The ragged march to winter weather continues. Unlike last month, which was mostly warm for days on end, November keeps bouncing between cold and warm episodes as the atmosphere struggles with the transition to a wintertime circulation pattern. Today will be warmer than normal as the morning rain tapers off to a drizzly fog. The rain's not going away! The tree lighting at Lincoln Center looks to be a soggy occasion. A low pressure... more ›

The libraries of the borough of Queens were announced as being the most utilized in the entire country. The Public Library Statistical Report just announced that Queens public libraries loaned 20.2 million items to residents in 2006, and the borough's on track to retain the top spot after loaning 21 million items in 2007. According to the 2000 federal census, Queens had 2.2 million residents, so that means the average person in the borough is borrowing approximately nine items a year. more ›

Like an elementary school kid who sees his teacher at a movie theater or in the grocery store, and is shocked that he or she doesn't sleep in the school's gym at night and requires food to survive, the media occasionally will note that librarians are not uniformly dour spinsters intent on shushing you and collecting late fines. The New York Sun ran an article Thursday regarding the growing number of librarians who live and socialize in Williamsburg. A group called the Desk Set––made up of librarians, archivists, publishers, illustrators, and the like––was formed by area residents in an attempt to improve the image of librarians beyond the typical stereotypes. They hosted a dance party on Memorial Day weekend, where young professionals gathered and drank cocktails with Dewey Decimal designations that alluded to their identities. more ›

Since the only truly green event is the one that doesn't happen, Live Earth is certainly being met with some criticism - but either way it's going to cast some green over the world tomorrow. If you aren't heading over to the "New York" event yourself, NBC Universal will be bringing the concert to the world with a three-hour primetime special Saturday night on NBC, 18 hours of live coverage on Bravo, seven hours on CNBC and lot more over at the Sundance Channel, Universal HD, Telemundo and Mun2. More on how they prepped for the event, and how they learned from Live 8, here. more ›

This week's weather looks like it will be a half-baked repeat of last week's weather. It won't be nearly as warm but the same general progression will take place. The combination of air mass size and speed of mid-latitude atmospheric circulation this time of year often yields a roughly weekly repeat of summer weather patterns. more ›

Over the past few days the storm off the coast has been the Fugazi of weather systems. It's been doing its own thing, shooting spokes of clouds and rain over New York and New England, completely independent of the world of weather circulating around it. Over the next day or two, however, it appears that the low will get ambushed and be incorporated into the mainstream atmospheric circulation. more ›

We saw Spider-man take over the city for a week, now get ready for The Silver Surfer to take over your change purse. more ›

Even in the shadow of the Queensborough Bridge, the Maison Tropicale looks aloof. Hovering above a cleared and graded strip in Long Island City, this compact machine for living wears the architectural equivalent of sunglasses, safari helmet, binoculars, and shorts. It is haughty and cute at the same time. The aluminum outpost, one of three prototypes sent to Congo and Niger in the early 1950s, was designed by Jean Prouvé as a prefabricated home for French imperial masters in the Congo. While the empire was already beginning to fade, there was still some impetus to conquer African territory and look suave doing it. more ›

The New Yorker was actually shut out, not garnering a single award for any of its nine nominations; it was the most-nominated publication in 2007. New York's five awards were for General Excellence (250,000 to 500,000 circulation), Profile Writing, Magazine Section, and Design. The magazine's online site nymag.com won an award for Interactive Feature. Other big winners last night were National Geographic and Vanity Fair, with two awards each. Rolling Stone, Wired, Foreign Policy, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists were other winners of General Excellence awards. If you'd like to judge for yourself, links to all of the nominated and winning articles are available here. more ›

This week's weather is all about the waves. The snake-like long wave pattern of air circulation well above the earth's surface is going to shift in mid-week. Today and tomorrow the circulation has dipped to our south, allowing all this cold air to be here. By Thursday it looks like we will be warming up under the crest of the wave. Even though today, tomorrow and Wednesday will be a bit warmer than the weekend, we'll still have below normal high temperatures in the mid-40s. Once the circulation shifts the weather will warm up. Thursday, the first full day of spring, and Friday should see highs in the mid-50s to lower-60s. That should get rid of the slush! more ›

Spring continues its sneak preview today. A low pressure system centered over Toledo this morning is pumping all sorts of warm, moist air our way. Most of the area will top out around 70 degrees this afternoon. Areas along the shore will be much cooler as conditions are ideal for a sea breeze. A sea breeze is a small circulation that sets up when ocean temperatures are much lower than those over land and if there are generally light winds. Under those conditions, a mini high pressure system forms over the water, a mini low forms over land and a breeze starts blowing toward the shore. The end result being near shore locations being ten degrees or so cooler than places only a mile or two inland. more ›

Today, many businesses are closed in honor of President's Day. Wall Street is closed, as are banks, government offices and schools. There's no regular garbage pickup, but the Department of Sanitation will be picking up garbage that has been stranded due to last week's storm. more ›

Busy, busy day in the Gothamist weather center. First, yesterday's temperatures were exactly normal. Our high of 38 and low of 26 were precisely equal to the average high and low for January 11th. Thus Central Park's streak of above normal temperatures ends at 32 days. However, our streak of no below normal temperatures continues into its 34th day today. That streak is likely to end next week as major changes are taking place in the atmosphere. more ›

If it weren't for this morning's lingering fog, we'd be warming up to near sixty degrees this afternoon. Instead temperatures will probably only reach the mid-50s. Still, that's at least ten degrees above normal. Another weak cold front moves through town this evening. The front's passage will clear out the skies and bring in slightly cooler air tomorrow. more ›

