Top 5 Stories on Brownstoner This Week: Brooklyn's Skyline Goes Up, Up, Up

How Six Controversial Proposed Skyscrapers Will Radically Transform Brooklyn’s Skyline
Just like our rents, Brooklyn’s buildings are going up, up, up. With this week’s announcement of a 600-foot-tall commercial building at 420 Albee Square and a 1,000-foot-tall tower at 340 Flatbush Avenue Extension, we thought it was high time to see how a few buildings-in-the-works measure up.

Con Artists Steal Homes From Longtime Owners in Bed Stuy, Crown Heights
Con artists hiding behind untraceable LLCs are swindling longtime homeowners in Bed Stuy, Crown Heights and elsewhere out of their homes. In some cases, fraudsters lie to get homeowners to sign over the deed. In other cases, they simply forge signatures without the homeowner knowing a deed transfer has taken place — until it’s too late.

The Biggest Mistakes in Eight Iconic Brooklyn Movies
Even some of the most classic Brooklyn films make mistakes in capturing America’s favorite borough. IMDB’s user-generated goofs section dares to question many an iconic New York moment, noting anachronisms, continuity issues and geography errors that just go to show, “there’s no guy livin’ dat knows Brooklyn through and through, because it’d take a guy a lifetime just to find his way aroun’ duh goddamn town” — to quote Thomas Wolfe’s Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Schools 101: How to Get Into the Public Elementary School of Your Choice
School applications. Ugh. Cue backstabbing, pushy parents hiring tutors to get their 3-year-olds into the “right” private preschools so that one day they may be accepted into Harvard. But it’s really not that bad, at least not in Brooklyn. There are a number of strong public schools in New York City — many of them better than private schools elsewhere in the country. And one perk of city life, as opposed to the suburbs, is your kid has at least some opportunity to attend almost any one.

5 Expert Predictions on the Future of Brooklyn Real Estate
What does the future hold? That was the chief question posed to four expert panelists — a developer, architect, critic, and city planner — each with an eye to Brooklyn’s destiny.