Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a burn victim on East 3rd St. and Beverly Rd. in Brooklyn, a shooting on Francis Lewis Blvd. in Queens, and a burn victim on 103rd St. and Park Ave. in Manhattan. Reps for the New York Philharmonic are investigating a planned appearance of the symphony in North Korea. Those excited by news of a George Clooney sighting in Brooklyn Heights yesterday can just go ahead and get giddy......

We've written a few pieces about the Khalil Gibran International Academy's attempt to find a physical home. The dual-language Arabic public school that has declared itself non-religious is, nonetheless, having trouble finding and sharing space with educational neighbors, who fear that they'll be hosting a terrorist academy. The fact that Khalil Gibran was an American-educated Christian poet seems to have drifted off into the ether of historical irrlevancy. The Department of Education initially wanted to......

Those music know-it-alls over at The L Magazine have declared the Top 8 NYC Bands to watch for this year. Who's in the class of '07? Here's our Top 4 of their Top 8 (we sort of wish they'd put a rock show on with all of them): • White Rabbits This band played our Movable Hype show in February (video) and nearly rocked the house down, and speaking of houses - all six of......

The conflicting interests of Columbia University and the West Harlem community continue to spawn new polemics from both sides, as the university inches ahead with its proposed 17-acre, $7 billion expansion. As the land-use contest heats up, so has the quest to find the perfect metaphor. The high-stakes name game begins with the conflicting designations of the territory in question. While Columbia has used the term "Manhattanville" to describe the area, which lies between 125th......

Haverford graduate, Parks Department project manager, and Greenpoint resident David Langlieb is under fire for writing an essay about his neighborhood in his alumni magazine. According to the Daily News, the essay, ripe with complaints about the old-school Polish residents and self-deprecation about not being an Ivy League graduate, has incensed the Polish American Congress and Councilman David Yassky, who said, "my eyes pretty much popped out of my head when I read this."......

And you thought they spent all of their time ranking the colleges you just had to go to and then spent the next 4 years doing everything but studying and now remember nothing. But the folks at U.S. News and World Report also like to make cute little lists of other things - and this time its hospitals! This week the magazine named 7 New York City hospitals in several Top 10 lists in its......

Forget arguing over whether uptown or downtown Manhattan is better - the new fighting is about what's better, Williamsburg or Park Slope. There's a hilarious Observer article about the psychological divide between residents of hipper, edgier enclaves like Williamsburg and Greenpoint and those of Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, and Boerum Hill. Yes, hipsters may lives in South (Gentrified) Brooklyn and yuppies may have condos in North (Gentrified) Brooklyn, but that doesn't matter - it's all......

Sofia Quintero, Author, Divas Don't Yield, Activist, Co-Founder, Chica Luna...

Here's an amusing video of an Ivy League kid copying some subway breakdancers-- his entrance comes about a minute into the video, and then the professionals dance with him for a little bit. Hilarious!......

We hope you like change, because there's sure a lot of it when it comes to who's writing the music picks. Now, on to the picks...while we'll be down in Austin for SXSW this week, we aren't taking every band with us. There will be plenty to rock out to in the city, and as an added bonus, it's St. Patrick's Day this weekend...so your rock will be mixed with green beer. Tonight the Presets......

The fifth "amazing bestest yet ever most ridiculous [insert other stupid and/or hyperbolic descriptor here]" season of the Apprentice premiered last night, and boy, do the contestants get dumber and dumber! Maybe not totally dumber, because Lord knows what Gothamist would be doing if we had to work with other people handpicked by Donald Trump and Mark Burnett, but you'd think that people who apply to be on the show would have seen previous episodes......

Yesterday, Columbia University introduced Norries Wilson as head coach for their football program after the firing of Bob Shoop last month. Wilson goes to Columbia after seven years with the University of Connecticut and four as the offensive coordinator for the Huskies. In 2003, the Huskies offense ranked 8th in the nation in yardage. In 2004, UConn's first year in the Big East, Wilson's offense led the league in total offense and scoring. Wilson's offensive......

Apologies to Salt-N-Pepa, but it's clear that Columbia University was not happy with the Lions' head football coach, Bob Shoop. Shoop was fired Sunday morning after a dreadful 2-8 season (Hey, they have the same record as the Jets!). Columbia University's athletic director M. Dianne Murphy said that it was "necessary and appropriate to make a change in leadership at this time." Shoop's team was also last in total points scored and allowed in the......

Miriam Datskovsky, Sex Columnist, The Columbia Spectator...

When we think sports here at Gothamist, we don't exactly think Columbia University or any other colleges in NYC for that matter, but things may be changing in Morningside Heights. Columbia's new Athletic Director (who knew they even had one), M. Dianne Murphy, announced that she's going to make some changes. The "facilities are woefully inadequate" and the "tradition of losing in most sport programs at Columbia frustrates and demoralizes alumni, parents, students, faculty and......

There’s this woman in my book club. She seemed nice enough at first, but lately she’s gotten really annoying. She flaunts her ivy league MFA and turns every discussion into a lecture on the finer points of Faulkner and Hemmingway. This group started off as just a social meeting of who wanted to talk casually about books, not an English class. What used to be a fun Thursday night gathering has now turned into something......

The Lyric Benson murder
Gothamist was disturbed by news this morning about the murder of Lyric Benson by her ex-boyfriend, Robert Ambrosino who then killed himself....

The upcoming release of Better Luck Tomorrow has critics and cultural scholars buzzing. A drama wealthy, Ivy League-poised Asian American teenagers who descend into crime, the film is sparking debate about how Asian Americans are supposed to be perceived. Some feel it's great, finally a way to get people seeing Asians as something else besides the model minority, while others are offended that Asians are being shown in an unflattering matter. At 2002's Sundance Film......