Zodiac (directed by David Fincher) A series of attacks and subsequent puzzling communiques from the alleged killer to the San Francisco Chronicle terrified the Bay Area during the '60s through the '80s. Director David Fincher grew up in that part of California and uses his childhood feelings of dread and fascination to craft an unconventional thriller. Unlike a more typical detective story with a evil-doer and a single valiant sleuth, Zodiac meanders over a long......

Jason Giambi has decided to talk. The Yankees DH, who faced a Thursday deadline from Major League Baseball to cooperate with their steroid investigation, decided yesterday to cooperate with baseball's steroid investigator George Mitchell. Giambi will have the inauspicious title of being the first known active player in baseball to talk to Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader. After speaking yesterday with Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, Giambi released a statement announcing his cooperation.......

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network." It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

We went to May May Food on Pell Street to pick up some steamed vegetable buns when this display caught our eye. Chinese-style tamales? According to The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson, tamales are "an important feature of Mexican food and date back to pre-Columbian times. A specially prepared cornmeal dough, usually stuffed with something but something cooked 'blind', is steamed inside little (or not so little) package of carefully trimmed corn......

After some rumors that the Reverend Al Sharpton hated Senator and presidential hopeful Barack Obama, Sharpton says they had a nice phone call yesterday. Sharpton, who just last week told Fox News he believed that Obama's campaign floated the story that he was jealous of the Senator, now says, "We had a good conversation. He said he's got a lot of respect for me and what I've done. We agreed to keep in touch."......

Mayor Bloomberg's longtime girlfriend Diana Taylor is known as the "de facto" First Lady of the city. She was recently the State Banking Superintendent, with previous stints as a VP at Keyspan and CFO of LIPA, and will be working at Wolfensohn & Company, an investment firm, in a few days. Her fashion sense has been praised in Vogue, yet she stands by her man when he wears shorts and white socks. In other words,......

Torontoist visits the site of a new Frank Gehry structure, stalks "the elusive Bahamas streetcar", and watches Tom Green get surgery. Phillyist rejoices in the Phillies' wild card chances, mourns the injuries sustained by Eagles defensive end Jevon Kearse, and goes pirate on our asses. SFist notes that Guns and Roses were in town, that San Franciscans are taking over reality TV, and that the San Francisco Chronicle's skills of original nomenclature could use some......

This has been a rough week for your -ist pals, though you wouldn't know it from the great posts all over the network. Plagued with server problems, our tech team (led by the great Neil Epstein) toiled around the clock to solve the glitches as they arose. Seriously, we've said, typed, and thought the phrase "server problems" more in the past week than we have for the last 35 years combined. Why not say it......

San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer poses a heated question to his readers: Is New York better than San Francisco? His thoughts on the matter are clear: I've been asked the question of which is better many times, and I have a stock answer. Because of its size New York has more to offer, but if we viewed things on a per capita basis, San Francisco would blow the Big Apple to bits. I......

On Sundays, Gothamist puts its own opinions aside, and asks friends and strangers to write Op-Ed pieces for us. If you want to submit one, email Jake. Here's a review of Ian Frazier's new book, by Ben Cosgrove-- sounds like a winner to us: Has anyone ever written a single, great, quintessentially New York novel? Or a single, great, quintessential history of the city? If anything, the books that feel most "New York" are those......

The New York Times calls Maria Shriver the "secret weapon" behind Arnold Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial success, saying Shriver was instrumental in keeping her husband on message as well as deflecting the sexual misconduct allegations. Sure, blame the wife. Seriously speaking, Maria Shriver is a smart, determined lady who also knew what she was doing when she married the body-builder turned Hollywood star. A friend says she's "steel with a soft center," which makes us wonder......

After having a week to digest it, critics are ready to weigh in on the new Sharon Stone AOL ad. And as Simon Dumenco says in his New York magazine piece, "in a nutshell, is the message of AOL’s new $35 million ad campaign: SHARON STONE IS NOT GETTING LAID." Other points he raises: We must assume that the take-away here, beyond the fact that Stone is so hard up that she has to hook......