Stilted But Not Wilted, by PayPaul(Leader of the WW Tribe) at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on 109th Ave. and Merick Blvd. in Queens, a person under a train at Sutphin Blvd. in Queens, and a cyclist pinned beneath the wheels of a bus on 14th St. and 1st Ave. (looks like victim will survive) in Manhattan. The tech-savvy youth who got himself arrested for stealing a Sidekick mobile device and then......

We finally got around to reading the profile of fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld in the New Yorker. Certainly, he's got his quirks. But we liked learning about what Lagerfeld, who reads in English, French, German, and Italian, thought about one famous American writer:“For me, the perfect writing is E. B. White—that’s how one should write English. The sound, the language, what it evokes for me. I see New York with the eyes of his book......

MOVIES: Don't forget, the Bryant Park movies start tonight! The movie won't begin until sunset - which is about the same time the rain and thunder are scheduled to begin. Tonights features in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller, The Birds. Be an early bird (heh) and get there at 5 for a good spot on the lawn! 5pm // Bryant Park // Free ART: Like Sculpture? Like to hear people talk about it? Then attend MoMA's On......

I once had a mediocre writing teacher tell our class that every story can be boiled down to one of two plots: Hero Goes On a Journey or Stranger Comes To Town. Of course, I think she was being simplistic to a fault, but if Colson Whitehead’s novels redeem her assertion at all, then I owe her an apology. I have the luck to have read his entire corpus of fiction – The Intuitionist and......

In this month's Metropolis, Paul Goldberger wonders what our cell phones hath wrought upon us, as they prevent us from experiencing a place. Goldberger writes in his elegant essay: When you walk along the street and talk on a cell phone, you are not on the street sharing the communal experience of urban life. You are in some other place--someplace at the other end of your phone conversation. You are there, but you are not......

Gothamist has been reading Colson Whitehead's new book of essays, Colossus of New York, and we might need to make it our official book. Whitehead, who wrote The Intuitionist and John Henry Days, the books is a collection of essays about New York - essentially a love letter in thirteen parts to New York. An excerpt: No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That......