From today’s Featured Rental Steals: a 4BR apartment in Prospect Heights for $2,450. There was some commenter debate on a previous cheap apartments post on what actually is affordable in BK these days, but at just over $600 a bedroom, there’s not much to argue about here. Especially when you get:  (more…)

A lotta bread for not much dough at Baked in Brooklyn. Photo by Sarah Bibi.

If you’ve been walking around Greenwood Cemetery on Fifth Avenue, you may have noticed an overpowering bread smell wafting over the streets. Don’t worry, they haven’t started burying ciabattas near the graves of the Civil War soldiers; you’re smelling Baked in Brooklyn, a colossal new factory / storefront that takes up nearly all of the corner of 26^th Street and Fifth. What exactly is Baked in Brooklyn? We scoped it out over the weekend then did an FAQ-style interview with ourselves to fill you in on pertinent data points.

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Sunset Park or Portlandia?

Remember the Portlandia sketch about Hotel Deuce, the intransigently hip lodge where you get a turntable and typewriter with every room and the lobby has a full-service DJ? Sure, we like to laugh at those funny similarities we see  with Portland, but turn your gaze to this newly built boutique spot in Sunset Park called Hotel BPM, which is, of course, named for “beats per minute,” and which The Brooklyn Eagle says is described as a “music-inspired property.” That means the hotel has fully licensed music streaming through its public areas and 76 guest rooms, compiled by hip-hop DJ BIJAL, who conceptualized and founded the hotel. The Eagle, which got a sneak peek at the new hotel before it officially opens May 14, says guests can also make song or artist requests at the time of their reservations. King and double-rooms start at $139 per room per night for the grand-opening rate. And of course, they’re going to be a sponsor of Austin’s SXSW festival. It is unclear if typewriters and hand-crafted library selections are included in the price as well.

It’s now dead-hot beautiful summer and the only ones thinking about the cruel fall are those teacher types embracing their few months of sanity. If you’re a new graduate preparing for your first year in front of the classroom this September, one outgoing Sunset Park teacher may make your life a little easier. The class act is giving away a whole starting teacher kit for grades 2-5 including things like pocket charts, stickers, incentive charts, calculators, math books and “LOTS” of children’s books. You have to take the whole large suitcase of stuff at once. Betcha that teacher will be happy to see them go.

Photos by Ben Dwork

Food carts are all the rage these days, but Tacos El Bronco isn’t part of the growing fleet of retrofitted cargo vans with sleek logos and Twitter feeds that serve Kobe hot dogs or $4 brownies sweetened with agave nectar. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) It’s just an old-school lunch truck that sets up nightly in front of the Key Food at Fifth Ave. and 43rd St. and serves murderously good tacos for $1.50 apiece. And that’s it—no burritos, no quesadillas, not even rice and beans. (more…)

Taiwan Cucumbers. Photos by Hannah Rosenblum.

Chinese supermarkets are chock-full of delicious, inexpensive stuff—that we know from many a past meal. Still, for the uninitiated, between the hustle and bustle (and often questionable English signage), the stores can seem like impenetrable fortresses. You know that fuzzy squash-looking thing is cheap, but… what to do with it? We decided to head to a couple of Sunset Park’s staple supermarkets and see what we could find, and how to use the stuff back at home. We compared the prices with those at a couple cheap non-Chinese spots (our local C-Town and Key Food). Here’s what we found: (more…)

Sunset Park, we just can’t quit you. As a resident of the neighborhood and surrounding area for nearly four years, I’ve been able to partake in all of its minimally gentrified goodies. It’s now no longer a secret that Sunset Park is an affordable oasis in the money sinkhole that is greater NYC, and that’s why Brokelyn keeps going back for more. And this week, the Daily News gets in on the bargains by profiling the neighborhood it its Savings in Brooklyn series. After the jump, their picks, and a few of mine. (more…)

Costco photo by Gene Jackson.

Is it possible to go to Costco without wondering: Is this really worth it? The crowds, the Zipcar  to Third Avenue and 38th Street, the existential despair of seeing your future in jumbo-sized cereal boxes, the inevitable 12-pound bag of frozen salmon filets you’ll never get through, the paradox of spending more to make sure you get your $50 membership’s worth.

That annual fee, of course, is the biggest question of all. Brooklyn College finance professor Charles Stone estimates that Costco prices have traditionally been roughly 10 percent less than average retail, which means you’d have to spend at least $500 a year to make your $50 back. For some people, that’s not hard to do, what with all the crap they wind up buying while they’re there.

But it just so happens that Target has rolled out a new line of “value basics” called Up & Up, which seems like a direct strike against Costco’s store brand, Kirkland. How do the two compare? (more…)

If you’re still figuring out your weekend, we have five ideas for you: Brooklyn Based, the must-read, thrice-weekly email blast about the best things to do Brooklyn, did a great story on us this week, featuring five of our current favorite deals around town. Read the story here, and while you’re poking around, don’t forget to subscribe to the BB newsletter so you’ll never miss another movie screening, concert or foodie event.

Brooklyn Bowl. Photo by Adam Macchia.

Last night’s opening of the much-hyped new Brooklyn Bowl elevates everything about ten-pin to a new level: the food (courtesy of Blue Ribbon), the music (it’s also a concert venue) and the prices ($50/ hour during premium slots!) The place certainly bucks the trends; two landmark alleys, Mark Lanes and Bedford Bowl, have closed in recent years. So how does the glammy new joint stack up against the remaining Brooklyn lanes, price wise? A comparison. (more…)