Williamsburg, Brooklyn is pretty much synonymous with "gentrification," and these U.S. Census maps showing median household income from the past two decades show you why.
Median household income in the Williamsburg Census tracts has shifted drastically over the past two decades, with much of the change happening between 2000 and 2012.
The most gentrified areas — the waterfront in north Williamsburg around Kent Avenue and the area surrounding the Bedford Avenue L train stop — are now seeing median household incomes reach about $80,000 and up.
The maps below show how much Williamsburg has changed since 1990. Darker color corresponds with higher income.
The map below shows Williamsburg in 1990. Median incomes ranged from $25,000 to $55,000 in 2012 dollars.
By 2000, median incomes near the waterfront and around the Bedford L stop had reached $47,000 to $70,000.
And most recently, in 2012, incomes have reached $87,000 on the waterfront and $53,000 to $80,000 in other parts of north Williamsburg.
His wife Carol is the general manager and wine director at the Italian-themed, locally sourced restaurant, which serves up dishes including roasted scallops with butternut squash and charred lamb shoulder.
We chatted with Teich about his transition from pitcher to chef and what modern diners expect from restaurants.
Business Insider: How did you first become interested in cooking?
Michael Teich: After my baseball career ended I got a job utilizing my degree, but I wasn’t passionate about it. I always enjoyed cooking, so a friend took me to a culinary school on a whim. I enrolled that day, started a week later, and a week after that I quit my job and started working in a restaurant. I’ve been cooking ever since.
BI: What are the biggest influences on The Wallace's menu?
MT: The biggest influences on the menu are the seasons. What’s available in the market is what is on our menu. Also the relationships we have built over the years with local ranches, fisherman and farms influences what we use. Plus we only serve seafood that has been approved on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s safe and sustainable list. And we only work with people who practice sustainability and take the same time and care to produce their products as we do in preparing them.
BI: What kind of foods are trending in the restaurant industry right now?
MT: People are very interested in where their food comes from so anything that is local, organic and sustainable is big with consumers. Also people are becoming more adventurous and willing to try different things, the secondary cuts. The nose-to-tail type of cooking has really gained a lot of momentum, as well as delicious vegetarian and vegan offerings.
BI: Which dishes are some of the most popular? Why do you think they are popular?
MT: Our vegetables are very popular because they are of the moment. I think they are popular because we really try to highlight the vegetable. People are surprised how great a carrot in-season tastes, or how savory and satisfying broccoli can be. It’s due to finding the best ingredients from farmers who care about what they are producing. Our ravioli has been a really big customer favorite as well. People can taste the care when something is made thoughtfully by hand. Our raw seafood dishes have also been well received. Again, they are local and sustainable fish where we highlight the fish. With all our dishes our goal is to highlight the ingredient, showcase it. Customers appreciate when they order carrots and they get carrots, not a lot of "chef-y" tricks.
BI: How have customers' values changed over the past 10 years in the restaurant industry?
MT: I think customers are much more savvy. There is so much information now, food is everywhere. The knowledge they have when they come into dine is so high, you have to deliver. I think customers used to just got out to eat, now they are judging you. Everyone is on Yelp, Twitter, Facebook giving their opinions in real time. I think another change is service, I suppose it has always been that way, but guests really want to feel taken care of, made to feel they matter and that you are happy to have them. That’s something we really focus on, making our guests feel like our guests and welcoming them into our home.
BI: What is the most surprising thing about opening a restaurant?
MT: So far for us it has been the sense of community. We really wanted to open up a neighborhood restaurant. To have people come in and tell us how excited they have been for us to open and how they watched day after day as we were building out feels really good. When they come in and we give them great service and delicious food and drink it comes full circle, and we have a customer for life. It’s really something special to be part of something bigger than just yourself and to see it grow is very rewarding. Before you open you are just thinking about opening, you don’t really think about the impact you are making on everything around you, but when you feel it and see it just makes you work that much harder to succeed.
Teich also shared some photos of the restaurant and dishes.
The interior has a modern feel:
Here are some carrots and parsnips with a honey-soy glaze:
Here are shishito peppers with edamame:
Roasted scallops with butternut squash, chard, and prosciutto:
A few months before YPlan opened its new offices in Manhattan, employees road-tripped to a workshop north of the city to work alongside Robert Rising, a man who calls himself "The Black Lumberjack."
