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).

Downtown: Two businesses in DUMBO have begun weaning customers off the latest symbol of wasteful consumerism: the plastic shopping bag. Comments (3).

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 (1).

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. Comment.

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.

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. Comment.

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

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).

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.

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.

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

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).

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

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

Vox Pop: Park Slope Food Co-op-ers speak out on the proposed bottled-water ban. Comments (1).

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.

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

Greene Acres: Fort Greene is becoming Park Slope — and it’s intentional! Comments (3).

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.

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.

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. 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).

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

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

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

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