Jaunted - Brooklyn

Get Spooked At A Sensory Haunted House In Brooklyn

egw — 2009-10-19T17:33:40-05:00

When we talk about Halloween in NYC, we have to say that the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade is so 20th century. A Brooklyn haunted house showcasing professional scarers is what you'll really want to check out this season.

The Gravesend Inn Haunted Hotel is a yearly production by the New York City College of Technology as a departmental project in "entertainment technology"—the kind of training that would prepare you to work on a Cirque de Soleil show in Vegas or be a Disney Imagineer. The hotel is designed to "sense" and respond to visitors; for more on that, check out an engineer's inside take on what makes it run. Last year's production imagined a hotel buried over a sailors' graveyard haunted by vengeful pirate ghosts; will it be zombies (or zombie Michael Jacksons this year?

Will Julia Roberts Come Back to Brooklyn To Film The Sequel To 'Eat, Pray, Love?'

egw — 2009-08-21T09:04:38-05:00

Certain Brooklynites we know have been rather put out by the filming of "Eat, Pray, Love," the adaptation of author Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling travel memoir starring Julia Roberts as a woman who takes three different trips in a year to get over a destructive divorce.

Well, buckle down everyone as we can expect more movie trailers in, say, 2011: Gilbert's second memoir Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage hits stores in early 2010, and a movie version can't be far behind.

For the four of you who haven't read it yet, Eat, Pray, Love ends with Gilbert finding love in her final destination of Bali, with a Brazilian-born Australian played by Javier Bardem in the movie. Committed sees Gilbert and her lover contemplate getting hitched after he gets detained by the Department of Homeland Security after a trip to France, and then take off across southeast Asia while pondering the question of popping the question. Further spoiler alert: They totally got married at the end.

Dining in Downtown Brooklyn: It's Always 1977 in Junior's

Victor Ozols — 2009-07-25T13:45:24-05:00

For the past two weeks, I've sat on a grand jury in Brooklyn Supreme Court, indicting or dismissing charges against defendants accused of some of the most heinous crimes in New York. Unfortunately, it would be illegal for me to divulge the details of the evidence presented to me and my 22 fellow jurors, but what I can do is tell you about some of the restaurants I visited during my one-hour lunch period every day.

Watch the Giglio Dance in Brooklyn

Victor Ozols — 2009-07-18T15:27:48-05:00

For the past ten years or so, the north Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg has been identified primarily with avant-garde art galleries, stylish bars, and of-the-moment restaurants, but every summer, residents are reminded of a much deeper history. Each July, the neighborhood hosts the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a festival that honors a Catholic saint named Saint Paulinus with music, food, parades, and the famous dancing of the giglio. For those who don't know, giglio is the Italian word for lily, and in this case it refers to an 80-foot tall, three-ton statue (pictured) that is carried and "danced" along Havemeyer Street by about 130 thick-necked men known as the Giglio Boys.

Cafe Grumpy Keeps Picky NYC Coffee Geeks Happy

BS — 2009-07-08T08:49:18-05:00

You never have to look far for a cup of coffee in NYC, but that doesn’t mean New Yorkers can’t make an obsession out of the search for the perfect cup—and we don’t mean the ubiquitous “best cup of coffee in the world” that Will Ferrell got so excited about in Elf.

Lately, NYC java is more about the super-serious independent coffee shops that have popped up throughout Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, attracting devoted followings by treating a cup of coffee as something akin to an art form. Beans are carefully sourced and locally roasted, baristas are trained on top-notch equipment with all the seriousness of a culinary institute, and customers not only know what country their favorite brew is from, but its town of origin and even the farm.

Brooklyn Gets a Music Festival of Its Own

BS — 2009-06-11T12:22:09-05:00

As the reigning indie music capital of the world, you'd think Brooklyn would have a long-running music festival to rival Austin's SXSW and Manhattan's CMJ, but the ragtag borough has never quite put it together.

But Brooklyn is amping up its game this weekend with the first annual Northside Music and Arts Festival, which will be taking over much of Williamsburg and Greenpoint tonight through Sunday. The blogistas will be out in full force to catch dozens of the borough's up-and-coming bands, along with a couple of A-list indie acts like The Hold Steady, Bishop Allen, and Sunset Rubdown.

The festival has also teamed up with the Williamsburg Gallery Association to offer an evening of music in the galleries tonight, along with a bunch of artsy events throughout the weekend.

All-access badges for the four-day event are a pretty reasonable $45, and shows take place at many of Williamsburg's most popular bars, including Barcade, t.b.d., and the Gutter, with just a few events across the river in—gasp—Manhattan.

Related Stories:
· Northside Festival [Official Site]
· Brooklyn travel coverage [Jaunted]
· Music travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: kenyee]

Go on an Urban Safari at Brooklyn's Prospect Park Zoo

Victor Ozols — 2009-06-06T15:54:04-05:00

New York has zoos in each of its five boroughs, and while the Bronx Zoo is the largest metropolitan zoo in the country, the other four are small enough that one can see pretty much every animal there is to see in two or three hours. I actually prefer these bite-sized zoological parks, where you can get in, get your animal fix, and get out with plenty of time left over for a nap before happy hour.