(Photo: The Nervous Breakdown)

Hey, ladies! Are you 18-25? Are you attractive and looking to make a little extra dough? Do you sometimes miss the gender tropes of the Mad Men era and long to be treated like a nubile piece of furniture? Well, you're in luck!

A tipster sent us this Craigslist ad, the poster of which is looking for a "hostess/masseuse" for a private card club that takes place in Williamsburg, and it is quite the gem. Before you think this is a bunch of hipsters throwing back PBRs and playing Go Fish, the poster promises the crowd is much more upscale. "Its [sic] a very nice crowd of lawyers, media/tech people, advertising guys, and a mix of other professions - it is an upscale crowd but the atmosphere is very relaxed and friendly," reads the post.

What will this hostess/masseuse be responsible for? Glad you asked:

"You will have to make and serve coffee and other drinks, snacks, order food for delivery, and help clean up around the club, but there is a lot of downtime too and overall the job is very easy and stress free."

Hm, sounds a bit like a waitress, albeit catering to a clientele that approaches Peak Douche.

But oh, there's more! (There's always more.) You'll also be responsible for giving "back massages for the players while they play cards." For this service you will receive $1/minute, on top of your way-less-than-minimum-wage base pay of $5/hour (plus tip!). But our Craiglister promises that you will make at least $100-200/night, "depending how good you are at massage."

But before you get all excited and head over to the ad to apply, you might want to check your ID: these bros only fuck with ladies 18-25, no olds allowed.

Bets on which techies are part of this card shark event are happily welcome in the comments.

(Photo: Styleblaster)

Styleblaster, a project installed by a handful of Brooklyn-based technologists that uses a camera to chronicle the sartorial choices of Williamsburg residents and upload the photos in real-time to the web, has quickly devolved into trolling.

When a Daily Dot commenter used Google Maps to sleuth out the address, it spread across the internet lightning-fast. The camera is situated in a window at 234 Driggs Ave., a block from the Bedford Avenue stop.

Now, Styleblaster has become the target of orchestrated trolling attacks from sites like Remezcla, which dispatched a blogger to strut in weird masks and costumes in front of the camera. Donning colorful masks, sombreros and big thick mustaches, they quickly racked up a fair amount of "tophats," which is the style blog's equivalent of an upvote.

The Remezcla team aren't the only ones who have taken to mugging for the camera. Otherwise oblivious passersby quickly caught on once word of Styleblaster hit the web--one even gave the finger to the camera. Here's a picture of a girl slurping a soda and making a "what up" gesture.

A "destination for New York City peacocks," indeed.

(Photo: The Yard)

No Sleep 'Til Back in July, Betabeat revealed that Williamsburg-dwelling coworking space The Yard would be launching a General Assembly-like roster of classes--and at "Brooklyn prices," no less. Well, the curriculum site is now live, with a full list of offerings. Examples include iOS app development for beginnings and Intro to Makerbot. A course on Kickstarter makes the joke about would-be creators of mason jar cocktail shakers almost too easy.

Your Digital Newsstand Now live: DuJour, an ultra-luxe magazine targeted to the rich and fabulous. Glossy photo shoots are all well and good, but DuJour hopes to distinguish itself by thoroughly integrating print and digital--meaning readers can finally click through to featured items that strike their fancy. Giving the pub a long leg up: A partnership with Gilt Group, which'll allow the magazine to launch with a subscriber base of three million.

Learning with Friends Ed tech platform Lore is now open to students, taking yet another stride toward being a social network, rather than simply a platform for classes. Rather than awaiting an invite from an instructor, anyone can now create a profile and start poking around. “We created Lore to make education better by connecting people.” said CEO Joseph Cohen in a statement, adding, “This is the next step. And we’re excited to see the new relationships and communities students form on Lore.”

Don't Miss the Bus Earlier this month we introduced you to Readyforce's Hacker Tour 2012 and its mission to recruit talent for startups, rather than Google or Goldman. Since then, the campaign has racked up even more sponsors, doubling the amount of support from VC-backed companies. Organizers are also offering two "pro-bono" spots for non-profit tech companies, plus three for early-stage companies. The tour kicks off September 12 at Cornell.

