Apparently smelling like you’ve been on a three-day bender is now socially acceptable, sophisticated even. Portland General Store have released this Whisky Eau De Toilette, claiming its ‘powerfully masculine’ aroma is like ‘old oaken casks, deep amber and rich spice’. Furthermore, there’s a Tobacco Wet Shave Soap to complete your debauchery-steez beauty regime. Both available at Hickorees.

Aptsandlofts.com via NY Times

HotelChatter and the Post clued us in on a new opening up next year in the ‘Burg — and Hotel Le Jolie better gear up for some serious competition. Graves World Hospitality is in the process of building the Williamsburg Hotel and Residences on N. 12th Street. Just when you thought the Northside couldn’t change at a quicker pace, prepare to have a boutique-ish sized hotel (with an adjoining apartment complex) charging $300 a night for a room.

After Albany passed a bill last month cracking down on illegal hotels and hostels in the city, the Williamsburg Hotel and Residences aim to fill the void — and this certainly ain’t no Hotel Toshi. HotelChatter mentions “plans for a rooftop bar (with wooden planks reminiscent of the Brooklyn Bridge), the ground-floor pool, and the street-food-style restaurant.”

The Post spoke to the developer:

“The one thing we’re trying not to be is a nightclub,” said Graves. “We will have some nice lounges and bars, but they will be approachable. You can build the nicest four walls, but if you don’t have the service to back it up, people won’t come back.”

This vision begins from its rooftop, whose wooden floor planks resemble the walking path of the Brooklyn Bridge, to its restaurant, “Streets,” which will offer a variety of improvised Third World delicacies such as pork banh mi and tripe satay, albeit at First World prices.

Tripe, pool access and cocktails? Not sure if we’re 100% charmed, but we have a feeling that wealthy relatives and European tourists alike will be flocking by next summer.

Kings County Cinema Society are screening a double-header of New York Art documentaries tonight at Launchpad, Brooklyn.

Birth of the Sun is the story of Grady Alexis, a Haitian artist who came to NYC via Miami. Alexis lived and worked on the streets, where he met his death, dying in 1991 at the hands of an off-duty cop in a streetfight. He was 26 years old. Director Thomas W. Campbell will be introducing the film.

Basquait doc, Downtown 81(aka New York Beat Movie) will screen directly after. The event is free, BYOB, popcorn supplied. 8pm.

No, seriously– he’s really excited about it:

Pee-wee Herman here. This is my very first blog, ever. My first Huffington Post blog. Ever. I am blogging on the Huffington Post. OMG. Did anyone notice I am blogging on the Huffington Post? I am a Huffington Post blogger. I’m joining the premier blogging site, The Huffington Post. I have to catch my breath. I’m. Really. Excited. If you couldn’t tell.

Read the whole post, which is mostly about how he loves the Huffington Post, over on, well, the Huff Po. He finally gets to the point (sort of) about 5 paragraphs in.

I understand it’s supposed to be funny, but does this mean that Paul Reubens just doesn’t exist anymore? I’m a little concerned…

UPDATED: Due to weather, the free screening of The Sternberg Project will be held next Monday, August 30 at 8pm.

Zena Bibler of The Dance Film Lab will be screening (for free) her newest site-specific film, The Sternberg Project, at the Sternberg Handball Court on Monday, August 30 at 8pm. The event will also include a short live performance and dance film by Itziar Barrio.

The Sternberg Project will be an interactive, crowd-sourced, multi-media time capsule of July in Sternberg Park and its surrounding area. The project is an assemblage of short videos made on anything from an HD camcorder to a camera phone that capture and create the movement of the park including dances, conversations, home runs, images, narratives, stills, sounds for the month of July 2010.

[More at moviehouse]

These Spoiler Alert subway notification additions were modded by Newmindspace and Jason Eppink.

These LED signs also threaten historical social behaviors, rendering obsolete the time-honored New York tradition of leaning over the platform edge with the hope of glimpsing headlights from an approaching train.

The Spoiler Alert signs warn waiting riders of this potentially unwanted information – allowing them to avert their eyes so they may preserve their spirit of adventure – while still leaving visible the data for travelers who wish to ruin the surprise for themselves.

[h/t buzzfeed]

The film adaptation of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, the 2005 novel by Brooklyn’s own Jonathan Safran Foer, just got more (or less) interesting, depending on your opinion of two Academy Award winners. It was announced that Tom Hanks (That Thing You Do!) and Sandra Bullock (Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous) have been cast as the parents of Oskar, the nine-year-old Manhattanite at the center of the story. Foer’s novel follows Oskar as he roams the boroughs of New York searching for the matching lock to a key found among the belongings of his father (Hanks), who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Director Stephen Daldry (The Reader) and screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) have been attached for some time.

The film won’t be released until sometime in 2012, but elements of its eventual trailer can easily be speculated. “Academy Award Winner” will precede at least 2/3 of the names (and possibly outrank them in font size), “the story of one boy’s search” will be used in either narration or text, and a shot of a tearful Sandra Bullock coupled with 30-seconds of strings provided by Thomas Newman will seal the deal.

Giving is good for you, it promises good karma. And good karma promises bad things won’t happen to you, like fracturing your tailbone. Besides, who could resist helping fund a project by the adorably awkward Max Annis, who happens to be your neighbor? Nobody, that’s who.

There’s less than two weeks left to raise the money, and if you know how Kickstarter works you know they get nothing if the $4k mark isn’t hit. So check out the trailer for Black Ant Lake here and donate some moolah– from the tiny bit we see, it’ll be beautifully shot.

Man, I wish I had a Kickstarter page for my life– but I’d probably spend all the money on whiskey and dresses, hence the fractured tailbone.

Unless you’ve lived tending the grounds on lands owned by the leaders of a vegetarian escapist cult, you’ve probably noticed that meat, that chewy brown stuff, has been making a resurgence in the neighborhood. For more on that, here’s 2,197 words on the subject.

Meat is having a moment in Williamsburg, where a critical mass of restaurant-going locals (and a lesser number of reverse-commuting Manhattan foodies) seems to be immune to the greens-and-beans trend that Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman cultists have beamed across the city for the past few years.

“There are a lot of meatheads,” said Zak Pelaccio, the chef at Fatty ‘Cue, about his nieghborhood.

[h/t Capital New York]

Coming this September, a commercial loft in Williamsburg will be converted into The Makery, a work space its creators describe as “an enriching, cross-pollinating environment where people making great things can make even better things when they’re surrounded by others doing the same.”

The freshman class includes Jauntsetter, Bnter (company of the girl behind TFLN in the Capital New York article), and a few YCombinators.

Get more info and contact email if you’re intersted on Matt Langer’s tumblr.