Word is that Michel Gondry has made the move to Brooklyn (his previous apartment was in the East Village). The director reportedly purchased a house on Orient Avenue in East Williamsburg, and while Curbed notes that a house from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was also on Orient Avenue, this isn't the one the director purchased -- that house was sort of a fixer-upper! Gondry has some celluloid ties to the borough aside from......

Photo: Food of the Future The East Williamsburg Moore Street Retail Market is one of four remaining city-run public markets built during the tail end of the Depression; opened by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in 1941, the Brooklyn market was created to clear the streets of unhygienic peddlers and monitor the scales for customers. Today the market is occupied by 13 vendors selling mostly tropical produce, roots and other ethnic foods to the local......

Brooklyn musician Michael Leviton and his girlfriend Leah Hayes have put their own apartment at center stage, after declaring their old hang, The Sidewalk Cafe, so over. They moved the scene to their East Williamsburg apartment at the end of 2006, calling it The Apartment. Now it's no longer much of a secret, and it may also be so over (though for different reasons). We were told by a "regular" of The Apartment (who had......

As a counterpoint to the tale of the mugging in pre-gentrification Bushwick (or East Williamsburg) in New York magazine, we bring you this mugging story from gentrified Park Slope. From the Morgan L station to the popular Grand Army Plaza stop, a woman gave a first person account of being mugged on Sunday with Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn. The woman says she had left the subway station around 10:30PM at night. While she......

An assistant principal at P.S. 196 in East Williamsburg was arrested yesterday for slashing her live-in boyfriend with a pair of scissors. Danielle Capuano's boyfriend Alejandro Ruiz was also arrested in the domestic violence incident in East Elmhurst, Queens. Capuano was charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon. Ruiz was charged with assault for hitting Capuano in the head. Neighbors of the couple described their seven-year relationship as troubled, with frequent screaming matches......

EVENT: Into anime? It's your lucky weekend, the New York Anime Festival is in town! There will be previews, screenings and panels galore. Check out their website for more details. All Weekend // Jacob Javits Convention Center [655 W 34th St] // $30 day pass, $55 weekend pass SHOP: FIT and the Design Mavens come together for a 3 day shopstravaganza. Tons of designers we're not cool enough to have ever heard of will be......

A Mutual Fund for Hipsters called The GendeX™ Thrasher Funds? It just can't be real...except it is. Advertised through a "dedicated email" from Daily Candy this morning means they have some cash to advertise -- but to prove their hipster-cred we may need to see some MySpace profiles. And surprise, surprise -- it looks like they have one (John Mayer is in their "Top 12" friends! Ironic or do their parents also work there?). Their......

Yesterday morning, two men riding bicycles were killed in separate accidents. Both occurred in Brooklyn. Around 4AM, the a 26-year-old at Union Avenue and Ten Eyck Street in East Williamsburg was hit by an oil truck. WABC reported that he was cycling in the wrong direction. The cyclist, identified as Craig Murphy [sic] who is a member of RightRides, died at the scene. The truck driver was not charged. Then, in Bedford Stuyvesant, around 6AM,......

Kate Gilliam heads up Trees Not Trash, a group whose name pretty much explains it all. Gilliam builds planters, plants trees and makes her industrial neighborhood a little more green each day. Oh, and she's a seed bomber, too. We're betting East Williamsburg could use a lot more patches of nature, so help out by volunteering or going to their benefit show this Saturday. When did Trees Not Trash begin, and what prompted its inception?......

If you aren't at a BBQ, aren't watching the fireworks or a big budget summer movie...below are some options for you. Whatever you do, though, bring sparklers! MUSIC: The New Pornographers and Midlake are playing a free show at Battery Park. If you didn't get a free pass, then go hang out on the outskirts, enjoy the day, and listen to the music - we're sure it'll be loud enough. 3:30pm // Battery Park //......

A 23-year-old firefighter died from injuries sustained while responding to a fire at 146 Leonard Street in East Williamsburg. Daniel Pujdak, a 2-year veteran with Ladder 146, fell four floors from a bucket ladder and suffered serious head injuries; he was pronounced dead at Bellevue shortly after. Over 60 firefighters were needed to control the fire, which allegedly started because of a cigarette left on a window sill. Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said that......

THEATER: John Fugelsang, the son of an ex-nun and a former monk, declares war on right-wing evildoers in his one man comedy All the Wrong Reasons. Targets include sex, politics, Klansmen, stem cells and the drug war (which Fugelsang recently skewered on the Huffington Post.) Theater blogger What’s Good/What Blows raves: “…once he settles in to tell the story of trying to get through Orlando airport with an 1/8th of weed in his sock and......