Summon the Stylistas Mark your calendars, people of fashion tech: On October 11, StyleCaster and the 92nd Street Y are holding their second State of Style event, on the heels of a sold-out February event. The idea is to "unlock the potential of new media in the style space." Speakers include designer Rebecca Minkoff and Buzzfeed president Jon Steinberg.

New Hires Jewelry startup BaubleBar has secured itself a VP of digital marketing, poaching from the tastefully appointed halls of the established fashion world. Previously, Shilpa Shenoy headed up digital marketing at Barneys New York, where she oversaw a site redesign and the launch of barneyswarehouse.com. Prior to that, she did stints at Helmut Lang and Theory.

Acquisitions Private equity firm Catterton Partners has acquired thirteen-year-old online promotions company ePrize. Terms weren't disclosed, but the company did rake in $53 million in revenue in 2011 and it has almost 500 employees. Because ePrize is profitable, CEO Matt Wise told Betabeat, the acquisition wasn't about operating capital, but rather having deeper pockets for strategic acquisitions.

3-D Printing We hear that Makerbot, New York's one-company manufacturing revival, recently signed a lease on its very own storefront. The Wall Street Journal reports the company will set up shop at 298 Mulberry, between Houston and Bleecker. Go ahead and update your Christmas shopping to-do list; we'll wait.

(Photo: The Yard)

Back in February, Betabeat introduced you to The Yard, a freshly-opened coworking space in Williamsburg that we minted the "General Assembly of Brooklyn." Turns out we're psychic, because today The Yard announced that--just like its Manhattan competitor, GA--it will be offering continuing education courses in subjects like programming and biz dev, beginning this fall. All at "Brooklyn prices," no less!

"We really want to cultivate a culture here that is cutting edge and innovative and collaborative," Andy Smith, The Yard's PR and curriculum coordinator, told Betabeat by phone. "It seems like now that we’re at a point where we are full, we can sort of branch out and extend our efforts to other aspects to cultivate that culture. Educational initiatives seemed like the next natural step."

The Yard differentiates itself from other coworking spaces by offering over 90 private suites for rent. Highly hyped startups like Uber and Wanderfly have made the converted factory their home away from home, and Mr. Smith assured us that there's currently a waiting list for new coworkers.

The Yard doesn't have all of the logistics of the new curriculum figured out just yet. "We’re still playing with a price point on the different classes," said Mr. Smith. "We’re still curating the curriculum, but we plan to offer one-time workshops---2-3 hour experiences--as well as longer courses. We’re also talking with some really qualified teachers to even go a step beyond that and offer intensive 10 or 12 week programs on software, iOS--more hands-on, heavy duty tech and programming."

Of course, the Flatiron-based General Assembly possesses similar offerings and is far more established than the 7-month-old Yard. But Mr. Smith thinks the Yard's location in Brooklyn provides it with a unique advantage.

"What GA does is great, but we’re in Brooklyn," he confided. "There’s a whole other world in Brooklyn that maybe is a little bit fresher and a little bit riskier."

What do you mean by riskier, we asked?

"I think the two boroughs attract different types of people and different types of startups," explained Mr. Smith, who has lived in Williamsburg for eight years. "I think Brooklyn has become a global name and now people are starting to tune into Brooklyn on this tech level, this startup level, where you don’t need to pay Manhattan prices for office space and you don’t have to pay Manhattan prices for classes like some place at GA."

We were starting to sense a Brooklyn/Manhattan beef, tech style. Mr. Smith explained that "we're not renting a floor on Broadway near the Flatiron, so our overhead is lower and we can pass that savings onto our students."

In true nouveau Brooklyn fashion, Mr. Smith then launched into detail about the renovations of the converted warehouse that now serves as The Yard's HQ.

"Anyone who comes by here can see that we’ve kept that environment of the original space. The archictect that we used to build this place out did it in an as efficient and green way as possible. We really tried to repurpose the building and cut costs everywhere we could and keep it as creative as possible."

Because of that, Mr. Smith added, "we have the opportunity to perhaps offer something similar to places in the city, but for maybe a little bit less."

Ah, yes, the "Brooklyn is cheaper" argument. Wonder what our friends at the New Jersey Tech Meetup have to say about that.

To help beef up its impending courseload, The Yard is looking for teaching candidates and applications for curriculum. You can get in touch with them if you're interested.

