Whether you call them variety meats, off cuts, or simply offal, hearts, tripe, tendons and the like aren’t the first things that spring to mind as fit for a gourmet feast. But thanks to the offal wizardry of Chef Chris Cosentino, just such a dinner was served Tuesday at the Astor Center. Cosentino, the executive chef of Incanto, graced New York with his annual “Head to Tail Dinner,” which he usually holds at his San......

Earlier this year the law started cracking down on illegal bootleggers of all kinds, so those looking for more inexpensive gifts like Prada bags or not-yet-released DVDs on the city sidewalks may be barking up the wrong Christmas tree. The NY Post reports that cops are paying extra-special attention to the counterfeiters this year, leading to a big decline in sales for the sidewalk entrepreneurs and aiming the consumers to (gasp!) legit storefronts.That's great news......

If you’ve got time-pressed guests from out of town who can’t decide between seeing a show or taking a tour, Accomplice: New York is a great solution. Described as “an adventure in organized crime”, the show is part mystery/scavenger hunt and part walking tour through downtown Manhattan, orchestrated by a gang of seasoned improv actors. It is never exactly clear who’s part of the production and who’s just part of the woodwork, which makes the......

Michael Dory is expanding the definition of graffiti, with his non-visual sonic street art (presented last month at Conflux). His inconspicuous concrete crickets (pictured) recently got some NPR and Boing Boing love, and his own site explains:Graffiti is one of the most powerful and most personal displays in the urban experience, and can be used to make statements, tag territory, spread messages — urban markup language in practice. However, the output is nearly always visual......

Not too long ago Ronen Givony started the Wordless Music Series, which is pretty much just what it sounds like it would be. Sonic worlds collide and fuse classical with indie, jazz with electronic and listeners with instrumental-only music. In the next week audiences will enjoy the sounds of Do Make Say Think and Beirut from an intimate setting for just such an experience. How did you come up with the idea for the Wordless......

Today, the NY Times had some advice for incoming first years to the city's colleges. They were:- Don’t fall asleep on the subway. - Don’t drink too much beer and use the street as a toilet. - Don’t ask a cabbie (or anyone else) to take you to “HUGH-ston” Street. - Don’t play chess for money with the hustlers in Washington Square Park. - Don’t try to swim in the river. - Don’t count......

Has Andy Warhol's estate been dominating the market for the artist's work? One owner of a silkscreen by Warhol says that it has, and yesterday filed a $20 million lawsuit in the U.S. District Court. Filmmaker Joe Simon-Whelan's Warhol original was marked as a fake by the estate who he says has conspired for 20 years to control the market and create an artificial scarcity of original works. The board does this with the authority......

Like an elementary school kid who sees his teacher at a movie theater or in the grocery store, and is shocked that he or she doesn't sleep in the school's gym at night and requires food to survive, the media occasionally will note that librarians are not uniformly dour spinsters intent on shushing you and collecting late fines. The New York Sun ran an article Thursday regarding the growing number of librarians who live and......

Yesterday, City Council member Simcha Felder held a press conference to announce legislation to ban menus, fliers and circulars from being distributed to homes and buildings. Introduction 427 would "make it illegal to distribute any unsolicited materials to households and buildings that display a sign indicating that they do not wish to receive them." Felder's statement said:It doesn't matter what borough or what type of building you live in, if you live in New York......

While filing out of the Laura Pels Theatre after Patrick Marber’s Howard Katz, a woman of a certain age was heard exclaiming, “A tour de force!” Having brandished that over-ripe phrase myself on probably too many occasions, I was amazed to hear it applied to the play we’d just sat through. Had I been misusing it all this time? Was the expression actually French for “a total waste of time”? According to Dictionary.com, the......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: barricaded EDP in Brooklyn Heights, person on the tracks at 4th Avenue in Park Slope, and a police car MVA in Williamsburg. Our frenemies at Gawker started a weekend edition. Thank God-- we thought we were going to have to wait until Monday to hear about a bald Britney Spears. Worst Boss Ever: Dr. Bartha's assistant, nearly flattened in the Upper East Side explosion, is suing his estate for......

Like many New Yorkers, Graydon Carter could care less about noise caused by new development, renovations, and all the like. But who knew he'd be up for throwing scaffolding down in extreme frustration while wearing shorts in 36 degree weather? Luckily, the Post has the "photo exclusive" that shows the Vanity Fair editor get up in a construction worker's business. The scaffolding was being put up in the West Village, near Carter's home and near......

- Even though Mayor Bloomberg says he'll sign the City Council's 25% pay raise (an extra $22,500 to bring the total salary to $112,500), he criticizes the fact that many City Council members are able to have other jobs, since the City Charter says City Council positions are "part-time." He also blasted the "lulus" - aka stipends of thousands of dollars - the City Council members get for chairing committees and the like. Easy for......

When going out to send your bills, postcards, thank you cards, and the like have you found your regular mailbox suddenly gone? It isn't your imagination. While the Post Office doesn't keep track of permanently removed mailboxes (uhm, why not?) they do admit that since the Republican National Convention a sizable number have been removed and taken out of service. For instance the 10003 ZIP code (which covers much of the East Village and......

Love Shacks Who says that love doesn’t came easy? Reuters reports that for a mere $21, you can still rent a small room at one of New York’s remaining gay bathhouses for a little anonymous romance. For gay men who find the internet dating scene just too impersonal, these establishments provide a safe place to meet the like-minded, skip the chit-chat, and get right down to business in safe surroundings. The houses are actually inspected......

