Prefab housing isn't just for the..."thrifty" anymore! Yesterday Wired featured a selection of twelve modular, prefab housing units -- from lofts to place atop city skylines to 60 square-foot cabins with "cathedral ceilings". Today The NY Times reports that the idea has "become fashionable at architecture schools and among an upscale segment of the housing market." As such, MoMA has commissioned five architects to set up their prefab-ulous designs in their vacant lot on......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes Gothamist is no stranger to the pleasures of the izakaya, which in our case usually include copious amounts of sake and yakitori. For some reason we've shied away from such dishes as spaghetti with spicy cod roe, even though we've enjoyed spicy cod roe dumplings on several occasions. Perhaps our aversion stems from the fact......

Two bridges spanning the Hudson River just north of the city will be getting suicide prevention phones instead of physical barriers following three fatal leaps in close succession earlier this year. The phones to be installed on the Tappan Zee and Bear Mountain Bridges will be connected to a 24-hour suicide prevention hotline. Plans for installing physical barriers were turned down as being too expensive to install and maintain. The plan to install the phones......

Even in the shadow of the Queensborough Bridge, the Maison Tropicale looks aloof. Hovering above a cleared and graded strip in Long Island City, this compact machine for living wears the architectural equivalent of sunglasses, safari helmet, binoculars, and shorts. It is haughty and cute at the same time. The aluminum outpost, one of three prototypes sent to Congo and Niger in the early 1950s, was designed by Jean Prouvé as a prefabricated home......

- Imette St. Guillen's family will sue The Falls, the bar where St. Guillen met her alleged killer, and various federal and state agencies that should have been watching over ex-con turned bouncer Darryl Littlejohn - The Daily Politics posts Ed Koch's review of Giliuani Time, and here's a snippet: "I am in the film, and if I do say so myself, my comments are pretty interesting. I describe Giuliani as either in the......

In an early gift from the Easter Bunny (in the form of Jesse Chan-Norris), Gothamist received a picture of the other giant inflatable baseball cap yesterday. The Yankee cap is on 6th Avenue and the Mets cap is near the Queensborough Bridge on the Manhattan side. Is anybody else wondering what kind of insurance coverage they need for these huge caps? And we kind of think our photoshop job looks better than the end......

Yesterday, New Era finally unveiled their gigantic inflatable Yankee cap to celebrate opening day (okay, it was a day late for the Yankees). S.D. captured the inflatable on a midday walk. Lets Mets fans feel neglected, there is a giant Mets cap near the Queensborough Bridge. The Yankee cap adorns a water tower at 581 Sixth Avenue (btwn 16th and 17th) in Manhattan. Still no news on whether other large protective objects are on......

A fire has shut down the Queensborough Bridge. The fire, on what looks like the Queens side of the bridge, has closed the bridge to traffic in both directions. Looking at WNBC's live video, you can see that a tarp is on fire and that there are cars still on the bridge. WABC reports that the tarp is covering construction scaffolding and that the FDNY had difficulty reaching the fire because of the traffic......