We have no problem with the paparazzi, but there comes a point where a picture is no longer interesting if you've seen one similar a million times. There are a million happenstances of this, but there are the ones that really stood out in our mind.

Sienna Miller Walking Her Dog: As we mentioned, Ms. Miller takes the pooch out for a stroll every day on the streets of New York. We've even seen pics of her picking up his poop. The critter is cute, but we are sick of seeing this. Get Sienna stealing people's husbands instead, she does that about as often. [Images via INF and Bauer-Griffin]

Gosselins at the Bus Stop: Just like Sienna's dog, the Gosselins have to bring the kids to the bus stop just about every day. It's always a hassle with all the children, their backpacks, and the photographers waiting to pounce. We didn't like taking the bus when we were kids, and we don't want to see it anymore now. [Images via INF and Bauer-Griffin]

Marc Jacobs in a Skirt: We love that Marc is a little fashion forward and claiming a piece of clothing for the boys that is usually reserved for the women. However, the skirt in and of itself is no longer news if he wears one everyday. It's like calling out Posh Spice for wearing the same frozen alien expression. We've just come to expect it, so it's not exciting. [Images via Getty and Bauer-Griffin]

Britney Spears in a Bikini: Just like Marc, her choice of attire is no longer shocking or titillating, no matter what the shape of her body is. Because she takes lots of vacations and her boys like to go swimming, we get to see her poolside apparel quite frequently. Let us know when she wears a metallic designer one-piece. At least that would be trend news. [Images via Bauer-Griffin]

Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber Walking the Family: The couple lives in New York and has two young kids. That means lots of time walking and pushing a stroller. For most Manhattanites (and espeically Brooklynites) seeing a pretty lady with a too-big stroller is about as rare of a sighting as seeing a crazy person on the subway. If we wanted to see this, we'd brunch in Park Slope instead of staying in bed on a Sunday morning. [Images via Bauer-Griffin]

Lindsay Lohan Shopping: Lindsay Lohan is unhireable. How does she pass the time? She shops. She'll buy anything (except groceries) and she'll spend hours looking for it. She takes friends, family, girlfriends, anyone. She loves to shop. Yawn. The only transaction of hers we want to see caught on film is when she goes to her dealer. Deliver some footage of that and we'll start paying attention. [Images via Bauer-Griffin]

On TV, we see her living the glamorous life working at Elle, going to hip parties, attending fashion shows, and being hated by her co-workers. She's supposed to be the real-life Gossip Girl. Which is why our ears perked up when we someone casually mentioned the other night that she's now living in this stroller-strewn neighborhood. Not hipsters with trustfunds Williamsburg or hipsters with real jobs Greenpoint, where she might still retain some of her cool cred, but boring, closes-after-7-pm DUMBO. No wonder we always see Whitney Port's apartment in the West Village, but never see where Palermo lives, because she's in a neighborhood that dare not speak its name to the MTV set.

She firstmoved out of her parent's place on the Upper East Side to a $4,150 a month pad on Leonard St in TriBeCa. But it was always framed as a youthful rebellion act. Page Six Magazine even did a spread about just how fabulous it was. Where are all the articles about just how great is to live in the outer boroughs?

But we could be proven wrong with some pictures of the apartment? Email us!

The premise of the show, if you've thus far been able to avoid it, is the misadventures of Jonathan Ames, played by Jason Schwartzman, who becomes so bored with his life that he decides to become an amateur detective. Ames seems like Schwartzman's Rushmore character all grown up, still trying on vocations that he has seemingly no prior formal education for.

New York as a milieu plays a major role, primarily Brooklyn, setting the stage for cliches of the macrobiotic vegetarian masseuse, calling Brooklyn the new Manhattan (wasn't that 5 years ago?), eating suckling pig at a artisanal greenpoint eatery that takes it's food very seriously.

Ted Danson is inexplicably in the picture, playing the editor of a magazine and the grizzled man about town. If you're having a tough time picturing the aged Danson as a Mr. Big type, you're not alone. He plays well as a comic foil for Schwartzman but not so much as a sophisticate.

It makes for good light Sunday viewing, but HBO has been in a major rut when it comes to new original comedies since Sex and the City went off the air. Curb is having one of the best seasons to date, but that's dipping in the old well. If Bored To Death is their best shot at taking over when Curb has expired, they're aiming pretty low.

Though I once swore I would never do such a thing, I'm about to move to Williamsburg. It's tragic, yes, but I have no choice: relationships do that to you.

Anyway, it was once cool to hate on all of the upper-class lowlifes who populate the area and appropriated white trash style, but that set has been neutralized by babies and real jobs. But, sadly, there's a new crop. And they're even worse!