Some comedic acts simply defy description, so before you read this interview with Julie Klausner and Sue Galloway, better known as the over-the-top lesbionic duo Betty and Joan of the mock 70's kids TV show Free to Be Friends, go have a look-see at the title sequence of their show or listen to "Boys and Girls Are Different in the Pants." That's just a taste of what you can expect from two women who sing......

As we appreciate the fact that last week's heat wave was last week, the NY Times' Sewell Chan has an article about that the little-known fact that turned-off appliances that are still plugged-in still draw electricity. We mentioned the "standby mode" issue last week, noting that is why Con Ed asks people to actually unplug TVs, printers, computers, and the like when the power demand is high. (It probably isn't a bad idea to unplug......

These are scary times for our feet. Yesterday, there were two alarming articles which can only mean that podiatrists are raking it in. The Daily News had an article about the woes to toes from flip-flops - and we've been experiencing some first hand as flip-flops are definitely the easiest thing to wear on the weekends. People (usually ladies) slip, there's tendinitis, and grime from a day's walking - and it's apparently bad to have......

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. It’s easy enough for everyone to condemn slavery as it existed in the past, on a large scale with whole tribes shipped across the Atlantic to perish on New World plantations, or when it involves children in sweatshops or women lured away from home and forced......

A new book claims that Al Qaeda was 45 days away from attacking the NYC subway system with cyanide gas, but then, for an unknown reason, decided not to. Um, phew? The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind is being excerpted in Time magazine this week, and yesterday, Time teased the excerpt with a "web exclusive" (Ali is an Al Qaeda operative/nformant to the U.S.; Ayeri is "Yusuf al Ayeri, "bin Laden's top operative......

There's an interesting article in the Village Voice about downtown residents unhappy with all the Town Cars in the neighborhood. The cars wait for employees at investment banks and the like, and Community Board 1 passed a resolution forcing Goldman Sachs, which is building a new skyscraper on West Street, to "minimize the impact of black cars" to the area. An agreement was reached (GS will keep its cars in a garage until they are......

Special boon for the cross section of the population that are subway nerds and Citibank customers: Select Citibank customers in the NYC area will be chosen to try out the PayPass "contactless payment" system for some NYC subways! A few months after announcing that they would conduct a $44 million pilot test, the MTA revealed that the Lexington Avenue line in Manhattan, along with the Jay Street/Borough Hall A/C/F and 23rd Street Ely Avenue E/Vstops,......

Rejoice, freecyclers and freegans: this Google maps mashup is for you! Garbage Scout is sort of a Dodgeball for garbage-lovers. It's motto is "Can you believe someone was throwing this out?" In many cases, we can indeed imagine why someone would throw their crap out, but their loss is indeed your gain. Here's how it works: From your phone, email a picture of your find to "street@garbagescout.com" In the body of the email type......

Mom always said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That's why we're a little disappointed that the new, hip franchise Cereality has yet to open in the Big Apple. A cafe solely devoted to the love of Froot Loops, Cap'n Crunch, Cocoa Puffs and the like, Cereality sounds like the perfect compliment to the diner, pushcart and coffee house options we New Yorkers currently enjoy. That said, one New Yorker -......

It's the day after Christmas, which also means it's a federal holiday, with government offices and schools and the like closed. Which also means it's kind of a slow news day in the area. The Daily News has decided to take the time to announce the new head of the Gambino crime family, Jackie D'Amico, aka Jackie Nose. With the Gotti sons supposedly out of the picture, D'Amico is the new acting head according to......

Over the weekend, the Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street had a fire break out on its 20th floor. Luckily, firefighters were able to control the fire (seven had minor injuries), and the FDNY is still investigating its cause - only maintenance workers were around on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We're glad that the Municipal Building is okay, because it is easily one of the most awesome buildings in the city. Designed by McKim, Mead......

There's a good question over at Apartment Therapy's "good questions" regular feature this week that stood out to us: "How do [NYers] incorporate nature or relaxation into their daily lives?" Finding a way to be comfortable and/or relaxed in the city is a tricky task, one that becomes increasingly important (and harder) as the days get shorter and shorter (damn you depleted daylight!). AT offers some sage advice (regular exercise and a calm home environment)......

Gothamist has a long list of things that fascinate us and one of the odder things on said list is the peek into the human psyche provided by security checkpoints (specifically the items they turn up). Luckily we're not the only ones. Sometimes it seems a week doesn't go by without a look at things turning up in airports or train stations showing up in one paper or another. But normally those stories focus......

According to the latest U.S. Census data, Manhattan residents have the highest average income in the country - a sweet $73,000. But then when you realize the average is seriously skewed because of all the bankers, lawyers, celebrities, trust fund babies, and the like, and you start thinking, "Damn, when is my ship going to come in?" And then when you factor in the crazy Manhattan housing costs (see Curbed) and other cost of living......

In the wake of the London blasts, Mayor Bloomberg took the subway after arriving from Singapore, in an effort to show New Yorkers that mass transit was safe. Today, there is supposedly at least one police officer on each train (no word on whether they can pass between cars), as security overall has been stepped up all over the region and country. Helicopters are flying above, bomb-sniffing dogs are on patrol and machines guns......