Don’t look now, but we’re just days out from capping this stunningly scrambled calendar year. By the end of this week, 2025 will be but a strange, twisted, at times even kinda gorgeous, memory. But the end of the year is also our cue for a time-honored tradition here in the BKMAG newsroom: Looking back at just what the year has wrought and what, if anything, there is to glean from it all. There were comings, goings, relocations, revivals, firings, hirings, record-breaking sales, and, yes, a gimmick or two, as well. Between us, it was a lot. But the top 10 most popular stories we published in 2025 aren’t just the borough’s biggest hits, misses, wins, and losses.
Sure, they helped us make some sense of this perpetually in-flux borough of ours, or offered a bit of history, insight, or color to the symphonic chaos of existing anywhere between the Pulaski and Marine Parkway Bridges. Brooklyn, and maybe more specifically this magazine it so graciously lends its name to, is nothing at all, though, without you, dear reader. And we learned just as much, if not more, about what catches your eyes, ears, feels, and attention this year. For instance, you’re a hungry bunch with far from picky palettes, craving quality, creativity, consistency, and obscurities in your dining program. And, hell yeah, you like to party, and should a local business somehow scratch both of these itches under a single over-priced roof, you might just pull up. You’re also sentimental, curious, community-minded, and inquisitive creatures who love a scoop and a centuries-old mystery as much as we do.
So, as we look back on 2025, it’s with a profound gratitude for having gotten to know so many of you over the last 360-something days. And we can’t wait to run it back with you in 2026, a year already slated to be as complex, nuanced, and full of change as any in recent history—commencing with the innauguration of a mayor with a bold new vision for the city and the departure of the flawed, but beloved, Metro Card—but with a better understanding of you and this beautiful, messy, marvelous place we call home, ready to pick the next year apart one lede at a time.
Here are Brooklyn Magazine’s most-read stories of 2025. Happy New Year and godspeed.
10. The End of an Era: Remembering TBA, One of Brooklyn’s Last Great Nightclubs
As TBA entered its final weeks, we looked back at a golden age in Brooklyn nightlife and the venue’s impact on local club culture.
9. After Nearly 30 Years, Steve Buscemi Lets Go of Park Slope Brownstone
Steve Buscemi officially parted ways with his home of nearly 30 years, closing a chapter for one of Park Slope’s most recognizable faces, and an increasingly rare strain of celebrity choosing the borough as their first and primary home.
8. 10 Unforgettable Bowls of Pho
Whether you’re after a rich stock simmered for hours that could cure heartbreak and a cold with a single sip or a quick, no-frills fix that just gets the job done, the borough has you covered with a grip of Vietnamese spots that take their pho game as seriously as you’d hope.
7. New Yorkers are Getting an “Inflation Refund” Check in The Mail
Don’t skip that trip to the mailbox—there’s a solid chance you’ve got a few hundred dollars from the state waiting for you to turn the key. You read that right. It’s “inflation refund” season, thanks to Governor Kathy Hochul, whose administration began mailing out checks to more than 8 million eligible New Yorkers.
6. This CDMX-Style Cantina is The Best Party in Brooklyn Right Now
Months before Dolores finally flung open its startlingly green doors on Tompkins Avenue, owners Emir Dupeyron and Cressida Greening threw a kind of preview party for the new place out on the sidewalk in front of their other restaurant Winona’s, located over on Flushing. The kitchen that night was basically a small grill, the seating was random and rickety, the menu was limited to a few types of tacos, and it was one of the best meals I’d had all year. So when I sat down to feast at Dolores proper during its opening weekend, the place packed with giddy locals by 5:00 p.m., my expectations were through the roof. And yet, somehow, the restaurant is even better than we dared hope?
5. Brooklyn Mirage Fires CEO Josh Wyatt
Brooklyn Mirage CEO Josh Wyatt, hired in October 2024 to rebrand and revamp Avant Gardner, was fired after a tumultuous and brief tenure at the company that was, at the time, plagued by failed safety inspections, unmet construction deadlines, and a worsening relationship with fans.
4. A Gravesend McMansion is Now The Most Expensive House Ever Sold in Brooklyn
If you thought the going rate for a home in Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, or any other presumable top contender for priciest neighborhood in the borough was absurd, allow us to acquaint you with Gravesend, the quiet, not-so-backwater, where a house shattered the record for most expensive single-family home ever sold in Brooklyn.
3. Brooklyn Mirage Parent Company Reportedly “Bleeding Money,” Trying to Sell The Business
In a scoop that reminded us to always keep our heads and ears on a swivel if ever eating at Per Se, an eyewitness, who happened to be enjoying dinner a few tables over from one of Avant Gardner’s non-executive chiefs, put us on to just how bad the situation was for the then embattled, now en route to demolition, Brooklyn Mirage.
2. Here’s Why There’s Suddenly a Bunch of New Payphones in NYC
If you were walking around the city in late summer and spotted a new payphone in a place you absolutely know there hasn’t been one in three decades or so, it wasn’t just your mind playing tricks.
1. Researcher Confirms NYC’s Mayoral Count Has Been Wrong for Centuries
When Queens assemblyman Zohran Mamdani is sworn in as the next mayor of New York City on New Year’s Day, he apparently won’t be, as the official count suggests, the 111th man to hold the city’s highest office. You may reasonably ask yourself how that works—Mamdani, is, after all, succeeding Eric Adams, a man who proudly refers to himself as “110” because he was, through an official and sacred governmental process, appointed the 110th mayor of New York during his inauguration ceremony on January, 1, 2022, which was a materially observable and thoroughly documented event. But the numbers didn’t seem right, presumably not even then, to at least one history snob in D.C.
The post BKMAG’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2025 appeared first on BKMAG.
