In November, Charlie Rose sat down with rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z. The musician is originally from Brooklyn and late in the interview Rose queries about the expected success of the Nets once they move to Kings County. Jay-Z is very enthusiastic about the potential of the team and the virtues of the borough, as he prefaces every statement about Brooklyn with the words "we" and "ours." It is unintentionally comedic then when Rose immediately......

FILM: Ease in to Halloween with classic horror flick The Innocents, based on Henry James' novella The Turn Of The Screw. Evil and innocence, the strange and the everday, will mingle as you...enjoy complimentary vodka an tapas! 6pm // Mantra Lounge [986 2nd Ave] // Free, RSVP here EVENT: Neurologist Oliver Sacks explores "the complexities of human response to music and its powerful ability to move us physically and emotionally" tonight as he shares experiences......

Mayor Bloomberg unveiled a new campaign, Just Ask The Locals, "the City's first-ever five-borough marketing and advertising campaign to make visitors feel more welcome, thank them for visiting, and help them navigate New York City." The Mayor made the announcement at the new American Airlines terminal at JFK and said, "New Yorkers have always been welcoming and friendly, but not enough people around the world know it. So now we're going the extra mile......

After a week in which the stock market reeled wildly due to concerns about the potential impact a collapse in mortgage debt could have on the economy, The New York Times examines the city's housing market and it's apparent imperviousness to downturn. The paper describes how despite a slump that was more of a pause in the second half of 2006, real estate sales and development continue to surge to this day, with property......

When Omar Freilla founded Green Worker Cooperatives, an incubator for eco-friendly worker coops, he set the initial goal of $700,000. “We weren’t even sure how we were going to raise that much,” he said in a recent telephone call. Almost four years later, the organization has raised well beyond their initial goal, thanks to RSF Social Finance and numerous local churches. Environmental justice isn’t new to Freilla. Before founding GWC, Freilla spent his days as......

The relatively recent boom of opening bank branches in Manhattan is examined in amNew York. With a 36% increase in Manhattan bank branches between 2000 and 2006, it's hard for many people to walk a block or two without passing at least one (though there are more in places like Midtown or the intersection of Second Avenue and 10th Street). Banks will pay higher rents, which makes landlords less willing to continue to rent spaces......

THEATER: Theodora Skipitares is a Greek-American playwright, director and puppeteer who uses near life-size puppets and Greek tragedies to look at our current situation in Iraq. (Her rendition of the Iliad and the Odyssey was a sold-out hit at La MaMa last year.) Her new show, which features puppetry and video, is The Exiles, an adaptation of the Orestes/Electra myth. “In this particular story of betrayal and vengeance, these puppets are an eerie construction of......

Finally we have details about when the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is coming to town - and, more importantly, when the elephants are planning their annual walk through Manhattan. For all you pachyderm enthusiasts, get ready to stay up late next Tuesday night:Unload Stock Cars: 11:30 PM (Tuesday, March 27) The Walk Begins: 11:59 PM Time At Tunnel: Approx 12:20 AM (Wednesday morning) In Manhattan, the elephants will emerge from the......

Mister Cutlets is somewhat of a role model for me . . . maybe even a father figure. We are both food writers. We are both lovers of meat puns (his book is called "Meat Me In Manhattan" and my last post was about a place with the motto "Let's Meat At Sahara.") We've both appointed ourselves absurd nicknames. And we both find it appropriate, even though neither of us are super heroes as......

Poor Columbia Street. In Manhattan, streets are completely torn up, repaired, and repaved and functional in a day. But for the past 6 months this street on the edge of Carroll Gardens and Red Hook has been in a stages of distinct disrepair, each frustrating in its own particular way. There were the potholes of the summer, the big dig of the fall -when all the concrete and asphalt were removed and new concrete......

Yesterday the Department of Transportation installed the first countdown pedestrian signal at the intersection of Coney Island Avenue and Kings Highway. Here's how the city explains the timer: The pedestrian countdown signals are the same size as the existing pedestrian signal head, but feature a dual display - the traditional "Walking Man" and "Hand" display, and a pedestrian interval countdown display. The countdown feature is programmed to start at the beginning of the "flashing hand"......

Halloween is just arond the corner, and a new haunted house has been developed to fit your fears! The creators of Haunted House NYC polled people in each borough about their top 13 fears, and each haunted house in each borough was developed differently based on that poll. The New Yorker says "People from the Bronx and Queens, they said, tend to fear things that might actually happen, like being mugged (harpaxophobia), while Manhattanites are......

At the farmer’s market you’re entranced. The stalls swell with the season’s natural bounty—corn, tomatoes, peaches, peppers—all the foods that taste right only when eaten at this time of year. You buy pounds and lug the harvest home. But as the shortening days slip by, those special $2 bags of veggies risk going to rot in your fridge. It’s enough to make a gourmet’s heart sink. What do you do? Can it. That’s what......

With the mercury rising to high for the city's liking, Mayor Bloomberg held a press conference at the Office of Emergency Operations in Brooklyn to emphasize what the city is doing during the heat wave. We suspect he's trying to be extra visible and genially authoritative (check out the plaid shirt!) in order to salvage public opinion after the Queens blackout, but his words are important:“The heat wave affects New Yorkers in all five boroughs,......

Thinking of all the college grads who just busted their asses looking for reasonably priced rentals in the city, the NY Times looked at one-bedroom rentals in the $1,000 range. The perhaps-catch: None were in Manhattan, but that may be due to the fact that many Manhattan deals "often change hands by word of mouth." Quite a few of the apartments sounded nice, but Gothamist enjoyed the ritual of the Times actually attempting to find......

For a long time we didn't listen to Wolfmother just because they had "wolf" in their name. We were sick it. Wolfmother, Wolf Eyes, We Are Wolves..."how could any of them be better than Wolf Parade?" we thought. Then in a warehouse in Austin this March, sometime around 3am, we were sipping on our nth PBR and who came on stage? It was that nice gentleman with the crazy hair that we rode the hotel......

- Horrible accident in Harlem: An SUV crushed a three-year old in a stroller - Cops with crew cuts and balding heads "are being forced to hand over chest hair, leg hair and in some cases pubic hair to labs conducting NYPD drug tests"... say it with us: EW! [Daily News] - This is so going on our Fall Reading List: A book about meat in NYC, Meat Me In Manhattan [via Gridskipper] - Chad......

[Photo by Couirey Eckmayer] Morning Theft, fresh off the bus from Boston in 2003, have been desribed as Pearl Jam meets Travis, Nirvana meets the Cure, the Pixies meets Radiohead...you get the point. But these guys have their own sound. And it sounds good. They're the band who has been (not so) silently brooding in the corner of the indie rock scene. They're loud. They're catchy. They're pensive mood rock. Gothamist (and pretty much......

Mayor Bloomberg, our enigmatic mayor, finds himself in the good graces of New Yorkers for now - at least, 47% of them, versus 41% of New Yorkers who disapprove of him. Also interesting is how his support breaks out by borough: In Manhattan, 60% approval, Brooklyn 47%, Staten Island 46%, Queens 44% and the Bronx 34%. The Quinnipiac poll shows that Fernando Ferrer would still lead Bloomberg in a hypothetical mayoral race, though. Mayor B,......