Photo of mating horsehoe crabs from Citynoise.com It's that time of year when love at the seashore blossoms, and hordes of initially alarming-looking horseshoe crabs scuttle up onto the beaches of Jamaica Bay to procreate in the sands. The species is approximately 450 million years old, and they look like something from a dinosaur film strip. Despite their tails that look like barbs and alien appearance, horseshoe crabs are completely harmless. Every summer, under......

A couple of years ago parrot poachers were the latest thing keeping bird watcher's eyes opened, as Brooklyn's feral parrots were disappearing. The unfeathered friends at BrooklynParrots.com still have plenty of beaked ones to observe, however, and their next "Parrot Safari" is coming up this June. The troop will "inspect the Brooklyn Parrots' Ellis Island" at Brooklyn College's soccer fields (which represents the first major colony in Brooklyn), before heading over to Green-Wood Cemetery,......

Brooklyn College is joining the ranks of other New York academic establishments by adding a dorm next spring (something they've already started, and stopped, work on). The school has a little over 15,000 grads and undergrads, with about 99% hailing from New York and 77% from Brooklyn. The school hopes that by adding a dorm, some out-of-staters will flock to Midwood. The Daily News reports the eight-story Farragut Road building will house about 214 students......

Take a good, long look New York: You could be staring into the squinty eyes of your future mayor. (Yes, the white dude on the right.) Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who describes himself as “somewhat comical” [emphasis added] is on the verge of announcing his candidacy for mayor. Fuhgeddaboutit? The Crown Heights native, who earned a B.A. at Brooklyn College after nine years of night school, has loudly occupied the largely ceremonial position......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a police officer was struck on Richmond and Wilson Aves. on Staten Island, there was a large fight on Franklin Ave. and Empire Blvd. in Brooklyn, and a double homicide on Furman Ave. and East 237th St. in the Bronx. The US Postal Service is expecting to process one billion individual pieces of mail today, three times the daily average. The busiest day of the year is expected to......

ART: Secrets of Coney Island Creek opens at the Brooklyn Public Library tonight. The exhibit of photographs by photog/author/Coney Island native Charles Denson goes back to the 1960s "when the waterway was at a low point, surrounded by industry and suffering from neglect and pollution. Since then, portions of the creek have been reclaimed, drawing both wildlife and residents to its shores. The photographs in Secrets of Coney Island Creek document those early decades and......

The Princeton Review released its annual "The Best 366 Colleges" rankings, and NYC college schools make some interesting showings. The New School is number 1 for "Best College Town" (Barnard, Columbia, and NYU are also in the top 10), while Queens College is the third most sober. Here are some rankings for some area schools: Barnard: Best Quality of Life (16), Great College Towns (2), Nobody Plays Intramural Sports (18) Brooklyn College: Professor Get Low......

Spiderman, Mortal Kombat, Sonic Underground. No, it's not FOX's Saturday morning line up, it's Terence Taylor's resume. Before jumping into horror, the Brooklyn born author spent over a decade writing and producing children's programming . From his days as one of the few black students at St. John's University, to his years writing Gulah Gulah's Island and Arthur, Taylor's story reveals the seemingly random events that often lead to a career in television and writing,......

Last May a bunch of Brooklyn College MFA graduates exhibited their work at the War Memorial, only to have it banned by the Brooklyn Parks Department. In the process of hauling off the artwork the Parks Department deemed inappropriate, college officials managed to damange some of it. Two Trees Management (who is moving Galapagos to Dumbo) saved the day and exhibited their show at 70 Washington Street. Meanwhile, the students sued the Parks Department, the......

Di Fara, the famed Brooklyn pizzeria that claims a space in many people's hearts, has been closed since Monday after failing five of the last six Department of Health restaurant inspections. Now, the media has flocked to get sad reactions from customers. The NY Times talks to a Brooklyn College student, who says, "I come twice a week, at least. This is the best pizza. I don't want to find a new place." The......

Congratulations to everyone graduating this month! As NYU's commencement was today, with speaker jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, we decided to list the many NYC commencement speakers, with help from The Chronicle of Higher Education (if we've missed any or gotten it wrong, let us know in comments): Barnard College: Anna Deveare Smith, playwright-actress CUNY Lehman College: Representative Charles Rangel CUNY Brooklyn College: Roberta S. Matthews, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Brooklyn......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: Found Explosive at Broadway and 116th St. in Manhattan, a Manhole Fire on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn, and a Homicide at 140-10 123rd Ave. in Queens. How to get a Manhattan hotel room for less than $200 a night. And it's not the Whitehouse on Bowery! Uphill and downhill could be two ways to characterize traffic safety debate in Park Slope, as a proposed bike lane for the incline......

Last night, Streetsblog noticed that the City University of New York had just announced that Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall was appointed Vice Chancellor for Facilities Planning, Construction and Management. A few hours later, there were press releases about Weinshall's resignation from the DOT and the Mayor. The Mayor said:When I became Mayor, the people of New York were already very fortunate to have an innovative thinker like Iris Weinshall leading the Department of......

Two New Yorkers were awarded Rhodes Scholarships this past weekend. The Big Apple recipients are Jacob Lemieux, who is from the Upper East Side and attends Stanford, and Kevin Shenderov of Brooklyn who attends NYU. The NY Times has a feature about Shenderov, not just because he's a hometown boy who attends a hometown school: His brother Eugene, who went to Brooklyn College, was a Rhodes scholar two years ago. The Shenderov family moved to......

