"spectacular" by i'mjustsayin on flickr The weather held out quite nicely for last night's fireworks show. And while regular midtown viewers may have felt shorted by the southern shift of the East River barges, quite a show was put on for those downtown and in Brooklyn. If you have any exceptional or stand-out photos from last night's display, please tag them "gothamist" on flickr.......

Empire State Building with Rainbow by Gothamist at Flickr There is no meteorological definition for thick air but Gothamist thinks today would qualify. So far it has been a cloudy, foggy, misty, muggy and rainy day. Throw in a shower or thunderstorm this afternoon and we've got a summer soup! The thunderstorms could be severe. Hail, damaging winds, heavy rain and frequent lightning are possible through about 10 p.m. or so. A flash flood watch......

Yesterday was the longest day of the year, and it seems most New Yorkers just went along their business. Except some Wiccans who gathered in the East Village, who held a "hush-hush" event for "people in the coven."......

Flying Low by EssG on Gothamist Contribute Today's weather is shaping up to be the same as every previous day this week. Sunny in the morning, clouding up in the afternoon. With the clouds comes a slight chance of a shower or thunderstorm. For a little variety today may warm to the upper 70s. At 7:59 EDT this evening the sun will be directly over the Tropic of Cancer somewhere in the Pacific Ocean......

Photo via Brian Fountain's Flickr. The Bryant Park Summer Film Festival kicks off its 16th year tonight with the 1962 (Sean Connery era) Bond classic Dr. No, though it's likely the opening evening will get rained (and stormed) out. The Monday screenings will continue throughout the summer, however -- here's a look at the schedule:June 16th, Dr. No June 23rd, Bride of Frankenstein June 30th, Hud July 7th, The Man Who Came to Dinner......

If "butter" flavored popcorn and Sour Patch Kids aren’t your ideal movie snack food, then you'll probably find the New York City Food Film Festival much more palatable. Starting Saturday at Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City, Queens, the festival will pair 18 movies with relevant munchies under the night sky. George Motz, who started the festival last year with chef Harry Hawk, says he wanted to create “a cinematic scratch 'n sniff......

Partial chart by Andrew Kuo for the NY Times. Andrew Kuo's charts are charmingly confusing, and his latest in the NY Times find their roots in his first summer festival: Lollapalooza '92 in New Jersey. Since then, he's learned a lot, and he's charted the knowledge for all who need some guidance as this summer's fests inch up on the calendar. For the ATP Festival happening in the Catskills, he asks (through graphs) who......

There may be a stray shower or two this morning but most of the rain has moved eastward. The rest of the day will remain cool and cloudy as the cold front that passed brought last night's rain goes stationary over southern New Jersey. The front isn't going to do much of anything until late Thursday. Showers are possible again tonight and tomorrow morning. Highs today and tomorrow will be in the lower 70s at......

Manhattanhenge 2008 by David Reeves on Flickr Look up. You see those wispy high cirrus clouds out there? They are harbingers of doom, or at least a rainy Saturday. Before then today will bring another promise of summer with a max temperature flirting with 80 degrees and a mostly sunny sky. The change will begin after bar-closing time tonight. That's when a warm front will pass through the city. Once it does, there will......

Photo by Elizabeth Weinberg. JellyNYC has finally announced their free Sunday shows at McCarren Park Pool. This could be the last season of the Pool Parties, with the space getting redesigned soon -- so try to soak it all up:June 29th: The Hold Steady, The Loved Ones, J Roddy and the Business July 6th: Ronnie Spector, The Rabbit Factory Soul Revue, Featuring: Roscoe Robinson, Ralph ‘Soul’ Jackson, Hermon Hitson and Wiley & The Checkmates......

Every year we're drawn to the Coney Island shoreline by the sirens...or at least, The Village Voice Siren Festival. This year they seem a bit more on top of things, announcing their initial lineup today -- a full two months before the show! This year's fest, their 8th, is being held on July 19th and promises some big names (drum roll please):STEPHEN MALKMUS AND THE JICKS, BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE, THE HELIO SEQUENCE, BEACH HOUSE, TIMES......

Summerstage Lineup Confirmed Ah, Spring. The weather feels fresh, the trees start to bloom and the free outdoor music events around the city start trickling out. This week saw the release of the Central Park Summerstage lineups, which is one of the best and longest running summer music series in town. Always a treat, this year is one of the most impressive, with a list of shows that seem too good to be free. The......

Craig Wedren is the former front man for the sorely missed D.C. band Shudder to Think, a group that seemed to intuitively grasp all the overlooked possibilities of the late-80s/early 90s post-punk landscape and render them into a sound that was at once startling, bizarre and irresistibly catchy. Since the band’s end ten years ago, Wedren has made a career as composer of soundtracks for movies such as Wet Hot American Summer and The Baxter,......

Bar Boulud: Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni recently lost his patience waiting on hold for 15 minutes to make a reservation, which should give you some sense of how feverish the excitement is for Daniel Boulud’s latest foray. The tony uptown wine bar, across the street from Lincoln Center, enjoyed the raging buzz of a sneak-preview opening on New Year’s Eve and now the 100 seat restaurant is open for real. Judging from the photos,......

If you are as big a fan of reality shows as we are, Fox’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., WNYW 5) is very welcome. Thanks to the WGA strike, there will be only eight episodes, but still this looks like an action packed romp based on the popular film series. Despite being based on the space time continuum bending robot filled movies, this has an all new cast with Lena Headley and......

