The city may be in a fictional hue of black & white in this animated video, but the sights and sounds are all accounted for. Join a tourist as he fights the crowds and experiences many failed attempts at taking the perfect shot of many city attractions. As the creators state, "In a city full of landmarks, there will always be someone to ruin your shot." Indeed.......

Hackers and tourists unite this summer as hackers from around the world track themselves, and others, in NYC. Confused? Terrified? Read on...As part of a social experiment, attendees at a hacker conference in July will be issued badges with electronic tracking devices. Large displays will show in real-time where people go, with whom they associate, for how long and how often. The tracking technology, known as RFID, is fast becoming an unseen part of everyday......

Chashama and Chris Rubino team up to present, "The Center of Something," an exhibit centered around the artist's "take on New York as a destination for both visiting and living." Since Chashama is in Times Square, the exhibit itself will become a temporary tourist attraction itself. But will the locals or the tourists be the ones flocking to it?The exhibit is modeled after the dozens of stores in the neighborhood selling the same inane......

Remember how a few years ago a 19-year-old girl climbed down onto the subway tracks to get her phone and got killed by an oncoming V train? It seems the lesson still hasn’t been learned and commuters are still risking their lives to retrieve dropped objects: Tourist Bijan Rezvani recently explained his reasons for venturing down there to collect his precious iPhone. It's the first time I've had a cool phone that does anything and......

Mark this in your calendars: NYC traffic will be bananas between April 15 and April 20, when Pope Benedict XVI makes his first visit to New York City. Like many tourists to the Big Apple, the pope will visit Ground Zero - the Vatican says that he wants to show "solidarity with those who have died, with their families and with all those who wish an end of violence and in the search of peace."......

REMINDER: Don't forget about the Atlantic Antic Festival, which we wrote all about yesterday. EVENT: The d.u.m.b.o arts center (dac) presents the 11th Annual Art Under the Bridge Festival. The three-day fête takes up 30 blocks bringing together over 1500 visual artists, 250 open studios and offices, and an expected 20,000 attendees. Given much of the music biz in this city has offices in that area, they'll be taking part as well. The Deli Magazine......

A couple of years ago, Bryan Devendorf (drummer for The National) documented the band's trip to SXSW for us. We enjoyed it so much, we asked him to do it again! This time he documented their recent shows with Arcade Fire right here in New York, and even addresses those security guards at Radio City. Related: NYT's article "Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog" Fake Empire.mp3 (from The National's upcoming release, Boxer.) I wake to......

We were just introduced to The Forms music recently, and once we were we immediately booked them for our show in Austin last week. Singer Alex Tween kept a log of his trip for us, which you can read below. Listen: Stravinsky.mp3 3/9 Brooklyn, NY. I reset the trip meter to 0.0 and after the first mile have the thought that there's only 1,956 more to Austin. I am accompanied by pal/tour photographer Andreas, as......

Pela was one of the many New York bands at SXSW last week. They kept a journal of their time there for us (which included bbq, hotel antics and a car crash)...yeehaw! Also check out My Brightest Diamonds's second journal entry for us, here. Listen: Lost to the Lonesome - remix.mp3 Tuesday March 13th It's 5am and we're heading to LaGuardia for a 7am flight. Very tired. We'd all been working nonstop until the night......

One of the Brooklyn-based bands down in Austin for SXSW this week is My Brightest Diamond. Nate from the band has been keeping a tour diary for us, check out his first installment below. SXSW: MUCH BETTER THAN BEING IN IRAQ. Three days before flying out from NY to Austin for the South by Southwest music conference, I had a rather ominous dream. It was the sort of dream you wake up from panicked and......

Two years ago, almost to the day, we started asking New York bands to keep tour diaries for us - a column we now call Tourist. With SXSW coming up next week, we wanted to invite New York bands heading down to Austin to keep a journal of the experience for us. If you're in a band from these parts, and would be interested, contact jencarlson (a) gothamist dot com Bonus points if you have......

In the crossroads of the "Can't Beat 'Em, So Join 'Em" chronicles and the "____ Diner, R.I.P." annals, there's is the Moondance Diner. The NY Sun reports the SoHo fixture will be razed for - you guessed it - luxury condos. But that's not all: Moondance owner Sunil "Sunny" Sharma was originally going to sell the property, but decided to develop it himself with Extell's Gary Barnett and others. Plans for a 66,743 square......

Tourist: New York bands go on tour. They keep a diary. We publish it. Au Revoir Simone spent two weeks in Japan in December. Playing shows, eating macrobiotic meals, hoping the deejay would play Peter Bjorn and John’s ‘Young Folks’ and much much more. Read all about it (and see lots of pictures) below. And on January 11th, catch Au Revoir Simone at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square (for their Upstairs at the......

