CONTEST ALERT: Tomorrow night the indie-elite will gather at Terminal 5 for The Plug Awards -- featuring Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, St. Vincent, José Gonzalez, Dizzee Rascal, The Forms, DiVinci and more. Tickets are sold out, so you can either watch the show here, or you can win tickets from us! We're giving away 5 pairs, starting now. Just email GothamistContest@gmail.com and tell us why you want to go. MUSIC: White Williams,......

READING: Jeff Garigliano, Condé Nast Portfolio senior-editor turned author, will be reading from his debut novel titled Dogface. The story follows a rebellious 14-year-old boy who, like so many before him, gets sent off to a camp that specializes in "whipping mixed-up teens back into shape". 7:30pm // Barnes & Noble [396 Sixth Ave] // Free EVENT: The Secret Science Club is back tonight with the President of New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Dr.......

READING: Our interviewee from yesterday, Adrian Tomine, will be reading tonight at Book Court. The graphic novelist not only has his work in some of the more prestigious rags, he's also got a full length graphic novel, titled Shortcomings. 7pm // Book Court [163 Court St, Cobble Hill] // Free At a very different reading in Manhattan, Chris Matthews will be promoting his new political memoir Life's a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About......

THEATER: Sarah Maxfield, the brains behind theater collective Red Metal Mailbox, brings THROW, the bi-monthly performance series she curates, to The Chocolate Factory in Long Island City. Imbibe cheap beer and vibe new work by Rebecca Davis, Betsy Miller & Dancers, and Tara O'Con. After each experiment, Maxfield moderates an exchange in which each performer interrogates the audience in hopes of culling constructive criticism from the increasingly lubricated crowd. Who’ll be the first to declare,......

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......

EXPLORE: Last call to visit the historic Governors Island this season! Free ferry rides depart hourly right next to the Staten Island Ferry terminal. Sitting 800 yards off the southern tip of Manhattan and about 400 from the Brooklyn waterfront, it isn't often you can get a view of the city and a house like that one to the right all from the same place. All Weekend // Governors Island // More info here READING:......

30 Years of Kino International Film Society of Lincoln Center In the creation of great cinema, a far-thinking and nurturing distributor is almost as important as the artists they're supporting. This year one of those historically important movie companies, Kino International turns 30 years old and in celebration of their fine work over the years the Film Society is showing two weeks worth of films all originally released by Kino. The movies featured in the......

The Debate Society is a taut little theater triad comprised of director Oliver Butler and wizardly actors Paul Thureen and Hannah Bos. Their 2006 production, The Snow Hen, took a Norwegian folk tale about an abandoned girl and wove it into a charmingly dark tapestry of melancholy and mystique. Now they’re back at the Ontological Theater (Richard Foreman’s regular digs) with The Eaten Heart, an enchanting mood-play very loosely inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th Century......

As we get closer to the kick-off of the much anticipated High Line Festival, let's take a closer look at what's to come, and at the man who co-founded and curated the whole thing, David Bowie. The eleven days of music, film, art and comedy starts Wednesday at Radio City Music Hall. Who else to play the first event at the inaugural festival than Bowie-beloved Arcade Fire? Pair 'em up with Brooklyn's The National and......

SCIENCE: It's Secret Science Club night again at Union Hall. This week Gerry Moore tells us of The Secret Botanical Life of NYC. From the press release: "Is this city nothing but steel and pavement? Nein! We’re gushing with biodiversity. Put a nosegay in your buttonhole, and prepare for FLOWER POWER!" Also: the aromatic cocktails of the night will be "the walloping Planter’s Punch and the deadly Black Dahlia”...smells like a pretty drunk science club!......

Harry Houdini's funeral was held on November 4, 1926, in New York, with over two thousand mourners in attendance. He was buried at the Machpelah Cemetery in Queens where the crest of the Society of American Magicians is inscribed on his grave site. To this day, that Society holds their "Broken Wand" ceremony at the grave site on the anniversary of his death. With a new biography called “The Secret Life of Houdini” that came......

The much anticipated, David Bowie-curated High Line Festival has finally announced a lineup. Upon the announcement of the festival last year, David Bowie said, "I've been particularly excited about seeking out emerging artists and giving them a place in a festival that will also feature some very well-known names." In that vein, we thought there would be some lesser known bands (Todd P-style), and are surprised with the abundance of (very obvious) bigger names: Arcade......

When you were a child, did you ever wish for anything, wish REALLY hard? Did you get it? If not, you must not have been wishing clearly enough. According to “The Secret” and its, dare we say, disciples, if you imagine it will come. Oprah did her own show on the topic, exclaiming, “I've been talking about this for so many years on my show, I just never called it The Secret!” And if Oprah's......

If you come into contact with a $50 or $100 bill, check it carefully! The Secret Service says there's a lot more funny money floating around the NYC-metro area. WNBC has PDFS explaining what to look for on the bills ($50, $100); it's pretty to cool to see the differences. Since the Secret Service is pointing out printing differences, it looks like the paper is pretty close and has that metal strand. We've been stuck......

Fashion and music sometimes go hand in hand (for better or worse), and under the tents at Bryant Park, this doesn't change. Two years ago we found ourselves sitting front row at Cynthia Rowley's show, and as the models started to filter out - The Secret Machines "Nowhere Again" blasted in the air. It fit. Last night, Zooey Deschanel opened Erin Fetherston's runway show, singing "Dream a Little Dream." She then went on to perform......