The proposed expansion of the Jacob J. Javitz convention center is essentially dead in the water as government officials admitted that the amount of money it would cost to undertake the project would not be worth the marginal return on investment that additional tax revenues would provide. Empire State Development Corporation chairman Pat Foye testified that about half of the expansion plan's $1.6 billion budget would be consumed just making repairs to the existing Javits......

Crave on 42nd: Top Chef Season One's Dave "I'm not your bitch, bitch!" Martin has found a home in New York serving comfort-driven American bistro fare. He reprises one of his Top Chef dishes -- the Black Truffle Mac ‘n’ Cheese, with black truffles, brandy and fontina slow cooked with fresh thyme and oregano, and the menu offers wood grilled pizzas, burgers, and hearty entrees, like "Sassy Sea Bass," farm raised bass, dry rubbed and......

Long time New York resident David Wain is currently on location in LA, working on his latest film, Little Big Men, starring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott. Wain's been spending a lot of time in LA due to his career, but, don't worry, he doesn't plan on moving there anytime soon. In fact, the only place the star of Stella and The State plans on moving is Brooklyn. In this Gothamist Q and A,......

Bruni visits Park Avenue Autumn this week, giving the seasonal restaurant, which changes name (Park Avenue Spring, Summer, etc.), décor and menu every three months to suit the season, two stars. Says that executive chef Craig Kotesku’s cooking here is much more interesting than at Quality Meats, the other restaurant he oversees. “Park Avenue Look-at-the-Weather-and-Fill-In-The-Blank has more than a striking gimmick,” he says. “It also has some terrific food.” In Dining Briefs, Julia Moskin goes......

Arnaud Desplechin in Focus Museum of the Moving Image When Gothamist saw cinematographer-turned-director Arnaud Desplechin's film Kings and Queen two years ago, we knew we were watching something unique. His movie about a French woman and the three important men in her life—her adorable son, her crazy ex-husband and her dying father—unfolds so organically you get completely caught up in the complex characters, utterly forgetting that Desplechin is expertly telling his story in a very......

Did contemporary art and music come together for the first time in New York? The holy (or unholy -- if you're not a Velvet Underground fan) union can be traced back to, where else, Andy Warhol's Factory scene. So why is the Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 exhibit being housed all the way in Chicago? The NY Times takes a look at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago) show,......

Tonight another season of Top Chef will come to an end as a new connoisseur of cuisine is crowned with a big white hat. So who's it gonna be? Dale, Hung and Casey are the three remaining chefs, and last week they gave us some easy recipes to cook in a small NYC kitchen, the dirt on Newark, and told us how they've been preparing to face Padma & Co. one last time. Dale When......

An author of the comic book series Optic Nerve, graphic novels like Summer Blonde and a frequent illustrator for New Yorker, Esquire and Rolling Stone, Adrian Tomine draws beautiful pictures about bad relationships—banalities, messiness, thrilling encounters and accidental connections. His new graphic novel Shortcomings follows Berkeley movie theater manager Ben Tanaka and the final days of his flawed relationship to Miko, who is considering a move to our fair city for a job. Cranky Ben......

EVENT: Join Chief Jim Riches, 9/11 families, rescue and recovery workers in an effort to Tell Rudy Giuliani to "Stop Politicizing 9/11". Rudy will be at a fundraiser at the Waldorf later today, and will be greeted by those who believe he's no hero. Why? They say: "He failed the FDNY & uniformed & civilian victims. He gave us incompetent commissioners ( FD,PD, OEM). No integrated command. He abandoned us on 9/11. He gave the......

The autumnal equinox is early Sunday morning, but the weather is not paying attention to the Earth's orbital position with respect to the Sun. Summer-like temperatures are here today, tomorrow, next week! Yes, the weekend weather is going to be as sweet as a sugarcube. The National Weather Service has the warmest forecast for the next few days so we'll go with them. Expect highs in the low-80s today, creeping up to the mid-80s......

Summer may be almost over in the city, but we're still clinging on to that summery feeling when the temp sneaks up past 70 degrees. On those days we find solace in the psychedelically colored iced desserts at Queens' Mie Jakarta. This joint's name means Jakarta noodles, and its noodles are indeed quite tasty. However, when our internal barometer goes haywire due to summer flashbacks we want only one thing here: a cooling, sweet icy,......

The Graduate (directed by Mike Nichols) If you're looking for a cultural touchstone for the '60s, or even one of the first great uses of pop music on a movie soundtrack, you don't need to search much further than The Graduate, Mike Nichols' dark comedy from 1967. A coming-of-age story that's spawned a Broadway adaptation and a poorly conceived movie continuation, The Graduate turns 40 this year (just like the Summer of Love) and in......

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and......

Battles vs. Deerhunter by the Sea A fine way for the Seaport Music Festival to send off the summer, with two of the year's biggest breakout bands on a lovely evening. We were taking in both Battles and Dearhunter for the first time last Friday and were massively impressed by both bands. Deerhunter, down a man and with their usual shtick toned down, sounded like a young Sonic Youth or stripped down Broken Social Scene.......

TIP: According to Paper's Mr. Mickey, Chloë Sevigny is having a tag sale on her block this Saturday. We're guessing there will be lots of vintage Balenciaga. Check out her apartment in House & Garden...pretty nice! EVENT: The Howl Festival (which took last year off) continues on throughout the weekend. Tomorrow around 2pm you can catch Moby with his band The Little Death in Tompkins Square Park. Check out the full schedule here. All Weekend......