Rising collected hundreds of felled trees after Hurrican Sandy to turn them into beautiful furniture.All-in-all, the employees helped him create 25 desks from this reclaimed wood.
Jessica Hack, YPlan's operations manager, said the team knew that it wanted to locally-source all of the furnishings for its new office to support the city (the company first was founded in London). Using Sandy debris was the perfect fit.
"We thought that it would be really cool to have something in our office connected to an event that was so huge for the city,"Jessica Hack, YPlan's operations manager, told Business Insider.
By helping Rising build the desks, YPlan also kept costs down and gave its new employees the opportunity to grow closer through team-bonding.
YPlan raised $12 million this summer for its international expansion, and it launched in New York City in September.
"Since then, we've been growing at double the pace as we did when we launched in London," co-founder Rytis Vitkauskas says. YPlan is available of iPhone or Android.
The point of YPlan is to help you make last-minute plans. It lists about ten interesting events, which are often discounted or exclusive.
You can read more details about each individual event.
Before booking tickets though, you have to sign-up.
I'm happily married. But if I wasn't and I wanted to spice up my life with a bout of infidelity, there are several dating websites designed with that in mind.
One of the best-known cheating sites is Ashley Madison. Curious about what it's like to use such a site, I went undercover (so to speak) for a month on Ashley Madison to take a look inside.
Because I was posing, I was as respectful as possible. I didn't respond to emails or look at everyone's private photos. Obviously, I didn't actually date anyone either.
That said, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy the site was to use. Given its emphasis on sex, I was also surprised by how respectful and NOT pornographic everyone was.
That said, need to warn you: the following slides do contain some racy and sexual content.
The first step is to tell the site what kind of an affair I was after. I said I was an attached female seeking males.
I described myself and my limits, mostly from pull down lists. My options were: something short term, long term, cyber only, "erotic," anything goes. I chose 'whatever excites me.' I also described what I look like and said I was 36.
I got an option of uploading a profile photo. Many people were using sexy photos for their profiles. It let me blur the face, or just block it like this. I could upload more photos to share with people I met on the site, too.
While my own interactions with cable providers gave me the impression that getting a set-top box installed is a uniquely miserable experience, a new study indicates that satellite TV providers might actually be more annoying to deal with.
According to mobile advertising company Marchex Inc., people curse out satellite TV representatives more than they do customer service employees of any other kind of business. In fact, Marchex says customers swear during 1 out of every 82 calls they make to satellite TV companies.
As for cable company employees? They have it marginally better as the third most-cussed out customer service representatives. Customers swear at them during 1 out of every 123 calls. Contractors were second-most cussed out at 1 out of every 90 calls.
To get its data, Marchex's assessed more than 1.2 million consumer calls placed to U.S. businesses from March 2012 to November 2013. Here's its complete rankings:
Chipotle has been quietly growing a pizza chain in Denver for more than two years.
Pizzeria Locale offers customizable pies cooked before customers' eyes in less than two minutes, and has become popular in the area, reports Patricia Calhoun at the Denver Westword Blog.
"'When I walked in, I thought, 'Oh my gosh, what if they did this in a Chipotle format?'" Ells said.
The Mexican chain spent the next 18 months helping the pizzeria adapt to a faster format with a rotating hot oven and affordable ingredients. The new Pizzeria Locale launched in May.
"We realized we could change the ways people think about pizza...how can we serve the same ingredients at less than half the price. Shockingly, it's worked," Ells said.
The experience at Pizzeria Locale is similar to Chipotle, WSJ reports.
"Diners standing in line choose from toppings like fresh mozzarella and prosciutto while watching their food being made," Nassauer writes. "Individual 11-inch pies cost around $6.50 and take a few minutes to make. Diners pay at the counter."
So-called "better pizza" chains have been competing to get a share of the booming fast-casual market.
For now, Pizzeria Locale is exploring the option of opening more locations in Denver.
Here are some photos of the pizza chain:
NOW WATCH: The Secret To Making Pizza So Tasty That Even New Yorkers Will Wait In A 2-Hour Line For A Slice
Lips get chapped, skin breaks out, and hair becomes static-y as it adjusts to the changing temperature and humidity.
