BENEFIT: Tonight go out in the name of pot, at the New York Benefit to Celebrate Recent Medical Marijuana Successes. The evening includes music and comedy with the hopes of pushing the cannabis campaign to victory! The Marijuana Policy Project will host the spring soiree, which benefits its "efforts to protect seriously ill New Yorkers from arrest and jail if they use medical marijuana with their doctor's recommendation." Some of the bold face names on......

FUNDRAISER: Design on a Dime opens tonight; the Housing Works event will be kicked off with a special event this year before opening to the public for free tomorrow. This is the fourth annual fundraising event, and tonight ticket holders "will view the room vignettes, enjoy exclusive preview shopping, cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, a silent auction and live entertainment." 6 to 8 p.m. // The Metropolitan Pavilion [125 W 18th St] // Ticket Prices Vary MUSIC:......

ART: Duke Riley brings his latest exhibit, After the Battle of Brooklyn: East River Incognita II, to Magnan Projects. Starting tonight and showing through December 22nd, the works imagine New York during the Revolutionary War and "interweave historical and contemporary events with elements of fiction and myth to create allegorical histories. His re-imagined narratives comment on a range of issues from the cultural impact of overdevelopment and gentrification of waterfront communities to contradictions within political......

THEATER: Temporary Distortion’s Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road) juxtaposes lushly photographed cinema with hypnotic live performance. Positioned within a small but elaborately designed boxlike installation, the actors draw the audience into their blood-stained world with a stillness that approaches meditation. When fused with the rich film projection above their heads – which furthers the abstract plot of the road movie/love story – the show draws you into an intimate embrace, as if the characters......

REMINDER: Don't forget about the Atlantic Antic Festival, which we wrote all about yesterday. EVENT: The d.u.m.b.o arts center (dac) presents the 11th Annual Art Under the Bridge Festival. The three-day fête takes up 30 blocks bringing together over 1500 visual artists, 250 open studios and offices, and an expected 20,000 attendees. Given much of the music biz in this city has offices in that area, they'll be taking part as well. The Deli Magazine......

THEATER: Continuing through the 29th, the East to Edinburgh Festival is showcasing some of the most adventurous American theater productions before they blast off for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Tonight’s your chance to witness one of the more colorful and timely selections: LA FEMME EST MORTE or Why I Should Not F%!# My Son. It’s a contemporary Phaedra adaptation that satirizes America’s celebrity obsession in the midst of war, featuring live music, “frenetic dance, fierce......

Starting at 7 PM tonight, the Housing Works Bookstore and Café will host the release party for the fourth issue of the New York-based Alimentum, a literary magazine focused exclusively on food and eating. Since issue #4 contains a special feature about bananas, free banana splits will be served after tonight’s readings from five writers: Diana Abu-Jabar, Gary Allen, Robin Hirsch, Joanne Jacobson, and Scott Seward Smith. Like much of what appears in the scholarly......

SCIENCE: Since we spent the weekend thinking about the Earth, spend tonight learning about Mars with NASA Solar System Ambassador Dr. Ken Kremer. He'll take you on a tour of the planet through 3-D orbital views. 6pm // The Explorers Club at 46 E 70th St // $20 THEATER: Project Shaw is dedicated to presenting concert readings of everything – every sketch, full-length and one-act play – written by George Bernard Shaw. This month’s reading......

EVENT: Housing works is opening their new store in Brooklyn today. With great events and thrifty finds and a way to support the HIV-positive homeless community, it's nice to see the store is expanding. 11am to 7pm // Housing Works Thrift Store [122 Montague St, Brooklyn Heights] ART: Photographer Haik Kocharian’s solo show at Robin Rice Gallery is “Isild Le Besco: the Early Years”. Fans of French cinema know Le Besco for her mercurial screen......