In 2004 we asked a bunch of New York bloggers to suggest sonic stocking stuffers. This year, we asked New York bloggers, bookers, musicians and more, what they'd give as a gift this holiday season. Here you go...commence shopping! Jack "Skippy" McFadden, Union Hall booker The Isles "Perfumed Lands" Ian Love's self-titled cd Wes Verhoeve, Cross Pollination / The Undisputed Heavyweights A Brief Smile - R.E.S.T. My Brightest Diamond - Bring Me The Workhorse Kevin......

ART: Local artist Jen Dunlap is having an art show tonight. It's called Yeep! Yeep!, so it's sure to be fun. Check out her work here, then head over there to see it all up close, while enjoying some free drinks! 7 to 10pm // Riverfawn [11 Harrison St #1] // Free THEATER: Anne Washburn’s The Internationalist begins previews tonight. Originally presented in 2004, it’s about a young American businessman assigned to an unspecified foreign......

THEATER: Harold Pinter’s taught two-hander, Ashes to Ashes, is running through Wednesday at the intimate Paradise Theatre in the East Village. The cryptic 45 minute one-act examines a refined couple’s quiet life at home, with the usual brutality menacing just beneath the surface. In a previous interview, Pinter blamed the male gender for the cruelty dramatized in his work, insisting that “God was in much better trim when He created women.” - John Del Signore......

This summer there's a series of (expensive) concerts going on at McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn. The site has been closed since 1984, and last year started undergoing renovations. Recently we received the following email from an unhappy local: This pisses me off. Clear Channel paid off the parks department to take over the McCarren Park pool site for a series of 6-10 $30 concerts (+ $14 service fee) this summer. They "improve the......

Tonight San Francisco rockers with the middle class rasp, Two Gallants, come to Bowery Ballroom. We interviewed them last week, and you should really check them out while they're in town. For serious. Opening up for them are Sam Champion (the actual NY weatherman still comes up first in a Google search) and Cold War Kids. Elsewhere in the city, Pela is playing with Project Jenny/Project Jan (at the Delancey). There's already ex-Art Bruter's and......

If New York wasn't the center of the universe already, we'd say the title would go to MySpace. The phenomenon has even inspired a song. The first band to play at our first ever Movable Hype show was The Fresh - which is pretty much composed of one man, John Fulton. Recently, he wrote and recorded a song in homage to MySpace, and today he has finally released a video for that song. A digital......

This week kicks off tonight with Non-fiction night at KGB Bar (85 E. 4th St.) with Harry Brunius reading from Better for All the World : The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity and Cynthia Carr reading from Our Town: Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America. It starts at 7PM and is free. On Thursday night (3/23), 7PM at Barnes and Noble (Broadway at......

PHYSICS: We were REALLY excited when we saw this on FreeNYC..."See the LARGEST TESLA COIL ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN. Feel amazing Electric Mayhem. Feast your eyes on lightning bolts, your ears on the sound of air molecules being zapped, Smell the fresh sent of ozone. Learn a little something about the forgotten genius Nikola Tesla. Join collective:unconscious creative directors Gecko Saccomanno and Jamie Mereness, who is also the master of the high energy physics......

So, it’s August and your shrink has split. Eleven months of listening to you has earned her a few weeks of rest, no? You, unfortunately, don’t get a break from your issues. All we have to offer by way of solace is a book that might make them seem minor by comparison to those of its subject: Dare Wright. The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll is Jean Nathan’s biography of Wright, an alarmingly......

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl (Penguin, 2005) "[W]hat is the taste of New York? To much of the world, it's cheesecake." When Gothamist read that line on page 20 of Ruth Reichl's newest memoir, Garlic and Sapphires, we knew that this was the recipe we wanted to prepare for this week's column. As tempting as some of her other recipes sounded--Roasted Rhubarb, Last-Minute Chocolate Cake, Risotto......

- WTC news: In possibly another sign that the WTC rebuilding totally sucks, the president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Kevin Rampe, has resigned today. NY1 says he'll still serve on the foundation, but this sounds sketchy to us. Additionally, an appeals court threw out a lawsuit against Motorola that relatives of firefighters killed during September 11 brought forth, claiming Motorola's faulty radios caused their deaths. - Identity alert: Computer tapes that held the......

Last night we were told that the Secret Machines were playing a (secret?) show at the Apple Store in Soho at 10pm. We didn't go, and haven't heard a thing about it. Did it happen, was anyone there? We need closure. Other not so secret events at the Apple Store are coming up that also have our interest piqued. Legendary Master of Music Photography: Bob Gruen. Gruen is one of the most well known and......

Here's the question for the day: Should Gothamist even mention sold out shows? There are a few of them this week. Mentioning sold out shows creates an environment where the "haves" are the winners and the "have nots" are the loser--unless the "have nots" turn in sexual favors with exes who thought ahead and bought two tickets. Is it right to pit the winners against the losers? Is it right to pour salt on the......

Nothing to cure the midweek blahs like doing the silly walk to a screening of Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) over at Makor at the Steinhardt Theater (35 W. 67th Street). No matter what ails you, a few sacreligious jokes by Eric Idle, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Michael Palin will fix you up right quick. Poor Brian. He doesn't want to be the messiah. He just wants to join the People's......

The St. Patrick's Day Parade is starting its slushy journey up Fifth Avenue (without gays), but most people are thinking about how the day is a free ticket to drink at 10AM. Gawker has suggestions on what to do this drinky holiday ("Most important: don't even go near McSorley's on 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd. Definitely avoid the lecherous leprechauns on parade up Fifth Avenue."). Gothamist might be sticking with the boring yet shoe-grateful......