Walter Pertyk, the Leon Goldstein High School junior who caused a fuhrer furor when he dressed as Hitler for Halloween, held a press conference - in costume - to explain himself. The Post has the details:"I'm not a Nazi. It's a Halloween costume," he declared. "People have taken it too seriously . . . I'm not going to go around and kill Jews or anything." At one point, the gathering was interrupted by area resident......

In this week's New Yorker, Fred Willard goes on a Gray Line bus tour of the city with writer Tad Friend (aka Amanda Hesser's Mr. Latte). And Willard analyzes the tour guide's skills from the upper deck of the bus. Here's an excerpt, and for background, the tour guide is a "small Japanese-American woman":As the bus drove down West Seventy-second Street, past the Dakota, where John Lennon was killed, Willard looked away: “It’s too recent,......

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. I remember telling a friend, after finishing Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, that Wonder Boys had not prepared me for this brilliance. I think I’ll be saying the same thing about Julian Barnes’ latest novel, Arthur & George. I’ve read A History......

Now that we're into November, awards season kicks off in earnest with big new releases such as Chicken Little. Wait. Sorry. Our mistake. After what seems like more than a year of trailers, the sky is finally falling for Disney's big animation experiment, but we actually meant Jarhead. Somehow, even arriving with an amazing pedigree that includes Oscar winning American Beauty director Sam Mendes, a best selling memoir as source material, and stars such as......

Like many others, one of Gothamist's favorite books about turn-of-the-century New York City is The Alienist by Caleb Carr. A novel about finding a cruel serial killer, The Alienist also had wall-to-wall details about what life was like in the city, with a particular grittiness that escaped film depictions. And we always liked how Carr would discuss in interviews that while people fret and worry about New York being crime-ridden, the kinds of horrors happening......

While this graffiti stencil caught by callalillie captures the mystique of Detectives Goren and Eames of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, it turns out that there needs to be an addition. Chris Noth, aka Detective Mike Logan from Law & Order's first five seasons, will be a permanent cast member of Criminal Intent this fall. He and Vincent D'Onofrio will be splitting the episode load as lead detectives on the case (D'Onofrio has had......

Law & Order
In the lives of New Yorkers, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the makers of Law & Order, who consistently churn out topical, interesting, and entertaining programming; and the Law & Order fans, who eagerly watch the show and its offshoots on NBC, TNT, USA, and wherever else possible. These are their stories....