READING: Here's something awesome to spice up your week - from Housing Works Used Book Cafe's website: "Jest Fest 06, a celebration of the 10th Anniversary of David Foster Wallace's INFINITE JEST. Join John Krasinski (The Office), Todd Hanson (The Onion), Lev Grossman (Time Magazine), and Laura Miller (Salon) in reading from and talking about the book. Audience participation strongly encouraged!" Nerdy goodness abounds! - Krissa Corbett Cavouras 7pm // Housing Works Used Book Cafe......

READING: The reclusive "Lemony Snicket" (known to grown-ups and non-believers as Daniel Handler) will be showing up - hopefully in a cloak and mustache disguise! - at Barnes and Noble tonight to celebrate the release of The End, the aptly-titled final chapter to his best-selling Series of Unfortunate Events. Expect the place to be rammed with excited screaming children, and maybe a suspiciously tattooed foe or two. - Krissa Corbett Cavouras Friday // 4pm //......

THEATER: The talented Michael Gladis, who theatergoers may recall from the hit 2000 revival of Brecht’s Baal, is currently appearing in ‘nami at The Kirk Theater. This darkly humorous drama is about a suburban woman’s belief that she has uncovered a plot to sell a child of Tsunami-ravaged Indonesia into sex slavery by her neighbors. Sounds heavy, but Martin Denton at nytheatre.com hails ‘nami as “indie theatre at its very best” and the “most exciting......

THEATER: The MoMA Dada exhibition ends Monday, and if you haven't gone yet here's even greater incentive to beat the deadline. Kate Valk, Scott Shepherd and Ari Fliakos of the Wooster Group are performing just three times at the museum in Who's Your DADA?!. This trio last mesmerized audiences in Emperor Jones and we're very curious to see what they do with original Dada materials. (The MoMA website tantalizingly mentions the appearance of "special guests".......

THEATER: Previews start tonightfor the first U.S. production of Australian Gordon Graham's play The Boys, ferried here across the bigger pond by Outhouse Theatre Co. The title characters aren't boys in age, but they certainly are in their attitudes toward women: at a party celebrating one man's release from jail, he and two buddies grow increasingly angry at their girlfriends, and leave in a misogynistic huff. The next day a woman is found raped and......

EVENT: Even if the Freegans have a photo of a pale vegan going through the dumpster for food on the front page of their website, this is actually a really amazing group of people that we could all learn a lot from. Tonight, for example, they will teach you how to build bikes using abandoned parts found around the city. Tools and know-how supplied. 7pm // Bicycle Rescue & Repair [327 W. 36th St between......

THEATER: Shakespeare in the Park may be having its formal opening today, but at the Paradise Factory Shakespeare is Dead http://www.eastcheaprep.com/home, or so goes the title of Orran Farmer's new play starring Luke Rosen and Chelsea Lagos, which is about "what happens to love when the poetry is gone." An artistic couple -- writer and actress -- must somehow move past the death of their child so that they can continue their own lives and......

We love the Housing Works auctions, and they're having another one right now. You can go check them out in person or online. This year, in addition to the window displays that are on view with auction items, there is now also bidding open on Housing Works first ever Art Auction. The auction features hand picked selections of art including paintings, posters, prints, and mixed media. Check the items out online now. If you're......

With KEXP in town there's a lot more music than usual. Check out their in studio shows online while you're at work this week. Off the airwaves there's a lot to see, hear and enjoy as well. Tonight and tomorrow night, Angels and Airwaves and I Am The Avalanche play Bowery Ballroom. If you walk by the venue to see a cluster of pierced tweens waiting to get in, it may help to know that......

We've got a packed week of awesome events for you, so start tonight (5/10) at McNally Robinson NYC to catch Welsh author Niall Griffiths in a rare U.S. appearance, reading from his latest, Wreckage, starting at 7PM. Tomorrow night (5/11), head over to the 92nd Street Y to catch former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright discuss religion and world politics with James Hoge - it's the subject of her latest book, The Mighty and the......

It's hard to believe that tomorrow marks twenty years since the Chernobyl disaster, but the folks down at Housing Works Used Books Cafe (126 Crosby St.) have joined forces with the National Book Critics Circle to commemorate the anniversary. Head over there at 6PM to hear a whole host of talented writers reading aloud from Voices From Chernobyl - Gary Shteyngart, Philip Gourevitch, and Tom Bissell to name a few. On Thursday night (4/27), the......