But it doesn't have to be this way. Here are seven simple beauty hacks that every guy should know.
Even better, they all use common household products, so even if you don't end up liking one of the tricks at least you didn't spend $50 on a cream.
1. Redness-reducing eye drops will make pimples less red.
So you're not supposed to pop pimples, but they're hard to ignore. If you do and the area becomes red and irritated before a big date or meeting, rub some redness-reducing eye drops on the area.
The drops contain tetrahydrozoline hydrochloride, which helps get rid of redness fast. Just put some on a Q-Tip and apply it to the pimple.
2. Dryer sheets fight hair static.
In the winter, it's not uncommon for people with fine hair to get static cling because of the dry air. One way to fight it is with a balm or hair gel, but if you're not into that sort of look (or ran out of product), you can also just take a dryer sheet and rub it onto your hair and brush. Easy.
3. Calamine lotion is an awesome spot treatment.
For those just on the verge of getting a huge pimple, rub some calamine lotion onto the area. It's ridiculously cheap, and dries up cystic acne very quickly (though it will dry out your skin too, so just make sure to moisturize after taking it off).
4. Keep lips soft with a homemade sugar scrub.
If you're not using lip balm regularly — and sometimes even if you are — lips have a tendency to get chapped in the winter. Mix some olive oil with sugar (you can also use honey and sugar) in a small bowl to create a scrub, and gently massage it into your lips.
Rinse off with warm water and finish with your favorite lip balm.
5. Moisturize your neck, hands, and face with virgin coconut oil.
Coconut oil has become the go-to product for beauty, health, and wellness enthusiasts. It's an amazing body lotion because it seals in natural moisture, and is naturally antibacterial and antifungal. Plus it smells amazing.
You'll usually find the unrefined virgin variety in health food stores like Whole Foods (look in the cooking section) — just make sure it's not hydrogenated, bleached, refined, or deodorized. We recommend Dr. Bronner's.
6. Put a cold pack on your face to de-puff tired eyes.
When you haven't gotten enough sleep (or your face is puffy from drinking all night at a holiday party), wake up a little earlier than usual and put a cold pack over your eyes for 5-10 minutes. The cold will de-puff your face, and help you look more alert than you actually feel.
7. Exfoliate dead skin away with baking soda.
The number one reason your face can look haggard during the winter is because of all the dead skin cells that accumulate. To make your skin look fresh, you should scrub your face with an exfoliant, such as baking soda.
It's coarse, but not too coarse, so it will get rid of the top layer of dead skin cells without irritating skin. Combine a teaspoon of baking soda with water and massage into skin before rinsing off with warm water. And don't forget to moisturize afterwards.
Last night Martin Scorsese's 'Wolf of Wall Street' came home, and premiered at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City.
I went.
Let me premise this review by saying that I don't go to these things — these Hollywood glitterati everyone-hold-your-breath-there's-Leo things. These suck-it-in-you're-on-the-red-carpet-now-smile things.
But I had a killer, killer time. It wasn't hard. The crowd was positive, the movie — the story of a crooked Wall Streeter and his opulent rise and ugly fall — had chops (though I'll get to my qualms in a moment), and the after party was fun.
The movie started early, at 6:00 pm. This may have something to do with the fact that it is about three hours long (a problem). I had one drink before the film started rolling. I wish I'd had two, as I skipped the red carpet anyway.
And I recommend that all civilians (non-film) people do this. In skipping the red carpet I skipped the squealing, flashing, and crowding that more resembles Times Square traffic than an actual celebration. Plus, you get a good spot to watch people walk in and out of the theater. Those are the money sightings. Remember that.
Now for the movie. The Wolf of Wall Street is the story of Jordan Belfort, a Queens kid turned penny stock hustler who made a fortune on Long Island in the 80s and 90s. The way Scorsese tells it, Belfort's firm, Stratton-Oakmont, was basically a non-stop orgy of greed, drugs, money and sex. Belfort's personal life was like that too.
The first hour or so of the movie was hilarious. This was Belfort's rise — his introduction to Wall Street and his A-Ha moment. The moment he realizes he can teach any idiots to sell stocks to idiots. The idiots he finds to do the selling are pitch perfect, especially Donnie Azoff (played by Jonah Hill in a perfect pair of prosthetic teeth).
