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Look past the movies and the new fashion line—she’s making the best music of her career.

St. Elsewhere, Gnarls Barkley's debut, is an unclassifiable mix of psychedelic rock, hip-hop, and electronic music, all topped by Cee-Lo’s classic soul vocals.

And other brilliantly strange concoctions from the elusive pop genius Scott Walker.

Create ecofriendly design out of scraps of wood or old water bottles. Turn foam into a chair, or plastic gumball-machine prizes into a light fixture. Or recycle design history itself, with a satirical twist.

Not every designer in Brooklyn is conceptual. The borough is also home to woodworkers, glassblowers, and potters, making objects that don’t need to be anything more than beautiful.

Take a lowly item. It could be cultural (hunting stuff) or just broken (old furniture). Add expensive materials—gold, leather—and a dash of irony. Presto! A high-design piece that subverts and satisfies consumer culture.

Brooklyn design events for May 2006.

And other notes from Brooklyn’s design boom.

For this special edition of Strategist, we subjected six great metropolises—London, Paris, Los Angeles, Sydney, Rome, and Miami—to the same scrutiny we bring to our own city every week. Now all you have to do is get on the plane.

Steely Dan was the quintessential L.A. band, but Fagen himself has always been a New Yorker at heart.