Lucky Ant has only been around for a little over three months, but it works like this: Each week, the creators choose one project from a local business in your neighborhood--something like building an outdoor patio for a local restaurant--and neighborhood residences can chip in to help pay for that project. Lucky Ant functions a lot like Kickstarter, in that those who contribute to the project get a reward for doing so, like a gift certificate from the restaurant.

"For the last 3 months, Lucky Ant has been running hyperlocal crowdfunding in the Lower East Side, but we are now ready to make our first move and we are growing to a second neighborhood as of this week," said Lucky Ant founder Jonathan Moyal in an email to Betabeat.

So far, many of the posted projects have reached their funding goals--Grotto, a Lower East Side Italian restaurant, successfully raised $7,500 to cover their outdoor patio. Bari Studio, a fitness center, raised $5,000 so that they could trademark their name.

Considering the neighborhood's known love for the mom-and-pop stores, branching out into Williamsburg seems like a natural progression. Lucky Ant's first Williamsburg-based project is for Pie Corps, to help the fledgling business build a bigger oven. And who doesn't like pie?

A number of tech companies, including Hype Machine, Wanderfly, Mobile Roadie and Uber are already working out of the space, as well as a few startups still in splash page mode, like Gander TV and Spotflux. Somewhere between 60 to 70 percent of The Yard's residents are techies, although that wasn't exactly the owners' intention. "We knew there was a need in Williamsburg/Greenpoint for something like this, but we didn’t realize the tech scene was happening here and that that was the direction it was going to go," Mr. Levy told Betabeat by phone.

Now that the startup syngery is under way, however, The Yard has been "planning strategic alliances" with angel investors whose portfolio companies might be interested in working there. For example, Mr. Levy said he's currently in talks with Brooklyn Bridge Ventures founder and First Round Capital alum Charlie O'Donnell, who launched a Kings County-centric seed fund last month.

And what about the name? "Um, I dunno, it’s where you work, 'I work in the Yard.' It’s a space to work, so that’s what we call it," said Mr. Levy, whose thick Brooklyn accent would not sound out of place in a Goodfellas remake.

Mr. Levy said he and Mr. Beyda got the idea to open a coworking space after looking at the possibility of working out of one of Manhattan's suddenly-ubiquitous office-sharing arrangements. The same day he crunched the numbers, Mr. Levy happened upon the location, at 33 Nassau Avenue. "Being developers, we kind of overdid it with our Internet," he said, referring to The Yard's 100 megabit-per-second pipe. "A lot of people in other places were experiencing problems with their Internet and you know if you’re an Internet business, you can’t have an outage, so we have a lot of bandwidth here."

We first heard of The Yard from from Simily and vReddit founder Brandon Root, who wrote us a tip emphasizing The Yard's  "potential to become something like Brooklyn's General Assembly."

"I certainly looked at GA when I was trying to find some office space, and certainly would consider it in the future, but I found it to be a bit...pretentious?" Mr. Root,  who works out of the space, explained by email . "Unlike its Manhattan-based cousins, I've found people at The Yard to be just as talented but far more approachable. Maybe I'm just more comfortable with the Brooklyn vibe than the highly-caffeinated Apple-everything crowd in the city."

"I don't mean to be unfair to GA, they have accomplished something incredible," he continued. "But The Yard struck me as more practical and comfortable."

Although The Yard has been hosting events, like the North Brooklyn Breakfast Club, the General Assembly comparison seems far-fetched for now. "I’m a firm believer in not trying to be anything other than what you are," said Mr. Levy. "As far as I’m concerned we’re done and the place is humming."

Hype Machine founder Anthony Volodkin actually signed up as a tenant before construction on The Yard was complete. "We were looking for space in the fall (our first office ever, in our 6 bootstrapped years!) and I happened to see the new sign while cycling through Greenpoint as it was still being built," Mr. Volodkin said by email. "Turned out it was an upcoming coworking space inside a beautiful industrial space, much of the great textures were preserved, so the place is modern while retaining bits of the old character.  Many of us live around here, and there are lots of good coffee places around."

Before The Yard, Hype Machine's seven-person team worked from home or in coffee shops with the "occasional 'office days,' where we'd all meet up in my living room in Williamsburg," he said.

