Since opening last November, the 2,000 square foot Radegast Hall in Williamsburg has been packed with patrons enjoying the massive mugs of beer, the hearty food, and the debate about the old world dirndl peasant dresses worn by the waitresses. (Humiliating or part of the ambiance?) One group strongly opposed to the vintage Czech ensembles are the employees themselves, who say the tight bodices and short skirts are provoking come-ons from grabby drunken tools. Not......

Southpaw owner Matt Roff is awfully busy opening new bars and venues lately (hopefully not nearby any nit-picky neighbors). As he works on the Galapagos space transformation, he somehow fit in opening up a beer garden last Friday in Crown Heights. Franklin Park is a 2,000-sq-ft beer garden (with 1,200-sq-ft of outdoor space) housed in a former mechanic's garage (à la Fette Sau) located at 618 St. John's Place in Brooklyn. Their website serves......

Sure, websites like Menupages are handy when you need to line your stomach for a night of debauchery, but how do Manhattan transplants find the best place to meet up for high fives and car bombs? And how do you find the best bar to avoid them and enjoy your favorite microbrew? A new website, Beer Menus, is more than just a bar search engine; it’s a great resource for tracking down microbrews and......

First devastating weather patterns and destroyed coral reefs, then lousy harvests and global food shortages, now this: soaring beer prices. In an increasingly warmer world, precious, life-sustaining beer is becoming a luxury item. The past year has seen a drought in Australia, flooding in Germany, hailstorms in the Pacific Northwest, and lower crop yields throughout Europe – all resulting in a dramatic spike in the cost of grains and hops. Climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger......

New York's called the city that never sleeps, but to many it’s also the city that never leaves its apartment. For the Netflix-and-sweatpants set, there are an increasing number of ways to get all the essentials with just a phone call or a few clicks of the mouse, provided you have a desirable zip code. The best known late night delivery service is Anytime, which provides East Village and Williamsburg shut-ins with the beer and......

Itching to jump back into Liberty City yet? The New GTA IV website has been launched, in preparation for the quickly approaching April release. The previews so far have been somewhat light on details, but the site finally sheds some light into what kind of trouble you can expect to get into while traversing a virtual NYC. To start, our virtual Queens is a land called "Dukes." Here, we've got a baseball team not so......

Okay, so you don't want to go out to watch the game and cooking is not an option. What can you order besides pizza? Plenty, as you already know (hey, we live in New York City, folks!). But we've found some particularly mouthwatering Super Bowl delivery specials, many of which involve pork. Mmmm . . . pork. Momofuku will deliver their glorious bo ssam -- a whole pork shoulder cooked to tender perfection. It comes......

This weekend Gowanus Lounge was first to note the unexpected closure of the 2nd Street Cafe at Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. The decade old restaurant, which on weekends had all the charm of a daycare center on adderall, had undergone a major renovation last summer. OTBKB hears word from a former employee that he/she was given just two days notice. Part of the ever-widening quicksand consuming New York restaurants? No word yet on the......

Chocolate, cheese and beer are all part of a well-balanced epicurean diet. Each starts with humble ingredients – cacao pods, sugar, milk, barley, malt and yeast – that are transformed by a seemingly magical process. Gothamist recently learned about all three from passionate experts in a “Chocolate, Beer and Cheese Pairing,” that took place at Jimmy’s No. 43. As anyone who’s ever had a cheese plate at McSorley’s can tell you, beer and cheese isn’t......

The “Beer Kir” at Marco Moreira’s 15 East is a Japanese beer-based mixed drink: Sapporo is floated on a shot of honeyed sweet potato vinegar, adding a sweet-sour edge to the dry lager. For the purposes of home experimentation, we found Benímosu ($11.35 for 4 oz.), the same artisanal vinegar used in Beer Kir at Katagiri, a Japanese food store on 59th Street. Made in Kyoto from purple potatoes and koji rice, Benímosu has clean,......

EVENT: Tonight's Downtown Third Thursday seems promising. Pete Hamill, author of Downtown: My Manhattan, will be on hand at 41 Broad Street, a "Classical Revival style building designed by Cross and Cross Architects completed in 1929 as the headquarters of the Lee-Higginson Bank. The original grand banking hall with its marble mosaic columns now houses the Broad Street Ballroom." The NY Times has more on the rarely seen space. 6pm // 41 Broad St //......

When news of 124 Rabbit Club’s opening broke, we dropped everything and headed down to MacDougal St. for some brews from the joint’s 40-plus beer list. Initially it was hard to find, then we saw the stairs leading down to an unmarked door and rang the bell only to find nobody home. At first we thought maybe we weren’t cool enough to gain admission, but it seems we weren't the only ones misinformed about......

BENEFIT: Tonight catch a special performance by Alanis Morissette, while rubbing elbows with Matt Dillon...all for a good cause! The inaugural fundraising benefit for the Adrienne Shelly Foundation will be held this evening, and you can get in with a ticket from $150 to...well, $10,000 bucks. You'll be supporting the late Shelly's foundation which "supports the artistic achievements of female actors, writers and directors through a series of scholarships and grants." 6pm // Skirball Center......

There must be something in the air -- temperatures dropping or the crisp winds of fall, perhaps -- but whatever it is, it has caused two of our favorite local artisanal picklers to launch tasty new products. First, Jon Orren at Wheelhouse has created the Ploughman's Pickle, his take on the Branston Pickle Relish that graces the traditional English Ploughman's lunch. His version contains the wort from Sixpoint Craft Ales' Brownstone Ale (wort is the......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a commercial robbery on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn, a suspicious fire on Renwick St. in Manhattan, and an "air-mail incident" at Union St. and Franklin Ave in Brooklyn. We can't wait to hear what that possibly means. Six men were murdered Saturday morning in New York City. Separately! The Times reports that patrons of the Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden don't know what they're enthusiastically drinking to at a......

