WEDNESDAY: Good-bye ‘08, Hello ‘09
If you still need plans for New Year’s Eve, the recently opened bussaco is offering a five-course prix fixe dinner for $80. A sampling of the scrumptious menu includes blue crab chowder, sweet potato ravioli, roast rack of lamb with beluga lentils and a chocolate-hazelnut napoleon. A raw bar (think: oysters, shrimp cocktail and clams), live music and a midnight champagne toast round out the special evening. bussaco, 833 Union Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues), Park Slope, (718) 857-8828.

If you’ve already got plans, and those plans are anywhere in Park Slope, don’t miss Prospect Park’s spectacular fireworks display. Though they won’t light up the skies until midnight, the park will start the celebration at 11pm with live music and free hot drinks in Grand Army Plaza. See prime firework-viewing locations here.

Eyes Wide Shut
Get your midnight kiss from a masked stranger at Huckleberry Bar’s 2nd Annual NYE Masquerade Party featuring a complimentary champagne toast, dancing hipsters and even a mask of your own if you forget yours at home.

Get Bubbly
Celebrate New Year’s Eve Red Hook-style at Botanica, where you’ll get to indulge in three different types of champagne for $50 and dance to the beats of DJs Adam Warped, Onionz, Sameer and Billy Belmont.

Diner Spectacular
The Southside institution that is Diner launched ten years ago on New Year’s Eve. Come duck under the sidewalks tents and raise a toast to ten more before you raise one to 2009. Dinner will be served at Marlow & Sons next door.

Hip-Hop Hurray
The soon-to-be defunct Studio B goes out with a bang on New Year’s Eve with a bash featuring Grandmaster Mele Mel of the Furious Five, indie hip-hop from Brooklyn-based Ninjasonik and a bevy of big-time DJs.

Pop the Cork
And if ringing in the New Year isn’t your thing, try listening to Pratt’s Chief Engineer, Conrad Milster, blow his old steam whistles from trains and ships at the stroke of midnight, while onlookers pop open bottles in chorus (mention the Pratt Whistle Blow at Gnarly Vines in fact, and you’ll get 10% off a bubbly to bring to campus). It’s like Times Square, only fun. 11:30pm-12:30am, Pratt Campus, enter on Willoughby between Hall & Emerson.

The Best of the Best
Barcade counts down the 200 most played songs of all time tonight, set to hit number one around 3:45am. Song list includes select tracks by The Mars Volta, Neutral Milk Hotel, Rush, Kings of Leon, Bruce Springsteen and Built to Spill.

Click here for our comprehensive (though not exhaustive) list of New Year’s Eve shindigs in Brooklyn: loft parties, trapeze-flying, and badass cover bands.

THURSDAY: Take the Plunge
Cross “be more adventurous” off your resolutions list with the Coney Island Polar Bear Club’s New Year’s Day tradition: a dip in the icy-cold Atlantic. Just bring a bathing suit, old sneakers, and layers of warm clothes to the boardwalk at Stillwell Avenue, where the group is meeting at noon. A donation to the club’s partner, Camp Sunshine — a Maine-based program for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families — will net you a free breakfast and all-day admission to the New York Aquarium.

FRIDAY: Dynamic Duo
A double-dose of art hits Pierogi Brooklyn on Friday with the opening two exciting exhibitions: David Kramer’s Snake Oil channels Raymond Pettibon in its use of text and political satire while Michael Schall’s The Augmented Fourth juxtaposes man and nature with intricate graphite drawings.

London luminaries meet New York notables in BAM’s production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard re-imagined by Tom Stoppard. Sam Mendes of American Beauty fame directs, and Ethan Hawke takes the stage. Stoppard’s modern take on this “droll meditation on bourgeois materialism” has the opportunity to be particularly apt on this side of the Atlantic. Opening tonight, the show runs through March 8th at BAM’s Harvey Theater.

SATURDAY: Swoon for Twitter
The Brooklyn Museum has created a new membership program for the Internet set called 1stfans, which marries online social networking (Twitter) with more traditional museum-membership perks, such as the inaugural 1stfans exclusive event at tonight’s Target First Saturday. Starting at 5pm, the studio of New York street artist Swoon will be making prints on the notebook-size pieces of found paper that 1stfans bring in. Join 1stfans here.

SUNDAY
Park Slope author Steven Berlin Johnson reads from The Invention of Air Sunday at 2:30pm at our favorite out-of-the-way bar, Sunny’s, 253 Conover Street, Red Hook. The new book follows the life and work of forgotten founding father Joseph Priestly and examines how political, social, and scientific change happens. UPDATE: We have a copy for the fifth person to email us the name of the website company Mr. Johnson started based on his last book.

Sent by Chrysanthe, Keith, Nina and Jocelyn. Photos, from top, by William.p via flickr, Huckleberry Bar website, Pierogi website, Base2John via flickr.