According to an anonymous insider cited in today's Post, Apple- and cheesecake-loving, bike lane-hating Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz isn't planning on running in the next mayoral election and, with his final term ending in 2013, will more or less retire from politics at that time. But Markowitz's camp says a run for mayor is still a possibility.

As soon as I was old enough to vote, I started voting for losing candidates. (Way to go, Mark Green.) And though I didn't vote in either of the big special elections in Brooklyn yesterday because I don't live in the districts, I learned this morning that the candidates I would have supported lost.

In Anthony Weiner's old district, Republican Bob Turner beat Democrat David Weprin 54 to 46. Weprin was a John Kerry-like candidate: he didn't inspire your support except by virtue of his opposition—the odious Bob Turner, whose campaign strategy involved vilifying Muslims and homosexuals to exploit the prejudices of the conservative-minded voters. The district might be heavily registered Democratic, but it went 44 percent for McCain in 2008 and 70 percent for Bloomberg the following year. "The district’s Russian and Orthodox Jewish populations have been trending hard to the Republican Party in recent election cycles," the Brooklyn Politics reported, "while the district’s Irish and Italians were already with the GOP."

As music sales continue to slide, there’s at least one bit of bright news: vinyl sales continue to climb. And that’s thanks to Brooklyn, right? Where we love old things, and beautiful things, and new things that look like old beautiful things? But also because our borough has perhaps the highest concentration of pressing plants on the East Coast, from EKS in East New York to Brooklynphono in Sunset Park. We’re not just the ones buying it; we’re making it, too. And at Brooklynphono, they do that by recycling old records—shredding them and reforming them into new albums. “It’s like being a short-order cook,” the plant’s owner recently told the Times. “The music is only as good as the ingredients you get.”