Last June Scientific American took a look at a human-less New York, a vision that was fairly on par with how the city was portrayed in I Am Legend. Now it's The History Channel's turn to jump on board the post-apocalyptic train, their show Life Without People will premiere this Monday (at 9pm). The scene is eerily similar to how Chernobyl looks after decades without human inhabitants. The show's site tells us: "Abandoned skyscrapers would, after hundreds of years, become 'vertical ecosystems' complete with birds, rodents and even plant life," bridges crumble, subway tunnels transform into watery canals, and...bears take the JMZ? more ›

We hope all of you, whether you have stayed in the city or have traveled to spend the holiday with loved ones, have a happy and safe Thanksgiving. While, for many people, Thanksgiving is about the bounty of food, football games, or the start of the holiday shopping season, it's also a good opportunity to appreciate your life. The History Channel has an extensive website about the history of Thanksgiving (with video). Scholastic's school-children-targeted... more ›

A look at some noteworthy television this week: more ›

A look at some noteworthy television this week: more ›

is an Oscar season darling that's well worth adding to the rental queue. more ›

A look at some noteworthy television this week: more ›

Doesn't it seem like you no sooner put down the fork at the Thanksgiving table and the Christmas themed movies have flooded the theaters? If you're ready to start ho ho hoing your way to the cineplex, the new slapstick family comedy , or it could be that Jerry Bruckheimer and Tony Scott have just run out of new movie ideas. more ›

The History Channel is creating a wild, NYC-centric float for this year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. According to its press release:

Designed to mirror a child's tin wind-up toy, The History Channel float will feature a giant replica of New York City's most famous skyscraper, the Empire State Building. In addition, the float will reveal through its wind-up motion, iconic dates, celebrations and locations, tracing the history of New York City. Through the artistry of the Macy's Parade Studio team, the float will feature landmark events throughout history from the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty to Babe Ruth's defining moments at Yankee Stadium, to the world-famous World War II "Kiss" in Times Square, all helping to bring history to life.

Along a dark and lonely strip in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, underneath the El train - at 1087 Broadway, to be exact - sits a shop. What kind of shop it is is hard to say. There might be a guy at a table drinking a can of beer and reading a yellowed paperback. Another table could have a cat stretched across it. There's a small counter on your left, with a couple of people drinking coffee and hunched over computers. And in the back, there might be a local rock or jazz band playing. But the main thing you'll notice when you walk in is the stuff. Lots of it. Books and board games and records and figurines and toys and lamps and maybe a motorcycle. More than you could hope to go through in an afternoon. And it's all for sale. more ›

The Times today reports on some funny numbers running around the theater district. Here's what we understood of it: In 1998 legit theater, which like the Apple Computers of yore is always somewhat "beleaguered", was having some trouble getting patrons in the door to watch anything that a theater snob might call "passable." Money was desperately needed to kick things into gear. So the city struck a deal with a group called The Broadway Initiative, led by Gothamist-idol Stephen Sondheim, to provide more money not only for theater owners but for the theater community as well. The deal was simple: 25 theaters in the theater district (that'd be between 40th and 57th Streets and 6th and 8th Avenues) were given permission to sell their unused air-rights to any property also located in the district (instead of only to the usual rules which only allow air rights to be sold to neighboring plots). In exchange for this lenience anyone who bought up one of these theater's air rights would have to pay an extra $10 per square foot on top of the regular price. That extra money was to be then given to a new Theater Subdistrict Council which would spend 20 percent of it on monitoring theater conditions and the rest on bringing poorer city residents to the Great White Way. Sounds like a good, simple, idea, no? more ›

Broadway's big night celebrated two hit shows, both with word "Boys" in the title. "Jersey Boys," the musical about singing group, The Four Seasons, won Best Musical and two actors won Best Actor (John Lloyd Young) and Best Featured Actor (Christian Hoff), and "The History Boys," a play about British education, won Best Play, Best Direction and Best Actor (Richard Griffiths). The speeches were all very heartfelt, touching and classy - Frances de la Tour, who won as Best Featured Actress in The History Boys, graciously thanked the crew and said she felt at home in "New York, New York." LaChanze won Best Actress in a Musical for The Color Purple, and thanked Oprah Winfrey at the very end. And Cynthia Nixon won Best Actress in a Play for The Rabbit Hole, and called herself a theater geek. The team behind The Drowsy Chaperone, the throwback to the 1920s musical, won a bunch of big awards, including Best Book and Best Score, with its Canadian creators thanking America. more ›

The weather outside might be just starting to feel like spring, but in the theater world there’s already a summery vibe going on. Last night the Lortel Awards kicked off the trophy-giving season; this Friday the Drama League awards go out. Then there’s the festivals; not that there aren’t festivals at other times of the year, but as the weather heats up they start crowding in thick and fast. Currently you can get a square meal of offerings from around the world, all via some well-curated festivals. To begin with, there’s Pan Asian Repertory’s Spring Festival of New Works, which has four very different plays to choose from: Lan Tran’s Elevator Sex, Kendra Ware’s Recollections: Butoh-Inspired Movement, John Quincy Lee’s ABC (American Born Chinese), and Terry Park’s 38th Parallels. more ›

Yes, the TKTS booth is moving from Duffy Square to the Marriott Marquis until December of this year while the new TKTS booth that looks like a huge red staircase (the ticket counters are under the stairs) is being constructed. But why did it take so long? Because the Times Square Alliance decided to spiff up Duffy Square, that sliver of land between Broadway and Seventh Avenues, between 47th and 46th Streets, in a $12.5 million project the meantime. The Times Square Alliance's Tim Tompkins says the TKTS steps will be "the Spanish Steps on steroids (it's okay to say "steroids" in development), and remaking Duffy Square is part of the bigger plan to make Times Square more pedestrian friendly. We can't wait! more ›

It's that time of year again. The humidity lifts, the smell of fall is teasing us from just around the corner, we really really want to buy school supplies (it's a nostalgia thing)...and, of course, musicians from all over descend upon the city and replace our quiet evenings with some rock. Okay, so our evenings aren't usually as quiet as we'd like them to be, and they do usually involve rock, but CMJ will multiply our norm by about 8 gazilion. more ›

We were glad to see that we weren't the only ones amused by the Times's editorial about Flux Factory's "Novel" installation. One almost wonders whether this bit of preaching is an editorial joke on readers, since it is hard to imagine such a complete lack of playfulness. The project sounds intriguing, and we hope to go see what architects dreamed up as concentration pods and what the subjects manage to produce. more ›

You'll start seeing ads in February. Other cable channels we'd like the city to team up with: The Food Network - tastings all around town; Sundance or IFC - more movies; Bravo - Queer Eye makeovers and Blow Outs; The Weather Channel - umbrellas, galoshes, mittens galore. And here's the city's official tourism site: NYCVisit.com. more ›