If we didn't read it in the Washington Square News, we would have guessed that either Dennis Crowley or Charlie Todd was behind this. But it looks like NYU RAs were the ones who created a Connect Four board out of Weinstein Hall's windows so students could play from the outside. It was part of an effort to bring the dorm community together (Floor Wars), even if it made some students cranky.“It was definitely not......

Mothers and fathers, don't just dream about your children being doctors (well, doctors might be passe, given malpractice coverage), lawyers or hedge fund managers: Have them set their sights on being the president of a major university. amNew York has a feature on salaries of NYC college/university presidents. The presidents are mostly charged with fund-raising, hence needing a real "performer" that gets a sweet compensation package, but the money they make can be pretty......

If you've been to an anti-war protest in the last couple of years, you probably recognize Geoffrey Blank. He's a fairly constant presence, especially in Union Square Park-- a big, bear-like guy who really knows how to work the crowd. Apparently he's a bit too loud for the cops, who have arrested him more than seven times for disturbing the peace. Newsday is reporting that Blank is now facing up to four years in......

The Mayor and Police Commissioner made sure New Yorkers knew that things were status quo after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death. And by status quo, that means New York City is still on high alert, which has not really changed since September 12, 2001 (save a subway terror alert here and there). Mayor Bloomberg said, "I don't think you should worry about: Are you safer today than you were yesterday or are you more in......

After its eviction from a city park, the Brooklyn College MFA graduates will get to another chance to exhibit their work, this time at 70 Washington Street, thanks to Two Trees Management which manages 70 Washington Street and 110 Livingston Street. The Brooklyn Parks Department freaked out when seeing art from "Plan B" at the War Memorial and unceremoniously hauled the works away (causing some damage as well). The show will reopen on Wednesday,......

- Forgotten New York heads to Green-Wood Heights - A Jesus statue on West 33rd Street gets a plexiglass case since people keep stealing Jesus's right hand - Stone Phillips has a really nice apartment - too nice for those Dateline Internet perv stings, though - Dianne Wiest's daughter pleads guilty to robbing and roughing up a kid at her school (yes, it was an iPod) - No Land Grab has Forest City Ratner's......

- Wait a second - a judge reinstates the law that says 18-21 year olds can't possess broad-tipped markers or spray paint - it'll be reviewed by another panel - A Con Ed worker was injured transformer blew - he was underground and had be taken out of the manhole - City Comptroller William Thompson is starting to raise money for his 2009 mayoral push - That area downtown with the big pit and......

If you had to guess which public or private University in America had the most Jews, you might be tempted to guess Yeshiva University uptown, or perhaps Brooklyn College-- but you'd be so so wrong. The real answer is NYU! Yep, it turns out that our homely downtown alma mater has more Jews than any other school in the country-- so step off, University of Maryland! Washington Square News has the report: NYU enrolls the......

Anyone flying this holiday season can count on their ears getting "clogged" as their plane climbs and descends. This can usually be easily remedied by either swallowing or, more comically, by pinching one's noses and breathing forcefully into it. However, for many children this act of ear "popping" is impossible to perform and, thanks to a normally underdeveloped Eustachian tube (the pathway which connects our ears to our oral cavities), will end up with......

- Tonight gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson gets his final wish: his ashes will be shot exactly six months from his death out of a cannon over his Colorado compound. - The Times has an interesting story on a cryptosporidiosis outbreak(sounds like a Neal Stephenson disease to us) based around Geneva, N.Y.. The parasitic disease, which spreads through water and dirty hands, was somehow camping out in water tanks feeding into the Sprayground water park.......

Norman Siegel, Candidate for Public Advocate...

Shirley Chisholm, who became the first black woman in Congress and first black woman to seek the Democratic nomination for President, died at age 80 in Florida. Born in Brooklyn and educated at Brooklyn College and Columbia's Teaches' College, Chisholm first gained prominence as an educator, advocating early education. Her Obituaries > Chisholm, 80, Is Dead; 'Unbossed' Pioneer in Congress" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/03/obituaries/03chisholm.html?hp&ex=1104814800&en=9bb0e9a778b4e5e5&ei=5094&partner=homepage">NY Times obituary is really rich with detail, describing her "unbought and unbossed" slogan in......

What's in my Go Bag? Not Gilbert Gottfried, I can assure you. (A better question might be, "What's in my Go Cup?") Our fabulous friends at the New York City Office of Emergency Management have assembled a coterie of agencies--including the NYPD, FDNY, Department of Health, ASPCA, Red Cross and National Weather Service, among others--to answer your most probing questions about all things disaster-related. The series of events, Ready New York Nights, has already kicked......

Julia Diaco, who was busted for selling drugs, including cocaine, as an NYU freshman earlier this year, received 18 months probation from a State Supreme Court Justice. The terms of her probation are that she must complete a 10-month residential treatment program at Clear View in Sandpoint, Idaho and then an 8-month vocational program. The ruling gives clues into what happens with offenders who get probation: If she completes the Clear View residential program, Diaco's......

Margaret Harper, NYC Public School Teacher...

Young Jean Lee, Playwright/Director...