To find out which 6 restaurants made the cut click here for more Brokleyn.com

1. Spending what you wish you had

Overspending, or mismanaging can attribute to funky finances. We have to be aware and at peace with what we have at the moment because there will always be something we can’t afford if you’re not a Rockefeller. At this point in our lives we’re building. If you’re in an image based industry the urge to keep up with the Joneses is hard to resist. You have to be able to say no to items outside your budget or create the income to afford it. Besides, being rich is a feeling not necessarily stemming from money.

2. Not knowing your worth

When we tie our bank balance to our self worth we’ll commit the financial no-no mentioned previously. Most money problems don’t stem from lack of money but from lack of knowing your worth. Financially abundant entrepreneurs and freelancers are those who have learned to translate their skills into money. Know what you are capable of creating and that you can be well compensated for it.

3. Acting as if there is only now, and no future

In addition to being cognizant of present finances it is essential to have a plan for what your finances will be in the future and work towards that. As we’re our own bosses having no goals and living purely in the moment is a sure way to keep funds limited on a prolonged basis. When emergencies and big purchases pop up (and they will) don’t be condemned to eating ramen noodle for the next three weeks out of necessity.

4. Thinking and acting as if bills are bad

I love billing my clients and I love being paid. Ever since being on the other side of a bill I know what it’s like when that check comes in late. Granted Con Edison isn’t feeling the burn quite like an independent freelancer, but the size of the company doesn’t determine the value of the service or product they provide. $300 for glasses? Great! I’ll now be able to see and look stylish. $27 from Con Edison? Whew! Gotta love being able to flip that switch and get light. Love IT! So pay that bill and do it on time. Your credit score will love you.

5. Not Acting on Sage Advice

Now that you know these principles the only thing you need to to do is enact them. Will you live by sage advice instead of just reading it? Today’s a good day to find out.

Originally posted 2012-09-04 14:52:57. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Routines make us feel safe, organized and in control. So I suggest you get a writing routine now! You’ll accomplish more with it than you ever did without it.

Originally posted 2010-02-24 19:54:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Upon walking in the store to your right is an assortment of longboarding parts; decks, and neon colored wheels. To the left is an area divided by a half wall of light oak paneling on the bottom  and plexiglass on top. In the front you’re mostly likely to find a shirtless Solomon Lang, the hype man of bustin boards. Of Jamaican descent by way of Georgia, this longboarding aficionado is also one of the organizers of Concrete Kings a social group of skateboarders of both the short and longboard variety. They meet up on Columbus Circle every Sunday and ride around the city. They were featured in Concrete Wave, CNN and NBC for their skating adventures including an impromptu skate competition. The bustin boards website attracts customers from all over the world according to Lang, also known as King Solomon.

It’s About the People

bustin boards is a hub for push culture. The back area serves as a social hangout for the skateboarding scene where they occasionally show movies as well. The whole place reeks of community and good will as customers and staff, almost indistinguishable, mingle on the premises.

“We’re a collective of friends and family. Everybody does a little bit of everything,” said Lang. The staff, mostly riders themselves, have nicknames like Diesel and Wiggler and often go shirtless.

The company’s been around for 8 years, originally in a warehouse in Hoboken, New Jersey that was the old Wonder Bread factory. As business grew they branched out to their current location on 340 Grand Street in Williamsburg.

As with any haunt in Brooklyn, there are characters and then they are are characters. A local resident by the stage name of Captain Celluloid was impressed by the boards. Still, he couldn’t stop talking about his passion for the old silver screen. Melding movies and skateboards he reminded everybody in the shop of “Back to the Future” and Michael J. Fox’s main mode of transportation.

“Where’s my hoverboard?” someone shouted. Laughter ensued, as it often does in the shop.

The Long and Short of It

This isn’t the same as the shortboards emblazoned by the likes of Tony Hawk and the X Games. Just like the name implies longboards are larger than their shortboard cousin. “The shorter tricks boards, they are designed to be light and pop them up with ease and portability,” Lang said.  Instead longboards are designed for durability and speed. “Shortboards can’t bomb down a hill 40, 50, 60, 70 miles an hour. Our boards… need to be able to handle that speed,” he said. They offer greater maneuverability and generally are more bendable. One manipulates the board using their heels or their toes.

