On Sunday afternoon, the fourth day of the Lunar Year, the streets and restaurants of Flushing's Chinatown were packed with families celebrating the Year of the Rat. In case you're wondering, that headline – like many of the Chinese people in Flushing – is Mandarin. It translates roughly to "Congratulations and best wishes for a prosperous New Year." Even though it was already 1:30 p.m., the urge for dim sum was all-powerful, so we're......

Photo of one of the 72 game balls for the Super Bowl by AP/Charlie Riedel So, the Giants making the Super Bowl has you preparing to watch a football game and you don’t know much about the sport. Let us help you with some pointers about the game. The weird thing about football is very little of it is done with your foot. Teams take the ball and either run it or throw it......

Photos via loveitmadly's flickr. On Sunday Gowanus Lounge received frantic emails from tenants in a blocklong loft building at 475 Kent Avenue in South Williamsburg who were being suddenly tossed out into the frigid night by the FDNY; we went to the building on Monday morning and talked to some of the shell-shocked residents as they moved out, one of whom told us, “Sheila [Properties] owns the whole lot and I don’t want to......

On Sunday, the worldwide running community lost an institution: Vic Navarra, a FDNY lieutenant who organized the NYC Marathon's start for 26 years, died at his home in Staten Island. He was 55 and had been battling sinus cancer. Navarra, a lifelong runner, fell into the job of organizing the NYC Marathon's start when he couldn't run (a rib injury from responding to a fire) in 1980, when he wanted to help out and he......

Two bills are facing off in the City Council these days, pitting the rights of landlords against the rights of tenants. Both seek to end legal harassment of one group against the other. In one corner, we have the bill introduced by Council members Daniel Garodnick and Melissa Mark-Viverito. It seeks to curb harassment of tenants by landlords who withhold services (e.g. heat, disrepair) by allowing them to file restraining orders against their landlords. The......

Yesterday nearly 100 zombies dragged their bones to Kent Street in Williamsburg for an afternoon session of yoga. Zombie yoga. Last week the invite went out stating: "This weekend I am attempting career suicide and I'd like YOU to bring the gauze. That's right! On Sunday, October 14th I plan to assemble the largest group of zombies doing yoga EVER. Bring a yoga mat. Dress like a zombie." Those intrigued (and maybe some extras from......

A confession. In general, we’re not big Food Network Fans. We do make an exception for Iron Chef (it always sucks us in), and we love it’s latest incarnation. Last week on the premiere of The Next Iron Chef (9pm on the Food Network, Chef Traci Des Jardins got the ax, brought down by her salmon roe dessert (ick). Read the Amateur Gourmet's unique and often hilarious take on things on his blog on the......

A 29-year-old Chinatown resident was charged with murdering his new girlfriend in the apartment he shares with his grandmother. Michael Chin Lenahan allegedly called his brother in NJ to say "I screwed up." His mother later went to the apartment and found a woman's body on her son's bed, under clothes. Police say Lenahan and Lorna Santiago had a date on Saturday night. They started at a restaurant on Third Avenue and then went to......

The PR team over at Mercadito sent us a very disturbing email earlier today: On Sunday, August 26, at 7:20 am Antonio Barranco Hernandez was killed, and Luis Romero and Augusto Bravo were seriously injured after a drunk driver slammed into the back of the van while the men delivered produce to Mercadito Grove restaurant, located at 100 Seventh Avenue South in New York City. Mercadito has set up a fund to accept donations on......

On Sunday, a Brooklyn woman who took in homeless men was found dead in her apartment. The Post reported that neighbors, who had not seen Young since Thursday, noticed a foul smell and eventually Geraldine Young's son found her "bloated and naked" body in a locked room. The ME's office's autopsy was inconclusive, and the police have yet to classify the death as a murder. Young lived in a brownstone at 1274 Bergen Street and......

EVENT: If you haven't taken a trip back to the Summer of Love yet, head over to the Whitney tonight for the exhibit and enjoy their Whitney Live event. DJ Scientific and Dana Leong will be providing the tunes. Friday // 6pm // The Whitney [945 Madison Ave] // Free with museum admission MUSIC: Tonight at the Seaport Music Festival Menomena and Beat the Devil will rock the sun down. Menomena "makes experimental rock that......

Of all the days and in all the neighborhoods for this to happen: On Sunday, the Daily News reports that Khadijah Farmer, a "masculine lesbian," was kicked out of the women's bathroom at the Caliente Cab Co. on Seventh Avenue in the West Village. And this happened to be a few hours after the Gay Pride Parade! Farmer says that when she went into the ladies' room, another woman gave her a look and said,......

Just when you thought the story about Foxy Brown being robbed by her pimp ex-boyfriend's friends couldn't get more crazy, now it does. The Brooklyn native claims she was never robbed and that she wasn't even in Brooklyn at the time of the alleged attack. She said, "A lot of the time, people mistake me for someone else, or people always call in these false tips." However, the police say the rapper, whose real name......

On Sunday we posted about the Bard Family being all but dismissed from their post at the Hotel Chelsea. As the interrogation spotlight continues to shine in the faces of the faceless "Board" that made the decision, a press release was sent out to explain what's going on behind the famous doors. The Bard Family, who have run the hotel from Mark Twain to Nancy Spungen to now, have been replaced by a new regime......

It's a sad sign of the world we live in that 11-year-old Xochil Garcia has thought about what she would do if she were being robbed or kidnapped, and it's sadder still that she actually had to put a plan into action. But thankfully Garcia managed to escape from a man who tried to kidnap her and also aided in his capture. On Sunday, Garcia was coming back home from picking up a Mother Day's......