Unlike the typical open floor plan, The Yard has about 100 offices to offer more privacy, although we're not sure if that takes the "co" out of coworking. The space also offers 24-hour access. Mr. Levy said he is "on the selective side" in terms of what kinds of companies or workers he allows in to The Yard, but is open to anyone who could be who would identify as creative. "Some of my competitors are like, 'If you’re not tech or a nerd, you can’t come in,'" said Mr. Levy. "We’re not that harsh."

The Bose radio in the kitchen piped soothing Dixieland standards past the verdant rose bushes. Dr. Parkinson went sockless in his loafers. He wore navy seersucker shorts and had his chambray shirt unbuttoned to somewhere around his fourth rib, revealing a tight, tanned torso. Life seemed swell.

“I was the doctor of the tech community,” the 35-year-old Dr. Parkinson recalled of his emergence on the scene several years ago. “It was just my first practice, but I got a ton of press and a lot of hits. So, like, anybody young and creative in New York would call me up to be their doctor.”

At the time, Dr. Jay, as he’s known around town, used tools like Google Calendar and Skype to redefine the conventional office visit for the web age. In lieu of humorless receptionists and cumbersome insurance claims, he offered to meet patients anywhere and accept PayPal. With lower overhead and no margins lost to the insurance companies, he could offer a concierge service to patients—house calls and hour-long appointments—and still pay off more than $200,000 in med school loans.

The slew of articles that followed focused on Dr. Parkinson’s start-up Hello Health (also based in Williamsburg), which attempted to formalize the system he’d hacked together into a streamlined social platform. Light-weight technology, meet the creaky old American health care system.

The idea was to build something that could scale nationally, enabling any small practice to join the digital revolution. But Hello Health quickly ran into problems when it tried to incorporate doctors who wanted to accept insurance and navigate the attendant maze of regulations and guidelines. Dr. Parkinson had given up his medical practice after just six months to become Hello Health’s chief concept officer in January, 2008, letting his license lapse after deciding he could not longer offer his patients the flexibility they deserved. A year and a half later, he left Hello Health  in the hands of his co-founder.

The peripatetic Dr. Parkinson has a new scheme, of course, and it’s even more ambitious than what came before. Through a new start-up, The Future Well, launched last year, and a collective that he started a few months ago called Doctors of the Future (a reference to his own magazine profile), Dr. Parkinson aims to position himself as the Michael Pollan or Jamie Oliver of “health consciousness,” he said, changing American priorities through his enlightened philosophies of lifestyle and design.

“I’d like to be one of those people,” Dr. Parkinson acknowledged. “Michael Pollan has to stay within food. I’d like to say—from a doctor’s perspective, from a health expert’s perspective—it’s food, movement, relationships, environment, work. It’s essentially just sex, drugs and rock and roll. It’s fun, it’s enjoying sex—doctors never talk about that, but it makes the world go round. It’s a consciousness about these components of your life that you should be optimizing.

“If you enjoy your life better, I think you’ll be healthier,” he concluded, while adding quickly, “but I don’t know if there’s any proof of that.”

So what exactly is the Future Well? The website’s tagline reads, “We design, speak, and consult to inspire health,” which is a touch vague, to say the least. But if it’s hard to define just exactly what Future Well does, that hasn’t stopped blue-chip clients like the multinational pharmaceutical company Sanofi, the National Institutes of Health and the Freelancers Union here in New York from requesting samples.

In each case, Dr. Parkinson’s treatment has been different. For Sanofi, he and his Future Well partner, Grant Harrison, created a Tumblr-inspired app that lets doctors “favorite” online resources about various health issues and then offer patients access to those curated lists. For the Freelancer’s Union, Future Well suggested strategies like creating a prize network of “mission-based” independent doctors and offering boutique services to the expensive outliers in the union’s insurance pool to keep them out of the hospital and taking their meds.

The flow of ideas seems to have increased now that Dr. Parkinson, like so many of New York’s growing contingent of entrepreneurs, has pivoted away from his original plan. “I’m trying, basically, to stay out of the medical world and focus more on health,” he explained. “I think the medical world is an intractable problem. I do not want to engage in any sort of system where I have to engage with the health insurance industry.”

