Earlier this year Bravo announced their "Real Housewives" series would be moving from Orange County to The Big Apple. The show premieres tonight, and critics have already gone sour on it. The NY Post describes the five women chosen to represent NYC as "status-hungry, money-mad matrons" (a real life Cashmere Mafia living in a Lipstick Jungle?). Appalled that out of "8 million residents representing every known corner of the globe" the network picked five who......

The cold and windy conditions that caused problems yesterday will continue through the day today. Today's high will be around 25 but the wind chill will stay around zero degrees for most of the day. With wind chills that low it is a good idea to cover up if you will be outside for more than a few minutes. We were reminded of this when our cherubic cheeks started getting numb on Gothamist's walk......

Big gas guzzling SUV's aren't completely worthless, especially if you need to withdraw some cash in a hurry. A surveillance camera in Orange County New York shows an intrepid robber ramming the back of his SUV through the front of a convenience store in an effort to steal its ATM--the whole machine. Starting at the top left and going clockwise, you can see 1) the SUV slamming through the front of the store 2)......

What has Conan O'Brien been doing in his spare time? His writers have only been putting pen to paper for their picket signs, and even though he returned to his late night desk earlier this month -- he's been a one-man show, lacking his trusty troupe of scribes. Alone and living in a world of reruns, he's been unloading in his diary strike journal. In EW's latest issue, which hit newsstands today, they dive into......

Are you ready to meet the Real Housewives of New York City? Bravo is spinning off their Orange County-based reality show with a look into the lives of some select East Coast ladies. The show will air March 4th, and The Daily News reports that the "stars" will be Bethenny Frankel, LuAnn de Lesseps (that's Countess, to you), Ramona Singer and Jill Zarin of the Upper East Side and Alex McCord of Cobble Hill.......

An NYPD officer was arrested early Thursday morning by Middletown, NY police after a young girl came forward and accused him of repeatedly raping her while she was a student at the karate school where he taught. Trent Young is a married 39-year-old who has been with the NYPD for nine years. Middletown Police said that prior to becoming a police officer, Young was a schoolteacher. He is accused of sexually abusing a female student......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: three pedestrians struck on 65th St. and 7th Ave. in Brooklyn, a tourist bus vs. building incident on 51st St. and Broadway in Manhattan, and a train derailment on East 239th St. in the Bronx. 47 years ago, two planes bound for Laguardia and JFK collided over Miller Field on Staten Island in mid-air. As body parts, Christmas presents, and debris rained from the sky over Staten Island, 132......

Josh Schwartz left the sunny beaches of O.C. to bring his brand of teen drama to the gritty city. His new show, Gossip Girl, will premiere on the CW September 19th, and it's been filming all over town lately. The series, which was gabbed about in The Observer recently, is based on the young-adult books of the same name and puts the spotlight on "the struggle for social supremacy among teens from both sides of......

Esca's Dave Pasternack is a Midtown Lunch'r too. His faves include Pakistani Restaurant on 38th and 9th, Grand Sichuan, and Han Bat on 35th between 5th and 6th. Restaurant Girl makes her Daily News debut, dines with Gael Greene, looks glamourous. Zagat goes mobile with Zagat.mobi. iPhone not included. Epicurious 2.0 has arrived with a redesign and more bloggers (because what isn't better with more bloggers?). RUB commissioned Orange County Chopper to create a mobile......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Clarkson Ave. in Brooklyn, another shooting on Madison Ave. in Manhattan, and a pedestrian fatally struck on Cross Bay Blvd. in Queens. 1010 WINS conducted an online poll asking "If a hurricane were to hit NYC, do you think the city would be ready?" 84% of respondents answered "Oh heck no -- look what happened Wednesday." Chicago police arrested the four men who allegedly bound and......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

Say that headline five times fast! The city is cleaning up today following yesterday's late-winter messy mix of snow, sleet, rain, and freezing rain. Snowfall totals ranged from 2.5 inches in Sheepshead Bay to 5.5 inches in Central Park. There was probably more snow in the Bronx but nobody reported it. Across the region, Goshen, in Orange County, received a dash more than a foot of snow. Long Island didn't get much snow but......

You know, it is a beautiful thing when all the pieces come together to produce a winter storm. There's a low pressure system deepening off the Virginia coast, sending plenty of warm, moist air toward us. To our north there's a high pressure system sending cold air our way. The warm air proves no match for the dense dome of cold air so it has no choice but to ride up over the dome. As......

