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Tags: Halloween Travel / Brooklyn / Brooklyn Travel / Haunted Houses / → All Tags
Get Spooked At A Sensory Haunted House In Brooklyn
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?
Tags: Recession Travel / Travel News / San Francisco Travel / Brooklyn Travel / → All Tags
Most Frugal US Cities List Calls Out Brooklyn, San Francisco
Financial site Mint.com has just released their 2009 list of "The Most Frugal Cities In America," charting the drop in discretionary spending for major American cities over the last 12 months. The data has all kinds of obscure and interesting information, from who spends the most on books to where residents are likely to drop cash on sporting goods.
We picked the weirdest data point from that last category and discovered that San Francisco ranks fourth on sporting goods, beating out a bunch of places where people buy boats, hunting gear, and camping equipment. Apparently whoever's selling cross-trainers to yuppies is making a killing.
The national drop in spending was an eye-popping 13%, which should provide our nation's totally hosed airlines a little bit of miserable company. Brooklyn led the way with a 28% decrease in total discretionary spending, a dip that future historians will undoubtedly refer to as "The Great Trust Fund Bust of 2009."
Tags: Events / Brooklyn Travel / Michael Jackson / London Travel / Atlanta Travel / → All Tags
This Weekend In The World: Michael Jackson's Birthday And More
· Brooklyn
He might be gone, but he is definitely not forgotten; tomorrow is Michael Jackson's 51st birthday, and Spike Lee is calling all five boroughs of New York City to come to Brooklyn's Prospect Park to celebrate. Happening between 12pm and 5pm in the Nethermead Meadow, MJ's birthday party will be a fest of DJs spinning his music and more. Expect lots of single gloves, glittery socks with loafers, and much chanting of "ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa."
Tags: Shopping Travel / San Francisco Travel / Brooklyn Travel / Los Angeles Travel / Barcelona Travel / → All Tags
Jaunted's Guide To Shopping Like A Local In Four World-Class Cities
Globetrotters who consider shopping a touristy gimmick are probably thinking more about Duty-Free boutiques at the airport, or landmark-shaped tchotchkes that fanny pack-wearing travelers just love to hoard. Then there's a clique of plastic-toting trippers who carve out quality time for retail indulgence. These hard-core consumers come back with heavier suitcases and cool keepsakes from their time away. That means no "I Went to [Blank], and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" shirts.
Jaunted's favorite shopping 'hoods are those that the locals frequent as much as savvy out-of-towners—places that have everything from the chicest clothes by local designers to uncommon home wares. We're less interested in the obscene glitz of Rodeo Drive than we are with destinations that have something unique to offer, like our suggestions below.
Jaunted's Favorite Local Shopping, Around the World, after the jump.
Tags: Literary Travel / Elizabeth Gilbert / Brooklyn Travel / → All Tags
Will Julia Roberts Come Back to Brooklyn To Film The Sequel To 'Eat, Pray, Love?'
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.
Tags: Street Art / Graffiti / Brooklyn Travel / → All Tags
Visit the Most Tagged Building in New York
We had a hunch Brooklyn street art has been on the rise recently, as the borough's been looking a little more back-in-the-day every time we turn a corner. Now we've got the stats to prove it—the NYPD reports graffiti complaints are up 20 percent since 2007.
While the police frame this as yet another downside of the struggling economy, we say: bring it on! A little spray-painting and wheat-pasting never hurt anyone.
And the best part is the NYPD even offers up a handy hardcore travel tip—the most freqeuently graffitti'd building in all of New York is the middle school on Starr Avenue in Bushwick. The school, of course, is hardly amused, but why not embrace it? Most Tagged Building in NYC is quite the title—why not quit all that scrubbing and just invite tourists and start charging admission?
· Brooklyn's losing battles in the war vs. graffiti taggers [NYDN]
· Recession Culture: Skip Museums For Brooklyn's Street Art [Jaunted]
· Street Art coverage [Jaunted]
Photo: [mercurialn]
Tags: Airports / Transportation / Websites / Brooklyn Travel / → All Tags
Get Hitched to Even More Strangers
Hitchsters.com, the online ride-sharing site for NYC-area airports, is expanding into Brooklyn next week. The service, which hooks you up with stingy strangers looking to split cab fare, will now partner with a Brooklyn-based car service, making trips to LGA and JFK easier for the heaps of travelers who aren't headed to Manhattan.
As we've mentioned before, taking a cab is usually something we do to avoid people: If we want to meet strangers, we'll take the subway. But for Brooklynites--who don't have cabs whizzing past at all hours--splitting a ride could make a lot of sense. And if things go nicely in NYC, Hitchsters plans to expand its reach beyond the city. Might we suggest Las Vegas--and its massive cab queue--next?
Related Stories:
· Hitchsters Offers Taxi Awkwardness to the Masses [Jaunted]
· Get Hitched to a Stranger [Jaunted]
· Hitchsters.com [Official Site]
Tags: The Departed / Movie Set Travel / Brooklyn Travel / Greenpoint / Brunch-Places-In-New-York / → All Tags
Movie Set Travel: The Departed's Brooklyn Roots
Maybe its that the parts of South Boston that still look like South Boston are hard places to both film and not get shot. Or perhaps Scorsese is physically incapable of making a film without some sort of connection to New York? In any case, The Departed is a Boston flick through and through (better accents than Mystic River, less... suck than Celtic Pride) but its dirty little secret is the large swaths of it that were filmed in deep dark blue Yankees turf.
For a dose of cinematic deja vu, head over to Brooklyn's longtime Polish stronghold and blossoming hipster enclave of Greenpoint. Make your brunch stop the Park Luncheonette at 334 Driggs Avenue, not too far from the Nassau Ave subway stop. The summertime open walls, street seating and great view of McCarren Park are a far cry from the menacing shadow cast by Jack Nicholson's Frank Costello in the diner and grocery scenes filmed at this location. Onscreen, it stood in for a Mom and Pop grocery on the take, but it takes a little squinting and a step inside to see the resemblance. Be sure to show up on the AM side of noon or expect to face a mob of asymmetrical haircuts with ironic t-shirts waiting to pile on breakfast nosh. The mozzarella and prosciutto omelette comes highly recommended and the french fries are exactly how they should be.
Another recognizable Brooklyn stand-in for Beantown turf is the Greenwood Cemetery. With 478 acres and close to 600,000 dearly departed, it might be hard to track down a stone inscribed "William Costigan" but these hallowed grounds are worth a walk for history buffs and those not creeped out by headstones galore. Its got Basquiat, Leonard Bernstein, and The Wizard of Oz's Wizard and is still taking customers looking for a fashionable place to die.
Related Stories:
· Martin Scorsese, The Departed Oscar Victory Tour Guide [Jaunted]
· Movie Set Travel: The Departed [Jaunted]
· Best Brunch Places in New York [Jaunted]
[Photo: Jack Rawlinson]