Some coke, crack and a ton of Quaaludes later Belfort is rich beyond belief and married to his second wife, a bombshell named Naomi, played by Margot Robbie. Both Robbie and Hill team up to steal the show from DiCaprio. He was good, yes. But they were better.
If I had driven to the North Shore of Long Island directly after the movie and cut off a Escalade on the highway, it could easily have been Robbie and Hill flipping me off from the front seat as they drove away. That's how spot on they were.
Plus, Bo Deedle played a private investigator in the movie, Fran Lebowitz had a cameo, and the soundtrack was full of 90s dance party tunes that had me thinking about MTV Jamz and In Living Color re-runs.
There were some issues though. Belfort's real victims, the investors who lost money, were nowhere to be found. That made it harder to see how he was more than a degenerate, he was a criminal. He lied to people and took their money. That shouldn't be forgotten.
Additionally, the movie was too long. I won't mention where I started to fidget in my seat — I've already said much too much — but (and I never thought I'd type this) maybe there was too much yachting.
None of this, obviously, is what makes a premiere special, though. Anyone can see the movie in the theater. What's cool about the premiere is that a guy behind me whispered "hey, that's my pillow," during one of the scenes in Belfort's living room. The people that made the movie were there. They finally got to celebrate the furniture they donated, the money they spent, the actors they dressed — what have you. That's what makes a premiere cool. You get to pretend you're part of the family.
And after-parties. Those make it cool too. The Wolf Of Wall Street after-party was at the Roseland Ballroom in NYC. It's a venue that sees more "18-and-over" concerts than Hollywood blow-outs, but it looked great.
The party was a mix of freezing girls in cocktail dresses dresses, New York City social royalty, film industry folk, and of course, the stars.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese were there sitting at a table near the DJ. I didn't get close because they were mobbed, and it seemed like a lot of work. Like, real "cut through body guards, avoid the girl having a silent melt-down and don't spill your drink" work.
The key to the after-party is not to spend your time stalking people, but to find a bar and post up. Everyone needs a drink, and in doing that you'll watch a lot of key people go by, like Kevin Connolly from Entourage (I've always had a soft spot for E, don't judge me).
More importantly, try to go with an industry person who actually knows the people that made the event happen — the planners, the media connectors, the sponsor finders. They are the silent force that moves this entire show along.
The night in general was about that force. At a premiere, the movie is the icing, the celebration is the cake.
Oefner is known for combining art and science, having previously captured the slow-motion effects of sound waves, centripetal forces and iridescence.
"My idea for this series was to invent time," Oefner wrote in an email to Business Insider, "In all the other series that I did so far, I was focusing on capturing time, holding on to moments which pass us by in the blink of an eye. With this series, I wanted to invent such a moment from scratch by creating an illusion of an exploding car, thus inventing, in fact, a moment in time."
Oefner started with assembled scale models of a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé with gullwing doors from 1954, a Jaguar E-Type from 1961, and a Ferrari 330 P4 from 1967. The first thing he had to do was disassemble the hundreds of parts in each vehicle.
Then he sketched the way each piece would fly from the model cars, had an explosion actually occurred from within. Oefner photographed each car part individually, suspending pieces by hanging wires or propping them up on styrofoam blocks that he removed when he overlayed the photos in his computer.
"When I was deciding on what object would work best to show in mid explosion," Oefner wrote, "I immediately thought of cars, because everybody recognizes them. The viewer doesn't ask himself the question, 'What object is it?' The discussion is rather about the state it is shown in."
Check out the three finished photos below:
And this video shows how Oefner did it (Your speakers aren't broken, there's no sound):
And in Jordan, King Abdullah II took the opportunity to do his people some good and help them move cars stuck in snow. The king had been touring Amman when he stopped to lend a hand, according to Ahram Online, the English-language version of Al-Ahram, an Egyptian daily.
It's logical to guess this is a public relations stunt to make Abdullah II look good. But as Raphael Orlove at Jalopnik points out, if that were the goal, the video would likely be higher quality.
There's an oft-cited study out there that says money does buy you happiness — but only up until a certain point. It says that after you make $75,000 per year, increasing your income is not going to make you any "happier."
But the truth about wealth and happiness is more complicated than any study can say.
Take the case of Evan Spiegel, the 23-year-old CEO of a startup called Snapchat.