In practical terms, that means he’s targeting those who are already either healthy enough or wealthy enough to sidestep some of the most trenchant problems in the health care system in favor of a boutique approach.

“Boomers are too far gone, diabetes is too far gone,” said Dr. Parkinson, who will deliver this message in upcoming speaking engagements at Google, Stanford and the Mayo Clinic. “All we can do is focus on people who are young, really well or relatively well and get them to be conscious of the fact that their behavior today influences their life 10 years from now. I like to talk about that. I like to talk about the standing desks.”

Dr. Parkinson was referring to research that shows that people who stand all day have a 65 percent lesser chance of cardiac events than those who sit at a desk. “That’s waaay better than what Lipitor would do and it’s a simple thing,” he said. “Plus I lose 300 calories a day from standing up and working. I mean, that’s like three glasses of wine.” Through his influential Tumblr, he’s already inspired a change in start-up offices around the city. Which is sort of the point. By seeding his ideas with the type of people who made up his short-lived practice, he hopes to watch the influence roll downhill.

“Everything good starts in Williamsburg, in New York City,” Dr. Parkinson said in soft-spoken, drawn-out cadence that sounded vaguely surfer-ish, until he told The Observer he's from St. Louis. “A couple years later, it trickles down to the rest of America. A couple years later, it trickles down to the poor in America, you know? So to me, you always have to start with the innovators and the ones that have the means to adopt early. Look at what Michael Pollan has done to McDonald’s. Happy Meals replacing their fries with apples—you can’t say that’s Michael Pollan, but he’s part of the ecosystem that’s encouraging them to do that.”

He offered another example. “Whole Foods when we were kids was like something that a bunch of hippies in California did. Now it’s a whole industry,” Dr. Parkinson said. “Jamie Oliver didn’t exist. Rapha, which is really kickass bicycling gear in London, teamed up with Paul Smith to design clothes that you can wear to a business meeting. I think that’s absolutely amazing.”

AMONG NEW YORK’S CREATIVE SET, Dr. Parkinson already has a few followers and friends who think he can pull it off.

“When you talk about good design and what kind of audience you can find through that, in a certain sense, quality is elitist,” acknowledged Benjamin Palmer, CEO of the interactive agency Barbarian Group. “But Whole Foods or Starbucks, it was just a way to convince everyone that coffee should be pretty good, actually. In 2008, Facebook was an elitist hipster little thing and now everybody is doing it.” That said, he added, “I’m not sure how quickly anything Jay’s working on could achieve that.”

Mr. Palmer is a regular attendee at Dr. Parkinson’s popular backyard parties, which attract a number of prominent techies. “He’s got this eclectic, intellectual geekdom,” noted Aubrey Sabala, who heads up Facebook’s consumer marketing team in Palo Alto. In addition to the tech set, Ms. Sabala said, you’ll see folks like comedian Reggie Watts show up. “The conversations that are happening are not just nerdy coding stuff,” she added. “It’s the theory of technology and how it could be applied to—it sounds nerdy, but there’s wine.”

Friends and followers of Dr. Parkinson’s, who devotedly comment on and “heart” his daily Tumblr posts, buy the Michael Pollan vision, even if they’re not exactly sure how he will get there.

“I just see him as a household name,” Ms. Sabala said. “I’d love to see him on a White House Council for Health or influencing decisions in Congress.”

Others are hard-pressed to envision how a prescription for better health that fails to grapple with the poor or infirm could have any real effect on the problem. “I think it’s viable for those that can afford it, but there’s a large base of people who can’t—people who aren’t making $100,000 a year,” said Leslie Ziegler, creative director of Rock Health, an accelerator for health start-ups based in San Francisco. “We’ve seen the wealthy go out of pocket for a long time already.”

Dr. Parkinson shrugged off the criticism. “You can beat your head at trying to figure out solutions for, like you said, a creaky system,” he acknowledged, “or you could design things that people want, and if they can afford it, they can afford it.”

As it happened, that was one of the challenges for Hello Health: while patients seemed willing to pay the subscription fees, doctors balked at the cost of a social platform that didn’t allow customers to pay with health insurance.