October 6: Strategies for Building a Balanced Wine Collection The experts at the Italian Wine Merchants can show you how to build up your wine collection beyond those bottles that were left over from your last party. During the course of the afternoon, you'll taste eight Italian wines including vintage Barolo, Brunello, Super-Tuscans, and more while sampling assorted antipasti. $125 per person. Reservations required and can be made online or by calling 212-473-2323 x106. 1:00......

We love it when we see the creativity of spirits mixology applied to beer - within reason of course. While there is a simple purity in a frosty pint of beer, sometimes it’s fun to play around. Our latest beer-tail to add to the collection, the Black and Blue, is case and point. It mixes things up just a little but doesn’t adulterate our brew. We tried the Black and Blue at the Blue Point......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: two pedestrians struck at 71st St. and Northern Blvd. in Queens, a shooting at St. John's Pl. in Brooklyn, and a collapse at 52nd St. and 7th Ave. in Manhattan. Someone stole the "diamond dress" that Carol Channing wore during her stage run in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," from an unattended luggage cart. The $150,000 dress was about to be donated to the Smithsonian Museum. Annheuser Busch is moving a......

In case you haven't yet heard the good news, the Red Hook vendors have gotten their permit extended through through October 21, which is when they traditionally end their season. Go and grab some pupusas. Can you live off the land in your own backyard? In Brooklyn? Without torturing your family? Unclear. Manhattan User's Guide gives us their latest hot list, including newcomers Tailor and Market Table. Andrew Carmellini admits to smuggling $12,000 worth of......

We expect a lot from our beer. It needs to be refreshing. It needs to be bold and flavorful. And it needs to keep us as excited on the last sip as we were when the first pass crossed our lips. For us, a truly great beer is the one that keeps going after most beers have stopped. So when we came across Endurance Pale Ale on tap at Drop Off Service in the East......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a water rescue at Chambers and Water Sts. off Manhattan, an armed robbery on Rockaway Blvd. and 75th St. in Queens, and a shooting on Grafton St. in Brooklyn. LibrerDia Lectorum, one of the city's oldest Spanish language bookstores will be closing September 30th. The Manhattan store on 14th St. opened in 1960 and became a mainstay of Spanish literature in the city. A fire broke out yesterday afternoon......

We’re not going to spend this space waxing poetic about the farewell to summer and how sad we all are to say goodbye. Folks tend to be so negative on Labor Day – it’s not like the summer immediately ends on the 4th of September. But if this “impending doomsday to summer” is enough to get people to party like they mean it, then we fully support the cause. Now we know we are......

August 19: 8th Annual Blues & BBQ Head to Pier 54 at Hudson River Park for meat, music, meat, and more meat. Hill Country, Dinosaur Bar-b-Que and other city favorites will be offering up their wares for sale. Full listing of blues acts here. Admission and music free. Pier 54 at 14th Street, 2-9 p.m. August 19: 4th Annual Singapore Chili Crab Festival This year's Tiger Beer Singapore Chili Crab Fest is in a new......

Former Yankees shortstop and long-time announcer for the team Phil Rizzuto died this morning at the age of 89. Rizzuto played his entire professional baseball career with the New York Yankees after being selected by the team as an amateur free agent in 1937. He wouldn't play his first major league game with the Yanks until 1941, but then served as shortstop for 13 seasons, during which the Bronx Bombers won 10 Pennants and 8......

When meat maven Josh Ozersky, aka Mr. Cutlets, talks bacon, many a New York City carnivore listens. And Gothamist is no exception. Despite Monday's dreary weather, we trudged over to East Village gastropub Jimmy's No.43, for what our favorite meathead was billing as a night of bacon, beer and pickles, a combination sure to brighten any rainy day. Some 25 pounds of cured pork belly were cooked up that night in the subterranean space. Five......

Who doesn’t make a mistake every now and then? To err is human, right? But what matters in the end is if you get called out on it. When (if) you do, you should probably apologize and make right. Well, we got called out last week. To celebrate National Beer Month we decided to feature a beer that we thought was pretty good, Red Hook Sunrye Summer Ale. Now we don’t expect every reader to......

What's worth watching, food-wise, on TV this week? Fox has Episode 8 of Hell's Kitchen on Monday at 9pm. Brad surprisingly got the boot last week; now five contestants remain. Read the latest episode roundup on EW’s TV Watch. This week on Top Chef: Rocco DiSpirito is appearing as a judge! And—allegedly—looking a little more plastic than he used to. Also, check out the proposed rules for next season in the Village Voice: we’re right......

Yesterday, Con Edison removed the tow truck sitting in the crater where a steam pipe explosion ripped a 15' by 25' hole in 41st Street and Lexington Avenue. The utility will investigate the damage in hopes of getting a better idea of what caused the Wednesday night explosion. Other clean up crews were working on other parts of the damaged area. One contractor who will be washing the facade of a building told WNBC,......

Though some people were running from the explosion, once things calmed down a little, it seems like many people were documenting what was happening. In turn, it gave those of us not on the scene a way to share the experience. Here are some striking photographs from readers: Photograph of people walking away, looking towards, the explosion by Horatio Baltz; see the full set Photograph the crowd on the steps of the New York Public......

As you may have heard, July is American Beer Month, and we’re in full celebration mode here at Gothamist. Not that we really need a reason to throw back all sorts of delicious, nationally crafted microbrews but the occasion serves as a handy reminder to try something new and explore what’s out there. So exploring we have done. The fruits of our pursuit have been quite abundant but there is one beer that has stood......