As Grub Street and others reported yesterday, a letter written last Thursday by Senator Chuck Schumer to Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Friedman may have prevented the forcible closure of the Red Hook Ball Field food vendors this past weekend. While this seems to be a small victory for the food purveyors, doubt remains whether the operating season for the newly food safety-certified vendors will end just after Labor Day, or at the end of October, the date observed by the vendors for the last few decades. more ›

"Let me preface this with some full-on full disclosure. I love Maureen Dowd. I love her not just for her columns and their brash, fearless intelligence. I also love her for being a woman in a man’s world, where even at her liberal Gray Lady’s office of eight columnists and one public editor, she is the only woman. I love her for knowing how to be sexy, smart, and every shade of the spectrum between the two. more ›

One bar owner complains that pre-smoking ban, a person could drink and smoke at his bar for 6 hours. Now a person will drink for just (JUST) 4, and then smoke for 2 hours. Which might be an interesting twist in the smoking ban: You may be more sober at the end of the night, thus making less rash decisions to drunken dial that idiot who said he was going to call you after your last date but now it's been a week and where the hell is that phone call. You'll still be getting lung cancer, emphysema, and all other smoking-related illnesses, but hey, you only live once and you might as well have your dignity intact by not drunken dialing. more ›