Photograph by Jake Dobkin Later today, the city will discuss whether the I.M. Pei-designed Silver Towers should be landmarked. The Observer reported that NYU announced its support today, a reversal from an earlier position over three years ago. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation pushed for landmarking the complex, located between Bleecker and Houston Streets and LaGuardia Place and Mercer Street, a few years ago, calling it "an innovative modern design by I.M.......

Yesterday was the annual Idiotarod, which is both loved and hated by locals. We hear that this year the head honchos were tossing non-competitors out of the checkpoints, this coupled with the amount of jocks tackling people leads us to believe that this (sadly) may have been the last good run. There have also been a ton of complaints about the competitors and organizers littering the streets, leaving their paths trashed with no clean-up effort.......

Jen has already posted her Top Stories for 2007-- but here's the list according to you, the readers: By Comments* 1. Pet Food Recall After Cat and Dog Deaths, by Jen Chung (614) 2. Rev. John Carmichael, Church of Scientology, by Jen Carlson (312) 3. Wild Wednesday Weather, by Jen Chung (255) 4. Maple Syrup Was Better: Smell of Gas Covers NYC by Jen Chung (191) 5. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Mooninites Don't Scare......

Cosmopolitan candy men and women packed the hotly-anticipated opening of Papabubble on Broome Street Saturday night. The high-end confectioner has been a big hit in Barcelona, Tokyo and Amsterdam, so it was only a matter of time before the New York market opened wide for some gourmet candy “sculpture”. Their new location continues the Papabubble tradition of preparing the sweets in-store, which has proven to be an entertaining and well-nigh irresistible marketing strategy. You......

The NY Sun is reporting that the Parks Department received a lackluster response from community members and government representatives last night after agency officials released yet another design for a renovated Washington Square Park. The presentation was an effort by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to move forward the public approval process. In 2005, a lawsuit was filed, alleging that the initial design to trim the fountain plaza area, among other plans, were not......

The NY Times explores what happens to celebrity architects’ drawings, models and telephone logs culled from decades in the design trenches. Hint: They’re for sale. Frank Gehry is the prime starchitect examined in the article. Gehry’s archive includes 30,000 square feet of models, a slide library, a digital archive and 5,000-plus drawings, what someone called a "beast." The Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal offered Gehry $1.5 million for papers and drawings related to......

EVENT: The New York Book Club at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum presents…"Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered New York City". The panelists include "Hal Buell, longtime AP photo editor who put images of the Vietnam War in newspapers across America; Richard Drew, AP photographer who has covered New York events including 9/11; Edie Lederer, longtime UN correspondent and first woman to be the foreign chief of bureau; and Valerie Komor, corporate......

A few weeks ago, the Brooklyn Paper suggested that the Red Hook grain terminal might become a storage facility for building materials. The NY Times follows up with a look at the progress so far and the building's decrepit appeal. John Quadrozzi, who wants approval to store materials for concrete and cement there, said the silos could hold 70,000 tons of cement and is essentially built like a bomb shelter because they used to......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an overturned auto on Father Capodonno Blvd. and Doty Ave. on Staten Island, a shooting on Manhattan's Sherman Ave. and a barricaded perp on Manhattan's East 23rd St. The upstate shootout that ended with two state Troopers dead and a house burned with the suspect inside? One Trooper shot the other, who was then killed from gunshot wounds to the face and chest. The legal system is not synonymous......

Despite winter being upon us, the hipsters of New York took to the streets yesterday with strange, creative outfits and shopping carts in this year's Idiotarod. What's the Idiotarod, you ask? It's like the annual Iditarod from Nome to Anchorage except with teams of human idiots replacing dogs. Some of the more creative costumes we noticed: Wonderwoman, the Noid (think Domino's Pizza campaign), the McDonald's mascots, the Cosbys, Ghostbusters with the Stay Puft Marshmallow......

The Observer has an article that, upon reading it, appears to have been written two years ago. "Blog Ghetto" scratches the surface of a scene that's been around for quite a while, and uncovers things such as: bloggers sometimes hang out with each other...and drink...at The Magician (and other "Hell Square" watering holes). The profile on the scene makes it seem very 90210-esque, even calling The Magician "Blogger High's Peach Pit" and picking out......

There seem to be a lot of LVHRD events lately! Tonight they present Bi-FOLD II: Street. The event will bring together two diverse artists inspired by the same muse, the street. The night will include both presentation and performance, including Brazilian graffiti artist Speto, who will present his work and create a live mural, followed by an interactive performance piece with New York based Graffiti Research Lab. Who better to introduce these folks than......

THEATER: Beastie Boy Adrock (who turns 40 next month!) was but a wee homey when his father, Israel Horovitz, penned his hit play “Line” 32 years ago. That dark comedy is the longest-running play in off-off-Broadway history. It’s about five people stuck on line and their shameless machinations to get to the front. The theater’s website boasts that the play has been performed in 25 countries and split the sides of 100,000 theatergoers. Who will......

- Thank God, the Discovery shuttle's launch went well - Bizarre confrontation at a Brooklyn supermarket leaves a police officer slashed - People are visiting the Freedom Tower's cornerstone in Hauppauge - The two separate drowning deaths leave mothers devastated - The Jews for Jesus are hitting NYC with its biggest group of missionaries ever - The ME's office says it'll take a few days to perform the autopsy on the full-term baby found......

"Where can I get a good view of the fireworks on 4th of July? Should I bring a folding chair? Can I bring alcohol? " If you haven't made friends with someone who has East River and/or Statue of Liberty waterfront views yet, we have some answers. The Macy's Fireworks Spectacular has 3 different fireworks launching sites this year (here's the map) - on the East River between 23rd and 42nd streets, between Liberty......

