Looking for something to spice up your week that checks all the boxes for “excitement”, “fun” and “feel good”? Every month, The Brothers Buoy host an after-hours bingo night at neighborhood staple, Humboldt and Jackson(434 Humboldt Street). The night is like most bingo nights, with prizes, drink specials, great music and fast flying daubers. What makes this event special is that each month, the Brothers find different organizations to donate all of the profits to. In their first 5 months of running the game, they have raised almost $6,000 for various charities, including Drive Change and Team Rubicon.
This Wednesday December 13th at 8pm, they are hosting a holiday edition Ugly Sweater Bingo. They’ve partnered with Salute American Vodka, an American brand who’s mission is to help aid military veterans after they return home from service. The event is FREE, and one bingo card will set you back $2.50.
As tends to be the case too often these days, our great neighborhood is heading toward the loss of another well-loved establishment. A victim of the rising tides of unreasonable rent, The Habitat will be closing its doors this September after almost ten years at 988 Manhattan Avenue. This cozy bar in the northern part of Greenpoint is home to a fabulous beer list, great brunch specials, and an awesome late night menu.
While all of that will be missed, there is a hole that it is leaving that many fear cannot be filled. The Habitat has on their menu “The Best Wings in Brooklyn,” and we have all been lucky enough to have them right here within our reach. With their departure in just over a month’s time, where will the hungry wing fanatics go to get their saucy fix?
Well, while the true classic might never really be topped, we rounded up seven other contenders that will do their best to warm your heart like The Best Wings in Brooklyn once did. Continue reading →
This past Tuesday night, the William Vale (111 N 12th St) hosted a screening of the fantastic new Netflix comedy The Incredible Jessica James. The event was hosted by Rooftop Films, a non-profit founded in 1997, dedicated to exposing people to new films and assisting up and coming filmmakers to produce new work.
The film stars Jessica Williams as the titular Jessica James, a young playwright in her mid 20’s navigating her emotions after a recent breakup, while keeping her spirits up amidst a slew of rejection letters from theater companies. The film follows her as she learns lessons about herself through her relationship with Boon (played by Chris O’Dowd), a recent divorcé with whom she shares a budding romance, and her students at a children’s theater company. As so many people do in their mid-20’s in New York, she starts out with a very idealistic view of where she wants to be romantically, professionally and personally, and throughout the course of the movie discovers that she is actually right where she wants to be. Continue reading →
Spaghetti and Mama’s Meatballs. Photo by Molly Tavoletti.
Echoes of the Cozy Royale catering hall can still be heard in the warm dining room in the back of the bar at Humboldt & Jackson (434 Humboldt Street). The Royale’s former owner, Joanne Perrotta, had turned down many other offers when she was looking to retire. For years, families and neighbors gathered for dinners there, and Perrotta wished to pass on that sense of community along with the space. Perrotta cared more about who was going to take the place over rather than what it was going to be.
The first time I set foot in Humboldt & Jackson was the very day it opened. I followed the renovation of the Cozy Royale into this place, a newly-titled “American Tasting Room,” step-by-step on my daily walk to the Graham Avenue L train and was thrilled to have a prospective place to call my own—my Cheers, if you will. I would cement my status by getting in right at the beginning. Over the three years since their opening I realized that the feeling of ownership and comfort that I felt is exactly what Bill Reed, the bar’s charismatic owner, wants for all his guests.Continue reading →
Bold will hold.This phrase, most commonly associated with the tattooing style of early traditional artists, signifies designing tattoos with a bold, thick line style that holds up beautifully over the years. Guys like Norman Collins (commonly known as Sailor Jerry) or his predecessor Amund Dietzel, preferred this style as smaller and more intricate designs tended to fade and wear away.
To the women who co-founded the breakout Greenpoint pin and patch company Pinpoint, the phrase applies in a different way. It not only drives their stylistic choices, but also serves as a metaphor for what it means to be young in New York and to begin a somewhat risky project with a lifelong friend.
Not surprisingly, Samantha Freeman and Emily June met during a high school art class in their home town of Cornwall, New York. As something that now seems like a predecessor to their future business together, they bonded over making stuffed animals outside of class. A few years later the two parted ways for college. Emily stayed in New York to study design and Samantha headed down to Florida to get her degree in dentistry. Years later they reconnected, and armed with new sets of skills and business savvy, they managed to found Pinpoint in the midst of navigating their lives in New York City. Continue reading →
As budding journalists, something that we are finding out at a very rapid rate is that there is really a fine line that you have to walk when going to a beer event. This past weekend we were given the privilege of covering the annual Brooklyn Pour Craft Beer Fest, presented in its 6th year by the Village Voice. In similar fashion to the last article we wrote for our ever tolerant friends at Greenpointers, we underestimated the inherent conflict that would arise from trying to maintain our journalistic integrity while also sampling every beer vendor in attendance. So before we continue to how deep we got into the fest, let’s give you some raw stats about the event.
Brooklyn Pour focuses on highlighting small craft breweries and unique imported beers. All told, there were 58 different breweries in attendance from all over the country serving up over 125 craft brews. There seemed to be a focus on the Northeast, the reason for which is because we make the best beer (Step off, centuries old breweries from Germany.)
Boring info out of the way, let’s get to the breakdown of our experience at the expo. What follows is a timeline of our decent into trying to take on the biggest craft beer festival in the Northeast, and failing miserably. Continue reading →
Take it from us: there really is no way to prepare your body for the consumption of alcohol at ten o’clock in the morning. No amount of crack-of-dawn jogging, smoothie making or transcendent meditation will make it any easier to knock back even one sip of a strong brew before your breakfast has begun to digest. We don’t know how we didn’t expect this, showing up to photograph the first-ever canning run at Greenpoint Beer and Ale Co. The process, led by Iron Heart Canning was mind blowing enough even without the pre-lunch intoxication.
Far from the beginning of this brewery’s story, this canning is but an exciting new chapter in their long history making and importing wonderful beer. Owner Ed Raven has been in the business of great suds since the 1980s. Not long after getting his start with the Brooklyn Brewery, he began his own importing company, RavenBrands, and opened the Brouwerij Lane beer shop on Greenpoint Avenue in the early 2000s. After Raven opened Greenpoint Beer and Ale Co. in 2014, the beer shop began to serve as a pseudo-training ground for young hopefuls who want to work at the brewery–honing their palettes and familiarizing themselves with beers from all over the world. Continue reading →
New bar openings in the Greenpoint neighborhood are always exciting for us. Being the men-about-town that we are, we’ve hit up nearly all the hottest and hippest spots from Driggs to Ash. Yet ever since the closing of our perpetual ride-or-die watering hole, Greenpoint Heights, we have been searching for that “everybody knows your name” kind of place.
At long last, we may have found our home away from home once again.
Nestled in what should be called “The Little Steak-Shop That Could,” Delilah’s Steaks (55 McGuinness Boulevard), sits the delightful new seven seater bar with the unbearably appropriate name: Samson’s. Yet unlike the Biblical frenemies, Samson’s is the perfect complement to owner Tommy Ferrick’s cheesesteak mecca—the first step in his risky but ever-so-admirable master plan to battle the lumbering titans that are Seamless and other services like it. Continue reading →
To the women who co-founded the breakout Greenpoint pin and patch company 
Take it from us: there really is no way to prepare your body for the consumption of alcohol at ten o’clock in the morning. No amount of crack-of-dawn jogging, smoothie making or transcendent meditation will make it any easier to knock back even one sip of a strong brew before your breakfast has begun to digest. We don’t know how we didn’t expect this, showing up to photograph the first-ever canning run at 