Decks come in a plethora of designs in the longboarding world, and bustin boards offers six of them, from a range of the 31 inch Spliff to the 42 inch Complex. Their most recent addition is the 38 inch Maestro. All orders and design options are processed on their website. While the decks are painted and customized downstairs in the workshop, the trucks and wheels are added upstairs where they’re packed and await to be shipped.

boards Aren’t the Only Thing Getting busted

As with any sport the risk of injury is there, and more than a few of the staff had scars to prove it- torn ACL, titanium rods, veneer teeth. Despite the risks, nothing would deter these men and women.

“I love riding, that’s for sure,” said Adam Crigler as he stenciled a deck, the main part of a board, downstairs in the workshop. A little common sense goes a long way. Lang explained the best times to skate are in dry conditions creating more friction instead of slippery wet surfaces. The store sells protective equipment as well.

Orders can vary, but they get an average of 150 orders a week. The boards can range in price from $90 to $120. The staff are more than happy to do demos for customers, experts and beginners alike. “We’re skaters before we’re anything else,” said Lang. Come by the shop, hang out, talk about skateboarding, and try out some boards. King Solomon will most likely be waiting for you.

Useful links

bustin boards’ website

bustin boards on twitter

Solomon Lang on twitter

Originally posted 2010-07-20 18:12:42. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

“Some writers are valued more than others. If we were to take a distinct measure of something let’s say money, we would be able to discern how much words are worth. Big name authors who have proven that the public values their work by buying the book in droves get more money than say new authors who’s value in the market is yet to be precisely calculated, only predicted by several factors (genre, length, writing style, and such.)

What about those whose words were not intended for profit like Martin Luther King Jr. ’s  “Letter from Birmingham Jail”? His words were powerful and moving, but he made no money from them.

The letter was published in various formats and its effects are still felt to this day. His words are valuable because it resonated with many.

That’s one of my favorite words. Resonate.

As writers we write words that will hopefully resonate within our readers. It is when this happens that magic happens and books are sold. There are different kinds of resonance. When someone reads a character they can relate to, that’s a resonance. When a reader fears a character that’s another kind of resonance. It shakes your bones, and creates an internal difference, a physical reaction.

Reading Native Son by Richard Wright made me cry. The protagonist was an impoverished black youth by the name of Bigger Thomas whose deadly mistake was done out of fear. His pain was so palatable I cried as if I knew the man myself. Problem is I did know this man. Growing up in Brooklyn poverty was evident. I saw and still see men like Bigger. Men hustling cheaply made electronics and bootlegs in beauty salons and bus stops and train cars, congregating outside bodegas, cigarettes and hard stories in tow.

These men whose life was neither kind nor forgiving already felt this fear. They (spoiler alert) didn’t stuff a white woman in a furnace, but truly the fear of a society that didn’t understand and aimed to oppress, was etched in their faces as wrinkles and scars from literal battles fought and won in the prison system.

This made up character wasn’t so made up. The pain, the fear and the horror were clearly outlined. You felt it. This is resonance.”

When this resonance is felt books are read and sold. So I wonder in starting this blog and as my first reading is in two days at Brownstone Books at 7pm, how much are my words worth?

Originally posted 2010-03-15 18:33:14. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Sometimes we forget that we are a part of society. We sometimes feel like a grain of sand in a beach, too small to make a difference. We’ll cite the media, government, but you know who else comprises of society? You, me and the neighbors; together we make up society. Instead of feeling like we are too small and can’t make a difference we should owe up to the power we do have.

We aren’t the ones in charge of the new fall programming at MTV or BET, true, but we are not as powerless as we think. We can tell our daughters, nieces, and nephews how beautiful they are and know that our words have just as much effect, if not more, than the girls on the videos.

Originally posted 2012-02-06 23:52:26. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

As A Newbie Don’t Compare Yourself to the Old Regime

If you’ve been publishing according to a writing schedule after a few weeks your blog posts should be of several categories, hopefully all intertwined. Use a website like Wordle to make sure your blog posts are cohesive. They should read like the chapters in a book, or issues of a magazine, not hodgepodge. There are categories that are interrelated and there are categories that really should be separate. For the sake of your sanity and your readers’ keep everything related within a niche.

