Is Police Commissioner Ray Kelly thinking of running for Mayor in 2013? The evidence is mounting in that direction: he has the approval ratings to back him, a close relationship with the current Mayor and administration, and the occasional incandescent PR moment or two. And a major profile in this week's NY Magazine lends even more credence to the idea, as it contributes a sweeping portrait of the Dunkin' Donuts- and iPad-loving, former Marine Corps. veteran who "radiates power." more ›

This week marks the start of the 5-minute grace period on muni meters, and in the aftermath of the taxi scandal and the unrelenting nature of subway douchery , some New Yorkers might be thinking of getting their cars out of storage early this year. However, since Mayor Bloomberg took office there’s been a 45 percent increase in traffic-enforcement agents and a 64 percent spike in parking fees, so you're likely to run into one while visiting your grandparents at their retirement home. Thankfully, there are some easy ways to avoid lovely Rita's wrath. more ›

This week’s New York Magazine cover story drops over 5,500 words on the “slightly illicit-sounding” Brownstoner, a blog that for several years has chronicled the steamy vicissitudes of gentrifying Brooklyn. Or rather, the article looks at Brooklyn’s turbulence through the prism of the blog’s commenters – specifically a derisive doomsday prophet who calls himself The What. 5,500 words, one commenter. Up next, a sprawling New Yorker profile on Alex Balk’s Tumblr imitator. more ›

A judge has finally ruled on a long-simmering dispute between a restaurant and its deliverymen. Last March deliverymen at the popular Vietnamese restaurant Saigon Grill, which has locations in Greenwich Village and on the Upper West Side, demanded a raise from owners Simon and Michelle Nget. The deliverymen reasoned that since the chain was pulling in more than $2 million a month, they ought to earn more than $120 for a 75-hour week. more ›

In 1962, photographer Bert Stern shot a series of photos (2,571 in all) of Marilyn Monroe at the Hotel Bel-Air that are collectively known as “The Last Sitting.” The 36-year-old Monroe was in the darkest period of her life, having weathered two recent divorces, gallbladder surgery and sickness during production of the romantic comedy Something’s Got to Give, from which she was fired and rehired. Six weeks after the Stern photo shoot, Monroe died from a barbiturate overdose in her L.A. home. more ›

The reviews are in for the $180 million production of The Golden Compass, and they’re lackluster at best, which is a pity not just for fans of the novel from which it’s adapted but for New Line Cinema, which was banking on another Lord of the Rings cash cow. Times critic Manohla Dargis calls it flawed and cluttered, although her description of Nicole Kidman ought to sway any dudes reluctant to see a movie starring... more ›

It's been a busy month for NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. After tackling Jean Nouvel's skyscraper, Renzo Piano's Times building and the West Side Rail Yards designs, today he turns to the feverishly celebrated New Museum, previewed yesterday by Gothamist. Designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Japan-based SANAA, the highly refined seven-story, 174-foot building succeeds, says Ouroussoff, on a "spectacular range of levels: as a hypnotic urban object, as a subtle... more ›

Insert obligatory phoenix metaphor here: Brooklyn’s Freebird, the used book and corn dogs mecca that closed earlier this year, is set to re-emerge a little later this week from The Embers of Gentrification. While the NY Magazine article linked in that last sentence is about the real estate debacle of Red Hook, the shuttered Freebird, which is technically in Cobble Hill, is sometimes considered (with restaurants like Alma) to be an extension of that troubled... more ›

With September at a near close, we hereby pronounce it the month of 40 Bond. While stories on hotelier Ian Schrager's second foray into residential development started appearing in 2006, interest ratcheted up this month with a slew of closings (Ricky Martin's moving in). Then this week, NY Magazine and The New York Sun devoted even more ink to it. more ›

Reach out and touch someone - and get fired for it, possibly even if you didn't do the reaching out and touching. The nutty voicemail message left for Bernard Spitzer, father of Governor Spitzer, is reassuring everyone that it's just politics as usual in Albany. The elder Spitzer's lawyers believe that the call was made by GOP consultant Roger Stone, who was recently hired at $20,000/month by NY State Republican (he was consulting with Spitzer's rival, State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno). more ›

After Attorney General Cuomo found that Governor Spitzer's staffers were using state police records to attack rival Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, everyone agrees on one thing: It's very bad for Governor Spitzer. more ›

We know July 4th is around the corner when we hear about the police seizing caches of illegal fireworks. Yesterday, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced "one of the largest fireworks seizures" in city history: 9,000 pounds of fireworks were found in Sheepshead Bay. Newsday reports that the fireworks included "mortar shells typically used in professional displays, as well as something called the 800-Shot Grand Finale Saturn Missile Battery, which is as big as a small table." more ›

At around 11pm we got a text message from a friend at the Shepard Fairey opening in DUMBO, saying that the "Splasher got caught at the show tonight". So far the information we're hearing is that two guys attempted to set off a stink bomb at the show, but were stopped by security. It remains to be seen if the stink-bombers are the same guys who set off a stink bomb at the Faile show last week (and then called 911 reporting a gas leak, which got the show shut down), or if they were indeed the ones splashing streetart pieces all over town a few months back. more ›

He made his name in London, Paris, Madrid, and Tokyo, and now he's making his mark on New York, too, with four major projects in development. Richard Rogers, one of Britain's handful of architect-knights, has just been awarded the 2007 Pritzker Prize, architecture's top honor. more ›

Workers at Vietnamese restaurant Saigon Grill have gone on strike - and have also been locked out by the owners - for over two weeks. Now, the workers have filed a lawsuit against Saigon Grill for a wide range of labor violations. more ›

