The scene seemed straight out of a Japanese comic book: a young maiden swathed in a kimono stood demurely under a row of blossoming cherry trees, her long hair flecked with pink petals. Next to her, a samurai warrior wielded a wooden sword.

But this was no manga page: The setting was Brooklyn.

“I’m playing Naminé from Kingdom Hearts!” declared college student Michelle Folvar, 19, as she strolled the Brooklyn Botanic Garden recently.

Folvar is not a performer or movie extra – she’s a dedicated “cosplayer.”

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CD sales continue to plummet. Digital downloads are rapidly climbing. And an old musical format is steadily making a comeback.

Audiophiles in search of that warm, grainy sound are getting into the vinyl groove again.

Last year, 990,000 records were sold – a 15 percent increase from 2006, according to the Nielsen SoundScan.

Brooklynphono, a small mom-and-pop vinyl record manufacturing company in Sunset Park, is profiting from this nostalgic musical resurgence. In 2001, husband-and-wife team Thomas Bernich and Fern Vernon-Bernich established a plant on 42nd Street where they press vinyl for independent artists and New York City-based record labels for $1 a record.

The city’s tortilla makers are in trouble: Their profits are as flat as their product.

In Brooklyn, where a cluster of factories on the Bushwick-East Williamsburg border form what’s known as the Tortilla Triangle, owners say high sales aren’t enough to help them keep up with rising food and fuel prices.

“We are trying to survive, but it is very hard to continue working when the profit is very small,” said Erasmo Ponce of Tortillería Chinantla on Grand St.

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The city is cracking down on folks who swipe recyclables left on curbsides, increasing fines to $2,000 from $100, putting more sanitation officers on the streets and impounding vehicles used in thefts.

Still, scrap metal theft goes on – particularly in Brooklyn, home to the Sixth Street Iron & Metal recycling plant.

Artist Dread Scott’s latest exhibition tackles politically charged topics, including Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq, with such frank images as a black baby doll, face down in a tank of water, and five shallow graves.

But he’s drawn the most fire for his depiction of police brutality in the form of shooting-range silhouettes abutting motorized police batons striking a coffin.

The piece, titled, “The Blue Wall of Violence,” is featured his “Welcome to America” exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts.

To hear an audio podcast, click below

When Petra Symister moved from Chelsea to Bedford-Stuyvesant she lost her sense of community - but blogging cured her loneliness.

“I feel more connected to this neighborhood by blogging than I did in nine years living in Chelsea,” she said.

Symister created the Bed-Stuy Blog 14 months ago, joining a Brooklyn-based network of citizen and professional writers, photographers and videographers who leave the comfort of their computer desks to meet in person every year at the Brooklyn Blogfest.

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Superman bursts through the front of a Bensonhurst home, fist raised and ready for action.

James Dean is a few feet below the Man of Steel, leaning against a wall with his hands in his pockets. The rebel has a cause - to protect the flowerbed.

Nearby, a portly monk prays, his eyes closed and his lips curled into a slight grin. The sign around his neck reads, “Pray for The Campanellas - especially Steve, who needs the most help.”

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A world seethes beneath New York where love-seeking straphangers interact with stolen glances between jostling bodies.

Those who enter that world at the L train’s Bedford Avenue stop in Brooklyn take to the Internet more often than riders on any other line to turn furtive eye contact into trysts.

In romance fever’s high-season – the two weeks before and after Valentine’s Day – 421 men and women posted to the “missed connections” thread on craigslist.org hoping to connect with a stranger they chatted with or made eye contact with underground.

(To see maps of the missed connections, click here.)

The Bedford Avenue stop sparked 16 of those postings – the most for any station servicing a single line.

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Residents along Pennsylvania Ave. in East New York have long contended with speeding vehicles and damage to parked cars that lose sideview mirrors, thanks to reckless drivers.

Now the city wants to reduce parking on the strip. But that’s infuriated local car owners who have proposed their own solution: adding bike lanes.

Women’s boxing has gained popularity through movies like “Million Dollar Baby,” and professional fighters like Laila Ali, daughter of Muhammad Ali.

But the gender gap hasn’t closed much when it comes to money. Jill Emery, a 37-year-old former Golden Gloves champ, has found that making as much cash as the male boxers who train beside her at Gleason’s Gym is her toughest fight yet.