Now that that generation has grown up and many of us thought — or hoped — that the hipster nightmare had ended, but that was simply naive. There's now a new generation of post-grad masses and, if you can believe it, they're sporting something even more disgusting than von Dutch fashions: a rattail. (And, yes, even its spelling's annoying.)

Once the hairstyle of choice for rednecks and unwashed losers, the rattail has found new life in New York City's cheaper boroughs. And it must stop! Rattails are a threat to America — and not just for the negative aesthetic value.

This nation, however maligned, remains an international beacon, and it's up to the country's youth to maintain the world's US-loving order. Rattails do no such thing. They make the country look weak and hickish. And weak, hickish countries get invaded. Just look at Iraq.

So, if America falls, it's your fault, bedraggled, so-called ironic hipster. If you ever cared about this once great nation, get a real haircut and stop embarrassing your parents – and the rest of us. If you hate this country, carry on and trust that we will file well-deserved treason charges. You've been warned.

Image via woodsm's flickr.

More of Mr. Kosloff's photographic sociological experiments can be found here.

These two women were out fliering for their Monday cabaret show at Public Assembly. We took about two hours to discuss the lighting, tonality and composition of this shot, as well as how to place all of the mannequins in the background, and I think I can speak for the three of us when I say we were quite pleased with the results. Our collaboration was marred only by a friendly conversation I had ex post facto with their legal and management teams which came to blows. Sad.

The line to get through the gates snaked along the East River like a seething yet smartly dressed millipede. It spilled off of Kent Avenue onto side streets and then spilled back. On a brighter note, the vibe was relaxed, it moved fairly quickly, and people were eager to share their ginger ale.

Just when you thought it was safe to feel comfortable and be yourself again, Grizzly Bear goes ahead and performs for free at the East River State Park, right over there in Williamsburg, with openers Vega and Beach House. I realize we are in the snark zone, but I just want to say (wistfully) that it may have been the highlight of my summer (sniffs, then bursts into tears).

We all have pet peeves. I have 11 of them. Number six is concert photography, which frequently affords me the opportunity to try to get good pictures of people who are standing eight feet above me and are surrounded by microphones, amps, and many other forms of clutter.

Oh well, this shot of Grizzly Bear bassist Chris Taylor came out OK. I think if this picture were an imaginary creature it would be an enchanted wombat, soaring gracefully over Tokyo, but periodically diving into gun-runs and strafing the fashionable Ginza district.

Who has seen the wind? Hello? Testing, testing?

On a more topical note, what do they call these things? Wind demons? Breeze buddies? Gale fellows? They're like smurfs, but much elongated and mute.

There were two of them. I named this one Milton, after my grandfather, whose proud, unbending parents may or may not have emigrated to the Bronx from an area that is today a suburb of Vladivostock.

If you've recently been laid off or are just looking for a new direction in life, Jelly NYC, the entity that synthesized the concert is hiring Breeze Buddies.

Applicants should have a positive attitude, enjoy the outdoors. Additionally, while not required, your resume will be given special attention if you are detail oriented, about 30 feet tall, and blue.

These two charming and able bi-peds caught the show from across Kent Avenue. I did not fall in love with either of these people in the 30 seconds that fate threw us so suddenly (and so violently) together, nor did I fall in love with them as a couple. But I did briefly fall in love with the idea of falling in love with them.

Shortly after this photograph was taken they were both accosted by a rogue wind demon.

I wonder what this woman was thinking as she basked in the afternoon sun out there on Kent Avenue. I wonder what was in her plastic cup. I have a fairly pronounced juvenile streak, so I also wonder, looking back now, how much time had passed since the last dog urinated on the pole she was leaning against. I hope it had been many, many hours and that the pole thing had been sanitized in the mean while.

These are the days of our lives.

This man had a similarly dressed colleague, but the back of the colleague's shirt read "Event Insecurity," and he was tasked with providing talk therapy to people in need. Ha ha—just kidding. Hey do you have any gum?

You know the economy is really hurting when your VIP pass entitles you to sleep in a ditch.

I think if this photograph were a dastardly villain it would be Lex Luthor, as played by Gene Hackman, of course.

Do you ever think about, like, human faces? One of the things that interests me is how some faces are sort of decade-specific, but other people look like they'd fit in quite well in, oh, say, a photograph from the 1920's, for example. Like this dude. Like he just escaped from the Dust Bowl and now just has a few text messages he needs to send. I appreciated him for not punching me in the face after I took this photo of him without asking his permission.

