How much for a five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minute-long lease? That's the million dollar question now that the Tompkins Square-adjacent space where Life Cafe used to live is up for rent. The Alphabet City cafe that will forever be associated with the Jonathan Larson musical RENT closed indefinitely back in September citing building repairs. more ›

Mayor Bloomberg's announcement that he would reduce the number of parking permits for civil servants by 20% has annoyed yet another group. Joining police officers, fire fighters, and other emergency workers are teachers. more ›

Okay, maybe pets aren't so into the holidays, except when it comes to scraps that fall to the floor or the prospect of a new chew toy. But that doesn't mean that pet owners aren't enthusiastic about projecting the spirit of the season onto Fido and Fluffy. more ›

Artist Phil Kline has brought us an Unsilent Night every year since 1992. He describes his experiment as an "outdoor ambient music piece for an infinite number of boomboxes. It’s like a Christmas caroling party except that we don’t sing, but rather carry the music, each of us playing a separate track that is a voice in the piece." more ›

It's a Halloween Hump Day! We will have more details about the Halloween Parade and other events in the city later, but we thought we'd point you to It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown videos on Youtube (part 1, 2, 3), in case you missed ABC's airing last night. You can also get it on DVD, and there's also the book It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: The Making of a Television Classic. more ›

The annual Tompkins Square Park Halloween dog parade was yesterday, and the pups were out in their costumed best! more ›

The Critical Mass Halloween Ride is tonight! If you go, get some good pictures! more ›

Saturday night’s Vendy Awards ended in victory for “Dosa Man” Thiru Kumar, the all-vegan, South Indian crêpe vendor of Washington Square South who had previously taken the runner-up title for the last two years. At the awards ceremony capping off a 5 hour eat-a-thon, Kumar was presented with the silver “Vendy” trophy by last year’s winner Samiul Haque Noor, from Sammy’s Halal. more ›

Talk about joy -- over 300 sakes will be poured at the largest sake tasting in the United States, coming our way tonight. Over 100 of them are generally not available outside Japan and about 150 are silver and gold award winners in the National Sake Appraisal that takes place each year. Never fear, there will be appetizers to soak it all up, from the likes of Bao Noodles, Bond St, EN Japanese Brasserie, 15 East, Megu, Sakagura, Tocqueville, Woo Lae Oak, wd-50, and more. There's also a sake info desk where an expert will be able to answer all of your burning sake questions. 6 - 9 p.m., the Puck Building, 295 Lafayette between East Houston and Prince Streets. Tickets are $75 in advance and $90 at the door. For more info or to make reservations, call 212-799-7243, or visit joyofsake.com. more ›

THEATER: The fall theater season gets curiouser and curiouser with the start of The Alice in Wonderland Puppet Festival at HERE. (The festival, which is not recommended for children under twelve, will feature a tea party after every show.) Tonight curiouser & curiouser fuses text from Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll’s diary entries and his muse Alice Liddell’s memoirs to try to decipher what destroyed their unique friendship. - John Del Signore more ›

You nominated your favorites and now the finalists have been revealed: more ›

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! more ›

MUSIC: Scottish indie sensations Camera Obscura bring their pop and their rock to the Seaport tonight. They're joined by The Last Town Chorus. After that, there's only one more show down there this season! more ›

THEATER: The annual Soho Think Tank Ice Factory, arguably New York’s most impeccably curated theater festival, has been hosting an exhilarating array of new shows every weekend since July 4th . Starting tonight you can sink your teeth into Vampire University, in which “a struggling vampire family descends on an evangelical college in the Midwest, the dad’s mid-life crisis of immortality triggers a desire to come back to life and the gulf between first and second generations vampires has never seemed greater.” Scored to live Theremin! John Del Signore more ›

READING: Check out today's interviewee, Peter Yarrow, tonight at Barnes and Noble where he'll be performing and signing the recently published Puff, the Magic Dragon book. C'mon, you know you've always wanted to hear that song live! more ›

MOVIE: It's certainly not the kind of night for an outdoor movie, so we suggest sitting in the cool a/c and watching the 1978 classic Dawn of the Dead. "Gone is the possibility of mankind’s dominance in this sequel to Night of the Living Dead; the zombies are in control now, with a group of AWOL soldiers and TV producers on the run from the staggering hordes. A deserted shopping mall offers a safe hideout, as well as the setup for Romero’s savage satire on consumer culture." The early screening will be introduced by producer Richard Rubenstein, more info here. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a possible grenade is noticed and reported on 33rd Ave. in Queens, an armed robbery on East 61st St. in Manhattan, and a carjacking on 133rd St. and Neptune Ave. in Brooklyn.
• City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is employing the celebrity skills of Matt Dillon to help save St. Brigid's Church in the East Village.
• Eastbay is marketing Converse All-Star high tops that appear pre-worn and fairly dingy as the "Ramones All-Star Hi". We would've gone with "Ramones Rock 'n' Roll Hi Tops," but that's just us.
• Perhaps realizing that publicity trumps dignity any day in her line of work, Angelina Jolie has rescinded demands that interviewers sign a contract restricting them from asking about her personal life. She even offered a paparazzo a lift in her car when the bike-riding photographer popped a flat!
• Students at private high-priced elite NYC high schools are dropping the club drug "Foxy" and paying to be driven around in a school bus and treated like babies in the phenomena known as "Sindergarten".
• Not even the actors in the cast of "The Sopranos" know what the seemingly anti-climactic ending of the HBO series was supposed to signify.
• Drug users are still shooting up in Tompkins Square Park, and a local organization is providing users with the anti-opioid Narcan to save the lives of people who OD.
• A 45-year-old homeless man was injured when a falling light pole struck him in the head outside the main branch of the New York Public Library at 42nd St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan.

