For every reason that Brooklyn is cool, there are 300 rats on the Lower East Side that are cooler still. Say what you will about it during peak B&T hours; for the money, there is no other neighborhood in Manhattan that epitomizes the city's filth, culture, and history so beautifully. Here's how we get tipsy and glutted on the Lower East Side for $30. more ›

Epitomizing the joy of the Lower East Side's ability to offer excellent bialys as well as superb hand-pulled noodles, tomorrow is the annual Egg Rolls and Egg Creams Festival at the Museum At Eldridge Street. The museum says that the block party will feature "Chinese opera and acrobatics, klezmer music, Yiddish and Chinese language lessions, mah jongg," and food, food, food. more ›

The complete history of Eldridge Street between Stanton and Rivington has all been visually played out in this 12-second video. Don't blink, you might miss that time it was Delancey Farm. more ›

The body of a 17-year-old boy was found outside 205 Eldridge Street (near Stanton) earlier this morning. He had a gunshot wound in the head and was pronounced dead at Bellevue. Witnesses said they heard shots around 2 a.m. A motive is not known at this time. more ›

A pingpong hall was a Chinatown brothel's way into the wallets of public high school students. The Post reports that a brothel at 39 Eldridge Street was shut down after parents of Pace High School students realized the brothel owners were targeting their sons. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: Airmail in Brooklyn, truck vs train overpass in 31st St & 20th Ave in Queens, an amputation at Grant St & St Pauls Ave in Staten Island and a bomb scare at Broadway and Mercer (NYU) in Manhattan.
• A former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani is now an "ambassador" for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. But it's not that shocking, since Fran Reiter had lead the Liberal Party before joining the Giuliani administration...or is it?
• Who decides how subway posters are hung, because this is another example of great subway-poster-juxtaposition?
• A piece of the Willamette Meteorite, which is at the American Museum of Natural History, is being auctioned off. And, no, the museum is not selling it - the private meteorite collection who they traded the 28-pound piece (getting a piece of Mars in return) is behind the sale.
• One man has been arrested in the Labor Day weekend bias attack of Top Chef Season 2 contestant Josie Smith-Malave. The attack was outside a Sea Cliff, Long Island bar; Smith-Malave said that about 12 people punched and kicked her and two of her friends and that the bar's employees, who went outside to watch the attack, didn't do anything.
• The NYPD's new headquarters for the towing division are in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
• Staten Island DA Daniel Donovan is warning residents about the fake IRS "Customer Satisfaction Survey" scam because taxpayers aren't really customers anyway.
• Speaking of taxes, John Gotti Jr. may head to prison because he hasn't paid $220,00 in back taxes.
• The Eldridge Street Synagogue's rose window returns in time for Rosh Hashanah.

Part of a larger block party on Eldridge Street tomorrow is the annual Egg Rolls and Egg Creams Festival. For just $2, (a dollar increase from last year), you get a kosher egg roll and a classic egg cream, mixed on site by a professional and made with Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup, the best choice for an authentic experience. The fried kosher egg roll will be missing the standard tiny bits of red pork, of course, but you’ll still be able to enjoy all the duck sauce you can squeeze out of the little plastic packet. Last year’s attendees were taken aback somewhat by lackluster egg rolls and literally tepid egg creams (see comments here); presumably some of the kinks have been worked out for tomorrow, and it’s such a great idea- two classic foods hailing from two different cultures packaged as a combo plate. At the low price, it’s street food fusion. Other festivities on Eldridge Street tomorrow include live klezmer musicians, storytellers, stunt dancers, and face painting. more ›

There are few funnier things than stories about firefighters looking for a water leak and finding a million dollar pot operation in the meantime. Yesterday morning, the Daily New reports someone called 911 to say there was "water gushing out of a three-story attached house on Palmer Avenue" in the Bronx. So when the FDNY investigated, they found water running AND 270 pot plants! more ›

- Now that winter is here, The Paupered Chef explores whether one can reproduce as great steak in a home broiler as can be achieved on an outdoor grill. more ›

Chinatown has moved on up to East 14th Street. Well, at least a little piece of it has, at Vanessa’s Dumplings. The proprietor, Vanessa Weng, opened this outpost a few months ago between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, after starting a smaller dumpling shop years before on Eldridge Street. At first, the new Vanessa’s looks like yet another storefront serving Americanized Chinese glop, but there is some fairly authentic Beijing-style street food here. more ›

