The NY Times delved into an amazing story of how a painting left for the trash was actually a long-missing painting by Rufino Tamayo, the Mexican artist. Someone, make this into a movie! In 2003, Elizabeth Gibson rescued the colorful, 38 1/8"-by-51 1/4" painting at West 72nd Street and Broadway. After years of trying to trace its origins, Gibson finally caught a break when a helpful librarian at the Frick suggested she go to the......

While filing out of the Laura Pels Theatre after Patrick Marber’s Howard Katz, a woman of a certain age was heard exclaiming, “A tour de force!” Having brandished that over-ripe phrase myself on probably too many occasions, I was amazed to hear it applied to the play we’d just sat through. Had I been misusing it all this time? Was the expression actually French for “a total waste of time”? According to Dictionary.com, the......

Hmm, maybe it's time to ask Grandma or Great-Grand what they've gotten stashed away in a drawer: A woman auctioned a perfume bottle that her husband bought in 1939 at Saks Fifth Avenue and it sold for $216,000. Why was it so expensive? For starters, it was a bottle created by Lalique. And it was also one of 100 bottles produced. The woman, who is in her 90s, kept the original box it was presented......

FASHION: This is the last weekend to catch Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Barrel Apfel Collection at the Met. The exhibit has been up since September and captures one of the most vivacious personalities in the worlds of fashion, textiles, and interior design. Check it out and gear up for fashion week, which is on it's way whether you like it or not. All Weekend // The Metropolitan Museum [1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd......

Last night, the premiere of King Kong was held in midtown, but the PR folks also dragged out a huge King Kong model to place in Times Square, probably getting soggy from the snow (we're sure he smelled like a real ape after that). Gothamist has been watching some King Kong coverage lately since we can't escape it, and we have two observations: (1) Damn, did Peter Jackson lose a lot of weight; and......

Hooray! The City managed to scrape together enough coin to save the B&B Carousell at Coney Island and buy it for $1.8 million. The owners of the B&B shut down the carousel in May (he said he was too old) and decided to auction off the carousel. There were fears that the carousel would be sold to someone out of state, or worse, that the horses would be sold individually. The auction house had rejected......

Narelle Sissons, Set Designer...

In a final plug, stop by the Apple Store SoHo tonight for the NY Bloggers talk. Gothamist can't wait to see all the other bloggers we try to communicate with only by email and trackbacks and hope that you, our readers who keep us on our toes with typo alerts, panda news, valid criticism and other cool happenings will be there, too. We'll be heading to the Merc Bar afterwards, so don't give us that......