Ten years ago this January, in the deepest part of Brooklyn (okay, the Lorimer stop on the L train) a shadowy organization was born from Chris Rubino’s beard. Long, lanky and Italian, Rubino was a natural born beard prophet. His Garibaldi came in lush and thick. His roommate, Sean Donnelly, saw his friend’s prodigious whiskers, and, citing his lineage and personal experience, doubted his own ability to grow similar facial foliage.

There are no drum circles at Occupy Napa. No skirmishes with police (at least not yet). No dissension among the ranks, which speak clearly and with a single voice. That the ranks total one exceed­ingly reasonable and polit­i­cally moderate 62-year-old man wearing jeans, a polo shirt, wire frame glasses and a gardening hat to shield his pale face from the sun probably explains all of the above.

What is the fastest way out of Mom and Dad's house (or, in this case, Upper East Side duplex)? If you're an upwardly mobile over-30 socialite, the answer is easy. Embark on a hobby-career: designer, candy hawker, actress, slut. The options are endless.

If "A Coney Island of the Mind" had a house band, it might very well be the Starlight Girls. While their name is evocative of the group's sound - waves crashing under boardwalks, seedy '40s piano lounges, cheap thrills, film noir soundtracks and Hollywood cocktail parties all come to mind - it's also partially misleading.

Dressed in throwback running shoes and shorts, Chris Nicolson looks more like a guy about to go for a jog with Prefontaine than who he actually is: One of the most important young winemakers in New York. He plunges a long glass pipette (or “thief”) into a barrel and then offers a sample of the still-maturing blend of riesling and sauvignon blanc destined to become the house wine at Momofuku.

The concept for Prime 103, Ed "Jean Luc" Kleefield's new steakhouse and lounge on the Montauk Highway, isn't borrowed from a Miami Beach rival, despite recent accusations. Its inspiration, it turns out, is much closer to home.

It has taken a little longer than expected, but Townline BBQ, the new Hamptons joint from the group that runs Nick & Toni's, is nearly ready to open its doors. The restaurant occupies the space that housed Alison on the Beach, which had to be vacated because it was close to being condemned.

Frank Mundus is largely credited (or blamed) with popularizing shark fishing for sport. He is perhaps better known as the inspiration for Quint in Jaws after he showed the book’s author, Peter Benchley, the gnashing teeth of the monster he meant to write about aboard the Cricket. Mundus came to Montauk, New York in the 1950s to scrape by as a commercial fisherman trawling for bluefish, but back then, the waters were full of sharks.

A shark does what it does. This particular fish, a 4,500-lb great white racing through the murky depths off Montauk, had a meal on its mind. Or rather, in its nose. Sharks, it’s said, can smell one drop of blood in a million drops of water. It might have taken as few as ten minutes for this great white to catch up to the rapidly expanding chum slick.

The first stages of the current crisis gripped tea drinkers in the summer of 2009. Long before Silk Road, the underground online marketplace that recently came to the attention of the feds after a flurry of media coverage, there was another site where one could score illicit substances-if that is, they were interested in procuring dried poppy pods.

In the beginning, online advertising was somewhat simpler than it is today. Even without going back to the Paleolithic Era of the Internet (remember rotating GIFs and flashing "Click Here!" text?) the job of policing online display ads - making sure embarrassing snafus and horrifying ad adjacencies didn't happen - was once the domain of actual humans.

As media, creative, design and PR give way to technology, software and product development, words like "digital" and "agency" mean less than ever The future of advertising isn't advertising," says Rei Inamoto, chief creative officer of AKQA.

George Lois talks with the cadence and manner of a guy who's spent years around boxing gyms and maybe the track. Though, most of his fights have been in editorial bullpens and most of his bets have been on creative long shots. And they've paid off.

Contractually, “A Tool To Deceive and Slaughter” (2009) by Caleb Larsen is a work of art. The work consists of a shiny Internet-enabled 8″x8″x8″ acrylic black box. The object serves a single-minded purpose. Like a determined combination of Sotheby’s and the Terminator, it continually puts itself up for auction on eBay (auction description: “This object perpetually attempts to sell itself on eBay.”)

It must be disappointing to many that the title track on Born to Die uses a cleaned-up version of the line "I wanna fuck you hard in the pouring rain." Though it must be universally agreed upon that "kiss you hard" sounds more natural coming from those famously puffy lips than the vulgarity that had blogs buzzing when the live version of the song first made the rounds a few months back. Lyrics cannot be considered one of Lana's (nee Lizzy Grant, as she is listed in the writing credits, and under which name she had previously recorded) strengths, anyway.

Nothing kills the flavor of a neighborhood like the arrival of a bank. Especially the modern bank with its flat screens and gaudy 24-hour glowing facades. Hudson Street, which has been suffering for some time, died a little more today.