The Chrysler Building. The Seagram Building. The Apple Store Soho? The Center for Architecture's executive director Rick Bell made a list of 10 great buildings to see in New York City (presumably for tourists) and spoke to the AP about it. The list spans two boroughs, a classic skyscraper, a beloved transportation hub, and retail stores, and some landmarks are deliberately left off (like the Empire State Building which everyone knows about):
• Conde Nast Building, for its "environmentally correct" design by Fox & Fowle.
• Brooklyn Museum, for the modern entry pavilion and plaza, designed by James Polshek, against its Beaux Arts facade; the AP writes the addition makes makes the museum "inviting and accessible, a suitable centerpiece for Brooklyn's burgeoning hipster art scene."
• Prada New York in Soho, designed by Rem Koolhaas, for the way it "displays the merchandise, it doesn't sell it."

THEATER: Over the summer the Belarusian Free Theater was arrested, along with their audience, during a performance of their play Being Harold Pinter, which uses Pinter’s magnificent Nobel Prize acceptance speech as a springboard for theatrical dissent, something the Belarus police state isn't really so into. (For that reason, the company’s performances are normally held secretly in alternating private apartments.) Unable to bring the entire production to New York for his Under the Radar festival, Artistic Director Mark Russell instead invited journalist/playwright Nikolai Khalezin (pictured) to present Generation Jeans, his solo show with DJ; it’s a semi-autobiographical account of a freedom fighter and the beginning of the “Jeans Revolution.” – John Del Signore more ›

THEATER: Under the Radar, arguably New York’s most exciting theater festival, begins today at The Public Theater and a few other odd locations like the Whitehall Ferry terminal. (There are also a few shows at the Classic Theatre of Harlem, P.S. 122 and The Kitchen.) One of the most buzzed about site-specific shows is Etiquette by the London company Rotozaza. It was a surprise hit at last year’s Edinburgh Festival; here the experience takes place at the East Village Ukrainian restaurant Veselka and involves only two actors: you and a friend (or stranger). It’s described as “a private theatrical experience for two people in a public space; the participants take a seat across from each other at a small table (the stage), put on headphones and follow a recorded script, complete with stage directions taking them through a half-hour play, in which they are both performers and audience.” And after the show, you can get pirogies with the cast! – John Del Signore more ›

TREE LIGHTING: Earlier this year, New Yorkers Fountains of Wayne transformed Demetri Martin into a lonely suit living in Brooklyn in this video. Tonight the band will be rockin' around the Stuy Town Christmas tree. A reader writes in:I just happened to see this flyer hanging up for the annual christmas tree lighting. And what the hell is this...7:30-8:00pm, FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE. Seems like it's top secret, but there are flyers everywhere.Random! But if you're... more ›

THEATER: The National Asian American Theatre Company is known for creating adventurous theater with an all-Asian American performing plays that often have little to do with Asian Americans. Their newest production is Blind Mouth Singing by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas; it uses a watery set and live music to tell a story of an “overly strict matriarch; her young son Reiderico who sneaks out of the house to visit his best friend who lives at the bottom of a well; her sister who treats syphilis patients in the open-air market; and her older son who bullies everything within his reach.” Martin Denton writes: “Authentic magic happens only rarely in the theatre… I'm talking about those rare wonderful moments when we see one thing on stage with our eyes, but our hearts tell us we're seeing something entirely different. Blind Mouth Singing is filled with such moments of magic.” John Del Signore more ›

We'd like to use this space to say that our thoughts are with the friends and family of John Pike (pictured). The 23-year old drummer of Syracuse band Ra Ra Riot was found dead yesterday in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. more ›

"More important, however, is the sheer scope of the proposed store in comparison with Apple's two existing Manhattan-area retail presences -- if not the world. The space will easily outsize both the 21,577 square feet of Apple Store SoHo and the yet-larger 25,000 square feet of the subterranean Fifth Avenue location. Property allotted to the third store will be so large, in fact, that its showrooms alone should dwarf the total area given to either of the present-day Apple stores." more ›

FESTIVAL: The New York Ukulele Festival has arrived. The weekend includes: "nonstop Ukulele Fun! Concerts, Vendors, Workshops, Jams! 40,000 Square Feet, Two Concert Stages! FREE BEER ALL WEEKEND. FREE UKULELE DOOR PRIZES AT EVERY CONCERT!!” more ›