Bring your knives to Broadway Panhandler to get sharpened and benefit City Harvest at the same time. We did this last year and can't tell you what a difference a sharp knife can make, especially when it's combined with doing something good for the world. Between 11:00 a.m.- 5:00 p.m., bring in up to three knives and get 'em professionally sharpened for a mere $10. You can sharpen your knife skills as well from 2-4 PM, when Norman Weinstein will demonstrate how to properly use a classic Chef's knife and the Santoku to chop, slice, dice, mince and julienne. 477 Broome Street at Wooster. more ›

Have you ever found yourself walking in the Lower East Side at night thinking 'Geez, I hope this neighborhood looks exactly like this forever?" Well, it seems that you aren't the only one. more ›

We were walking by the Eldridge Street Synagogue this morning, and we noticed they were putting four new towers on the roof. Back in 2005, Tien visited the synagogue and got some interior shots. He also found a little info on the temple: "The Eldridge Street Synagogue... was built in 1887 and one of the first built in the US by Eastern European Jews. It's already being restored and repaired with the bulk of funding from the city in the form of grants that total $2.9 million. Major improvements, besides roof repair, include the installation of an HVAC system." more ›

This says a lot of human nature: Firefighters discovered a hydroponic farm in a Brooklyn apartment only after someone complained about a water leak. AM New York says that the "smell of marijuana was unmistakable in the hallway" but no one ever complained about that. So, when a neighbor called 911 about the leak, firefighters found a "full-scale hydroponic marijuana operation." The police are still looking for the couple who rented the apartment and seemingly managed the farm. We're suprised the growers didn't try to install a window unit ventilation fan, but that's probably the least of your problems when you've got a leaky hydroponics system. And that leak must have been bad for someone to call 911 - or the super might just be that unresponsive. Hmm, maybe those Lower East Side tenement apartments with the bathtubs in the center of rooms are appropriate for some things... more ›

The NYPD thinking about scaling back small pot busts and shift the focus on "major busts." Newsday reports that misdemeanor pot arrests would be limited to 40% for the Narcotics Division, while they would focus on dismantling drug crews that "peddle cocaine or heroin." Hey, now! Cops are privately grousing about Narcotics head Assistant Chief Anthony Izzo's plan will give pot smokers the liberty to smoke up everywhere. A police official defended Izzo, saying, "He wants results. He wants an impact. He's not telling them no marijuana collars. But he's also saying, 'If you jump out of the car' and bust someone for smoking pot, don't expect me to pat you on the back and call you a detective.'" Gothamist can only hope for interesting tales of big pot busts, like the Eldridge Street marijuana farm, pot being grown in Floyd Bennett Field, and the Brooklyn-Queens pot empire. more ›

Okay, the name leaves something to be desired, but you can still sample a variety of German foods and beverages and view cooking demonstrations by chefs at Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall every day from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Red cabbage and spätzle? But, of course. Gummi bears? Got 'em. The event is sponsored by the German Agricultural Marketing Board, the German National Tourist Office, the German Information Center and the Goethe-Institut New York. For more information, visit www.germanfoods.org. more ›

." Those mobsters are relentless: Pot farm with stolen electricity. The Queens location, where the pot farm was in the basement, had a strong exhaust fan to remove the "pungent odor." The ringleader, Peter Zuccaro, is currently serving time in a Florida prison. more ›

Those disgusting couches you see on sidewalk might be secret special drug repositories. A man used his truck and a U-Haul to move 170 pounds of coke hidden in a couch, driving from El Paso, TX to New York. Eddie Guitterez left the couch on a Bronx street, as well as abandoned the truck and U-Haul, in 2002. Apparenly neighborhood crackheads had been sitting on the couch but didn't realize they were sitting on the stash until sanitation workers discovered it. more ›

Another interesting fact about the Eldridge Street pot farm: Downstairs was a children's day care center and next store was a middle school. According to the Daily News, the day care center started to pay "closer attention" to the entrepreneurial neighbors after a leak (possibly from the $1 million farm's special irrigation system). Brilliant. Police investigators told the Times that the farm looked like "an Amazon forest." more ›

Police officers had been called to investigate reports of drug use at an apartment at 39 Eldridge Street. Police followed a strong marijuana smell to an apartment that had sliding bookcases which concealed a marijuana farm. There was an estimated $1 million of marijuana growing in the space with "specially built irrigation and ventilation system" (a ventilation system that didn't work that well, Gothamist thinks). The Post reports that when the police got a search warrant (based on seeing a few pot plants in the apartment) "they quickly found the remote-control devices. They pushed the buttons on the remote controls - and the bookcases opened to reveal the farm, consisting of 400 to 500 pot trees, all 4 to 5 feet tall." Sliding bookcases! This is what has been missing from Gothamist's life. Not that we have anything to hide.
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