Recently in Fort Greene Category

This weather has me feeling a little gloomy (as does the postponement of ballfield chow), but what better way to kick a funk than a movie by the pluckiest of plucky Golden Age actors: Barbara Stanwyck. She's pretty much my favorite actress of all time--tough, smart, down-to-earth, and funny as hell. Now until May 6th, BAM is doing a retrospective of some of her best flicks. If I had to choose two favorites, I'd go with the gangster's moll vs. uppity professors comedy, Ball of Fire (Saturday), and her last movie, the Night Walker (Sun, May 6), a so-bad-its-great William Castle quickie about a woman haunted by her dead husband.

Another episode of Dine in Brooklyn, brought to you by Marty and friends, where all participating restaurants offer three courses for just $21.12. Please hop back to our posts for reader comments from Dine in Brooklyn, March 2006 edition. My top 10 for this year (L=lunch, D=dinner):

Applewood, 501 11th Street, (718) 768-2044, D
Blue Ribbon, 280 5th Ave, (718) 840-0404, D
Bocca Lupo, 391 Henry Street, (718) 243-2522, L/D
Bouillabaise 126 Union Street, (718) 855-4405, L/D
Brooklyn Fish Camp, 162 5th Ave, (718) 783-3264, L/D
Chestnut, 271 Smith Street, (718) 243-0049, D
Crave, 570 Henry Street, (718) 643-0361, D
Lunetta, 116 Smith Street, (718) 488-6269, D
River Cafe, 1 Water Street, (718) 522-5200, L
Stone Park Cafe, 324 5th Ave, (718) 369-0082, L

And for the two people for $21.12 deal:
Chip Shop,  383 5th Avenue, (718) 832-7701, or 129 Atlantic, (718) 855-7775, L/D
Smoke Joint, 87 S Elliot Place, (718) 797-1011, L/D
Zip1 Zape,  152 Metropolitan Avenue, (718) 599-3027, D

See the complete list of restaurants at the Brooklyn Tourism's website. You can check out photos of some sample dishes over at Brooklyn Record. And please leave your experiences at past Dine in Brooklyn restaurants below.

Update: For Dine in Brooklyn, Zagat has made all of its ratings and reviews free for participating Brooklyn restaurants.

Stuff to check out this weekend:

• One of my favorite online shops, Fred Flare, has a pop-up store in Williamsburg for the holidays. It's at 175 N 10th Street, and it's open this Friday through Christmas Eve. [Via FashionGeek]
• Prospect Park's Kate Wollman Rink opens on Thanksgiving from 10 a.m.- 1 p.m., 2 p.m.-6 p.m. and stays open all weekend long. It's $5 admission ($3.50 kids and seniors) and $5.50 skate rental.
• Check out one of Brooklyn Museum's cool exhibits: Ron Mueck's gigantic people, animalistic watercolors by Walton Ford and an Annie Leibovitz retrospective.
• Celebrate a new Bonita location  that's only three G stops away in Fort Greene. [Via Brooklyn Record]
• And reason enough for second helpings of turkey: The F train isn't all screwy--yea for holiday tourist season!

We've been eating more outside the hood lately, so we'd like to solicit some feeding advice from the neighborhood experts.Who's been to La Lunetta (old Taku space), Porchetta (since they got a new chef), and the new Thai place in old Tuk Tuk (name is escaping me)?

We've been twice now to the Smoke Joint in Fort Greene and can recommend the wings, the beef ribs and the greens. Not so much the pork ribs or the mac and cheese. They do have the Southern hospitality down pat, though.

It's all about BAM this weekend. So much stuff going on it's hard to figure out what to go to. On Friday, there's a dance piece set to Steve Reich music, and the Susan Sontag-inspired theater piece The End of Cinematics sounds interesting, but granted that's coming from someone who only has to pay $4 with a TheaterMania membership (definitely worth it if you like theater at all). But I'm not sure I can resist going to see Tod Browning's Freaks, one of the creepiest movies ever made, on the big screen. I've only seen it on video, but even then, this revenge thriller--starring actual pinheads and other circus sideshow folks--deeply freaked me out.  It's all the more shocking when you realize it was made in 1932. Saturday is Lost Highway, one of the few David Lynch movies I haven't seen. I either love his movies, or want to walk out of them. Any fans of this one out there?

Thanks to a reader for pointing us to JeepBastard's blog (run by former hacker John Lee, who at least used to live in Brooklyn). Tech geeks will enjoy the blog, but we're not here to talk about geeks. What we're here to talk about is JeepBastard's assertion that at 80 Hanson Place, the site of a Brooklyn Academy of Music expansion, used to be a biowarfare lab and that lab monkeys were routinely heard screaming from that location during the 1980s crack years. Also several people died (along with some monkeys). Is this just strange or does it fall into the strange but true category?  Perhaps it's a little bit of both. The NYTimes confirms it used to be a medical testing lab. But ... a biowarfare research lab?

(Whatever you think, the photos are cool.)