Rain or no, the 2006 Coney Island Mermaid Parade was earlier this afternoon, and Gothamist's man on the street Jake Dobkin and his trusty camera braved it so you didn't have to. A good time was reportedly had by all. The resulting photos, we think, speak for themselves. [Related: you can see more pictures at the Mermaid Parade Flickr Group and MermaidParade Flickr Tag. Also check out some good shots from Eatsdirt, a perpetual......

Mothers and fathers, don't just dream about your children being doctors (well, doctors might be passe, given malpractice coverage), lawyers or hedge fund managers: Have them set their sights on being the president of a major university. amNew York has a feature on salaries of NYC college/university presidents. The presidents are mostly charged with fund-raising, hence needing a real "performer" that gets a sweet compensation package, but the money they make can be pretty......

The NYCLU is working with the FBI as the federal agency investigates whether the NYPD violated civil rights of protesters during the Republican National Convention in 2004. The FBI only confirmed they did send a letter to the NYCLU, but luckily the NYCLU has a PDF of the letter here. The FBI is looking for Dennis Kyne, whose arrest was thrown out after "videotape contradicted" the police officer's account. Interesting - and we're sure......

We hope you've got your padded spandex and your cushy bike seat, because May is bike month here in New York City. Organized by the good people at Transportation Alternatives, there are over 150 great events going on all about the city. While some of the events have already happened, there are tons of events left (the month is so jam packed that there were events in April and there are some in June) including......

Stephen Colbert can now add 'linguist' to his resume. His "truthiness" was awarded word of the year by the American Dialect Society. Defined as "the quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true," truthiness was not in fact coined by Colbert, but definitely reinvented. One example of truthiness might be Gothamist's publication of Donald Trump as a sperm freezing, propecia......

Cool stuff: The 92nd Street Y/ Makor has a Roosevelt Island Hike this Sunday. As per the 92nd Street Blog, Roosevelt Island is more than just the decaying old hospital, the Island once had the "city’s main prison, a smallpox hospital, a disease research laboratory, an insane asylum, a fort and a lighthouse." There are some new development planned for Roosevelt Island (great midtown views!) but the movie Dark Water took the depressing approach......

- Governor Pataki leaves the hospital and will try to "do some work" or whatever he calls what he's doing to our state - A look at the African Burial Ground's location - Mayor Bloomberg and State Senator Bruno meet so the press can get off their backs - but they probably still hate each other - You're warned: The film adaptation of Ethan Hawke's book, The Hottest State, is shooting in town -......

Well, our government has a fever for a convention, that is. Mayor Bloomberg, not content with just one convention under his mayoral belt, is looking to land both the 2008 Republican and Democratic conventions. Even Senator Schumer said he'd support another Republican powwow in 2008, noting its economic impact (the city only made $3 million after all the bills were paid, but there was $250 million in economic activity). Frankly, Gothamist is surprised that......

New York Magazine has not one, but five separate articles on bloggers in this week's issue. Some priceless quotes: "The upshot? Nick Denton’s revenues from Gawker were probably at least $1 million a year and might well be cracking $2 million. Not bad, considering the blog had no serious expenses other than its writers—first Spiers and now Jessica Coen and Jesse Oxfeld, all working for journalist wages—and Webhosting fees of maybe a few thousand......

- We understand the babies are some kind of fashion statement these days, but for the love of god, keep your tots out of the bars. - The Snapple/NYC deal is getting to be a bit too much for some. - Heroina, one of the puppies that had a bag of liquid heroin stuffed inside of it, is not only being trained to be drug-sniffing dog, she just gave birth to two puppies (Tina......

We reminded you last week to vote for the Plug Awards, and now is your chance to check out the actual awards ceremony. The awards are tonight at Webster Hall and will include a sampling of some of our favorite bands: Performances by: * BEANS w/ HOLY F**k (representing WARP's nomination for Label Of The Year) * CHAD VANGAALEN (nominated for 2 PLUG Awards - New Artist & Male Artist of The Year) * CELEBRATION......

On Sundays, Gothamist prints opinion pieces related to life in New York. If you want to submit one, email us! The opinions expressed below belong to the author, not to our site. With Sam Alito set to be confirmed to the Supreme Court this week, lots of Americans are thinking about abortion-- namely, the strong likelyhood that Roe v. Wade could be overturned in the next few years. That would make getting an abortion in......

There is an awesome NY Times story about how the police "covertly join in" various city protests, possibly to rile things up. Gothamist knew that those ads for NYPD recruitment were to attract a hipper, younger force, sort of like a 2005 version of 21 Jump Street! It seems that the operation has been to surveil crowds ever since the start of the Republican National Convention, back at the end of August 2004. The......

Recently, it was announced that architect James Ingo Freed died last week. Who? He was a partner at Pei, Cobb, Freed and Partners - the firm started by I.M. Pei; you can read his bio here. While many obituaries called out the fact that he designed the Holocaust Museum in D.C. (here's a link to the museum), Freed designed a lot of recognizable city buildings: The Kips Bay Plaza housing, University Plaza Towers on......

On Sundays, Gothamist publishes opinion pieces by its contributors and friends. The opinions expressed in this piece belong only to the author, who, in this case, is me. I've written about this so many times on Gothamist that I'm worried about sounding like a broken record-- but apparently the big corporations have not gotten the message. This week, Sony Playstation graffiti pieces have been popping up like cancer all over Manhattan. The pieces are......