Stacey Brook is a Writer, Blogger, Author

Having trouble wrapping your arms around what to get your friends and family for the holidays? Turn to your favorite cephalopods for help. Who isn’t romanced by the squiggly arms of a squid or the suckers of a many-limbed sea creature? From neckties, to jewelry, to classic Christmas ornaments, tentacles are wrapping everything in holiday spirit. So embrace the Cthulu, the octopus and the giant, man-eating squid, and get Kraken on purchasing gifts that will inspire many two-armed embraces.

I love Halloween more than the average nerd. Over the years I have funneled pumpkin buckets full of cash into commissioning costumes that sate my desire for pure celebratory and sartorial excess. But even I get sick of dropping dollars on intricate outfits whose price-per-wear can only be divided by one. I haven’t once purchased a costume that could later be worn out on an average Friday night in NYC.

It’s a boom time for yoga studios in Williamsburg/Greenpoint. When I first began researching for Part I of this story, I was aware there was a surge of new places to practice yoga in the neighborhood, but I didn’t realize we were in a veritable cornfield of them. Turns out that behind those barricades we all thought contained high-rise apartment buildings—just yoga studios! Miles and miles of yoga studios. If you haven’t yet sought out a neighborhood practice space for your plow pose, it’s a wonder you haven’t tripped into one, given their prevalence. It’s even possible you are living in a yoga studio and haven’t realized it yet. Take a whiff of the air—is it incense-scented? Is your pup, Sparky, all of a sudden stretching with his back knees bent, and his pelvis tipped in the air? Are people touchy about you wearing shoes inside your own home?

Nicole Atkins and The Black Sea blow us out of the water with their deep blues rock and palpable heartache.

When Bob Fingerman envisions the future, he sees a planet with mutants and a healthy supply of Slim Jims. As From the Ashes, his latest graphic novel, begins, Fingerman and wife Michele stand amidst the rubble. In this sharp social satire, the author of Beg the Question populates the world with neighborly zombies who live peacefully with three-headed dogs while “foodies” feast on the flesh of nuclear-charred celebrity chefs.

The world of rock concert poster art has its own definitive language, silent and spoken, written and unwritten, overt and implied. Like with many other microcultures, knowing this community’s unusual codes, insider terminology and culturally specific social etiquette is the difference between surface appreciation and full understanding. The masters of poster art twist pop culture imagery, repurpose age-old Americana icons and ink out slick illustrations in the name of ephemeral, music-related events. Using techniques and equipment that in the age of computers is all-but antiquated, they construct limited edition, handmade artifacts that not only mark a single day in history, but are reflective of the cultural surroundings at large. The community that produces these vibrant runs of ink on paper is insular and eccentric, full of brilliant, quirky, often introverted personalities, whose bombastic mode of expression is balanced by the under-the-radar status of their craft.

Douglas Rushkoff, filmmaker, scholar, media wunderkind and author of Life Inc., a manifesto of changing our culture of corporate-run consumption, spoke at Etsy headquarters recently. In addition to telling the tale of how corporate culture came to be, Rushkoff debunked the myth that industrialized production is more cost-effective than local production and trade, addressed how specialization is the territory of the handcrafter (not the worker on the assembly line), and emphasized the importance of the peer-to-peer exchange.

Zach and Wen Schieffelin think a lot about how people travel through the city. The two managing partners of Carbon(-) (pronounced “carbon negative”) have long had the matter of personal transport in their purview. In 2001 the couple launched Vespa Soho on Crosby Street in Manhattan. Five years later it was the largest Vespa dealership in the US. A couple of years later, they opened McCarren Motors in Williamsburg, a shop initially envisioned as “Vespa Brooklyn.” But because they were not able to secure an exclusive dealership with Vespa in the area, the shop was eventually realized as a provider of a more diverse selection of two-wheeled, motorized vehicles.

On a recent Monday morning, five days before she’s due to appear at Iguapop Gallery in Barcelona for a solo show of her artwork entitled “Silent Heroes,” Williamsburg artist Tara McPherson wipes teal paint off a palette knife, the only dirty instrument in her impeccable storefront studio on South 1st Street. Three paintings, two on the wall and one perched on an easel are in various stages of progress. The canvases (her first on linen —she usually paints on birch) each features one of McPherson’s signature beautiful babes, and each incorporates little blue, embryonic globule-like creatures—the latest additions to her fantastical world on paper. McPherson had just been asked to contribute an additional six more drawings to the exhibit, as songwriter Devendra Banhart had pulled out at the last minute (“What? A musician being flaky?” she joked), and all but one of the new pieces were still in early phases, just sketched enough to recognize the incorporation of McPherson’s tiny unsung heroes in each.

Not all of us are natural students, and many of us no longer have the patience to endure long lectures or do homework on a regular basis. But there are very few of us who don’t appreciate the value of acquiring a new skill set, especially one that’s fun, even to the point of relative uselessness. The WG took the time to sample some of the neighborhood’s most intriguing classes, some of which have more practical applications (flower arranging), and others that are more difficult to apply to everyday life (aerial tricks!). Williamsburg/Greenpoint is a collection of creative minds that need constant stimulation, and though the internet can teach you a lot of things, there’s something to be said for taking a stroll, rolling up your sleeves, and seeing what live instruction has to offer.