Some people make money the old-fashioned way: selling bomb pops.

On Wednesday the New York Times ran a piece in their Dining section about the growing resentment some insufferable parents of bratty kids have for the ice cream man. One of the parents quoted extensively in the piece was a woman from Park Slope, Brooklyn (Of course!) named Vicki Sell, and she is pissed that the damn ice cream man once made her daughter have an "inconsolable meltdown" after she was denied a tasty frozen treat, so she's now doing everything she can to shit all over everyone else's fun by having them all shut down just so she doesn't have to listen to her kid whine anymore.

"I fall into the camp of parents who are irate," Ms. Sell said. She has equal disdain for Mister Softee and the ice cream pop vendor outside the park, but since they are licensed, there is not much she can do about them.

"I feel kind of bad about having developed this attitude," she said. "I want Katherine to have the full childhood experience and all. But it's really predatory for them - two of them - to be right inside the playground like this."

Ms. Sell says she is not obsessed with health and nutrition. She - and others - feel they have been pushed to the brink by that little bell. Across message boards and playgrounds, soccer fields and day camp exits, parents have been raging. In a greener, more health-conscious, unsafe world, the ice cream man has lost some of his mojo.

Toward the end of the piece, Sell is quoted again and this time her occupation is noted:

And Ms. Sell owns and runs a restaurant in Brooklyn with her husband, a chef. "I'm not a health freak by any means," Ms. Sell said. "But I notice what happens to my daughter when she eats these sugar-filled things with all these additives."

Now, tonight a reader wrote in to point out the restaurant owned by Vicki Sell and her husband is The Chip Shop, a fish and chip joint on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. What sorts of foods does The Chip Shop serve? Fried foods, and lots of them! In fact, they'll fry just about anything that can be battered and placed on a wooden stick! They even have something on their menu called the "Twice Fried Cherry Pie," but the brownshirts at the NYC Health Department banned it! But hey, don't fret, as there's all sorts of other "sugar-filled things with all these additives" that Vicki Sell is more than happy to batter and deep-fry for only $3.50! Here's the menu:





Now, in case you're unfamiliar with Park Slope and its geography, The Chip Shop is located in a densely populated area filled with families. There are at least a million and one jokes about Park Slope parents and their strollers in circulation right now! So isn't it sort of "predatory" to open a restaurant that sells crap like fried Twinkies, Snickers bars, Mars bars, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and Twix in the middle of the New York City's neighborhood most synonymous with urban family life? Well, yes, perhaps it is, so leave the freakin' ice cream man alone lady!

Some people just have their heads stuffed so far up their own asses it's ridiculous.

Update: Vickie Sell wrote into comments and claims that she was misquoted by the Times and doesn't have anything against Mister Softee peddlers. Since this is sort of buried in all of your commenty rage, we're moving it up to the post:

I am the person quoted in the Times story and I my point of view was not accurately reflected by a long shot. I'm very upset to have been quoted as hating Mister Softee and all these vendors and I have absolutely not started a campaign against them. My complaint was about the ice vendors within the playground and that they are unlicensed and illegally sell to children in a place they are not allowed. I called 311 once (not multiple times by any stretch of the imagination) to inquire about their legal standing. They do not have sanction from any health authority to handle food and there's no telling where their product comes from. I had hoped that would be played up in the article. And yes, I do feel that bringing these carts into the playground is predatory. I was perhaps "irate" about this but not about ice cream vendors in general. They are run out over and over by the police or parks people but come back time and time again. I don't have any problem with legal vendors outside the playground in areas they are licensed for — despite what the article says. I'm all for people making a living and for people to choose the time and the place to buy treats for their children. I did discuss these points for the article but I don't see them there and I believe other people's points of view were attributed to me. In fact while I was being interviewed we bought ice pops for our children from a licensed vendor outside the park.

Pic by Chef Cajun Ryan.

• "Well judging from that picture, he'll fit right in!"
• "All those heroin-addicted hobo squatters make Williamsburg just like a war zone. He'll feel right at home!"
• "All those rusting hulks of empty buildings make Williamsburg just like a war zone. He'll feel right at home!"
• "We hope a puking pug dog on the L train doesn't trigger his PTSD!"
• "Ware once had a fling with Lara Logan but he better not let Lara Logan visit him in Williamsburg or a dirty hipster might steal Lara Logan away because she is sexy and probably likes dirty hipster sex!"
• "Eh."

