LIC bike parade

Everyone loves a parade! Or at least on a day when spring seems irrevocable and the nibs on the tips of trees are enchanting us into the thinking life might be for the enjoying. OK, that wasn't a sentence but really all I want to say is this: First Annual LIC Bike Parade Queens, New York Saturday, May 10, 2008 Registration 11:30 AM Workshops 12:00 PM - 3:00 PM Parade 3:00 PM - 4:00PM Free / Rain or shine! Socrates Sculpture Park has more info....

The new New Museum

I finally made it out to the new New Museum on Bowery. I have fond memories of the old building in Soho, although I would always leave that space remembering the awkwardness and particularities of a museum shoe-horning itself into a very old building not designed for museum display. The first thing I noticed approaching the new building on Bowery is that it looks like a prison, except designed for Dr. Caligari. I understand the steel fence is supposed to operate like a scrim, filtering out light to a shimmering effect. Instead, it just looks like constrictive chain link....

Save the Pastrami!

Another Lower East Side institution has been forced to close its doors. The owner of the 2nd Avenue Deli said he closed the restaurant Sunday after a lease dispute with the building's new owners. "My current rent is $24,000 a month for 2,800 square feet,'' Jack Lebewohl told The New York Times. "They want $33,000. I can't afford that.'' Jossip's tongue-in-cheek-on-rye obit here. And sign the petition to save the 2nd Avenue Deli!...

Stingy Starbucks has the wrong holiday

Wow. That headline sounds as if I were editorializing in the Akron Free Press. But anyways... on the the moralizing! On Saturday, I got Punk'd. Starbucks has a clever marketing gimmick here in New York. They have cars driving around Manhattan with a Starbucks cup fastened on top, as if the driver accidentally forgot to bring his coffee in with him. As the car slowly cruises by, throngs of people on the sidewalk will point and yell at the driver that he forgot his coffee on top of the car. I actually walked up to the car to hand the...

LICNYC

We moved to Long Island City. My old super, who is 72 years old and has only twice left a two-block radius on the east side, keeps asking us "How's Long Island?" She doesn't understand. LIC is in no way like LI. Unlike the Brooklyn old-school brownstone neighborhoods, and unlike the tacky weirdness of other Queens neighborhoods, LIC is a strange beast. It's a weird, funky neighborhood of factories and garages and stray houses. It's been filled up with old-timers, artists, Latinos, and now a new breed of folks looking for a reasonably priced neighborhood with a classic New York...

New York Mayors Built on Grid System, too

Gotham Gazette has a handy grid on where all of New York City's mayoral candidates stand....

'Intelligent Design' invades New York

They're not just in Kansas anymore. The pseudo-scientists have invaded New York state and are pushing for our kids to learn Creationism 2.0. This stuff isn't junk science, it's just junk. The summary of the bill introduced to the NY State Legislature on May 3 by Catskill Assemblyman Daniel Hooker: Add S803-b, Ed L Requires teaching in both theories of intelligent design and evolution in their curriculums; provides that the board of education or trustees of every school district shall provide appropriate training and curriculum materials for the regular teachers who will be providing such instruction, to ensure that all...

Morgenthau might feel the heat

Is Manhattan ready for Leslie Crocker Snyder? The former prosecutor plans to challenge District Attorney Robert Morgenthau this year in the Democratic primary. Snyder's main argument? Morgenthau's dusty. He's 86 years old. Also, he spends a lot of money and attention on white-collar and terrorism-related crimes that are better handled by the Feds. This New Yorker article has a kicker of a close: Now Morgenthau, who was born closer to the Presidency of Martin Van Buren than to that of George W. Bush, is looking ahead. “I have a lot of unfinished business here,” he said. Indeed, Morgenthau believes that...

Sharpton scumwatch

New Yorkers, watch your wallets when friends of Reverend Al enter the room. A top presidential fund-raiser for the Rev. Al Sharpton was convicted yesterday in a massive Philadelphia pay-for-play corruption trial. ... Hawkins and Philly powerbroker Ron White were caught on FBI tapes saying Sharpton could gain them access to New York City pension funds and "billions" in Pepsi contracts. White died before trial. "Let's say they [Pepsi] probably have some minority mandates . . . We could take insurance, we could take printing, we could take their pension fund . . . If you just broke off, like,...

New York moves to drop the reefer madness

A prominent NY Republican has joined the slow fight for treating marijuana in a rational way. State Senator Vincent Leibell introduced a bill that would allow doctors to prescribe pot for seriously ill patients....

1 in 48, plus 23

I'm participating in a 48-hour project to photoblog New York using cellphone cameras. Take a look at http://24in48.org/....

GOP grease

The GOP convention has been very generous to special interest groups this week, but certain New York City businesses have suffered from the Republican love machine. For many of the businesses near the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden, this week has been far from a party. Yury Vinogradov estimates business is off 80 percent at his store, It's Another Hit, which sells baseball cards and comic books on West 33rd Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. "Exceptionally bad," said Vinogradov, 47, when an employee of a nearby tuxedo shop stopped by and asked, "How's it going?" Vinogradov's store...

Atlas Stripped

This is what happens when I'm behind on my blog reading and writing -- I miss a Gothamist Interview with my favorite burlesque star, Julie Atlas Muz. The interview is a little anticlimactic, but check out her web site for serious hotness at julieatlasmuz.com. As her web site says: On any given night in New York City, you can see Julie Atlas Muz swimming in an aquarium as a mermaid, peeling off the outlandish costumes she dons, or covered in fake blood in the basement of a gay bar--in essence, expressing her bawdy, irreverent and unexpected sense of humor.  Humor...

