The City Council voted 50-1 Wednesday in favor of zoning changes that would allow Swedish home furnishings giant Ikea to build a megastore on the Red Hook waterfront. Only East New York Councilman Charles Barron voted against the contentious plan. Comment.

Atlantic Yards: In response to pressure from community members, politicians and the press, community boards 2, 6 and 8 publicly announced their involvement in negotiations for a community benefits agreement with developer Bruce Ratner over his planned Atlantic Yards basketball arena, office tower and housing complex. Comment.

Atlantic Yards: Over the past 10 weeks, while invited community members, community board leaders and heads of community organizations worked with Bruce Ratner to clandestinely forge a community benefits agreement for the Atlantic Yards development, the question asked by local politicians, individuals, neighborhood associations and opponents of the arena project has been, “Who exactly is the community?” Comment.

Nearly two-dozen Brooklyn restaurants have agreed to donate up to 5 percent of their proceeds this week to help Develop-Don’t Destroy Brooklyn fight Bruce Ratner’s plan to build a 19,000-seat basketball arena, office towers and high-rise apartment buildings in Prospect Heights. Comment.

The modest public park on the triangle near the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue intersect, represents to many Fort Greeners everything problematic with the BAM Local Development Corporation. Comment.

Atlantic Yards: THE ANSWERS to the city’s stadium problems lie at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues. While real estate mogul Bruce Ratner continues to push ahead with his Atlantic Yards project — featuring a basketball arena for his Nets, 60-story office towers and a high-rise housing campus — arguments for less obtrusive, more neighborhood-friendly developments above the Long Island Rail Road storage yard continue to pop up. Comment.

If you love food and drink, then there is only one place to be this Monday, Oct. 18 - the eighth annual "Brooklyn Eats" food and beverage tasting festival at the New York Marriott Brooklyn. Comment.

Work, work, work. In the latest installment of the "New French Connection" film series at BAMcinematek, work is a prominent theme: people meet on the job and form relationships; they learn life lessons through the tasks they must perform; the workplace is even used to explore the experiences of legal and illegal immigrants. Comment.

As Mazeppa sings in the musical "Gypsy," "You gotta have a gimmick." Writer-director-composer Richard Maxwell, whose latest offering "Good Samaritans" is having its American premiere at St. Ann’s Warehouse now through Oct. 24, has learned this lesson well. So well, many of his admirers seem to have forgotten that beneath the style, there should be substance. Comment.

Meet the artists who live around the Gowanus Canal in the eighth annual Gowanus Artists Open Studio Tour on Oct. 23-24. This year, 85 visual artists including Patrick Barrett (whose 2003 Polaroid manipulation "Carroll Street Bridge" is pictured above) are showing off their works, which range from paintings to photographs and from textiles to porcelain. Comment.

Although known for exhibits on subjects as ancient as the life of founding father Alexander Hamilton - which is on view through Feb. 13 - the New York Historical Society’s latest exhibition, "The Rescue," recalls the very recent attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Comment.

Director Robert Wilson and composer-librettist Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of the a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, have joined forces to create a music-theater piece based on Gustave Flaubert’s 1874 novel "The Temptation of St. Anthony," which will be presented at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House Oct 19-24. Comment.