At a price of thirty dollars for half an hour, the Venetian Gondola Tour sounds like it has an easy victory over the horse carriage rides as the best valued date Central Park has to offer: You can be serenaded with opera, you're not trailed by the scent of manure and you don't have to worry about a throng of commenters on this blog questioning your integrity. But with that price comes a risk—your seemingly peaceful trip around the lake and interactions inside the boat might be judged by the seemingly sweet postgrad manning your boat...on his blog. And worse than that, now that blog's been taken to the next level—the Sunday Times! more ›

It's been nine long years since Wallace Shawn's strange and haunting masterpiece, The Designated Mourner, was staged in a crumbling old gentleman's club on Wall Street—the perfect location for a play that so vividly illustrates how pampered complacency enables brutal tyranny. Now Shawn is finally back with another play—well, sort of. His Grasses of a Thousand Colours premiered at the Royal Court in London earlier this year, but a production in New York, his home town, is far from assured. more ›

, she'll take you on an amusing tour of her New York, one you've most likely seen glimpses of in the subway, the vestibule to your apartment building and while staring in the face of a locksmith who's let you back into two separate apartments on moving day. more ›