A touch of Flavorpaper goes a long way. Photo via Brooklyn Based

Maybe you’re staring at your wall watching the water stains your landlord refuses to fix and wondering if you can Dumpster dive enough cans of similar looking paint to cover it all up. Fancier fixes for your home decor problem — like, actually covering the wall with an attractive, matching pattern — probably fall down the priority list below making sure your rent gets paid. Here’s your chance to win a free installation of the same wallpaper that adorns Lenny Kravitz’s home and Steve Madden stores: Our friends at Brooklyn Based are teaming with The Sweeten to giveaway about $1,000 worth of paper and installation from boutique Brooklyn shop Flavor Paper. Contest ends Aug. 2, so find out how to enter here and you could have a whole new room before you know it.

Let's take you out to the ball game

Look for ways to do good in Brooklyn and you’ll feel like you’re at Smorgasburg with five bucks in-hand: So much choice, such meager resources. But what if someone came to you and said “Here, take these food tickets, have a ball. And, oh yeah, you’ll also be helping out 35,000 needy Brooklyn folks”? That’s sort of what we’re offering here: Brokelyn’s teaming up with CAMBA, one of BK’s largest nonprofits, to give away two pairs of Cyclones fun packs (including tickets, a Cyclones cap, hot dog, chips and drink) for a CAMBA benefit/Brooklyn Cyclones game July 28. It’ll be a night to raise funds and awareness for CAMBA’s programs and services around Brooklyn —and this organization’s benevolent tentacles reach all over the place. (more…)

The scene at 2010's Summer Soiree, via Vogue.com

Prospect Park keeps you fatted with a buffet of all-you-can-eat free summer goodness, from concerts to plays to all sorts of frisbee-rific, grill-enabled (and soon wifi-enabled) open spaces. Usually, you have to be an elite type New Yorker (read: Bloomberg) who can fork over donations — and an $85 entrance fee — to attend the Galactic Star Groove Summer Soiree on July 21, an annual love fest at the Audubon Center and Boat House flush with cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, electric boat rides and more. But this year, thanks to our new friends at Google, you can go too! We have five pairs of tickets to giveaway to what will surely be the swankiest party you’ll attend in the park all year that doesn’t involve hiding your Sixpoint cans from Park patrol. Read on: (more…)

How fabulous is Kate Payne, author of the Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking, a blog and now a book? Yesterday the thoroughly modern housemistress invited us to the Brooklyn Flea in Williamsburg (gorgeous, btw), handed us $25 and told us to buy the grooviest home item we could find. The only catch: four other bloggers would be doing the same, and our merch would be judged against theirs in an online contest on Kate’s blog. The purchases have been logged and photographed, Kate’s blog post is up, and it’s a tight race. These other gals found some good stuff. But we’re in this here Broketucky Derby to win it, people. We’re not going to ask for your vote. We’re going to BEG for it. For the love of G-d, PLEASE pick number 3. Vote in the comments. Thank you.

cheer up, pup. You're internet famous!

Endless car alarms,  screeching sirens, sidewalks covered in dog waste and the terrifying pack of just-released-from-school teenagers on the subway: these are among the more unpleasant aspects of living in New York City. But what is one to do? Blog about it, naturally. Brooklynite Jenny McCoy has taken up the cause of documenting dogs excusing themselves on sidewalks, and the owners who watch it happen, on her Tumblr, Dogs Shitting on Sidewalks. And now McCoy — whose unrelated day job is tweeting for @MTVnews — wants your help to document the doodie: any photo submitted to the site before April 30 will be entered to win $50 in cash. Send submission to jennylmccoy@gmail.com with cross streets and borough, but watch where you step.

A few weeks back, OK, practically a month ago, we invited readers to submit their best pictures of sidewalk detritus bared by the Great Brooklyn Thaw. (The contest was inspired by our own sighting of a dead rat, an inflated condom and a crumpled hemorrhoid-cream tube, all in one block.) You came, you shot, you sent pics — of dead birds, hypodermic needles, umbrella graveyards, a soundboard thingy, a purple marital aid, and much much more. From this bounty of urban grotesquery comes not a single victor, but a veritable minyan of them. A limited edition Brokelyn t-shirt to all who entered. (You’ll be contacted via Flickr.) Thanks!

Spring is in the air, and crumpled tubes of hemorrhoid cream are on the sidewalks. Yesterday, we spotted this one amid the melting slush on Pacific Street, within 20 feet of a dead rat resting his head on a diaper, a used condom swollen into a balloon by its gasified contents and a trail of defrosting dog poop. The snow is gone, at least for a few days, and two months’ of trash-bag spillage is emerging from its wintry slumber. What unsightly or perhaps even beautiful horrors hath the Great Thaw of 2011 wrought on your block? Submit photos to our new Brokelyn Flickr pool by, oh, March 1. We’ll run good ones in the blog and pick a winner. The prize? Something fun. Condom after the jump, dead rat here (warning: graphic). (more…)

Just say no to Santa, Nancy! You can do better

You probably know the drill by now with the well-established recurring BK Hookup parties at the Bell House, but here’s a quick study guide just in case: It’s a cheap night at a great bar with good music and lasciviously discounted drinks. And the best part: EVERYONE IS THERE FOR THE SAME REASON (hooking up). So, you know, the odds are on your side. Several people we know have done quite well at past events, to the point of making out on the dance floor, though none as well as this awwdorable couple who met at last year’s Naughty Office Holiday Party, fell in lurve and got married. FiPS and Eaters Digest NYC are back again this year with another night of holiday-fueled singles mixing Wednesday night, and Brokelyn has some tickets to give away. Here’s how to win: (more…)

Six, the beer-swilling donkey, design by Erik Zimmermann

Pop in that Bob Ross tape, crack open a cold one and get inspired. Sixpoint Craft Ales is calling graphic designers, illustrators and any schmo with open-source Photoshop to design the company a great new poster for its Red Hook brewery (apparently, animal puns are encouraged). The top three designs, chosen by popular vote, will be rewarded with a care package of rare homebrews, t-shirts and some tasty edible from the brewery’s resident master chef. And, of course, your design could soon grace the brewery walls. (more…)

Sky, one of April's Eye Candy For Strangers winners.

Come on, you know you’re visually stimulating. If you’ve got mad video-making skillz, here’s your shot to get them seen. Brooklyn Bowl and Vimeo are accepting videos for the upcoming Eye Candy For Strangers, the third such showcase event where the most visually-wowing home-made videos (“visual stimuli”) will get shown under the musical stylings of some of BK Bowl’s very special big-name guests. If chosen, your video will play on Jul. 29 on all of the venue’s gigantic HD projection screens, to a live show by BLOCKHEAD and the DVJ’d tunes of Psyberpixie. And it’s not a one-time deal—your eye candy will be kept around to play at future events too. (more…)