Yesterday we gaev you a preview of Prospect Park West, Sohn's upcoming book about four Brooklyn mommies behaving badly. One of the ladies is Melora, a Hollywood actress who moves to Park Slope, so the narrative is peppered with fake stories about real celebrities. Melora and Hudson fight over a part, Lucy Liu calls Melora a "fucked up woman," Maggie Gyllenhaal is her mortal enemy (her's too?) and Alec Baldwin steals her therapist. Do you think some of them will guest star when Sarah Jessica Parker turns this into a series?

The Post dutifully called the publicists of the celebs involved. Most wouldn't comment, one never heard of the book, and Alec Baldwin's harried publicist, happy that his client didn't call anyone a pig in a voicemail again, says Baldwin doesn't care about Sohn's made-up tales, adding "It doesn't sound like such a good book."

But at least Sohn is fun enough to add a bit of sizzle to her novel. Today the New York Times fills us in on the new trend in chick lit: books with heroines who are weathering the economic meltdown.

Framed as cautionary tales, these books introduce female characters compelled to "face facts, raise funds and watch out for themselves," said Elizabeth Beier, who edited The Summer Kitchen. "They're not just vicariously experiencing other women's getting and spending," she said. "They are taking charge of their own identities; they are actually doing something, and that always makes more involving fiction."

God, that sounds as boring as reading Ruth Madoff's inevitable indictment. We'd much rather read some fake bullshit about famous people than some fake bullshit about the formerly rich trying to turn their lives around. That's why we pick up the Post every morning!

The company's name is Macro-Sea and it's run by a man named David Belt. Belt and his partners "borrowed" the idea, lining old dumpsters with plastic, filling them with water and adding water-filtration systems, from a Georgia man who'd made one himself. They figured that since there aren't many places to swim in New York City and since New York City is laden with dumpsters, why not give it a try? I mean, why not? And it worked! So now they're expanding.

Macro-Sea itself is using the project as a template for a larger idea: turning eyesore strip malls into artsy community destinations, with Dumpster pools and other indie attractions.

"I thought if we could get people to come here and swim in a Dumpster, I could probably use the same aesthetic sensibility" to get people - and, not incidentally, better retailers - to come to a dingy strip mall, Mr. Belt said. The company hopes to open its first repurposed shopping center in Atlanta this fall, ideally with dozens of pools in the parking lot that visitors can rent for the day.

Again, why not, right? After all, what works in Brooklyn always works in the deep South!

Finally, there was a quote near the end of the piece that made me howl with laughter. It goes:

"The water's amazingly fresh, for swimming in a Dumpster," said Alexis Bloom, a documentary filmmaker from TriBeCa, after doing a few laps. She compared it favorably to the pool at Soho House, an actual urban country club.

Now, you'd probably have to live in New York to truly get the joke about the pool at Soho House being compared to a dumpster, but just know that Soho House is a notorious Eurotrash hangout and, yeah, you can probably figure out what the joke is now.

Forget the Trash Bag, Bring a Towel [New York Times]

Residents of Williamsburg—Still looking to pick up some street cred to enhance their hardcore quotient? Well, now you've got it! Williamsburg is rapidly turning into Alphabet City circa 1979.

Heroin-addict hobos from around the country are overrunning hipster haven Williamsburg - living in stalled luxury condo projects in the trendy Brooklyn neighborhood.

The squatters, from middle-class families, hop freight trains to the city, where they can earn up to $150 a day panhandling in Manhattan. At night, like plenty of other borough commuters, they return to their homes: grubby hideaways inside boarded-up lots that pock the once-booming neighborhood.

"I've got to sleep somewhere, and I might as well do it in Williamsburg," said Stuart, 22, a Florida college dropout.

The admitted alcoholic and heroin user makes $15 an hour panhandling in Union Square, holding a sign that reads "Traveling Broke and Sexy."

"The girls here like it that I'm dirty and I ride trains," he added.

Ha! We never really thought of it in this way, but Williamsburg has to be one of the few places in the country where "hobos" can get ass from non-prostitutes on the regular. Really, if you're a girl who's turned on by the whole homeless heroin addict look, might as well bang the real deal if it's available to you rather than someone who's just pretending, right? We imagine that a real homeless heroin addict walking into a bar in Williamsburg is just like the real Tucker Max walking into a kegger at Arizona State. The world is your slimy oyster.

Punks Invade Williamsburg as Heroin-Addicted Hobos Set Up Shop in Trendy Brooklyn Neighborhood [Daily News]

Anyone who's walked around Williamsburg lately can see the painful signs of a busted bubble. New developments sit virtually vacant. New building constructions have stopped cold with the landscape of the area littered with semi-constructed buildings. We already knew things were bad, but we had no idea that things were this bad.

