Results tagged “breakdown”

Last Sunday and Monday a collective of activists, journalists, retired government officials and theater makers gathered at The Culture Project to begin mock impeachment proceedings against President Bush. The “trial by theater” arose in part out of frustration with Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi’s pledge to leave impeachment “off the table” when her party seized the House majority. The month long series, called A Question of Impeachment, is intended to spark debate and, participants hope,...

The Chronicle of Higher Education released its annual salary survey of the heads of educational institutions and the value of a college education is evidenced in the paychecks being cashed by institutions' presidents. More than a dozen heads of private universities took home more than $1 million during the 2005-06 school year. According to the New York Post, the dean of higher earning was Donald Ross, who took home $5.7 million--most in deferred compensation after...

Theater producers and Local One, the Broadway stagehands’ union, may have agreed to return to the bargaining table next week, but don’t rush out and buy Phantom of the Opera tickets just yet. (Or ever.) The Posts’s Michael Riedel points out that Local One is being joined at the table by Tom Short, the boss of their umbrella union, The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). Since Short will have to give the final authorization for a strike – and it's a union rule that an IATSE official be present during at least one round of negotiations before striking – this could signal a breakthrough or a breakdown.

There is no denying the greatness of Justice's album, "Cross," and there is no argument from us that it isn't the type of music that is perfectly suited to be blasted in a massive dance club. But those two things alone do not automatically lead to a good live show. These two are sloppy, to put it simply. Too many changes were missed, beats were a half step off, and the songs didn't mix well together. There was no catastrophic breakdown, but the little things add up. We left Terminal 5 underwhelmed. The light show was cool, though... (pic via pocketmonsterd's flickr)

Senator Charles Schumer's latest crusade? Trying to keep the national Do Not Call registry list extended so New Yorkers and other Americans won't have to deal with re-registering.

We recommend avoiding the FDR until after Wednesday, as it will be closed during the day whenever the General Assembly is in session. Everything goes back to normal midtown traffic chaos on Thursday.

The taxi strike is over and rates are back to normal, but many people may have discovered that ride-sharing in a cab is a great way to save money. Fortunately, there are a few online services that can facilitate sharing a cab and splitting the fare to the airport or around town with fellow New Yorkers. Consider it yellow-carpooling. Last year we wrote about hitchsters.com, the online service that formalizes ride shares by matching users through its database. Hitchsters.com works by matching flight information with time, dates, and locations of passengers to make splitting a cab to the airport easier. Similarly, the recently launched SplitaCab.com also focuses on sharing rides to the three major area airports using a GoogleMaps mashup. Both services focus on rides to the airport to and from Manhattan, although hitchsters.com has a beta version that includes Brooklyn.

(directed by Zoe Cassavetes)

Anne Burrell has barely gotten any sleep in the last month. Almost all of her time has gone into the opening of the new West Village restaurant Centro Vinoteca. Its small, trench-style kitchen features a pass window that looks out onto the bar area; the dining room itself is spread out over two levels with about 75 seats total. 1960’s era Italian glass chandeliers hang over the tables (“They make me think of Lite-Brite,” says Burrell). A good amount of early press for the restaurant has been about its piccolini, or small plates menu, which features items like Fried Cauliflower Wedges with Parmigiano Crust and Agliata ($6), and Stir-Fried Marinated Olives ($3). Entrees range from $19 to $36.

The city and state have worked out their differences and will move forward on overhauling the 421-a tax abatement program for new development. The City Council had passed a version last year that would have increased the amount of affordable housing and limited how much of the subsidy could go towards luxury housing, but then the Legislature's version, passed in June, included more neighborhoods, more units available to people with even lower incomes, and $300 million in breaks to Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner Companies. The city wasn't sure about those additions and wanted changes.

Mayor Bloomberg headed to jury duty this morning, with a smile, a number of bodyguards and press aide Stu Loeser. When he showed up to the waiting room for prospective jurors, apparently a woman called a friend and said he was there for the "same foolishness" as everyone else.

It's that time again! The Straphangers Campaign has released its annual State of the Subways report, and this year, the 1 train topped all other lines. This is amazing news for the 1 train - it was only in 2005 when the Straphangers found the 1/9 to be the schmutz-iest! The 1 train got high marks for "frequently scheduled service, arriving with more regularity, fewer dirty cars, and better announcements," but it did perform "below average on: a chance of getting a seat during rush hours, and delays caused by mechanical breakdowns."

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week?

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? Here’s the breakdown:

With the mid-week Fourth of July holiday, an abbreviated work week practically demands an afternoon at the movies complete with giant tub o' fatty snacks and subzero air conditioning. New York is a real haven for movie theater aficionados, and we all have our favorites. Here's a brief breakdown of what to see, and where, this holiday. In the comments feel free to weigh in on the best and/or worst places to see giant alien vehicles attack earth or betrothed couples acting goofy.

