is a real thing that has been on my mind when doing shopping, and something that would fall under the purview of the Broke Ethicist, if we had one. I was shopping in a thrift store in Atlanta recently (in which the relatively minimal prices mark the only place where Atlanta trumps Brooklyn), minding my own business and going through the sort of slash-and-burn, try-on-and-discard method that I have fine tuned over a decade of thrift shopping mastery.

This is partly due to my desire to be left alone in my shopping bubble, because I know what I like and I like what I want, and no one else, not salesperson nor family member nor Thrillist listing, has ever been able to accurate predict it. I decided on a ringer tee from Stone Mountain, chosen not only for its dirty retro 80s summer-camp aesthetic, but also for as a souvenir from the town in which both my friend I was staying with worked and from where Kenneth Parcell came. When I got to the register, the cashier asked, “Was anyone helping you today?” The real answer was “no,” but I looked around at the cute girl who smiled at me before and pointed, “her there, with the bangs.” As such, bangs girl got some commission from the sale. But she didn’t really help me at all. Was I ethically wrong to do this? (more…)

Are the president’s naps more important than yours?

Watching the State of the Union last night while playing your Poland Spring drinking game, you noticed the prez up the ante on minimum wage, proposing to hike it to $9 an hour, which is even more than New York’s Gov. Cuomo was seeking, which is kinda nice when you consider how many laid off professionals end up doing crap jobs for vomit pay these days. And there was talk about overall economic stability, and increasing American output by stealing Apple jobs from struggling Taiwanese workers. But where was the real talk of progressive reform that our nation’s overburdened and overloaded workers are demanding? We’re talking the third rail of office politics: Naps. Naps, not apps! What do we want? “A place to lie down for a few minutes!” When do we want it? ”Sometime around 2:30 would be great!”

We need them, now more than ever, as described in this New York Times story from last week about how relaxation increases productivity. And part of that relaxation is, of course, the simple nap, which does so very much for us, says Science: (more…)

The long-awaited 2013  Brokelyn Beer Book is on sale today, just in time for Valentine’s day. For just $30, you get this gorgeous, pocket-sized, completely portable coupon book (designed by the talented folks at The Heads of State) containing coupons for 30 free beers at 30 bars. And not just any bars: The Brokelyn elves have spent the past few months curating the best beer bars in town. But wait, there’s more! This year, we offer not one, but TWO books to choose from, each containing 30 different amazing bars! What?! It’s true! See the breakdown below, but don’t dawdle in buying your beer book today, because these puppies will be snatched up before you can say, Bartender, I’ll have another! (more…)

Wait till they find out about Regretsy.

Remember Paul Ryan? He was that child actor the Republicans hired to try to run in between Barack Obama’s legs while he was carrying pork to the socialist BBQ, only to watch him suplexed by Joe Biden and fade away. Until this week, when Obama’s inaugural speech reminded us of Ryan’s oft-repeated “takers vs. makers” catch phrase. Jon Stewart on Wednesday used that as a chance to take a swipe at the most notorious “makers” in the world: Brooklyn-based Etsy. See the clip below: (more…)

Ladies clamored for the limited dude selection at the BK Meat Up in 2009. Photo by Mark Sullivan Bernal.

Not to be a Dennis Downer, but it probably sucks to be a single lady in New York City, especially of the attractive, driven, smart type, which, last I checked, is like 85 percent of yous. You outnumber dudes, so you are forced to hit on whatever human mackerel you find swimming around at Lucky Dog or whathaveyou. Not to mention that Adam, once he went all stalkery and creepo, instantly became the most realistic character on Girls. I have seen that inky stare of desperation across too many faces, even including one that was being dragged away by the cops in practically the same situation (LEAVE MY LIFE OUT OF THIS, LENA). A lot of you make more money than us and are willing to pick up the check, yet still my lady friends can’t seem to find even a simple winter’s bone.

But the sad truth is that we, the dudes of Brooklyn, the broliteriate, if you will, are apparently not helping the situation at all. I present exhibits A through Z: Every single time there’s some sort of singles event/date-off/sexy party, the place is overflowing with ladies, and not just any ladies, but babes, cute girls with food blogs, light brown hair and quirky skirts or tall ones with stylish glasses and a hopeful smile who can’t help but bite the side of their lip out of nervousness. Take, for example, the Literary Speed Dating our friend Jo Firestone is hosting at Housing Works on the day before Valentine’s day. She’s got binders full of women, and practically no men, so much so that there is now a freaking discount for straight guys. What gives, bros?  (more…)

I don’t want to wait in vain for your train. Via Flickr’s drain.

If you’ve ever ridden San Francisco’s meager but clean and efficient version of the subway the BART, you would think those Bay-Area-ians (Bay-guls?) have some sort of sixth sense when it comes to pre-walking to where the subway doors open, as they all form an orderly line on the exact right spot. Then you realize the damn floor is marked for the doors, which is cheating. We have no such thing in New York though, where everything is chaotic and unpredictable and dangerous! Or is it? There’s an easy subway hack hidden in this New Yorker story about the Norwegian architecture firm redesigning Times Square that lets you know exactly where the doors are going to open. The secret? Gum. (more…)

Oven, the time of cholera.

Sometimes those things happen in your apartment and you’re like, “Well, that’s future Tim’s problem.” Like when someone decided to install a spice rack tenuously perched shelf of spices above the stove, leading to an almost weekly incidence of fumbling something that drops down into the inky abyss between stove and wall, not to mention all the spills thrills and chills that come with the kind of extreme, splatter-prone cooking we practice. But then! All the rodents of Brooklyn decide to gentrify your apartment at once and suddenly Future Tim is Present Tim and you’ve got to clean it all out to try to cut down these cheap eats so attractive to critters. And so, we excavate. (more…)

The world has flipped and left us here.

Did New York get all cattywampus overnight? In the past 24 hours, Gov. Cuomo said he wants to legalize pot, Joe Biden is actually talking about doing something with the guns, Arrested Development is even closer to coming back, and now a judge blocked a restaurant from opening in Manhattan because it was … overpriced foodie bullshit??!

According to this item tucked in today’s NY Post, the judge said the proposed Chef Driven Market for the edge of Union Square Park and its $18 brunches would not serve the humble park-going masses. And if you ever doubted the effects of Occupy Wall Street, put this quote into your eye holes: (more…)

“Whew, thank god they already have a Brooklyn Industries here.”

There are no jobs in this country any more, and probably not planet Earth at all, because according to this chart, all you struggling actors are in just as crappy a lot as all the unemployed mobile home installers and game cage workers in America. So what to do about it? To paraphrase President Bush: “M-A-R-S bitches.”

That’s right: Mars One, the Netherlands-based group looking to set up a human colony on Mars in 10 years, yesterday released application criteria for those wanting to join the ranks of the first people to step foot on the planet. The criteria are surprisingly easy to meet. And the best (worst?) part: the citizens of earth get to vote on who makes the final cut to the go to the red planet, like some sort of horrible hybrid of American Idol and Prometheus. (more…)