IF APPLE STARTED making restaurants, they might be exactly like Macbar. From its bright yellow, seamless plastic interior to the inventive if environmentally unsound food packaging and the noodleshaped case you get if you order a medium macaroni and cheese, this place screams sleek and chic. Read more Read it in print

Upon arriving at 3rd Wards new space, an old factory at 573 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, I was hit with the realization that I had been there before. At the tender age of 19, I rode the finicky industrial elevator to the fourth floor to an illegal loft with a killer view. The last time I had been there I was naked and high, and now, nine years later, I was ready to see what the building had to offer me. Of course, it was dick. Read more Read it in print

THE EASIEST QUESTION anyone will ask you at Park Slope sandwich shop Reis 100 is, “wheat or white?” Other then that, you’re stuck with more complicated choices involving pastrami, bacon, prosciutto, Nutella, duck paté, chicken, smoked salmon, anchovies, olive tapenade, gruyere cheese, egg salad, tuna, kimchee and/or mushrooms. Just to name a few. Read more Read it in print

FOR THE PAST nine years, Jessica Stockton Bagnulo has known she wanted to own and operate her own bookstore. Now, she has the opportunity to peddle classics, cookbooks, graphic novels and more at Fort Greene's newest attraction, the Greenlight Bookstore. Read more Read it in print

OPENING A BAR on the corner of 16th Street and Prospect Park West, right by the Pavilion Movie Theater and Prospect Park, proved one of the smartest things boozy businessmen Jeff Switzer and Greg Curley could have done. Read more Read it in print

Lean and mean, Iron Maven passes rainbow-clad Smashley Simpson on the track. Dressed in a skimpy plaid skirt, the Holy Roller girl weaves in and out of the green-sash wearing Hurl Scouts and, with a violent hip thrust, Scouts’ Rosa Sparks knocks one of the Rollers to the ground with a bone-jangling crack. Read more Read it in print

If you haven’t been to Galapagos’ new home in Dumbo, it’s well worth the trek. Unlike the old space, every seat in the house here has access to the large stage. Perched on the mezzanine, my date and I peered over the railing at the cloverleaf shaped seating and into the venue’s trademark, black inky pools of water. “Don’t fall in,” I warned my friend. “But isn’t this a mermaid thing?” she shot back. Touché. We were, after all, attending The Mermaid Ball. Read more

“All great artists are shamans,” says Larkin Grimm. “Everyone who is a musician and goes into an altered state of conscience is a shaman, and music puts you in that altered state of conscience.” This mystical connection between a musician and their audience was one of the many reasons Grimm teamed up with the Ordo Templi Orientis, also known as OTO, to curate the Musicka Mystica Maxima Festival, a new sort of event featuring musicians who all practice magic, kicking off Monday at Santos Party House. Read more

WITH A DEAD baby pig in her arms, Anne Apparu receives news that her good friend and former brother-in-law Dash Snow, has died. But instead of breaking down, Apparu has a meal to cook. Read more Read it in print

Beyond the tourists listening to live Lennon covers at Strawberry Fields and the jazz band playing on the grass, another sound emerges from the depth of the trees in New York's Central Park: the low bass of dance music. A closer look reveals figures who look like they could have stepped out a 1970s theme movie—perhaps Roll Bounce or the equally disco-tastic Roller Boogie. The weekly dance skaters whizz by in a roped-off oval area, doing what they have done for the past 30 years. And then Lezly Ziering takes the lead. Read more