Freeloading Fitness

A while ago I posted about the cheap-as-can-be gym memberships offered through the city's Parks and Recreation Department, and, believe me, I am still a devotee of their $75 yearly deal. But that doesn't mean that I can't get down with some free fitness as well.

Brokelyn.com has published a guide of all the gym deals and promotions one could possibly find all over Brooklyn. From 1-day passes to a full week (!), Brokelyn calculates that the truly motivated Recessionist could end up with 26 straight days of free workouts.

Frugal Brooklyn

Last week, Brooklyn was named the most frugal city in the U.S. by Mint.com, based on discretionary spending figures. Of course, since the numbers correspond to the percentage decrease in spending since 2008, it could just mean that Brooklyn was one of the most outta hand back in bull-market 2008...

Either way, its a great graphic and is fascinating in its specifics, charting how much each (at least, each of the 5 least frugal) spent on clothing, books, electronics, hobbies, and sports respectively (Chicagoans love them some books). I wish they had broken it down for the most frugal as well-could be a very interesting comparison.

Quick! A Few Free (and Almost Free) Things to do in NYC Before Summer's End

September 21st is the last day of summer. Stop crying about it and start reading about it, because you have exactly 3 weeks to get your act together and get your Recessionist summer on. Here are some cheap things to do before you break out the corduroy and wool.

Explore Governor's Island:

Rent a bike for free (1 hour) on Fridays through October 9th and take a ride on the island's 2.2-mile waterfront promenade. The island is completely carless, and only accessible by a free ferry from Manhattan or Brooklyn.

If you're lucky you'll catch one of the art exhibits hosted there during summer months. (Creative Time’s show, “This World & Nearer Ones,” is up through September 20.)

Have a High Time:

A park that offers natural beauty, art, and a history lesson, the High Line opened on June 8th to hordes of New Yorkers who couldn't wait to get off the ground.







What's now wildflowers and fountains was for the past 25+ years an abandoned and overgrown train track. From the 1930s until 1980 it ran through the meatpacking district in Manhattan, bringing freight from 34th St. to Gansevoort St downtown.

The track was all set to be demolished (thanks , Giuliani) until the Friends of the High Line stepped in and got that thing good and parkified. Read more about the park and the process in this New York Times article.

Take Yourself Out To The Ballgame:

The Brooklyn Cyclones' season ends around labor day. Tickets are only $7.50. The Wonder Wheel is open through labor day as well.

Warm Up at P.S.1

P.S.1, in Long Island City, Queens, holds a weekly dancefest to soundtrack of fun, experimental music, held in the museum’s annually redesigned courtyard. This year it's a bedouin tent designed by the architecture firm MOS. Remaining shows: DJ Spun on Sept 5.

Green It Up:

Whether or not you even buy, all those vitamins in the air at local Greenmarkets have gotta be good for you, right?. Plus they are always samples! Check out the markets at Union Square (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday), Tompkins Square (Sundays), Tribeca (Saturdays), Tucker Square (Thursdays and Saturdays), Stuyveant Town (Sundays), Columbia (Sundays) and 57th St. (Saturdays). and catch great views of Lower Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the New York Harbor for free.

Take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry and catch the very best kind of views (the free kind) of Lower Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the New York Harbor.

Check out the Brooklyn Public Library's Free Summer Concert Series:
Up next are the Mandingo Ambassadors on Sept 12th, followed by Harry and the Potters on Sept 26th.

Roosevelt Island's Riverwalk Commons also offers free summer concerts, through Labor Day. See their calendar here, or on the Islander blog.

Who Needs Money, Anyway?

Certainly not Lily Gold, a Brooklyn artist who says she is, "constantly looking for ways to eliminate hard currency from my life." She recently created a bartering event at a Park Slope art gallery. According to the internets, she is not alone in preferring to trade.
An e-commerce expert interviewed by am NY says that, "as the economy has nose-dived, the "free-trade" movement has skyrocketed." And he doesn't mean the kind of "free trade" that allows you to buy bargain blouses at Wal-Mart made in Pakistan or Bangladesh. He means swapping goods and services instead of paying for them

Due to a timely combination in the of generalized brokeness and increasing access to the internet, lately US consumers are returning to the good ol' days of bartering. For many, this means access to products or services that would be out of reach otherwise, because bartering opens up opportunities that don't exist in a classical economic system, where pricing is marked to the market.

A bartering system instead can give the economic edge in any given deal to unlikely and unexpected parties, as it simply benefits those who happen to have a particular item or service that is in demand at that particular time by a peer.

Can you feel the thrill???

For a while, Craigs List (with its "barter" section) had the corner on this market, but among the bartering websites that have cropped up lately are:
HomeExchange.com, where you can trade houses for a vacation (ooh, think anyone will want to trade a noisy, cramped apartment in Brooklyn for a thatch-roof beach house on an island??); MakeupAlley.com, a "beauty social network" which offers product reviews as well as the possibility to make trades;FrugalReader and PaperBackSwap, both book trading websites; TextSwap, which is for textbooks in particular, BarterBee.com, for movies, music, and games; and, finally, SwapThing and TargetBarter which are forums for trading and bartering all categories of things.