Uneasy lies the head that wears a tiara. “I can’t believe all the ‘controversy’ of me taking the title back to Manhattan,” newly crowned Miss Brooklyn Leigh-Taylor Smith told The Brooklyn Paper this week. “I really didn’t expect it.” Comment.

Art: In an echo of the “Sensation” controversy almost a decade ago, a Fort Greene museum is under fire from police union brass for a supposedly anti-cop art exhibit. Comments (3).

Imagine taking a subway from Bay Ridge to the Bronx — without ever entering Manhattan. It could happen — not anytime soon, mind you — under a just-announced Metropolitan Transportation Authority plan to turn an under-utilized freight line that cuts through southern Brooklyn into a subway route that would cross three boroughs and intersect with 17 existing subway lines. Comments (2).

Dining: Dust off your bibs and elastic-waist slacks, “Brooklyn Eats” is back! The ultimate smorgasbord celebration of the borough’s restaurant scene, which was an annual event from 1997 through 2006 at the Brooklyn Marriott in Downtown Brooklyn, has announced its 2008 date and a new locale: April 30 at Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Comment.

Atlantic Yards: The City University of New York bailed on a plan to hire Bruce Ratner to build a new lab, classroom and residential skyscraper in Downtown Brooklyn because the Atlantic Yards developer would be too expensive, too slow and too controversial, The Brooklyn Paper has learned. Comments (2).

Red Hook: The Mongstad mirrors will be on the second floor, near the windows with those killer views of Manhattan. The kid’s play room will be near the front door. And over there, near the 1,400-car parking lot, is where you’ll eat those Swedish meatballs. Yes, Ikea is coming closer to opening its Red Hook store. Comments (3).

Carroll Gardens: The suburban luxury homebuilder angling to construct the first major residential project along the Gowanus Canal felt the full fury of pent-up anti-development anger this week. Comments (1).

Atlantic Yards: Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-project is suddenly on even shakier ground, thanks to an inexplicable court ruling last week delaying until at least September a final judgment on one of the last legal barriers to the $4-billion development. Comments (5).

Williamsburg Waterfront: The city is apparently not sweet on a developer’s plans to build a five-story glass addition atop the landmark Domino Sugar refinery building along the Williamsburg waterfront. Comments (2).

Williamsburg: On the shelves of Polish grocery stores in Greenpoint, bottles of Mountain Dew and Diet Coke are beginning to crowd out liters of Zywiec Zdroj and Nateczowianka. Comment.

Dining: Ted Allen’s one lucky foodie. On Monday, March 10, the Clinton Hill resident and television personality — he calls himself “cable famous” — will have a chance to combine two of his great passions, food and philanthropy, when he hosts “Savor,” an evening of fun, fundraising and French fare held to benefit the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Comment.

Dining: Actress Lorraine Bracco unveils her new wine in Bay Ridge Comment.

Smartmom: Can we please just end the Babeland controversy before it even begins? Comments (1).

Park Slope: The secret is out: Park Slope is home to scores of randy, vibrator-loving women. No wonder Babeland, the Manhattan-based sex shop, is opening an outpost on Bergen Street in May. Comment.

Editorial: The Gowanus Canal is a national disgrace — and here’s how to clean the toxin- and sewage-filled corpse of water. Comments (3).

Fort Greene: One year after the city tried to foist its first Arabic language academy into a Park Slope elementary school — sparking weeks of protests by PTA parents — the city is trying to do almost precisely the same thing, this time in Fort Greene. Comment.

Politics: Last week’s stunning mayoral poll put Borough President Markowitz ahead of other pretenders to the City Hall throne, but the Beep’s dithering over whether he will run is allowing valuable fundraising opportunities to dissolve into the ether, experts said. Comment.

Brooklyn Angle: Call him a Nader Traitor — but the only Brooklynite to contribute to Ralph Nader’s inept 2004 campaign has bailed on the twice-failed presidential hopeful. He’s not alone. Comments (1).

Downtown: Students at Downtown’s respected Polytechnic University will get higher tuitions — but even higher academic credentials — thanks to Thursday’s vote by the school’s trustees to be acquired by New York University. Comment.

Theater: Williamsburg’s Brick Theater is heating up the winter theater scene with its reprise of its critically acclaimed production of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from Underground.” This five-part dramatic oratorio, which runs through March 22, explores the masochism of the legendary Underground Man and meshes his rancid diatribes with a soundtrack of Russian tavern songs and string quartets. Impeccably directed and adapted by Michael Gardner, this intense, 90-minute show is a must-see for adventurous playgoers. Comment.

Letters: The mailbag is filled — as always. Comment.

DUMBO: DUMBO residents want the city to expand a rezoning proposal to not only preventing skyscrapers like the 33-story J Condos and 23-story Beacon Tower from rising again, but also to block David Walentas’s Dock Street project. Comments (1).