On Sunday, there were a few reports of a motorcyclist who was critically injured during a hit-and-run in Brooklyn. Her name was not initially released, but now Monica Henk's family is speaking out because they have decided to take her off life-support. Henk's husband Dan, and he told the Daily News, "Her backpack was covered in blood. She was hit so incredibly hard that it shattered her helmet. I want to catch this guy. This......

The sad truth of being a pedestrian in New York City is that pedestrians have be on the defensive. On Sunday night, 23-year-old Sabina Paradi was crossing 37th Street at Ninth Avenue when a truck making a left turn hit her. The driver was "cited for failure to yield right of way," which means that the driver didn't stop for pedestrians. Paradi suffered critical head injuries, and her father Bodo Paradi told the Post, "We're......

Convicted cop killer Ronell Wilson angered the judge presiding over his trial when a warden told him Wilson broke the "shatterproof" windows in a prison visiting room. Wilson, who was sentenced to death for the murders of two undercover police detectives and is at the Metropolitan Detention Center awaiting formal sentencing, threw a chair at the windows when he found out a visit from his mother and sister would be "non-contact" (his previous visits had......

We didn't make it to the Central Park Zoo for the icy food-for-animals competition, but luckily Julia Meredith Levy did. She sent us a detailed report:Ice replaced Iron in a Chef competition yesterday at Central Park Zoo. Fittingly, the contest's taste testers were Polar Bears Gus and Ida, weighing in at 1,000 and 700 pounds respectively. In the wild, their diets consist mainly of seals, eating as much as 100 pounds in one setting. On......

Did you ever take a photograph only to later realize that the picture contained unseen details? Normally nighttime clouds over the city are pale yellow as they are lit by reflections from sodium vapor street lights. Thus Gothamist was surprised to see a bright white cloud out our window. We're not sure why it was so white (our ignorant guess is that sodium vapor lamps aren't used in Central Park), but the whiteness was unusual......

-All seemed set for local favorite Phil Mickelson to win the U.S. Open. He had come close at Bethpage (2002) and Shinnecock (2004). On Sunday, he entered the final hole needing a par to win and a bogey to force a playoff. But he double-bogeyed the hole, and Australian Geoff Ogilvy won the championship. As Ogilvy told NBC's Bob Costas afterward, the Winged Foot golf course in Mamoroneck may have beaten all the golfers. Ogilvy's......

On Sunday's Gothamist publishes opinions submitted to us by readers, in this case Andrew Bast. These opinions do not necessarily represent those of Gothamist LLC or its editors. Almost two years ago, Governor George Pataki helped to lay the 20-ton, Adirondack granite cornerstone for the Freedom Tower. And it wasn't until just this past month that the financial bickering between Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority were finally sorted out so construction could begin in......

On Sunday afternoons, when we're getting slightly upset about the weekend coming to a close and not getting nearly enough done, we find solace in watching Lidia's Family Table on Channel 13. It is, by far, one of the best cooking shows, and that's because Lidia Bastianich is our secret Italian grandmother - and that's not just because she makes a mean beef short ribs braised in red wine. A good part of it is......

Tonight San Francisco rockers with the middle class rasp, Two Gallants, come to Bowery Ballroom. We interviewed them last week, and you should really check them out while they're in town. For serious. Opening up for them are Sam Champion (the actual NY weatherman still comes up first in a Google search) and Cold War Kids. Elsewhere in the city, Pela is playing with Project Jenny/Project Jan (at the Delancey). There's already ex-Art Bruter's and......

We continue our march across 14th street this week, skipping over Union Square and landing just shy of the ever expanding Meatpacking District. As far as good eats, the block of 14th street running east from the 1/2/3 stop on 7th Avenue packs good undercover bang for the buck. Either tucked behind modest storefronts, down under staircases on the ground level of a building or showing up only one day a week, it takes......

Before we get to the weekly events which are sure to dazzle and amaze, Gothamist would like to note the passing of one of the great science fiction writers, Octavia Butler. Butler died after falling down the stairs outside her home this weekend, and will be sorely missed. She's the only science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur grant, and in a field dominated by men, Butler was a woman notable not only for her strong......

If you live in the East Village or LES, you are familiar with the late-night ritual of drunk guys peeing on the street. We're always suprised at how little shame men seem to have at dropping trough in public, and how indiscriminantly they scatter their urine. On Sunday mornings in particular, everything seems drenched in pee-- trees, apartment building walls, phone booths, etc. While we thought this problem was intractable, happily Joa Herrenknecht did......

Terry Connelly, SVP and General Manager of The Weather Channel...

What's your New Year's resolution? Is it to check out more live music, perhaps, and not be such a couch potato? Dance more, drink more, veg less? You have come to the right place. Here's some of what's happening around town this week: Not much going on in the early part of the week, as several clubs are closed. Maybe Monday is the night to check out former America's Next Top Model contender Shandi Sullivan......

Move over Brooklyn Vegan, now there's something leaner. And tastier, too. Mmmm, meat. Hello, I'm Catherine's Pita (henceforth known as Gothamist), and I'm here to tell you about the shows most likely to satisfy your hunger for the rock this week. Here's what's on the menu: Monday starts things off with a bloody slew of interesting shows. Seattle will most certainly be in the house at the Knitting Factory (and Tuesday at Northsix) as Pretty......