New York Magazine decides to look at the city in the year 2016 in terms of architecture and real estate development - and how that'll impact New Yorkers. It's a great look at how drastically the city could change in ten years, which is all overwhelming, exciting, and kind of scary, because for every rendering of glassy buildings, what does that mean for the neighborhoods? Are they plans for more affordable housing to meet up with the luxury condos and pleasure palaces? At any rate, it's all interesting to see how the post-September 11 and Bloomberg administration have suddenly encouraged all this planning buzz. more ›

- Awesome truck photographs from lucky dog on Flickr more ›

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Yesterday morning, a four-alarm fire broke out in Astoria, damaging a few stores on Ditmars Boulevard and 31st Street and suspending subway service temporarily. Dan Dickinson has some photos showing that among the damaged stores is the restaurant Thirty One (here's NY Magazine's mention of its opening). The Daily News says that Twin Donut employees noticed smoke coming from Thirty One. As it happens, City Councilman Peter Vallone has an office across the street; Vallone said that while the damage was upsetting, at least no one was seriously hurt. Here, here. more ›

We knew that 80s icon Cyndi Lauper lived on the Upper West Side, but Gothamist didn't realize she was trying to only pay $508 in her rent! Lauper, who sublets an apartment at the Apthorp, the apartment building that takes up Broadway to West End Avenue, 78th to 79th Streets, is suing the owners of the building because they had been paying $3,250 a month for many years, while the previous owner had paid only $508. Lauper's "landlord," Shlomo Baron, agreed to pay $2,400 a month for the apartment because it was not his primary residence. Lauper sued Baron in 1996 for overcharging her, and after much legal mishegas, a court said that using a real estate formula, Lauper should pay $989. Of course, Lauper and her husband are arguing that they should only pay $508, because it seems those music royalties aren't what they used to be, and now they are taking it all the way to courts in Albany. If Lauper does get her rent lowered to $508, or even to $989, Gothamist expects Lauper to generously tip every service person she comes into contact with, waiters, cabbies, doormen, you name it, plus give nice gifts to her personal assistants and the like, because rent of $508 sounds more like what you pay when you share an apartment with four other people in a Greenpoint loft. NY Magazine even lists rental prices at around $10,000! more ›

Gothamist spotted this sign the other day while walking down Thompson Street between West 3rd and Bleecker. Now you may remember that, a while back, Pluck U. served up its buffalo wings around the corner on West 3rd, in addition to its other two locations: 3rd Avenue between 10th & 11th and 124 Nassau Street between Beekman & Ann. Granted, we haven't eaten at Pluck U. since those days, but it's likely that we may stop by for a wing fix once it opens up. We will admit that we rarely eat wings anymore, having OD'd on them in college, and tend to prefer slightly funkier versions than the buffalo-style standby, like those highlighted in NY Magazine's Super Bowl wrapup or the ones they described at Tebaya. more ›

It's that time of the year again: NY Magazine's Best of New York issue is out. This is when already fans of certain establishments must put up with the hordes of people trying to get in on the action. For instance, restaurant Ici in Fort Greene will never be under the radar again. But it is helpful knowing that G+G Cleaners on Grand Street is a great cheap place for alterations and that Simadi Salon has good $50-100 haircuts. And who knew quilting was the next big hobby? Gothamist was happy to see that the top pick for best Chinese Banquet was Shanghai Pavilion, which we visited after a NY Times rave. However, also included this year are overrated food joints, like Peter Luger and Magnolia Bakery, but we doubt this will have much effect on these Teflon places. more ›

Yes, yes, we know. Everyone else wrote about it already. But Gothamist was at the opening night party at Plate NYC too, so we wanted to throw in our two cents, and let you know that it's open for business. Unfortunately, we only had time for a quick stop-by, but the tease we got was enough to make us want to come back for a real visit very soon. more ›

More about bicycle advocacy from Transportation Alternatives and NY Magazine's end-of-the-year piece on Critical Mass rides. more ›

We never realized how "on the cutting edge" we were (or possibly over the hill) until this week, when we were about to do a review for Bar Tonno. We went there Saturday night before we knew this was the cool week to review it, we swear! But, given the fact that we have a day job to hold down, we had to wait until now to review it. And despite the fact that, this week alone, the Village Voice, NY Magazine, and even NY Times hit it (highlighting the squid ink shot, pictured at right), we're still going to share our visit with you. more ›

NY Magazine on the Biltmore Room. more ›

If Caroline Kennedy moves to Park Slope, what does that do to the neighborhood? Do you think she'd join the Food Co-Op? Here's the Corcoran guide to Park Slope (a Corcoran broker called "Prospect Park West" Brooklyn's "Central Park West"). NY Magazine's Park Slope profile. more ›

NY Magazine gets city coroner Jonathan Hayes to write about the latest CSI spinoff, CSI: NY, set in our great city. Now, Gothamist is predisposed to the reigning cop-and-lawyer show in town, Law & Order, especially since it actually shoots its episodes in NY, but we won't mind seeing CSI:NY in reruns or on Spike TV at some point. Gothamist did like Hayes's insights about being a coroner:

There�s a forensic saying that �there is only one honest witness to every murder��the victim. And we talk about the Five Questions: Who are you? How did you die? When did you die? Where did you die? Who killed you? But we don�t ask those questions out loud. Watching Khandi Alexander [of CSI Miami] caress and murmur to the bodies creeped me out, both for its bedroom-level sensuality and its tacit New Ageism. Aesthetic issues aside, that sort of sentimentality is just not an option if you�re going to stay sane doing this work.

Also be sure to check out Gothamist Sports' Olympics coverage; for further beach volleyball examination, check out Tien's own site. more ›

Gothamist Cooks (Kind of) by the Book more ›