Ali Rogers, left, Miss South Carolina, and Mallory Hytes Hagan, Miss New York, react after the announcement of the new Miss America.

The loveable, retro kitsch-fest that is the Miss America Pageant took place this weekend, and the parade of earnest Midwestern baton-twirlers and bright-eyed Southern belles pledging world peace felt to the Transom like something out of another world, or at least another America. So it was the surprise of the night when the winner was announced: Miss New York, Park Slope resident Mallory Hytes Hagan.

Ms. Hagan isn’t native to the hipster-filled borough in which she currently resides. (And, no, her talent was not creative nonfiction.) Born in Alabama, she moved to New York several years ago and lived all over Brooklyn, from Bed-Stuy to Williamsburg, before finally settling in Park Slope. As she wrote on her blog, “In the time I’ve spent in New York, Brooklyn has grown very close to my heart. I love New York (and not in a tourist T-shirt kind of way) dearly and I truly believe this is the city where dreams come true.”

But just how Brooklyn is Ms. Hagan—sorry, Miss America? Lydia Lam, an orthodontist who lives in Park Slope, was unaware of Ms. Hagan’s victory but thought it was something that Park Slopers could embrace. “That’s really great for her,” she said with a laugh. “I think that’s good, because I feel like Brooklyn is a bit of a melting pot, and in that way, it can be representative of America,” said Ms. Lam, who doesn’t think Ms. Hagan’s Alabaman heritage makes her any less of a Brooklynite. “That’s exactly what Park Slope is—a lot of people who move to New York,” she added. “I myself didn’t grow up in Park Slope.”

In general, however, the mood among Ms. Hagan’s fellow Park Slopers is a mix of apathy and mild amusement. And in classic Brooklyn fashion, those who are celebrating Ms. Hagan’s victory are doing do so with a dash of irony.

Chris Genua, the general manager at the Double Windsor, created a drink special in Ms. Hagan’s honor: The “Mallory Hagan”: a pint of a local beer and an Alabama slammer for seven bucks. “It’s more of a funny thing, especially in this neighborhood,” said Mr. Genua of Ms. Hagan’s victory. “It feels like a funny thing that Miss America is walking amongst us.” Mr. Genua describes the mood among patrons as apathetic. “When people found out, they would sort of smile and shrug and not order the drink,” said Mr. Genua, laughing. “I’m sure people would be more excited about it in Alabama.”

It’s true: back in Alabama, Ms. Hagan’s fans aren’t quite so jaded. Dr. Shakela Johnson-Ford, director of guidance at Hagan’s high school alma mater, is delighted at Ms. Hagan’s victory. “I think it’s awesome!” she told the Transom. “The residents here are just as proud as if she’d won the competition as Miss Alabama.”

Ms. Hagan is the first Miss New York to win the pageant since 1984, when the winner, Vanessa Williams, had to resign after taking part in a nude photo shoot. Let’s hope that Ms. Hagan’s Alabaman roots will help her resist the city’s libertine ways and keep her grounded (and clothed) for the duration of her reign.

Kaitlin Monte, Miss New York. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

With temperatures dropping into the low single digits, is it any wonder that most of us would prefer to spend our weekends indoors? Sure, we could be doing something with our families and friends on these blustery Saturday and Sunday evenings: Throwing a fondue party, perhaps, or helping the kids put together a jigsaw puzzle with one hand, a glass of Malbec in the other. But how can you expect us to concentrate when there are so many amazing things going on inside that spectacularly flashing flat screen?

Saturday night had us flipping the channels frantically: Did we want to watch the Miss America Pageant—complete with ads for Scientology interspersed with shots of Kaitlin Monte, our very own Miss New York, criticizing the Occupy Wall Street Movement—or the playoffs? Well, it’s obvious which one we’d pick, since we happen to know what place Miss New York finished after strutting across the stage in Vegas but can’t tell a touchdown from a Tebow these days.

That’s not even taking into account the after-hour events! At 11 p.m. we dutifully switched over to Saturday Night Live to watch Daniel Radcliffe slog through the gauntlet of his post-Harry Potter career. We almost wished we could have cast an invisibility cloak over Lana Del Rey during her traumatic musical performances. Note to SNL bookers: Never book a guest who has yet to cut an album, no matter how much the hipsters love her.

Sunday posed an equally prickly question. Should we watch the three-hour painfest that was Ricky Gervais getting booed off the stage at the Golden Globes or the Giants game? Either way, we were expecting a lot more tackling … especially from those A-listers who got all dressed up to receive the usual masturbatory accolades from the Foreign Press Association and instead were forced to grin and bear it while a Brit with bad teeth gave them a spanking. We almost wished that the Globes involved a fourth quarter event as exciting as Brandon Jacobs’s touchdown. Instead, we had Meryl Streep, Matt LeBlanc, Brad Pitt and Madonna accepting awards at a ceremony that could have been called Back to the Future: 2001.

Fortunately for Mr. Gervais, mining the past for humor was less abrasive than trying to open new wounds. At the very least, the jokes were less scandalous the second time around. We’re still making fun of Johnny Depp for The Tourist, are we? How naughty.

Of course, there was another reason to celebrate the last long, freezing weekend. No, not Martin Luther King Day—that would go without saying (unless you happen to be one Juan Williams moderating a Republican debate in South Carolina). Yesterday was also Blue Monday, a pseudoscientific holiday marking “the most depressing day of the year,” which occurs on the third opening weekday of every January and can be dated back to 2005, when it was invented by psychologist Dr. Cliff Arnall as part of a British Sky Travel campaign ad. The formula to determine Blue Monday was fairly complicated and involved factoring in things like weather and broken New Year’s resolutions and was originally printed in a mental health journal as if it were scientifically legitimate.

But, hey, that’s no reason not to celebrate it! (Xanax for everyone!) Let’s face it: Dr. Arnall picked a perfect day for his made-up experiment. Any Monday in the middle of January could accurately be described as the worst day of the year, but had it occurred any earlier this year we might have been too comfortable in our windbreakers and T-shirts to find fault with the shortened days and long nights.

All things considered, it wasn’t too bad … inasmuch as we experienced the blues, it was largely in the form of hypothermia.