New York City (and Mayor Bloomberg’s 2030 strategists) now can breathe a sigh of relief: Gotham is getting its first luxury green hotel. more ›

This Sunday, the Mayor will formally unveil more PlaNYC details (though the website has been up for a while now). He'll give the speech at the American Museum of Natural History, to which New York Mag says, "while we're excited to see the plan, we confess the museum's symbolism is making us nervous: dinosaurs … carcasses … oy." more ›

April 20-21: Wine Rave NYC more ›

Borscht Belts were so last year! On an otherwise quiet President's Day, Governor Spitzer announced that he was authorizing the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe to build a casino in the Catskills. The tribe has been planning a casino in Monticello in Sullivan County for many years and the Mohawks agreed to "comply with applicable tax, labor, and health laws (so, things like cigarettes, alcohol and gasoline would be taxed). The deal would give NY State up to 25% of the casino's revenue from 3,500 slot machines, which the NY Times puts at "more than $100 million a year." The Post spins a bigger number: revenue of $4 billion over 25 years. more ›

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn continued to show how different she is from former Speaker Gifford Miller by backing part of the Mayor's garbage plan. The plan includes creating a recycling plant at pier 52 (near Gansevoort - and right in Hudson River Park, where the trucks are parked), converting the recycling plant at 59th Street and Hudson into a commercial waster station, and then putting a residential waste station at East 91st and the East River. more ›

Normally we run op-ed pieces on Sunday, but this one is about Earth Day, which is today! It was written by Molly Dobkin, the twin-sister of the publisher. Even though they are twins and share a telepathic bond, the opinions expressed in it belong only to her. more ›

Tupper Thomas, President of the Prospect Park Alliance more ›

On Wednesday, the polar bear Gus and Ida at the Central Park Zoo held a press conference, with some help from the Natural Resources Defense Council. The point was to announce that the Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace would take legal action against the government for further endangering the already-endangered polar bears: Global warming is leading to polar bears' natural habitats to melt out. And the press conference's location was to drive home the fact that zoos may be the only place where you can see polar bears if things keep going as they have. We love the idea that polar bears would hold a press conference, concerned about their wild relatives, and in fact, we hope the NRDC can get the penguins to give a press conference next. more ›

Cue the Jaws music: The snakehead is here! A snakehead fish was found in Queens. Oh, yes, at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park's Meadow Lake, biologists found a couple of the "voracious" snakeheads there. Gothamist remembers when we would read these wild Washington Post articles in 2002 that would get more and more hysterical as more and more snakeheads seems to be spotted. Snakeheads apparently eat everything in its environment, thusly taking over a lake and depleting any other kinds of life there, and officials think that the snakeheads were originally imported from China (of course, as many nutty things seem to originate there) to be future cheap, dish dinners (of course). Biologists will be looking to make sure all the snakeheads are gone, and Gothamist prays they do - rumor has it they can walk out of water, perhaps trying to usurp alligators at the new urban legend. more ›