A celebration of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, featuring short screenings from all 25 members, plus a dance party curated by DJ Phantom Power & DJ Knight of the Goddamn Cobras and live music from Dynasty Electric. Knitting Factory 361 Metropolitan Avenue Brooklyn, New York Cover: $10 Doors: 7:30

So Niels Windfeld Lund, aka The Bib Professor, is visiting New York for a conference and asked your Brooklyn Home Companion bloggers here if we would support him organizing an overalls party in Greenpoint while he’s in town. Of course! This is the kind of just-random-enough-to-be-fun endeavor we fully support. So, if you happen to [...]

Lots of food policy, agriculture news this week: * Pittsburgh considers reining in urban agriculture, beekeeping and chicken raising. Says the mayor’s spokesperson, “Anytime you see something growing and expanding and there are no rules, you need to regulate it.” Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear …(but darling for the way she manages [...]

Cafe Royal: It is adorable. It is owned by Cody Utzman, the same guy who owns Brooklyn Standard & Papacitos. It has coffee/tea/pastries now, and plans on alcohol and light food in the future (for now, you can bring in sandwiches from Brooklyn Standard across the street). It is, like, 4 blocks from my house. [...]

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: 2010 is the year of the overall. But don’t just take our word for it; both Vogue and Glamour are touting the trend. Well, touting may be a strong word. Says Glamour‘s fashion blog: When overalls popped up at a few spring 2010 shows, I kinda [...]

This Saturday, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s “Making Brooklyn Bloom” conference will feature workshops and lectures dealing with growing things in the city: Kick off the spring gardening season at Brooklyn Botanic Garden with this daylong conference on how to green up our communities by revitalizing our soil, the foundation of life in the garden. This [...]

March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, right? There is no either/or involved? These are the things we’ve been arguing about around the ol’ homestead lately. Weighty, I know. Well, no matter whether the weeks bear more resemblance to Simba or Bo Peep, we’ll be keeping busy in March, supporting and [...]

Attended Work It Brooklyn at the Arsenal last night, and was amazed by the variety of freelancers, artists and entrepreneurs there. During the “speed networking” round, I think I volunteered to paint Brooklyn roofs white this spring; promised to introduce a guy who wants to make a Japanese travel show to an acquaintance of mine [...]

All right, there’s really not that much snow on the ground here in North Brooklyn. I just want to bond with my DC friends who keep twittering about it, okay? I want a shared cultural moment and, dammit, the weather just won’t cooperate! Nonetheless. You should come out this weekend to: 1) The Love Party [...]

As usual, Joann Kim is on top of EVERYTHING GOING ON IN NORTH BROOKLYN in terms of creative events, volunteering and community involvement. She is currently co-starting a networking group for north Brooklyn freelancers (Work It Brooklyn) and promoting the efforts of folks in Bushwick to turn unwanted space in the Most Holy Trinity Church [...]

I suppose that I would be immediately outed as a witch during the Salem Witch trials of yore. I make secret brew in my house, write lusty plays about circus folk, and find myself enamored of both intentional communities & the magic of Apple computers. Mostly, I am just freakishly tall. Yet, after being stranded [...]

Via Joann, the Unhappy Hipsters tumblr:  Dwell magazine images re-captioned. This is my favorite:  Lying on his back, watching the passing clouds, he worried over the Nathaniel Hawthorne lookalike’s role in this grim threesome. Also via Joann, Radish, a “seasonally prepared foods” store, is set to open this spring on Bedford Ave, in the storefront [...]

Our crumbly little railroad apartment is happy this winter. Its tenants lay shoulder to shoulder, grinning ear to ear. For awhile, I could not figure out why. Oh yes! Be a host and fill your space with creative people. Invite warm bodies over and often. The positivity is infectious and the ideas swarm like hungry [...]

Had the pleasure of listening to a band called Bow Ribbons at Monkey Town Tuesday night. They only played two songs, because they were sharing the evening with Jolie Holland, Mike Wexler, Garrett Devoe and others (in what Monkey Town described as “a night of medieval sonic drone guitar rock, fiddle, folk-pop and expert percussion”) [...]

I just picked up two pairs of overalls for under $10 at the Salvation Army on Bedford in Williamsburg. If I’m being completely honest with you, I must admit that I did not, in fact, actually own any overalls myself until today. More photos of some of my lovely Goddamn Cobras compatriots modeling the latest [...]

• Brooklyn’s Backyard Chicken Keepers from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo. Meet Megan Paska and Katrina Mauro both Mother Hens to four curious egg-laying chickens in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. They decided to raise chickens for the first time in their tiny urban backyard as a way to live more sustainably. What they discovered is that raising chickens is [...]

Drop the .wordpress. Brooklyn Home Companion is now simply http://brooklynhomecompanion.com. Update accordingly, dears. Thanks!

Now you know. [Have a good overalls photo? Send it to brooklynhomecompanion@gmail.com]

After trips to tropical islands (Katie) and the suburbs of Cincy, OH (me), we are once against nestled in cozily in our over-heated, now-crowded-with-Christmas-presents Greenpoint home. And we intend to hibernate. I mean, we are, in fact, at this moment, hibernating. I don’t think Katie has left the house in 48 hours; I did go [...]

“What the hell is that? What are you doing out there?” A confused friend asked me this during a recent visit to our home. To which I proudly puffed out my chest and said, “This is our Compost Pile.” Oh yeah, we buy our produce at farmers’ markets, carry canvas bags everywhere, and reuse our [...]

Welcome, class! This will be the first of many Friday “Home Economics Lessons,” links to the random cooking-, farming-, dancing-, creating- and Brooklyn-spectacularity-related things we’ve been reading about throughout the week. Let’s begin with this article in Bust magazine, via Stem + Leaf, about the history of home economics. Writer Emily McCombs notes, “From feminist [...]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6deggcIR98Q&feature=player_embedded] Saw the Christmas Spectacular show at the House of Yes last Friday. Very impressive. Not your typical holiday- show mix of burlesque dancers and bland comedy (though the comedy was bland) – the House of Yes show features amazing aerial acts combined with genuinely talented dancers of all sorts of varieties (from burlesque to [...]

Julie Powell, of Julie and Julia fame, talks with Double X’s Hanna Rosin about what seems to be the hobby trend of the moment (and is also the focus of her new book, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession): butchery. The first proper butcher shop I ever came to know was Ottomanelli’s, on [...]

We are nomads. I have moved all over the United States, South America, and the UK. Each place, I have to part with most of the contents of my house. It is pleasant cleaning ritual, albeit a usually embarrassing one. (Glitter Dickies’ jeans?) These items find homes in Salvation armies, Craigslist, or freecycle, but occasionally, [...]

When I was a freshman in college, my friend Kari asked me if I would like an orange. We were sitting in her dorm room with some friends. I accepted her offer, and watched, a few minutes later, as everyone in the room stared at me aghast. My faux pas? I had bitten into the [...]