Having shuttered its incubators in Williamsburg and Manhattan in 2010 and largely stopped courting media attention, Hello Health’s software is now both HIPAA-compliant for insurers and designated as “meaningful use,” which means Medicare and the federal government will subsidize the cost of adoption. “The idea that Jay had sounds so simple, but health care is a land mine,” said Hello, Health CEO Nathanial Findlay, who counts BlueCross BlueShield as an institutional investor. “You have to be very, very careful about which toes you’re stepping on.”

That doesn’t seem like a big worry for Dr. Parkinson. He said he’d recently met with Tumblr about the possibility of creating a concierge medical service for the start-up’s staffers. “A doctor friend for their employees that they can call, email, text questions. We’ll set up appointments with our favorite groups of doctors in the city.” He described the plan as “a layer on top of insurance that would work within their insurance network.”

As for the physicians, Dr. Parkinson has been building a list via Tumblr, posting a call for “forward-thinking creative doctors” to join his tribe. (He said 1,500 signed up to be Doctors of the Future.) “As in everything there’s a technology-adoption curve,” he explained. “If you gather together all these really innovative, creative, young, earlier-adopter types, something interesting can happen.”

If the Tumblr arrangement gets approved, he imagines it will be duplicated by other start-ups around the city. If not, he’ll try something else.

Toward the end of the afternoon, The Observer migrated inside Dr. Parkinson’s railroad apartment for a tour. Next to a mini bedside filing cabinet, containing curios from his medical antiquities collection, stood a tall red industrial cart with an iMac monitor on top. “That’s one of the other things that I would like to do—start a company that makes handmade, beautiful standing desks,” he said. “They’re all geeky and gross, made in China. Or sort of do-it-yourself, bad looking things. I want to make a whole, like, really beautiful standing desk company.”

-ntiku@observer.com

This is not your beautiful rooftop . . . yet.

#StartupLife co-founders Steven Liu and Louie Torrellas have already collected $1,040 (and counting!) towards their $10,000 campaign to create an affordable co-living space for start-ups in East Williamsburg. They're certainly in the right neighborhood for such a collegiate project. McKibbin Lofts, just two blocks away, is so popular with artsy post-grads that it's often referred to as a dorm. Okay fine, maybe it's more like that "filthy hipster dorm," but still.

Perhaps it was that underground ethos that prompted the two co-founders to eschew Kickstarter for their fund-raising campaign and instead opt to advertise on the more DIY-focused San Francisco-based IndieGoGo.

Although you can't throw a Nexus S1 in parts of the city without hitting a coworking spaces, that still leaves future Dennis Crowleys and Kevin Ryans to fend for themselves after hours. Liu's plan for a start-up alternative involves "lower-than-market rent, a close-knit start-up community, and a strong network of experienced mentors"--accessible from bunkbeds, private bedrooms, or suites in 20 separate apartment units. Bunkbeds go for under $300/month, but come with access to the courtyard and rooftop. "All you need is a suitcase and a dream." (Oh, and at least $550/month if you don't want to become too familiar with your co-founder's sleepwear.)

The entire $10,000 will go to subsidizing the cost of rent for residents. At "certain contribution levels" donors are entitled to a week long stay in their own room or suite. Mr. Liu's goal is to get sponsors to subsidize living expenses, provide subsidized legal and accounting services, and promote products from residents from the "media production room," he set aside for marketing purposes. Ultimately, he wants to build a fund to finance the whole shebang.

We want to encourage people to pursue their real passions by removing distractions like worrying about rent, scrambling to find advocates and friends, figuring out legal and accounting structures, etc. Our thesis is that if entrepreneurs can focus on what they're really good at, which is building a product that customers want, then we can improve the quality of startups in the NYC ecosystem.

Betabeat maintains that the pressure of making rent every month tends to inculcate a healthy practical streak. But we have to admit we're intrigued, both by the concept and how $10,000 alone can subsidize the cost. Perhaps Mr. Liu learned some financial wizardry in the seven months he spent as an analyst at UBS before jumping ship to the lean side. He promised to tell us more after he got off "a conference call with City Hall," (hmmm) so stay tuned.

There are currently 94 days left to raise funding for the campaign. In the meantime, whaddya say General Assembly, We Work Labs, Dogpatch Labs, etc., can we bring our toothbrush?