It's back to the Upper East Side dog run fight: Remember how dog owners are battling over a future 6,200 square foot (!) dog run on the Upper East Side, because tiny dog owners want a separate space for their petite pooches while large dog owners want a continuous space? The Parks Department has decided to put up a temporary fence (1,200 square feet for the small dogs, 5,000 for the big) to see how things go, but New York magazine reveals results of a dog census.

Lori Light, owner of a nine-pound Maltese named Rupert, has taken a dog census of 103 buildings near the park. The result (small dogs: 1,148; big dogs: 328) shows, she says, that “78 percent of the dog population is getting less than 19 percent of the space.”

The cafe’s owner, Nick Bodor, 38, said that for years he was able to clear enough money from Alt to live on. But times have changed on Avenue A, where new boutiques now face a cleaned-up version of Tompkins Square Park that includes several playgrounds. more ›

Goodness, Community Board 8 is damned if it does, damned if it doesn't when it comes to plans for a new dog run. Even though a resolution was passed for a waterfront dog run to be created at the East 63rd Street heliport, the Sun reports that small dog owners are clashing with large dog owners over the proposed run. more ›

We received a press release about the closing of yet another establishment in lower Manhattan today. This time it's not a high profile venue like CBGB, but a little vegan bakery on St Marks that is being forced out due to high rent. more ›

To the relief of dog owners and to the dismay of the Juniper Park Civic Association, Queens Supreme Court Judge Peter J. Kelly ruled that off-leash hours for dogs between 9PM and 9AM are allowed, saying that the Parks Commissioner has the power to allow pups to frolic freely. While the Juniper Park Civic Association called the ruling "complete lunacy," Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said, "Tired dogs are good dogs." more ›

Au Revoir Simone is: Heather D'Angelo, Erika Forster and Annie Hart. more ›

Calling J. Jonah Jamison! Animal points out some rubbery impediments to people's daily lives: Artist Jasmine Zimmerman's rubber band installations. There are photographs of the Essex Street subway station entrance, parts of Tompkins Square Park, and other walkways covered with the bands. Animal has her full artist's statement, but here's an excerpt:

The installations alter urban traffic environments, such as crossing staircases or busy sidewalks on the streets of Manhattan, inviting the pedestrian to reinvent their path. They can be very visible or almost completely invisible, depending on how the light hits them, (which changes throughout the evening of course as the sun moves through the sky). more ›

- Yes! Let the discussion on medium rare pork begin. At the very least the dining populous may end up ordering fewer well done pork chops. Hopefully a conversation will follow in the near future about the acceptable light pink hue that properly cooked chicken and turkey breast can have. Get yourself a meat thermometer so you can nail the right temperatures. more ›

Thanks to a suggestion by our beloved publisher Gothamist Weather has recently become addicted to the weird daily weather video from PhearCreative. Usually filmed in Tompkins Square Park, the video features an engaging pre-teen girl presenting the weather forecast along with a series of groan-inducing snarky remarks and jokes. The weirdness is with the snark, as it usually contains references to pop culture, drugs or sex. The pop culture remarks would be fine if they referred to things ten-year olds knew about, but having a little kid make sex and drug jokes is more than a little creepy. more ›

It's hard to believe, but Joey Ramone has been dead for five years. Today is his birthday, and to celebrate and remember him, Ramones super-fans are visiting spots in Queens and Manhattan. Nonsense-NY has the details: more ›

THEATER: Mike Daisey, the versatile, unpredictable monologuist (and onetime Gothamist interviewee), has revealed a lot about his own past and personality over the course of his years of performing and writing. Now, in the last entry of the season at Galapagos' "Evolve" series, he's going after new material -- a select array of "Great Men of Genius" other than himself. Last week he explored the life more ›

ART: The 10th annual Tribeca art walk is this weekend. Toast, the Tribeca Open Artist Studio Tour, is a free, self-guided tour of approximately 100 artists' studios throughout Tribeca. Talk to the artists in their own spaces, and of course - check out their art while you're at it. more ›