With sales across Brooklyn down a staggering 57 percent from a year ago, Williamsburg, with its high density of new construction, has taken on an ominous disposition. Walk down virtually any block and you'll come across an amenity-laden building that sits nearly empty: relics of a moment in history that seems, increasingly, like a fever dream.

Most unsettling are the cases of the developers who seem to have vanished, leaving behind so many vacant lots and half-completed buildings-eighteen, to be precise, more than can be found in all of the Bronx-that large swaths of the neighborhood have come to resemble a city after an air raid.

All over the city, overleveraged developers have seen their projects stymied by the recession, but the highly speculative nature of what's happened in Williamsburg stands out as exceptionally dramatic and misguided-New York's version of the collapsing exurban "boomburgs" in Florida and Arizona.

Oh but wait—This is only the beginning!

Part of what makes the present situation so dire is that it is still in the early stages of unfolding. There are already about 400 new apartments on the market in Williamsburg, and additional condos are completing construction every month. According to a study (Real estate broker David) Maundrell released last month, 2,818 new apartments will have hit the market by the end of this year, with another 2,766 projected by the end of 2010. On top of this, Fannie Mae, the country's most dominant home-mortgage lender, recently implemented a policy requiring that buildings be 70 percent in contract before guaranteeing mortgages, thus delaying the moment when a developer can stop covering the taxes and common charges on a finished project.

The writer of New York's massive piece, David Amsden, took some time to visit a few of the new developments in the neighborhood.

I made my way to a building called Warehouse 11, on the corner of Roebling and North 11th Streets. Marketed by David Maundrell, the building has 120 total units (plus the requisite yoga center, playroom, parking garage, 24-hour concierge, gym, and communal sundeck). While the model apartment seemed an appealing enough place to live, there was something generally off about the building as a whole: Despite having been on the market since early 2008, only 30 percent of the units were in contract, and it was clear that construction wasn't complete. The list prices, too, were significantly higher than comparable products, as if the developer had not been informed about the current state of the economy. A few weeks later, I noticed the front doors of the lobby had been padlocked shut. The process of foreclosure had begun.

Looking at the bright side, we suppose all of these vacant new developments will lead to some awesome squatting opportunities for the hipster looking to enhance his or her hardcore street cred. We look forward to having our tips line flooded with ridiculous Williamsburg hipster squatting stories for years to come!

The Billyburg Bust [New York]
Pic via Look At This Fucking Hipster

The blog's explanation for pulling the post:

Basically, we believe that parties who are the subjects of an extensive and sensitive post like yesterday's should know they are being written about. This is both the neighborhood-y, Local thing to do and simple journalistic ethics.

In this case, the author of the piece identified himself to several climbers but not to the people who run the space. We were unaware of this lapse. We had concluded, based on the author's initial pitch, that he planned to be upfront with everyone, and we neglected - our bad - to confirm this after the piece was filed.

Well that's all well and good and friendly, but it's really the type of thing to decide before you publish the extremely extensive post about "this bizarre hybrid of subterranean climbing gym and hippie speakeasy" in Fort Greene. Because the entire thing is, of course, cached by Google. All anyone has to do is click here to read the whole thing, or visit AnimalNY, where they put up a screen shot of it. Now, Jed Lipinski's post on "one of the best kept secrets in Brooklyn" is going to get far more readers than it would have had you simply left it up.

See: The Streisand Effect.
[The Local's 'Why We Unpublished" statement and the original post, via Animal NY

Vox Pop, described as "a coffee-house, a bookstore and a publishing company" on its website, is a popular hangout for Brooklyn lefties who love free wi-fi, poetry readings and open-mic nights (and what Brooklyn lefty doesn't?) whose financial troubles were detailed in the New York Times back in March. Vox Pop's owner, Debi Ryan, said that the statue was stolen on June 21 and that she, like a typical pansy-ass liberal, is "scared" after seeing the hilariously amateurish video showing the blindfolded statue receiving a beheading as "We Don't Want Your Freedom" and "Death to America" flash across the screen repeatedly in Atari-esque font.

We didn't want to believe it could happen, but it was only a matter of time before the terrorists struck a coffee shop in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. Gorilla Coffee in Park Slope has to be next, because there are few things that terrorists hate more than lesbians and strollers. Bet on it.

via Animal NY

So far, everyone's been accounted for, but three people were injured. The building was 493 Myrtle Avenue, on a main drag of the neighborhood. Clinton Hill/Fort Greene's a pretty writerly/media-oriented place. Glad everyone's okay.

Brooklyn Building On Myrtle Avenue Collapses [Gothamist]

Picture via Yfrog.