There is nothing like a little snow to make the local television stations go nuts. The madness really started yesterday evening with reporters sent out to find snow, special winter weather graphics and crawls with school closings along with other notes about the snowstorm on the bottom of the screen. This morning the madness continued with most of the stations starting their morning newscasts an hour early at 4 a.m. However, we missed the......

Newsday has a good article looking at the transportation issues the next governor will deal with - the biggest being the MTA. The MTA, which already announced fare hikes for next year, faces insane budget deficits in the coming years: $905 million in 2008, $1.13 billion in 2009, $1.48 billion in 2010. The Straphangers' Campaign's Gene Russianoff says of the MTA, "They borrowed a ton of money to fix a system, and now the bill......

As Travis the cat contemplates the clouds over the Hudson (we understand he is quite the weather fanatic), Gothamist wonders if we need to dig out a sweater tonight. The rain and clouds of this morning have mostly been pushed away by a high pressure system that has slipped southward from Canada. As the center of the high parks itself over us the winds will also die down. Clear skies plus calm air adds up......

Hmm, were some fires at an almost completed synagogue in Williamsburg actually a message? A new Satmar headquarters is being built at Ross Street and Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, and the Post reports that two suspicious early morning fires occured there. The new synagogue happens to be right next to Satmar Grand Rebbe Zalmen Teitelbaum's house, and one thing that fire marshals cannot ignore is that many supporters of Zalmen's brother Aron, a grand rebbe......

They came, they mourned, they left? Despite predictions from all over of "epic violence" between supporters of the two would-be Satmar sect leaders after last weeks death of Satmar Grand Rebbe Moses Teitelbaum, it never seemed to happen. Things looked especially nerve-wracking when supporters of Aaron Teitelbaum, Moses' oldest son who runs the Satmar community up in Orange County, came down to Brooklyn and set up tents (see above photo). And yet: Although there......

Apparently the Satmar Jews in Williamsburg went a little wild last night. According to Newsday: At least one person was injured in a faceoff between hundreds of members of two opposing factions at Congregation Yetev Lev D'Satmar... Police estimated the crowd ranged anywhere from 500 to more than 1,000. Police eventually restored order, and many of the members of the faction from upstate New York retreated to a nearby tent where they have been praying.......

The tropical disturbance that was partially responsible for Saturday's rain is gone. The cold front that brought us the rest of the rain is still around, having stalled over the eastern Atlantic. As long as the front sits there we're in for cool, cloudy, rainy conditions. Right now the greatest chance of rain appears to be tomorrow night into Wednesday. We won't get nearly as much rain as over the weekend but the ground is......

Because we're fascinated by bets with an elected official whose last name is a snack food brand, Gothamist wants to take a moment ot consider Mayor Bloomberg's "friendly wager" during the Angels-Yankees series with Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle. Mayor Bloomberg announced what NYC will send over if (IF!) the Yankees lose: I hear Anaheim is lovely this time of year, but is there anything better than October baseball at Yankee Stadium? This year's team is......

Is there anywhere to go apple picking near the city which is accessible by public transit? We're so glad you asked this question, because we are getting ready to kick it into gear for Autumn of Fun 05, which involves getting large-ish groups of people together for autumnal excursions such as apple picking. We found a few orchards that offer apple picking and directions by mass transit: Wickham's Fruit Farm, in Cutchogue, Long Island can......

Today, the NY Times has two articles about the Senate race this fall, and Gothamist must admit, we forgot that Senator Charles Schumer, Park Slope resident, was up for reelection until we saw his current TV commercials. The NY Times reports that a Quinnipiac poll shows Schumer's Republican opponent, an Orange County Assemblyman named Howard Mills, trailing 13% to Schumer's 63%, reinforcing the "somnolent" in the article's headline, "First Schumer TV Ad Appears in a......

Spalding Gray was reportedly spotted on the Staten Island Ferry the night he supposedly disappeared. Gray had been spotted on the ferry the night before. Gray's family was told someone spotted him at a restaurant: Sara Vass, a family friend, said the family had heard from a retired police detective who described seeing Mr. Gray at a diner in Orange County, N.Y., after he was reported missing. "His description of Spalding was on the money,''......