Today the Times’s Frank Bruni marvels at Manhattan’s new wave of high tone restaurant openings during a recession, and pins the trend not on entrepreneurial bravado but on the fact that it takes years to get a fancy eatery open, and most of these new places were envisioned in flusher economic times. It is true that in 2005, the top fifth of earners in Manhattan made 52 times what the lowest fifth make – $365,826......

With street-side Christmas trees going for more each year and the average apartment size decreasing, we propose the adoption of a new holiday standard: Enjoy your Christmas Tree in a highball glass. To wit: Clear Creek Distillery’s Eau de Vie of Douglas Fir, 375 milliliters of pine flavored brandy, found at Red Hook booze and esoteric spirits emporium LeNell’s. This small, $45 bottle is cheaper and has a lesser environmental impact than deforestation, and will......

Six years ago musician Gail Silverman, tired of watching her fellow female rockers sitting on the sidelines, started her own record label, Revolutionary Records and a concert series called Girls Rock and Girls Rule (GRGR). What started out as just a one gig event has grown into a sort of small-scale hard rock Lilith Fair, with a rotating line-up of local musicians joining a roster of headliners whose tour this year has taken them through......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a stabbing on Monument Walk in Brooklyn, a stabbing on West 31st St. in Brooklyn, and a stabbing on Hughes Ave. in Brooklyn. Cops are looking into the death of a man who was found unconscious in the bathroom of the Knitting Factory. They're deeming the incident suspicious. A Columbia University hunger striker was carried off a couch after passing out from hunger. Meanwhile, a group of drunken students......

Sure, there are tons of auctions happening - a handwritten draft of a Steinbeck novel will likely take in $500K at the end of the month, Courtney is gonna sell Kurt's pajamas, the Dukes of Hazzard car (the General Lee) took in nearly $10M this weekend and the Met held an "Art for Opera" auction yesterday. We'd like to focus on the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, however. Tonight is the last night of......

THEATER: We could try to describe Neal Medlyn's Coming In The Air Tonight, but why bother when there’s this: “The show features a variety of Phil Collins and Genesis music and is about how Neal is starting to slowly fall apart due to how he's all torn up inside from getting his heart broken into tiny pieces. It is also about how Neal steals a lot of stuff from people. Like their belongings and house......

THEATER: Obie Award winner Adam Rapp has just unwrapped (sorry) his new play Essential Self-Defense at Playwrights Horizons. Set in a mean Midwestern town called Bloggs, the play has, fittingly, been generating big blog buzz. The “grim fairy tale” revolves around a disgruntled misfit “who takes a job as an attack dummy in a women’s self-defense class and finds himself mysteriously drawn to the repressed bookworm who’s beating on him. But all’s not well in......

VINYL SALE: If you're looking for some rare vinyl, you might want to check out this monthly event: Shakey's Record Fair. A meatpacking district locale seems...a little off, but as FreeNYC points out, if you're "looking for that super rare old school funktified 7"...Shakey's Record Fair is probably the only place you'll find it." 8pm // APT [419 W 13th St] // Free THEATER: Rules of the Universe is a new site-specific play performed in......

I once had a mediocre writing teacher tell our class that every story can be boiled down to one of two plots: Hero Goes On a Journey or Stranger Comes To Town. Of course, I think she was being simplistic to a fault, but if Colson Whitehead’s novels redeem her assertion at all, then I owe her an apology. I have the luck to have read his entire corpus of fiction – The Intuitionist and......

March 4: Caipirinha Making Brazilian Extravaganza Join in the fun at LeNell's Ltd: a Wine & Spirit Boutique, as they celebrate Brazilian culture with Brazilian music, food and of course a variety of tropical concoctions made with Cachaca Fazenda Mae De Ouro. Munch on Pao de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread), grilled sausage (two types!) and even more Brazilian cheese. Sip traditional and passionfruit caipirinhas and get ready to try some new tropical cachaca concoctions to......

You can pretty much guarantee a fun night when giant hip-hop superstars headline a stadium. They'll be theatrics, hit-after-hit, lots of hand wavin' and crowd sing-alongs (and lots of police). If you check out the Eminem, 50 Cent, Lil Jon, D12, and G-Unit show at Madison Square Garden Monday or Tuesday night, you'll also be on TV. It's being taped for Showtime. If that's too mainstream for you, the place to be is Knitting......

Ida, Indie Band...

Did you guys know winter was still here? Yeah, anyway, it'll be giving us some more snow this weekend which means that staying home and drinking hot chocolate (or red wine) and watching movies will likely be a top choice for most. But for the adventurous we offer the following choices, along with a spontaneous snowball fight: MUSIC: The Willie Mae Rock n’ Roll Camp for Girls, an offshoot of the original Rock Camp for......

Oscar Commentary
Oscar is celebrating its 75th anniversary, I'm celebrating my 25th anniversary of watching Oscar....