Loveletter to New York

Gothamist's best interview ever....

Trumping the Donald

TMN has a great piece written by a Brooklynite whose building was invaded by The Apprentice. My reality collided with reality TV during episode seven of NBC’s The Apprentice. The premise was a hyped-up competition over real estate. The remaining participants were challenged to renovate and rent one of two ‘rundown’ Brooklyn apartments in 48 hours. One of those apartments was a third-floor, one-bedroom in a brownstone on Third Street, where my family and I live on the first two floors. On screen, the team leaders stood outside our stoop and negotiated for the apartment above us. Off screen, we...

Good-bye, MoMA Gramercy

My second home is no more. Yesterday MoMA's Gramercy Theater on 23rd Street bid adieu with a retrospective of Sofia Coppola's films. The ridiculous idea of cannonizing Ms. Coppola after two-and-a-half films fits my sadness, which is for the loss of something that was a temporary home while the museum fleshes out its expanded 53rd Street space. The Gramercy was close to both apartments I've had while living in New York. The screen was the perfect size, and every seat on the floor was fantastic. The experience at the Gramercy was second only to the Walter Reade for optimal viewing....

I'm So Loathsome I Could Cry, or Five of the Least Loathsome New Yorkers

Following the oft-bandied-about New York Press list of the 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers, we can't help but wonder why a small magazine few people actually read is always so, well, hateful. And while it's certainly easier (and ok, perhaps slightly more fun) to bitch your way into New York's blogland, we prefer to celebrate the best NY has to offer. Without further ado, we present five of dailygusto's Least Loathsome New Yorkers. 5) Ed Grant, host of Media Funhouse on MNN We've mentioned him before, and we'll doubtless mention him again. Although his timeslot is more elusive than Bin...

...The People That You Meet Each Day

I just saw this great Rosecrans Baldwin/Danny Gregory piece in The Morning News about Baldwin's Brooklyn neighbors. It's a true cliche about New York that despite its size, it's quite insular, particularly within neighborhoods. You end up seeing a lot of the same people over and over again -- sometimes acknowledging each other's presence, sometimes not. If I had any artistic talent, these are the neighbors I'd draw: 1. The aging punk-rocker in a similarly-aging Ramones t-shirt, fine shoulder-length curly yellow hair, and a limp, from my old neighborhood in Chelsea. I always saw him (from my balcony) crossing...

Jury Duty

I'm quite excited. Today is my big court appearance. Not as a defendant (they'll never catch me!) but as a juror. What's got me really excited is the hope that my experience will be something like Pauly Shore's in the 1995 movie "Jury Duty." You've got to watch the trailer and get excited about "lifestyles of the rich and sequestered."...

Apartment living is back

Slate has an optimistic story about the changing fads of New York apartment architecture. Author Alex Marshall notes: "Meier's Perry Street and Pasqarelli's Porter House buildings have sold out at prices per square foot considerably higher than average. This may prompt more developers to realize that adding creative, original architecture can mean more money in their pockets, and this may eventually improve the skyline and streets of this city and others." Yes, and this will lead to a golden age of New York architecture where everyone pays a reasonable rent. And no neighbors will ever catch a rat on a...

Times Square stories

Adam Gopnik reviews a few histories of Times Square in the latest New Yorker. Definitely a must-read. The myth they want to dispel is that the cleanup of Times Square in the nineties was an expression of Mayor Giuliani’s campaign against crime and vice, and of his companion tendency to accept a sterilized environment if they could be removed, and that his key corporate partner in this was the mighty Disney, which led the remaking of West Forty-second Street as a theme park instead of an authentic urban street. As Traub and Sagalyn show, this is nearly the reverse of...

Olympic Villages for all!

Isn't it great when architecture and food collide? No, not the towers of food at Gramercy Tavern. On the way to lunch today I took a look at the models for New York's 2012 Olympic bid. Several people wondered who has won the bid for 2008, and what their village will look like. Wonder no further! Take a look at the upcoming Athens 2004 Olympic Village before checking out San Francisco's Sasaki Associates plan for Beijing 2008. There's no clear victor in the battle to transform Queens in eight years. Henning Larsens Tegnestue has some nice touches (windmills!) and their...

Warning: Joan Rivers Content

Very quick little story. I was just returning a car to the Hertz on E. 24th, and this guy (apparently a regular) was exclaiming to the Hertz lady about how the customers at the 24th St. Hertz are so much nicer than the ones at the 76th St. Hertz. To prove his point, he told the lady about a time he was there when Joan Rivers was waiting for a car. Apparently, Joan had a major fit about the service (quelle surprise!) and threw a pen at a Hertz employee, hitting him in the eye, screaming, "I'm Joan Rivers! I...

10 Great Things

Manhattan User's Guide asked some of their favorite NYC bloggers to describe their ten favorite things about the city. My server's been having problems, so I think my questionnaire got lost somewhere along the way. Without further ado, then, my 10 Favorite Things about NYC. 1. Faces How many faces does the average New Yorker see each day? My non-scientific estimate is about 1,247. In the street, I've seen ruddy CEOs leaving their sleek black cars and blinged-out hip-hoppers smiling through the windows of their stretch Hummers. On the subway, I once saw a sickly strung-out heroin addict's drool falling...