EVENT: McSweeney's Presents an all-star benefit will feature an indie-rock supergroup made up of Dante Decaro and Hadji Bakara (of Wolf Parade), Nick Diamonds and Jamie Thompson (of Islands), Amber Webber (of Black Mountain) and Syd Butler (of Les Savy Fav). Authors Joshua Davis (Underdog), David Rakoff (Fraud) and Rodney Rothman (Early Bird) will also be on hand. And that's not all! Daily Show correspondent John Oliver will be on hand for some laughs. All proceeds benefit 826NYC and 826LA. more ›

MUSIC: If the line to get in to The Good, The Bad and The Queen playing the Apple Store earlier this year was blocks long, we can only imagine what it will be like for YouTube video sensations Ok Go. The band plays there tonight, but will they bring the treadmills? more ›

Gothamist is sponsoring New York City Photobloggers 9 tonight @ 6:30PM at the Apple Store SoHo-- there will be six great presentations by local photobloggers, a giveaway by Photojojo, and some free beers afterwards. If you like photography, it'll be a good time. more ›

MUSIC: The Good, the Bad and the Queen play a sold out show at Webster Hall tonight, but before that they're playing a much more intimate show for free at the Apple Store. Not familiar with the band? It's headed up by Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz fame. more ›

THEATER: A revival of John Patrick Shanley’s Women of Manhattan closes tonight. The play - described by the Moonstruck scribe as an “Upper West Side Story” - focuses on three female Manhattanites who lament the fact that, while their careers are flourishing, their emotional lives are a wreck. "Rhonda can't dispose of her ex-lover's shoes, Billie can't escape the honeymoon phase of a three-year marriage, and Judy can't seem to find an attractive man who isn't gay." You’ll laugh/cry. - John Del Signore more ›

READING: Head to the New School to join the New York Times and their moderator, critic William Grimes, as Carl Hiaasen reads from his latest crime caper, Nature Girl, which chronicles the exploits of volatile Honey Santana who meets a wild cast of characters while en route to the Ten Thousand Islands. Show up early for a good seat - Hiaasen is a popular draw. - Krissa Corbett Cavouras more ›

READING: What do you do after you've outed Deep Throat? Well, David more ›

THEATER: This week marks your last chance to see TRUTH {the heart is a million little pieces above all things}, a one-man show by Mike Daisey that NYMetro declares “a delirious, brainy, hilarious, infuriating experience from which one emerges perversely hopeful.” The play follows the fictional and non-fictional stories of James Frey's self-destruction, the sordid and shocking tale of J.T. LeRoy, and Fernando Pessoa, a Portuguese poet whose great works were written by warring multiple personalities inside his head. These stories are reflected against an autobiographical accounting of Daisey's own history of lying and telling the truth. - John Del Signore more ›

THEATER: The Fringe Festival is over and pretty much every stage in town is dark tonight, but the Abingdon Theater Co. is producing a reading of Stephen Cone's Lacrimosa, about an famed evangelist and his wife who seclude themselves in their big mansion, thinking the Second Coming is near, but instead a strange girl arrives, and the evangelist's volatile brother, and with them all the problems and craziness of our mixed-up world, jolting them from their comfortable complacency. This reading will be even more interesting because minster and evangelical expert Cathy Gilliard is on hand for a talk-back. - Mallory Jensen more ›

If you love photography, there's only one place you should be tonight: the Apple Store SoHo from 5:30-8pm. The NYC Photobloggers group is throwing their sixth event-- a fun filled spectacular kicking off with a demo of Aperture at 5:30pm, and followed by presentations by six of NYC's best photobloggers at 6:30pm: Corrie and Lex of officersrow.org, Joseph Holmes of Joe's NYC, Noah Kalian of Noah Kalina Interiors, Tod Seelie of Of Quiet, Jimmie Yoo of cornershots.com, and Reza Mazaheri of Photos by Reza Mazaheri. The Apple Store was nice enough to donate a copy of Aperture ($500 value!) and many of the photographers are raffling prints, so if you swing by, you might get a present! Cost: absolutely free. Bonus: Gothamist is sponsoring free beer after the show at a local bar as part of our 3rd Birthday week. See you there! more ›

Our friends over at Fotolog.net have a serious problem- the runaway success of the site has run up quite a server bill: some $70,000 dollars and counting. Cypher reports that the site is doing "over half a billion page views per month", or about "70 servers and... 22 terabytes of bandwidth each month." The founders have been working diligently through the summer to secure funding, and rumor is that investors have been pretty receptive to the pitch- after all, Fotolog is probably the most popular photoblog service on the Internet. However, closing investment deals takes a lot of time, and Fotolog needs money now. As such, Fotolog has put out the Paypal hat, and asked their users, friends, and supporters to show some love. more ›