Last month, the Wall Street Journal and others reported that Spiegel turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook. When people read these reports, they thought Spiegel was crazy.
But here's the thing. Spiegel comes from a wealthy family. His dad lives in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area. Also, Spiegel was able to sell some of his stock in Snapchat to investors for millions of dollars.
So the fact is, when he turned down Facebook's $3 billion offer, Spiegel was not saying "no" to being rich. He was already rich twice over.
And what did that money — his father's and his own — buy him? It bought him a relatively risk-free chance to spend the rest of his life running a global technology company. It bought him a pursuit.
Having a pursuit that means something to you is not the same thing as having happiness, but it's something like it that can't quite be quantified in a study.
Not everyone, though. One tech executive I met with last week shook his head in bewilderment when Snapchat came up. He said that Spiegel was "taking food out of the mouths of generations of Spiegels."
Obviously, the topic of wealth and it's relationship to happiness is complicated and conversations about are laced with judgement. And that's why it so fascinating to read a thread they have on Quora where rich people are answering the question: "What does it feel like to be financially rich?"
Here are some of the most candid thoughts from the thread. Some of them are heart-warming. Some are brutally honest. Some are very surprising.
Money does not make you happier, relationships do.
"I don't believe very much in the hedonics argument about wealth - that the more you have, the more money you need to maintain a certain level of happiness. Happiness has mostly to do with relationships and the quality thereof. I doubt that it's a metric that can be measured effectively by economists to come to a conclusion." — J.C. Hewitt
After you are rich, you take it for granted, like you take having great parents for granted.
"[Being rich] feels like all the other blessings we have in life when times are tough - we know that they are blessings, strive not to take the for granted, but can forget we're blessed when we're feeling down. It's like having a beautiful kid of a wonderful spouse or great parents. And for me, at least, I can say with absolute certainty it has not made me any happier." — Rick Webb, COO Barbarian Group
Having a lot of money makes you want to make more.
"I thought, if I could make 10 million dollars then it must be too easy. In fact, I honestly thought, everyone else had probably already made 11 million dollars. So then I felt poor again. I now needed 100 million dollars to be happy." — James Altucher
When rich people start dying, they become less proud of their wealth.
"After she attained what she thought was success, [my mother] was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. She spent the days up until her death regretting almost all the choices she made and beat herself up day after day. One of her last journal entries included reflections on how unappreciative she was with the things in front of her, and finally realizing happiness does not lie within superficial matters a little too late." — Mona Nomura
Rich people get all the same sadness, but they don't hurt as much because they are still rich.
"Rich people are prone to all the same maladies and emotions as anyone else, and at the same frequency. And certainly, in some cases, money itself can cause stress and unhappiness. But, with one difference -- if you're unhappy and rich, you have money. And money buys creature comforts." — Steven Kane
After you get rich, you feel the same.
"After a few months of wealth you will eventually get used to it and become the same person that you are now." — Balraj Chana
If you are rich because of your salary you end up working all the time.
"Socially, the life of someone who makes a lot of money is probably not what you expect. The "rich" on television are usually old money of some kind. The working rich pretty much have to devote their lives to work. At many points, my dad was working and traveling for twelve months out of the year. I think when my sister was born, he was literally commuting between NYC and Zürich five days out of every seven." — J.C. Hewitt
Being rich makes you feel smarter and better than the rest of the world, and that feels good.
"It feels good when you break your own money making records and look at the rest of the world like retards. It's good to defeat the system and money helps you do that." — Anonymous.
You get respect you don't deserve.
"Life is effortless for the rich. Just by being who you are, perhaps 99% of the world will hop-to and accord you respect that you don't deserve. Even the stupidest and most illiterate rich person can be showered with respect and praise."
Sometimes, you feel like you are God.
"Having grown up as a child in a family which can be described as old money, and having since then lived in humbling circumstances, I can say for sure that families from old money treat their children like gods. When I was little, I used to take kids aside and explain to them that I was indeed God. 'Psssst, you know I'm God, right?' Obviously that feeling has left me, but it hasn't left my father, who used to tell me that we have blue blood. He now sits in his room in a constant depression, and is the most miserable person I know." — Igor Atakhanov
Being rich makes life less risky.