You Don’t Find Your Tribe By Just Writing

• Guest Post. There are so many articles on guest posting, really just pick one, but this one became my favorite.
• Find other blogs you like, and comment away. Join them on Twitter, and join in the conversation naturally.
• I was going to suggest joining a blog network. Upon researching this I realized most of my favorite blogs don’t belong to any network. If anything you’ll see a lot of comments and guest posting going on, but there’s no formal network.
• And let’s not forget getting offline and meeting the people you are most likely to vibe with. There are conventions, conferences, MeetUp.com. Where there is an interest there are people getting together based on said interest. Bring a business card and a desire to mingle.

Building Your Tribe Takes Time

You’re not going to be considered an established blog out the gate. Quality content and good marketing can shorten the amount of time your blog gains traction, but most, if not all, of the best bloggers have been hacking away at the keyboard for years before they started gaining real traction.

Kitty Bradshaw has been  blogging for 13 years.

Goddess Leonie –six years.

A Belle in Brooklyn-  four years of relationship writing, 7 before that on entertainment alone.

You may or may not know these women, but they are successful at what they do because they have found their tribe.

Do you know the story of the bamboo?

Brands take years to develop and finesse. Purpose needs no such time.

Purpose is now.

Your tribe will come to you as you refine your brand by staying true to your purpose.

Photo from CW Ye of Flickr

Originally posted 2011-05-02 23:31:06. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

There are some people who have never cracked open a self help book. Are their lives any happier than those who do seek out this genre? I don’t think so. Everybody needs a boost. Whether they get it from a friend, or a book, or both is a personal choice.

So while I don’t believe people who do not consume self-help literature are happier, I do believe they cope differently. And (almost) everyone has cracked open a book but it wasn’t called a self help book. It could have been a book on careers or how to fix a drawer.

Every non-fiction is a book of self-improvement. We are all looking for ways to live better lives. A book on how to make furniture is solving a problem. It’s not personal per say, but it helps nonetheless. That desk they built will be used for what? Start his own business?

We are all looking for extensions of ourselves, a better extension of ourselves. We see ourselves reflected in the actions we take, the things we buy, and why we buy them.

As we try to connect to ourselves we are also in the process of connecting with others.

A product bought in a store didn’t come about in a vacuum. Many hands, and heads collaborated together to make it come to life. We are buying ideas come to life everyday. Before it was actual, it was actually an idea.

Originally posted 2010-11-03 19:21:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Image from Wikipedia

Allen Gregory is a new show that premiered on the Fox Network two weeks ago. It features the voice talents of Jonah Hill as the self titled protagonist and French Stewart from one of my favorite 90′s sitcoms “3rd Rock from the Sun” as his gay father, Richard Delongpre. (I would go into the other characters-the father’s life partner, Jeremy and their daughter, Allen’s sister, but they’re only there as props to the narcissistic father and son.)

The crux in which the cartoon is based on- an overly sophisticated seven year old is too out of place rendering the humour non existent.

There’s comedy in alienation, but it’s hard not to flinch at the sheer awkwardness of the title character. Usually the greater the awkwardness the greater the release when the punchline comes rolling in. But, alas there’s never a punchline great enough to justify or erase the tensions leading up to it in “Allen Gregory.”

The father was downright repugnant. (Does he even like his children?) The way in which he treats his partner was verbal abuse. Getting a laugh out of a repugnant character requires something special. Abuse on shows like “Family Guy” are quick and cruel and quickly glossed over with a cut to another scene. Characters who are bleeding to death and presumably dead in one scene are completely whole again in the next- no harm, no foul. Richard’s abuse is prolonged with no end in sight. Again no punchline on this show has as of yet alleviated the bad mojo of listening to a man berate his life partner.

The crush on the principal was way too extreme although providing fodder for the funniest joke the night. At the end of a daydream sequence he and the object of his affection are about to do the mattress mambo. Half naked he asks her the state of her affairs down there to which she replied “I’m going to level with you it’s Hurricane Katrina down there.” My roommate couldn’t stop laughing and repeated it several times- a hallmark of a good joke is when you want to hear it again and again. It was the only time I even felt like cracking a smile because the narcissistic father ruined everything for me.

