It Burns When I Picnic

Ouch! At first glance, the Roast My Weenie ($15, www.roastmyweenie.com) dog cooker might make you cringe. The painful image it evokes of impaling your sausage and then grilling it over an open flame is kind of hard to, um, swallow. But unless you like to eat your wiener raw, you’ve got to stick something in it to heat it up—so it might as well be this stainless steel stick figure’s little needle. Each base can be custom cut with the name of any team in any league, so it makes a great gift for any sadomasochistic tailgater with a foot-long fetish. ------

Dog Days Of Summer Sweaty. Sticky. Miserable. Summer in New York City can get pretty nasty. Add to that the daily commute to and from work via subway—also known as the hell pit—and each of the aforementioned adjectives are no longer powerful enough. This year, relief may be found in a toy of yesteryear: the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine. This frozen treat gadget came about in the 1970s, and now all of those trend-spotting Web sites, like UrbanOutfitters.com ($26) and FredFlare.com ($22, currently on backorder—it’s that cool), are bringing it back for a new generation. The Snoopy creation includes a metal ice shaver, syrup bottle, package of cherry mix, three paper cups, shovel scoop and instructions. This could either be the best thing to greet you when you get home from work, or it could be your new moneymaking scheme ’round the office. Visit Snoopy.com for tips on how to make your very own, super awesome sno-cone party. Here’s a free tip from us: Add booze. (Christine Werthman)

ReinventingThe Wheel I shed a tear when I see the abandoned corpses of bicycles out on the city sidewalks, locked to lampposts, rotting in the sun. But I take comfort knowing that somewhere in the world, dead bikes have become organ donors. In Oregon, the post-mortem remains of two-wheelers are being resurrected by ResourceRevival , which, for the past decade, has been recycling old bike parts into unique furnishings like pendulum clocks, barstools and cafetables. Their best seller is the gearhead’s perfectsummer companion—a bottle opener frankensteined out of a length of bike chain and a section of sprocket. Pick one up at gomiNYC ($12, 443 E. 6th St.) and pop a cap in style at your next barbecue. (David Callicott)

Fancy Beer The Brooklyn Brewery (79 North 11th Street, www.brooklynbrewery.com) is the best place to elevate simple beer drinking to an art, or at least to forego the belching for something slightly more sophisticated. In summer—the most crucial time to have lots and lots of suds—further your connoisseurship with their special, available-for-a-limited-time-only “Brewmaster’s Reserve” beers, like the Brooklyn Abby Singel and Blanche De Brooklyn, ($5 per pint on average), which you can enjoy on draft in June and July, respectively, and then never again. Abby Singel mimics the beers Trappist monks brew for their personal, after-hours use, while Blanche De Brooklyn is the Brewery’s answer to light Belgian wheat beers, and incorporates Curaçao orange peels to create a distinctively summer flavor. But for the amateur alcoholic, their classic seasonal variety, Brooklyn Summer Ale ($5 per pint on average/$8.99 six-pack), is the way to go. Inspired by English “light dinner ales”, this swill should be coupled with “seafood, quiches, or lightly spicy dishes,” as the brewery suggests, for the impossibly genteel beer fan. But don’t worry if you prefer hot dogs or Ritz crackers on the side; in my expert opinion, the fine brew will still go down just as smoothly. (Francesca Levy)