NY Cares Day: Meet Alfred

I forgot how fun it is to paint, especially when you’re bringing cartoony characters to life on the blah walls of an elementary school cafeteria. This Saturday, Leah and I painted murals at PS84, an arts school in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for NY Cares Day. 8,000 New Yorkers came out to spruce up schools around the city. There was a huge team effort at PS84, led by my wonderful co-worker Gloria and her boyfriend, Sam. Leah and I can take credit for bringing this creature to life - I surmise he was a cross between a goose and a moose? We declared him Alfred.

Alfred, keeping watch over the lunchroom

To get involved with NY Cares, click here for Upcoming Events. I bet you’ll be surprised at the variety of opportunities that exist. Next weekend, if you’re free and feeling festive, you can even guide kids through a “haunted” walk at Prospect Park.

So go out and volunteer! It’s even more fun when you’re not doing it for the sake of your college applications.

Brooklyn Fall Festival: The Prequel

In my last post, you read how Sammy and I took on Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood for cheap fall fun. The New York Times may have written about “Frugal New York” this weekend, but that’s how we live every weekend…NYC is an insanely expensive city, but free stuff is all around you. Take for instance Union Square on Saturday morning, where we met up before hopping on the F train to Carrol St.

1) Free Fashion Advice at the Union Square Green Market.

were they for real?

Two women who claimed to be stylists were giving free fashion advice to anyone who lined up at their booth. Sammy and I eavesdropped and tried to ask them the business rationale for setting up here — was this for a TV show? A book proposal? a web site? A magazine prank? (Yours truly used to do that for JANE magazine…remember the infamous street spa in Times Square for the March 2006 issue?). They avoided non-style questions and only gave out a paper with this web site, which looks pretty hokey…plus, these bloggers caught some cameramen hanging around the girls, so I’m betting it’s candid camera for a reality show. Another reason to love NY: Where else can you get locally grown produce and good, free fashion advice in one place?

2) Free Mini Crumbs Cupcakes!

You know it’s your lucky day when a woman stands on the street corner with a pink baker’s hat serving free mini Crumbs cupcakes, of the M&M, Oreo, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup variety. This plate was cleared in less than a minute!

cupcakes are bliss

See, freebies abound you when you have wanderlust and open eyes.