An excellent Hasidic outdoor advertising update: Back in January, we noticed that an East Williamsburg poster of an Orthodox Jewish boy had been been updated for the boy to look more Hasidic - and it was splashed with some Hebrew graffiti. It turned out the graffiti was part of the ad, which is trying to encourage the Hasids in the neighborhood to donate cars to Oorah, a children's charity. Will at Razor Apple took......

A few months ago we were walking on Lee Avenue in East Williamsburg, and noticed some strange billboard graffiti. It looked like someone had spraypainted a beard over the kid in the ad. At first, we thought it might be the work of Beard, a streetartist who had been putting work up recently, but on closer inspection, it wasn't so much a beard as just a straight crossing out of the face. Last week,......

The NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating why 28 year old black man ran into the Belt Highway, where he was hit by a car. Eyewitnesses say that two white men "struggled with" and "forced" Michael Sandy into traffic on Sunday night. Given that Sandy's race and the fact he was in Plumb Beach, a gay cruising area off the highway, the police have been investigating the incident as a possible hate crime. The......

-- Starting October 9th, Mastercard is giving away free subway rides at 6-line stations-- but you have to have one of their PayPass cards or keychains. Sadly, you can't ask Mastercard why the MTA's security projects are lagging. -- Is there anything more embarassing than getting your ass kicked at the Harvard Club? -- Some good news: at least one working factory will survive in East Williamsburg-- that means 100 manufacturing jobs will stay......

On Monday, police were investigating a hit-and-run death on the West Side Highway. A man was hit by a southbound vehicle at West 12th Street at 3:45AM, and the police were trying to find out who was driving - and who the victim even was, as police didn't find any identification on the body. And now it looks like the victim was Brooklyn resident Josh Crouch. The Post reports that friends say he was headed......

PARTY: FreeNYC holds their Bugjuice party again at Luke & Leroy's (which has managed to stay open post-Misshapes!) If you like reggae, funk, soul, hip hop and $3 vodka drinks...this is the place for you. Friday // 10pm // Luke and Leroy's [21 7th Ave South at Leroy] // Free FILM: Rooftop Films presents Dark Toons. Brendan Canty has not sat idly by during Fugazi’s break. He recently produced a new album by the Thermals,......

New Yorkers for Parks released a 2006 Progress Report on neighborhood parks that were examined in the 2005 Report Card on Parks, and the news is depressing. While five of the top ten parks are still in great shape, the other five have deteriorated, most dramatically, Tenney Park in Queens which had been given an A+ in 2005, but now warrants an F in 2006. And parks that were in bad shape are just......

It's just like the MTA to problem solve a couple years after the problem starts. The NYC Transit Authority will be adding more trains to the L line because the current, snazzy R143 line is "not enough" to serve the masses of people. The TA will have to figure out how to make the signals work with both the current, (relatively) high-tech R143s and the old cars (maybe the slant R40s?), and that could......

Momus, one of our favorite almost-famous rockers from the mid-1990s, has lately been blogging up a storm on Livejournal. He's been living outside NYC, but has been planning to return. Only one problem: he needs a place to stay: As I've mentioned, I'll be spending March to May of this year in New York City, performing the role of an "unreliable tour guide" daily at the Whitney Biennial. Today I just want to ask if......

Yesterday afternoon, the roof of 103 Meserole Street in East Williamsburg collapsed on top of eleven workers who had been renovating the building. At first, area residents said it sounded like a huge explosion. The Buildings Department says that the owner had been given a permit for "vertical enlargement" - gutting the building for a new facade, replaced beams, and new windows - and the FDNY explained what happened: "Both side walls were being......

A woman who worked at the Red Bamboo restaurant on West 4th Street was killed while riding her bicycle in the East Village Sunday night. A private trash truck hit Brandie Bailey at Houston and Avenue A as she was biking home to East Williamsburg before Midnight. When he was pulled over on East 21st and Second Avenue, the trucker driver told the police he didn't realize he had hit anybody. The driver hasn't been......

With the closure of the Screening Room in Tribeca last year, those diners who long for the dinner and a movie date to occur all in the same location have been cast a drift. However, with the advent of Dekk restaurant's weekly Superfilm Tuesday nights and now the montly Dine-In Theater at The Archive in East Williamsburg, there are now a few options for high quality nosh with a side of cinema. Tonight at Dekk......

Pow! Take that, landlords sizing their huge warehouses and factories today to become tomorrow's apartments: The Mayor is looking to create "protected industrial business zones" in order to protect factory jobs. Other tax incentives will be used to encourage factories to remain in New York City, because salaries in manufacturing are typically higher than in other sectors. Unsurprisingly, the areas where the city gets complaints about illegal conversions are East Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Oh,......

Young Jean Lee, Playwright/Director...