Downtown: Vandals tagged a Remsen Street brownstone with anti-Semitic graffiti last week, less than one month after a Brooklyn Heights man was indicted for covering houses and cars on the same street with swastikas last fall. Comment.

Breaking Chews: We’re dishing up Brooklyn’s latest food news. Comments (1).

Rezoning: The city moved to restrict development along a low-rise stretch of Grand Street, but activists urged the city to speed up the process to protect the neighborhood’s character. Comments (1).

Downtown: An elite private school went under siege on Feb. 22 when a student received an anonymous online message from someone claiming that he would blow up the school. Plus all the other crime news from Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO and Downtown’s 84th Precinct. Comment.

Bay Ridge: They’ve tried marching. They’ve tried chanting. So why not try a little New Orleans jazz to save the historic Bay Ridge United Methodist Church? Comments (3).

Fort Greene: A man’s sense of humor got him into trouble on Feb. 27, when he laughed at two guys fighting and ended up with a bump on his head. Plus all the other crime news from Fort Greene and Clinton Hill’s 88th Precinct. Comment.

Williamsburg: Two schools were burglarized last week, in incidents that netted criminals thousands of dollars in cash and electronics. Plus all the other crime news from Williamsburg and Bushwick’s 90th Precinct. Comment.

Bay Ridge: Three months, two deaths, one hotel — and everyone is talking. Comment.

Carroll Gardens: Thieves on wheels plundered a parked commercial truck laden with valuable tools on Sackett Street on Feb. 21. Plus all the other crime news from Carroll Gardens, Red Hook and Cobble Hill’s 76th Precinct. Comment.

Williamsburg: An assailant broke a pedestrian’s jaw in multiple places on Feb. 24, after a woman started a conversation with another man. Plus all the other crime news from Greenpoint’s 94th Precinct. Comment.

Waiting in the Wings: There won’t be a dry eye in the house on March 15, when the Brooklyn Family Theater, a Park Slope gem for the past seven years, has its last show at the Church of Gethesemane. Comment.

Park Slope: “The Colbert Report” goes after our “Graffiti girl,” 6-year-old Natalie Shea. See it here. Comments (1).

Park Slope: A beer-loving perp assaulted a bodega clerk and then stole fake money off the store’s wall before running away on Feb. 26. Plus all the other crime news from Park Slope’s 78th Precinct. Comment.

Williamsburg: A hard week for twenty-something men using the Bedford Avenue L station ended with hard time for one teenager. Comments (2).

Bay Ridge: A 16-year-old boy was beaten and robbed on Shore Road on Feb. 28. Plus all the other crime news from Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights’s 68th Precinct. Comment.

PS … I Love You: Our columnist takes you inside the kid’s only night spot, Club Loco. Comments (1).

Bay Ridge: A couple walking to the steps of their 70th Street home was beaten and robbed by a group of perps on March 1. Plus all the crime news from Bensonhurst’s 62nd Precinct. Comment.

Cinema: Music and the movies have always made a great match. From cinema’s earliest days, when music served as accompaniment to film, until today, when film scores can make or break a “talkie,” the two arts forms belong together. And don’t think that today’s cinematic music is merely background for current releases. Many musicians are writing music for new experimental films, as well as creating new scores for classics, like Windsor Terrace resident Tom Nazziola. Comment.

Nightlife: “Did you just walk in off the street?” a bartender at Dram Shop, a new Park Slope bar, asked me when I walked in the door. On that day, he explained, the bar wasn’t officially open yet, but he invited me to stay as long as I wanted and drink free Brooklyn Lager. Comments (2).

Greene Acres: Fort Greene is becoming Park Slope — and it’s intentional! Comments (4).

Music: For her performing debut with the Brooklyn Philharmonic on March 8 at the Brooklyn Academy of music, musician Leila Josefowicz is going to plug in her violin. John Adams’s “Dharma at Big Sur” calls for an electronic violin, but its challenges haven’t dimmed Josefowicz’s enthusiasm for the work. Comment.

Music: “In our current commercial and popular culture, there may be no other rhapsody considered more celebrated than Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ “ Sun Jin Hong, artistic director and conductor of One World Symphony, told GO Brooklyn. Comment.

Cartoon: Our artist’s take on the issues of the day! Comment.

Dance: Tamango collaborates with Williamsburg artist in Town Hall show Comment.

Nightlife: If you ask Anthony McErlain, one good bar deserves another. McErlain is the proprietor of two establishments on Park Slope’s Fifth Avenue: the two-year-old Black Sheep Pub, which, he said, serves “typical bar food,” and the tonier Cafe Tapeo, an altogether different animal that opened in August. Comment.

Fort Greene: Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries wants to help renters from being displaced. Comment.

All the important meetings you should be going to. Comment.

Parenting: All the action for you and your kids! Comment.

In the spirit of encouraging a free exchange of ideas, The Brooklyn Paper makes this space available to our readers. Comment.