Aah, the holidays. A special time of year when we seem to collectively clamour for the title of “Most Destitute: 2013.” Winners are to be announced the first week of January at a special ceremony in your local bodega when your friendly clerk tells you that you cannot charge a quart of milk to your card “for some reason.” Chances are that right now, you have presents to buy (although hopefully you’re nearly finished), parties to attend, and family to see. Or maybe you’re staying in the city over the holidays for the first time either by choice or financial constraint. It’s a wallet-crushing time of year but fear not, there are still many things to see and ways to enjoy yourself this week that won’t add (much) to your impending financial woes.
Make Music Winter Parade
Tonight, Fort Greene, 7pm, FREE
The beautiful part about the unseasonably mild Holiday season we’re experiencing is that you can go to events in an outdoor setting without 17 thermal layers. With that being said why not get into the community spirit on Christmas week by checking out this unique winter parade in Fort Greene which commences outside of BAM at 30 Lafayette Ave. and winds it’s way down to Cuyler Gore Park with local musicians providing the soundtrack and crowd participation encouraged.
Christmas Eve at Tom’s Coney Island
Tom’s Coney Island, 1229 Boardwalk West, Coney Island
December 24, 8am – 5pm
The Coney Island offshoot of the Prospect Park diner is giving you the chance to eat weekday brunch for a good cause. All the proceeds from the day will go towards Coney Recovers, so the more diner food you eat, the more money gets raised. Why not just hang out there all day and have all three of your meals there?
It Happened in Brooklyn
Brooklyn Historical Society From 128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn.
Adults $6, Seniors 62 and over, Students 12 and over $4, College students must show student I.D.
Newcomer to the borough or just looking to experience some of its history you may not have been aware of? Take a trip to Brooklyn Historical Society’s permanent exhibition on Pierrepoint Street and find out how the saying “everything is happening in Brooklyn” has historical connotations reaching much farther back than the point when the Lower East Side started pricing out the artists and eccentrics in the late ‘80s. From earliest settlers to wartime efforts at the Navy Yard, come see the ever changing, always interesting landscape of where we now call home.
Needlecrafts
Lefferts Historical House, Prospect Park
December 26, 1pm-3pm, FREE
Have you been cooped up with a neglected, year-long Netflix queue since the solstice? Do you have a turkey hangover or burgeoning PTSD after seeing Les Miserables? Well come on then and get yourself out of the house! A free event that will be a break from the movies, stuffing yourself with holiday goodies or festive boozepocalypses, Needleworks could be a readymade segway into a New Year’s resolution to learn a new skill.
Dim Sum
Everyone else is going to be sitting around their tables eating the traditional Christmas ham or goose, but it doesn’t mean you have to sit and eat alone. Gather up your friends and head down to Sunset Park and Bay Ridge to take eat some dim sum. Dim sum, for uninitiated is like a roving Chinese buffet that comes to you, with waiters bringing small dishes around and letting you grab what you like. You’ve got a few options, with the best of the bunch the enormous, palace-sized Pacificana (813 55th Street), actual palace East Harbor Seafood Palace (714 65th Street) and the Robert Sitsema-approved Spring Garden (912 65th Street). Failing that, you can go on a gustatory adventure and try to find a pastrami egg roll.
And if you still haven’t done your holiday shopping, you can still check out a few craft fairs