" My life has less risk. If I'm ever ill, I go to the best doctor. If I want to invest in real estate, I can afford to lose the investment without effect to my lifestyle. I can have 5 kids and know that each of them will go to college." — Josh Kerr
After you get rich, you will still ask: "Is this it?"
"When you've achieved all material goals, you startup asking yourself, is this it? And then if you're a truly ambitious individual, with some care for what the world could be you start asking yourself, what next, how can I change the world? That's where I'm at at this point." — Anonymous
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There's no question that it's an epic film in terms of scale, but at times it gets so lost in itself — in the debauchery, the opulence, and the excess — that it forgets that the audience is watching a story. And stories need to move at a steady clip.
That isn't to say that 'Wolf of Wall Street' isn't enjoyable, it is, but there are few times when you feel that director Martin Scorsese is so obsessed with re-creating the world of the wolf, that the story of main characterJordan Belfort suffers.
Belfort, played by Leonard DiCaprio, is a kid from Queens with big dreams of making it on Wall Street. He starts working at Rothschilds in 1987 where he meets his first boss, played by Matthew McConaughey.
In one of the first scenes, McConauhey takes the young, innocent Belfort to lunch at Windows of the World and explains Wall Street to him.
It is during that speech that you realize that this movie is 2/3rd brilliant comedy. McConaughey is perfect. The way he explains Wall Street money as a fantasy, its salesmen as crooked soldiers, and its clients as idiots, is incredibly hilarious and more importantly, accurate.
That is the speech that turned Belfort into a wolf. When the stock market crashes on Black Monday, he goes to work for a hole-in-the-wall Long Island penny stock firm. That's where the wolf learns to hunt. It's how he learns he can sell anything to anyone if he lies, and that he can teach anyone else to do it too.
It's how the scam, his firm Stratton-Oakmont, is born.
That first hour in which Belfort finds his band of merry menaces, builds his firm, and becomes a debauched adulterating drug addict is incredibly funny. It moves fast, and Jonah Hill's character, Danny Azoff, steals the show. Hill's voice is perfect, his prosthetic teeth are perfect, and like McConaughey's character, you an see the greed on his face. It's human and it's honest.
This where Scorsese shines. The movie is a lot like 'Goodfellas'. DiCaprio speaks to the camera with the same intensity as Ray Liotta, though he's got way better clothes. Scorsese, for his part, captures the dynamic of Stratton-Oakmont's close criminals so well that it feels like you're part of the family.
That sense of family gets complicated in the next hour, as you see Belfort go completely nuts. He leaves his wife for a Long Island princess named Naomi, played by Margot Robbi, who matches (if not surpasses) DiCaprio's intensity.
The lady is really seductive, and so is Belfort's life. Yachts, cars, having sex on piles of money, crazy private planes to Vegas, tons and tons of drugs. It's all there. This is where Scorsese can lose us. It's clear that he wants to capture every moment of Belfort's spiral. The film smacks of a morality play.
As Belfort loses control, the story slows down. A such, the movie was long, long, long. A bunch of scenes should have been cut, especially because there are two major things that the movie was missing.
First, the victims. There were people that lost their life savings with Stratton-Oakmont, and they were nowhere to be found in the film. This makes it hard to see Belfort as the true criminal that he was.
Second, Belfort had mob ties. The mob is Scorsese's wheelhouse, so it's a wonder that the connection didn't make it into the film. Could've been fun, as fun as his spot-on presentation of a shady Swiss banker — as fun as the porn star facial hair on Belfort's drug dealing high school friend.
All in all though, the film is a party, and not just because of the drugs and debauchery. It's because the movie sounds like a party — the soundtrack brings back Jock Jams mix CDs and Limelight club anthems.
Plus Leonardo DiCaprio can dance. Go ahead brother. GO. AHEAD.
Department stores are feeling the heat in the last week before Christmas. In honor of one of the biggest toy shopping seasons of the year, British department store House of Fraser looked at sales figures from the last five decades to determine the most popular toys through the ages.
It starts in the 1960s when nearly every kid asked Santa for a remote control car and follows toy buying trends to the present when toys seem to need an Internet connection to succeed.
In the early years of this decade, one of the most popular toys is Moshi Monsters, which started as a website for 6 to 14 year olds to raise virtual pets and has since turned into an array of physical products including figurines, video games and movies.