While juxtaposition of different and altogether opposite elements (the overly pretentiousness seven year old Allen Gregory having a crush on a wizened principal) is a comedy staple the writer’s forgot finesse and applied it to too haphazardly and with a heavy hand.

A show that does it right.

As a fan of the burgeoning genre of adult, smart witted, but crude, and politically incorrect cartoons such as “Family Guy” and FX’s most recent gem “Archer” “Allen Gregory” means to keep up, but so far is lagging behind it’s predecessors.

Note: This was originally posted on Google Plus. You can add me as well while you’re on there.

Originally posted 2011-11-09 17:43:57. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Ok. Now you know you’re an awesome writer. Congrats! Now that you know you’re a hidden talent just waiting to break through, you need a crew (as small or big as you like) who’s going to support you. Maybe on a writing website (such as this one), in real life (supportive sibling or parent), or your Facebook friends. Whatever. Just get them already!

Ways to Get ‘Em

I would say the best kind of support comes from other writers. They know you’re woes and misery unlike, say you’re accountant friend. (Although I bet they know a thing or two about deadlines, April 15 anyone?) If you know don’t know any, find them, if you already have them, find some more!

The simplest way is to Goggle it. Your area and writer’s group. You can also find writing groups in your area by using Meetup.com. There are online social networking sites for creative types, such as Protagonize,  and Writer’s Cafe strictly for the written word, and Red Bubble, with an emphasis on art and photography.

You can’t turn everything into a damn acronym, but the creative folks behind the National Novel Writing Month didn’t give a damn. And now across the writing blogosphere NaNoWriMo is a rites of passage for many. The gist? Write a novel in the month of November. Writing a full novel in just one month is not impossible, but spectacularly Herculean, and not everybody who undertakes it actually completes the novel. Instead, many writers use NaNoWriMo as a springboard to finish or start their novels. As I’ve witnessed its more about conditioning yourself to write every freaking day. As in taking your writing from a lofty wish to a serious goal. With deadlines. You know how writers need deadlines or I’d doubt we’d get anything done. (This post is a courtesy of a deadline.)

Heck, even renting a shared office space might be something worth looking into. Not to be confused with a virtual office. In a virtual office, the use of actual office space is less common. Cheaper than renting out your own office, shared office spaces started as a way for freelancers and other home based entrepreneurs to escape the loneliness of working from home.

The least expensive will set you back at least $200. They often have several levels of memberships so you can decide how much space and how much other perks you want to enjoy. They give you a place to dedicate to your writing. The best part about it is the commitment. Shelling out at least $200 bucks a month, you’d better have a plan, and get some writing done.

The best part about these places is the camaraderie. Odd and creative minds are abuzz at shared office spaces and collaboration is a natural byproduct. There are several in Brooklyn, including 3rd Ward, with free classes included in unlimited membership, the Brooklyn Creative League and Green Desk. I’ve even heard about Jelly. Not an office share but organized times when people of the entrepreneurial spirit get together.

If you’re not the typical writer, you might want to check out the NY Writers Coalition. Their mission is to give a voice to those who otherwise wouldn’t normally have one such as the incarcerated, disabled, immigrants and homeless. Basically, the people you don’t expect to pick up a pen and paper and bust out “Leaves of Grass.”

Go where other writers congregate, bookstores, and readings. Bring a business card, talk to other writers. This might be a radical thing for the introverts, but you gotta mingle if you don’t want to be single. Single as in all alone in the writing process.  I’ve met a few good people at readings of my favorite authors.

As for me, I am currently a part of the Write in BK writing group. From there I’ve met Raquel Penzo aka The Jaded NYer who hooked me up with my first opportunity to read my works in public.

It’s worked for me. I don’t know what’s going to work for you, but you know what does work? Getting off your butt, stop watching that rerun of Lost and actually trying! So do the damn thang and Finish The Novel Already!

Originally posted 2010-04-24 15:48:20. Republished by Blog Post Promoter