Geez, the weather this winter has been uneventful. There's no letup of dull weather in sight, at least in New York. We took a gander at LAist this morning only to see that Los Angeles has more snow than Gotham City. The massive west coast storm has dropped up to eighteen inches of snow at higher elevations in Los Angeles County. Today is sunny, slightly cool and windy. Tomorrow: Clouds, slightly less cool and not......

Pictured: Ballet rehearsals, New York City, ca. 1916. From the Library of Congress. If you're head over heels for the ballet, we've got some good news: The New York City Ballet announced last week that they would be hosting two open dress rehearsals of Susan Stroman's Double Feature this month. The company began the open rehearsals last year with Peter Martins's Romeo + Juliet, and they hope to continue them annually. The press release......

Last night we received a link to a treasure trove of old copyright-free photos being hosted on the Library of Congress's Flickr page. Here's a link to all of their New York images, and some of our favorites are below and after the jump. The pilot project will get 3,000 of the Library's 14 million photographs online. See what both the Library of Congress and Flickr have to say about the endeavor. Woolworth Building, between......

MUSIC: There's not a whole lot going on musically tonight, but the show at Cake Shop seems pretty...sweet. By The End of Tonight and Multitudes will be taking the stage -- the former is described as "the perfect marriage between the math-rockiness of Hella with the glistening, soaring guitars of Explosions in the Sky." 7pm // Cake Shop [152 Ludlow St] // $5 FILM: The Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance and the Municipal Art Society present their......

Showing how divided its philosophies are, Supreme Court justices ruled, 5-4, to limit the power cities have integrating schools and placing students by race. Schools in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington had been trying to maintain diversity by, as the NY Times explains, "limiting transfers on the basis of race or using race as a 'tiebreaker' for admission to particular schools." However, the majority found those programs to be unconstitutional and Chief Justice John Roberts......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: History Detectives (Monday, 8:00 p.m., WNET 13) The PBS show where a team of experts look into the history of the objects of ordinary people returns for another season. Shaq's Big Challenge (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., WABC 7) Yet another fakeality show, this time with Shaquille O'Neal as the star of what can be best described as "The Biggest Looser, for Kids" or let's exploit some fat kids......

Last month, Representative Anthony Weiner released a report showing that 85% of registered sex offenders live within 5 blocks of NYC schools (here's a PDF of the report). Included in the report was a map illustrating this point; the report says, "Cartographers at the Library of Congress have plotted the location of every school and every sex offender in New York City on a map. Every sex offender is represented by a red dot,......

Joe and Coolfer both sent in a link to the new George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress. The collection of about 40,000 images is searchable online, and includes pictures from the 1860s to the 1930s. Search on "New York" and you'll find an amazing gallery of city images-- more than 1100 pictures! The best part is that all of the images are part of the public domain, and available in uncompressed......

Gordon Parks, the photographer turned writer- filmmaker- poet- activist- musician, died in New York City yesterday at age 93. The NY Times obituary is comprehensive and chronicles his feats: The first African-American photographer for Life magazine, the first black Hollywood producer-director, one of the founders of Essence. An iconoclast, Mr. Parks fashioned a career that resisted categorization. No matter what medium he chose for his self-expression, he sought to challenge stereotypes while still communicating to......

Justina Mejias, Proud Puerto Rican...

Gothamist wishes all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving. We are thankful for quite a few things - funny pictures of Mayor Bloomberg, a really good sandwich, passing Law & Order on-the-street sets, secret music shows, people who let us pet their dogs. Most of all, we're happy we've made many so many friends, new and old, that we've made through the site (new contributors, readers) who teach us new things and encourage us to......

Columbus Day, which Gothmamist hasn't really celebrated, except for college protests about the holiday (which are pretty matter-of-fact at the alma mater), means that banks and some schools are closed. There's only Express Mail from the US Postal Service, but the branch at 8th Avenue across from Penn Station is open. And more likely than not, you still have work. But for those of you who are able to, the city has some festivities you......

Happy 4th! Some holiday notes: - The groundbreaking ceremony at Ground Zero ended with the announcer saying, "Please join us for refreshments at Battery Park," which sounded exactly like a ball game. Who knew? Newsday has more coverange. - Takeru "The Tsunami" Kobayashi broke his own record of hot-dog eating at Nathan's today, eatin 53.5 hot dogs! The second place finisher was around 15 or 16 hot dogs behind, which is insane. More coverage......

It's July 4th, Independence Day. There are lots of activities in the city, but the highlight is Macy's Fireworks over the East River. This year's fireworks display is called "Lights of Freedom." According to information from Macy's, the display will have 50,000 shells, which means 1,600 shells per minute. And the Macy's Fireworks show uses 55 times more fireworks than the average US fireworks display. WNBC's July 4th coverage is extensive, including thorough tips for......