Take a look at this infographic charting the most popular toys from the last five decades:
With the help of property search site Estately, we came up with a list of quirky properties currently for sale across the U.S., including a Miami mansion with a moat and a converted church in Oregon.
This Malibu shack comes with an underground system of tunnels.
It may not look like much from the outside, but the thousands of dollars you sink into this property will actually buy you 40 acres in the Malibu Hills, prime real estate surrounded by state protected land on three sides.
The previous owner dug a series of underground tunnels around the property, believing that Spanish gold was hidden there.
This single-family home in Oregon used to be a church.
This church-turned-home still features Cathedral ceilings and skylights. The updates include a lofted bedroom and office space as well as a Euro-style kitchen and a Japanese soaking tub and steam room in the bathroom.
In addition to this place's cool look, taxes are frozen on the property through 2016.
Many familiar faces make an appearance on Wealth-X's list of the billionaires who made the most money this year.
Businessmen like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who have dominated wealth rankings for years, continued to add billions of dollars to their already sizable fortunes.
Here's the full list, ranked by billions made from January 1 to December 11, 2013:
10. Carl Icahn made $7.2 billion
The corporate raider had a big year after bets on Netflix and Herbalife yielded Icahn Capital Management $800 million and $500 million profits, respectively. He tweeted his thanks to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Kevin Spacey, star of the streaming service's hit show, "House of Cards."
9. Lui Chee Woo made $8.3 billion
The founder of Galaxy Entertainment Group became Asia's second-richest man in 2013 as gambling revenue grew at a record pace in Macau. Lui is looking to expand his flagship casino in the city's Cotai area, which is known by many as the Asian version of the Las Vegas Strip.
Brin, Google co-founder and head of special projects with Google X, made $2.9 billion in the October stock surge. As of December 11, Brin is worth an estimated $30 billion, a 4.8% percent increase over the year.
6. Masayoshi Son made $10.3 billion
The founder of Softbank, Asia's top Internet and telecommunications corporation, lost $70 billion in the dotcom crash, but he's surging back in a big way. The purchase of Sprint and a large investment in Finnish game-maker Supercell are highlights in a year that saw Son's personal net worth more than double, growing from $8.8 billion to $19.1 billion.
The founder and CEO of Amazon, which made $17.1 billion in net sales in the third quarter, raised some eyebrows when he bought the Washington Post for $250 million this summer.
3. Sheldon Adelson made $11.4 billion
According to Wealth-X, the casino mogul's personal net worth grew to an estimated $35.3 billion this year thanks to profits from his gambling properties in Las Vegas, Macau, and Singapore.
2. Bill Gates made $11.5 billion
The world's wealthiest man ended the year with a personal net worth of $72.6 billion, up nearly 19% from $61.1 billion in 2012.
1. Warren Buffett made $12.7 billion
Berkshire Hathaway's CEO personally made about $37 million a day in 2013, a year that saw the company's acquisition of Heinz and Nevada's NV Energy.
She didn't really resemble a panda right away. Days after her birth, the zoo posted a photo of the tiny, 4.8-ounce pink cub. "All signs are that we have a very healthy, active, vibrant cub," officials said at the time.
We didn't learn that Bao Bao was a girl until several weeks later. Her mom is National Zoo panda Mei Xiang, and a paternity test later revealed that her father is Tian Tian, the zoo's male panda.
Now, nearly four months after her birth, Bao Bao has posed for her first official photo shoot, for Smithsonian Magazine. She's still tiny, but has the classic characteristics of a panda.
Here she is at 10 weeks:
Bao Bao, was the result of artificial insemination. Here, she is examined by two zoo keepers:
At 10 weeks old, she weighed 7.7 pounds, according to Smithsonian Magazine. But she was about the size of a stick of butter when she was born.
The history of gin is often tied to British culture — a "gin craze" took over London in the 18th century, while English soldiers in India were known to drink gin and tonics to protect themselves against malaria.
But today the juniper-infused liquor is loved by all kinds of people the world over, from British bar patrons to American rap stars (think Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice").
The masterminds at FindTheBest have made a list of the best bottles of gin you can buy for less than $30.
Some of the labels are traditional London dry gins, distilled with the classic juniper flavors that have been used for centuries. Others are more modern, making use of a variety of other botanicals and fruits.