SPORTS: Does it seem like everyone you know is suddenly wrapped up in their fantasy leagues? If you're fully engullfed in your own, or if you're feeling left out because you just don't "get it" - head over to Housing Works for a discussion on fantasy baseball. Experts Ron Shandler (Baseball Forecaster), Sam Walker (Fantasyland), and Nate Silver (Baseball Prospectus) will let you know what it's all about. Friday // 7pm // Housing Works Bookstore......

In case anyone forgot it was an election year and politics are on the brain, Housing Works' Used Book Cafe is hosting a reading of Proud to be Liberal!, an anthology that traces and defines the history and ideology behind liberalism. The reading features contributors from all walks of life, reading from the work, and starts tomorrow night (3/15) at 7PM. It's free. On Thursday night (3/16), the art and literature world will find themselves......

This week's literary events kick off tonight (1/24) at Housing Works Used Books Cafe (126 Crosby St.), with a reading from Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonorated, edited by Dave Eggers and Lola Vollen. The reading will be followed by a Q&A and a signing, starts at 7PM, and is free. Then tomorrow night (1/25) on the Lower East Side, don't miss the First Fiction Reading Series at Bluestockings (172 Allen between Stanton and......

Since it's obviously National Hangover Week and no one does hangovers better than New York artists, it's a rather slow week (again!) in readings and literary events. Next week looks like it's picking up a fair bit, though, and we're excited about several events, so tune in next Tuesday. For you science fiction fans, tonight the New York Review of Science Fiction hosts its first reading of the year, at the South Street Seaport Museum's......

There's nothing like a library to awaken our love of reading. Tomorrow night (11/30), our beautiful Main Branch of the New York Public Library (Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street) is hosting a conversation between novelist Alice Walker and Times critic Margo Jefferson. The panel costs $15 and starts at 7:30. And now that Thanksgiving is over, well, it's Christmas. And Gothamist would be remiss if we didn't point you in the direction of all things......

On Sundays, Gothamist publishes opinions pieces by New Yorkers. The views expressed below belong only to the author-- who in this case is actually, um, me. I've discovered the secret to true New York City happiness: quit your job and throw all of your shit out. A couple of months ago, I had an epiphany. I had recently graduated from NYU's business school, and strapped down with 120k of MBA debt, I was seriously considering......

ART: For The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Gary Baseman taps into the id, the psyche of primitive impulses. Influenced by “The Garden of Earthly Delights”, a renaissance masterpiece by Hieronymous Bosch, Baseman creates what he calls "pervasive art". He uses both the channels of mass media TV, Film, Print, and fine art. [Right: Anita 11" x 8.5" Ephemera, mixed media] September 10th through October 8th // Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm // Jonathan LeVine......

Now, you know us, we'll drink to anything- Tuesday, pandas, a subway ride without a man exposing himself to us- but recent events have really made us wonder if we shouldn't be doing more with those dollars. This weekend, Marion's Continental, an institution in it's own right, is helping us help others. Ten percent of the total receipts of the long weekend that started last night will be donated to the Red Cross in an......

As we all know, CMJ is about to take over...however, non-CMJ events will also be taking place that week, unphased by the marathon. One that caught our eye is this Housing Works event starring Bright Eyes. Tickets are on sale now for $40. From the website: Join Bright Eyes and an all-star line up for this spectacular benefit event, “Walking Songs” to kick off the Campaign To End AIDS march to Washington, DC. Bright Eyes,......

If you find yourself in Soho this weekend, peel yourself away from the windows full of expensively shiny trinkets and browse instead at the Housing Works Bookstore, which is offering some especially good deals at two great events. Saturday they hold an Open Air Book Fair on Crosby between Houston and Prince. There will be live music, free coffee, and incredible discounts on books and records. Sunday brings the fifth annual Literary Magazine Fair, where......