When there's an El Niño, and there's a mild one right now, the atmosphere is more likely to circulate in a zonal, or west-to-east, pattern. A zonal circulation keeps the cold air to the north and the warm air to the south. Kind of like a McDLT! New York is far enough south that we mostly stay on the warm side of things. We're in a strongly zonal air flow pattern right now, and we look to stay that way for the next week. more ›

Yesterday, the Mets organization and various city and state officials broke ground on the new Mets stadium, Citi Field. more ›

There's nothing like a NY Post vs. NY Daily News pissing match! Yesterday, the Audit Bureau of Circulations announced the latest circulation figures, the Post now has a daily circulation of 704,011 copies (a 5% increase over last year) while the News is at 693,382 (1% increase). more ›

Important things first: Shea Stadium will see a bit of rain and wind this evening. Not ideal weather for baseball, but they should be able to get the game in. Yankee Stadium will also see a bit of wind and rain, but it doesn't really matter. more ›

Mayor Bloomberg released the 2006 Fiscal Year Mayor's Management Report yesterday. The MMR is the Mayor's way of being accountable for city initiatives and agencies, and during the press conference, the Mayor felt that there was still work to be done, saying, "Two-thirds of the things are going in the right direction. A third aren't going as fast as I'd like, or in the right direction.": Like what? The quality of streets has declined (which the Department of Transportation says is due to construction projects), the Civilian Complaint Review Board received 16% more complaints about police officers, structural fire response times increased and pest control exterminations dropped by 39%. more ›

Today marks the thirteenth straight day of below normal temperatures. Interestingly, if you're the sort of person that finds these things interesting, high temperatures during this stretch have been much more below normal, by 5.5 degrees, than low temperatures. The reason for the difference has been the clouds and rain, which don't let us warm up during the day, rather than a colder air mass, which would keep us cooler during the day but even more so at night. more ›

- We'll expect to see this on the Threatdown - brown bear roams NJ
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The Times says he spent the 1914 penny at a Times Square hot dog and pretzel vendor in Times Square - if only that vendor knew! more ›

is about to get interesting again. Well, interesting if you find the ever dwindling newspaper circulation numbers interesting. Which for whatever reason, we actually kinda do. more ›

February review: Lots of temperature swings as the atmospheric circulation pattern shifted mid-month. Central Park temperatures wound up slightly above average for the month. Precipitation was slightly below normal but more than an average amount of snow fell. All in one storm. more ›

You complain about the dirty subways, the MTA complains about the media: The MTA put the blame on free newspapers for giving subway riders more things to drop on the floor and cause track fires. The MTA says that trash pickups have increased by almost 43% (35 tons in 2004 to 50 tons last year), which may have led to the 40% increase in track fires (the Daily News has lower numbers, which we can't quite figure out). Of course, the Daily News and Post love that the MTA is blaming the rise in problems to AM New York and Metro (combined circulation is around 600,000), but politicians say the MTA is being "disingenuous" since the agency has cuts its maintenance crews. Maybe the MTA needs to be better about putting newspaper recycling containers at its stations, like these clear ones at the Jay Street stop. What's interesting is the hypothesis the MTA has about the free newspaper causing track fires - if stacks of the free newspapers are set near a platform edge, the vacuum effect of the trains causes them to be "pulled into the tracks," but it's not just the free papers - many a time Gothamist will see all sorts of papers left on the subway platform (or subway car seats) for other riders to enjoy them. And we're more upset about seeing food and drink on the subway platform. For instance, who the hell left their cereal on the subway platform the other day? Think about that one, MTA! more ›

As we all know by now, Staten Island Chuck, Gothamist's favorite rodent (he's bigger and cuter than a rat!), did not see his shadow yesterday morning, meaning an early spring. While Chuck was not seeing his shadow, Gothamist was photographing these snowdrops emerging from the ground in Morningside Park. By our recollection they were coming out a couple of weeks earlier than last year, which one might assume is another sign of an early spring. Now that this morning's rain has stopped we've warmed up to 62. Close to the record high of 64. Another sign of spring's imminent arrival? more ›

Every day we throw our pocket change into a little box by the door, and once every six months or so, we sit down and roll it into bank coin wrappers while watching television. Sure, we could just take it to one of the coin-sorting machines at the local Commerce Bank, but rolling coins is relaxing and it only takes about an hour to roll a couple of hundred bucks worth of coins. Anyway, the other night we were doing this, and noticed something strange: we had 360 quarters, 200 dimes, 80 nickels and 300 pennies. Quarters, dimes, and nickels seemed really overrepresented-- and pennies were strangely scarce! more ›

Miriam Datskovsky, Sex Columnist, The Columbia Spectator more ›

Wow, you put Mayor Bloomberg, resplendent in cash money, on the cover of your alternative weekly and the next thing you know, you're sold to a bigger company! Village Voice Media, which represents the Voice and five other alt weeklies (including LA Weekly), is announcing its sale to the New Times today. New Times is the largest alt weekly publisher with eleven papers (Dallas Observer, Miami New Times, SF Weekly, Cleveland Scene), which would mean a combined circulation of 1.8 million readers. Or people who take the newspaper to put over their head during rainstorm. The NY Times writes, "The Village Voice newspaper, with its weekly circulation of 250,000, will be the flagship of the company as well as the national brand for a new alternative media Internet portal that the merged company is planning." Which means that you'll be able to follow your favorite indie band from town to town, and plan an alternative American roadtrip! more ›