To rank the bottles, FindTheBest used weighted scores from the Beverage Testing Institute, Wine Enthusiast Magazine, the International Wine and Spirit Competition, and performance reviews from the San Francisco World Spirits Competition for every year since 2000.
10. New Amsterdam Gin ($14)
This is a modern gin flavored with citrus peel and juniper. According to the Beverage Tasting Institute, it's "a fruity, very approachable gin to drink neat or on the rocks."
According to the Beverage Tasting Institute, this Austrian-distilled traditional gin has "delicate aromas of pepper jelly, floral bath talc, pine sap, and lemon curd."
2. Van Gogh Gin ($25)
This London Dry gin incorporates ingredients from all over the world, including cassia bark from India, coriander and licorice from the Middle East, and juniper berries from the Netherlands.
1. Tanqueray No. 10 ($30)
Tanqueray No.10's distinctly fruity flavor earned it a rating of 100 out of a possible 100 from FindTheBest. According to the distillers, it's "the only gin distilled with handpicked fresh fruit and botanicals, including white grapefruits, oranges and limes."
Brooklyn-based artist Lauren Orscheln approaches each canvas with a large brush and a pot of instant coffee.
For coffee snobs out there, don't worry: the instant brew isn't for drinking, it's for painting.
"The viscosity of the instant coffee works great on the canvas," Orscheln told Business Insider. Plus she likes the rich, brown color.
Orscheln, who showed some of her work at Coffee's Night Out last month in Greenpoint, started experimenting with coffee as an artistic medium five years ago when a teacher recommended it as an exercise. First, she used a hair dryer to caramelize the coffee for a sculptural effect, and that evolved into working with it in figurative painting, her main pursuit.
She starts painting on the coffee with a big brush then moves to a smaller one farther into the sketching process. Orscheln uses charcoal to create outlines. When it mixes with the coffee, the charcoal gets "flattened and looks more like paint."
"When I'm working with coffee, it's more about forms and lines," Orscheln said, "It's not so much about coffee acting as a rendering device."
If she makes a stroke with the coffee she doesn't like, Orscheln can wipe it off the gesso-treated canvas with a rag. That usually leaves a bit of a yellow stain behind, but it doesn't bother her. She likes viewers to see "a history of the piece."
Orscheln works on the coffee and charcoal layer of her paintings for a couple days, about 10 to 15 hours of collective work. It takes a half-hour to dry, but she usually takes at least a day off before finishing the piece with oil paint.
"If I put too much oil on top, it's very easy to wipe it off with a turpenoid rag," Orscheln said. "I want the coffee to show through in the end."
Keep scrolling to see some of Orscheln's work.
"Self Portrait" is the last in a series of self portraits Orscheln painted. She used coffee, watercolor and charcoal.
"Botched Debauchery" is the first piece Orscheln painted with coffee. She sketched entirely with the medium, then added charcoal to create the shadows.
Earlier this year, Penrose, a blues and rock band that moved to Brooklyn from Philadelphia, asked Orscheln to design an album cover for them. It's one of the few pieces Orscheln painted on paper. She sketched in coffee and said it gives warmth to the watercolors.
Orscheln started "Freudian Slip" with charcoal and then added coffee to figure out where she wanted the most depth. She added even more coffee after the layer of oil paint to get the pigment she wanted.
Orscheln said she was especially happy with how the coffee background came through in the final image, titled "The Foot Painting."
For "Tousled Sheets and Paint," Orscheln painted a bunch of fruit thrown on her own bed, first with coffee and watercolor, then with oil paint.
Michael Teich's life was at a standstill after his baseball career ended nearly two decades ago.
Rising collected hundreds of felled trees after Hurrican Sandy to turn them into beautiful furniture.
Chipotle has been quietly growing a pizza chain in Denver for more than two years. 
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3. Calamine lotion is an awesome spot treatment.
6. Put a cold pack on your face to de-puff tired eyes.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese were there sitting at a table near the DJ. I didn't get close because they were mobbed, and it seemed like a lot of work. Like, real "cut through body guards, avoid the girl having a silent melt-down and don't spill your drink" work.
"After a few months of wealth you will eventually get used to it and become the same person that you are now." — Balraj Chana
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