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? Here’s the breakdown:

What’s worth seeing on food-related TV this week? Gothamist has got the breakdown:

The State Assembly voted in favor of allowing same-sex marriages in New York. Newsday said it was the first time a gay marriage bill was "debated publicly in one of the houses of the State Legislature Tuesday." However, the bill is not expected to make it pass the Republican-controlled Senate. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said, "We're not doing gay marriage by [tomorrow's adjournment], that's for sure."

Yesterday's reports about the number of people arrested during the 50th annual Puerto Rican Day Parade were incorrect: While numbers like 80 and 173 were offered, today the NY Times reveals 208 people were arrested, due to police concerns about the Latin Kings. However, there's some question as to whether more people without gang connections were arrested during the sweep.

You asked, we answered. We sent members of the Gothamist team to the top frozen yogurt outposts in the city and even made our own. Here's a breakdown of what we discovered:

A friend who emailed us a few weeks ago to inform us that the Beastie Boys were releasing a new album and that it was going to be all instrumental left us conflicted. We'll admit that the instrumental portion of their last shows at the Garden were great, but we wouldn't consider them highlights, and we generally judge their last tour a high-point of our concert-going existence. A week or so later, this same friend sent us a link to a video that the Beastie Boys released on their site. The video opens in black and white, with the band wearing dark suits and ties; an electric organ starts the song. "Oh no," one might be tempted to think, the Beastie Boys have suffered a middle-aged breakdown and are reincarnating themselves as a subdued Blues Brothers. Anyone concerned that "To the 5 Boroughs" was a farewell album and that the Beastie Boys performance at MSG was some type of NYC farewell address should take comfort in that the trio is not nearly ready to go silent into that good night. That we even hesitated to doubt the born-and-bred New Yorkers leaves us embarrassed.

That all changed in the ninth. After trading runs in the eighth, the Mets started the inning with Delgado earning a walk. Carlos Gomez came into run for him and promptly stole second. He scored on a botched fielder’s choice and then the floodgates opened. Reyes and Chavez singled home runs and Carlos Beltran doubled to make it 6-1. Only some nifty relief pitching by Randy Messenger kept the Mets from doing more damage, but they had scored enough even though Billy Wagner pitched a shaky ninth.

, for instance), he takes his subject matter even more seriously in this tale of a dutiful daughter with a dangerous teenager, her kooky hairdresser sister [pictured], their undead mother, the elderly aunt, and the nosy neighbor. You don't want to see the story of this sextet of fabulously flawed women struggling to live in a man's world end, it's all so compelling and enchanting.

The pseudonymous Lux Nightmare burst onto the alt porn scene as a college student at Columbia where she launched the naked-guy-and-girl site That Strange Girl, featuring stills and video of herself and numerous other models who looked like they could be her fellow classmates. At a time when Suicide Girls and Burning Angel were coming to prominence, That Strange Girl (who, full disclosure, this interviewer posed for) was a homegrown, indie entry in the genre. Cut to the present, where Nightmare has since folded her XXX business and is a member of Gotham Girls Roller Derby, teaches sex ed to teenagers in East Harlem, and runs the smarty-pants sex site Sexerati, where she conducts interviews, explores Dating 2.0, and explains terms like "the pink ghetto." (Warning: many of the links in this interview are NSFW.) Currently, the "non porn star" is working on a book proposal about her time in the alt porn trenches.

Three years after his death, Spalding Gray: Stories Left To Tell has opened at Minetta Lane Theater. Running through May 13th, the performance features five actors surrounded by stacks of marble notebooks, similar to those Gray filled in his lifetime (up to 300). Selections from "Swimming to Cambodia," "Monster in a Box" and other monologues are read, but perhaps more insightful and often eerie are his unpublished works. From his last entry (a tape recording from December 18th, 2003): "Everything's in my head now, my timing is all off. Tomorrow is the day I'm going to kill myself."

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”?

There's nothing like a State Comptroller -using- state- employees- to- chauffeur- his- wife scandal to make our own Police Commissioner stop having the po-po drive his wife around. Oh, yes: NYPD Confidential spoke with a few detectives about "Driving Mrs. Kelly", a practice that ended right when State Comptroller Alan Hevesi came under fire:

One detective said the detail drove Mrs. Kelly as many as three or four times a week.

Continue reading "Grand Theft Auto: Commissioner Kelly's Wife Edition"

Governor Eliot Spitzer gave his first 2007 Budget Address, one that shook up old budget ideas. He wants to spend more, for starters, increasing the budget by 6.3% to $120.6 billion (illuminating Times graphic here). Still, Spitzer called his budget "austere," as he suggested adding almost 2,500 more state jobs. And though he's not cutting taxes, he's not raising them (there is also some property tax relief for the middle class).

NY State has the most semifinalists in the Intel Science Talent Search, with 117 entrants out of 300. Eighteen semifinalists are from NYC public schools. Here's the breakdown: Stuyvesant has 7; Bronx Science has 6; Townsend Harris, SI Tech, Murrow, Midwood and Brooklyn Tech each have 1. Mayor Bloomberg said, "It's another testament to the quality of our schools." Well, it's a testament to seven schools, at least.