Yowza! The NY Post reports that a Grand Central "hospitality supervisor" is accused of seducing and harassing male employees. Tourist greeters Filipp Asmolov and Mynor Federico Nunez separately say that they had affairs with boss Mercedes Mercado and when they tried to end them, she threatened them. Here's the Post on Asmolov's suit: At first, the suit said, the strapping Asmolov was receptive when the petite Mercado pressed herself against him in the midday hours......

MUSIC: Love is All takes over the Knitting Factory tonight with not one, but two shows. The early show is with Cause Co-Motion! and Devastations, the later one with Cause Co-Motion! and Tyvek. Choose wisely. Or you could always watch Jared Leo bring his emo wrath upon bloggers, his band plays Roseland tonight. Friday // The Knitting Factory [74 Leonard St] // $13 MORE MUSIC: The Battering Room is putting on a show at the......

Next up in our Tourist series, is The Parker String Quartet, a young classical string quartet that performs in venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center and Wynn Walent. Walent is a New York singer songwriter who recently released his debut album. These two acts recently joined together for a weeklong tour (co-presented by Concert Artists Guild and Kitchen Sink Music). The tour brought classical music into bars and clubs, pairing it up with......

Even though we are way way past school age, we still get a little melancholy at the close of summer. Fortunately, our friends across the -ist network know that the shenanigans don't need to end just because the big yellow buses are back on the roads. So, grab your sunscreen and your favorite hangover cure, as we take a tour of end of summer fun from -ist cities all over the damn place. SFist Tourist......

A few weeks ago we metioned our latest feature, Tourist. Fittingly, the first New York band to write about their tour for us...never even left New York. Heth and Jed are a couple of musicians who you may also call buskers - though they'll bring their gear indoors briefly to play Mo Pitkins on August 30th (see full details after the jump), you've probably seen them rocking underground at some point. Their shows around the......

We're starting a new feature here called Tour-ist. Get it? Okay, let us explain. A New York band hits the road for a tour. They keep a tour diary for us. We post it here, there may or may not be YouTube videos from the road included, and we call it Tour-ist. Does that make more sense? We have some bands lined up for the Fall already, but would love some more, so if you're......

In all the excitement of a three-day weekend we plum forgot that this past Friday was the last Friday of the month. And you know what that means don't you? Time for the police to go out and give tickets willy-nilly to every other person they see on a bicycle. Mike over at Bike Blog wasn't able to attend this months Critical Mass either, but he still managed to pull together a report on......

June 3 -- June 9: Germany: a SENSE-sational Experience Okay, the name leaves something to be desired, but you can still sample a variety of German foods and beverages and view cooking demonstrations by chefs at Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall every day from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Red cabbage and spätzle? But, of course. Gummi bears? Got 'em. The event is sponsored by the German Agricultural Marketing Board, the German National Tourist Office, the German......

Here it is, our last piece of SXSW coverage. The warm sun has snuck out of our skin and we can barely taste the frozen avocado margaritas anymore, so for anything Austin related in the future you'll have to go here. The Cloud Room let you read all about their experience at South By, and now The National, a band we've recently been listening to more and more, opens up their diary to you. They......

Before heading down to Austin we asked a couple of New York bands if they could keep a tour diary of their experiences at SXSW for us. We ran into J, singer of Brooklyn band The Cloud Room, at the party on Friday night and he showed us some folded up papers filled with black ink scribblings. Below is what filled up those papers by the end of the weekend: Thursday We arrived around 10pm.......

Again, after a beautiful weekend, New Yorkers wake up to terror news, it's just that today it seems terrorists had been Washington > Security: Tourist Copters in New York City a Terror Target" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/politics/09terror.html?hp">targetting tourist helicopters and limousines to use as ways to attack the city. A number of arrests and raids in Britain and Pakistan lead intelligence officials to believe this, though the NY Times says that helicopter companies in NYC hadn't heard anything.......

The Times gave a little insight into the history of the Egg Cream, plus some of the seedier, corrupt power plays to be egg cream (and assorted accessories) king of New York. The article says the egg cream was born on the Lower East Side, which surprised Gothamist because for some reason, we'd always assumed it was born in Brooklyn. Perhaps it was perfected in Brooklyn. An Egg Cream recipe from Chowhound with this warning:......

- Tourist muggings of late in the city. - Gothamist on the Angelika and art house moviegoing. - Blogs aren't alternative cool anymore? Damn it all. - Arguably the grossest post ever on Gothamist: Ladies and their boyfriends' zits. - Iguanas on the loose in Brooklyn! - Inside the apartment of Gizmodo. - One blogger's trials of cooking like Julia Child. - Alfred Hitchcock ain't alive, but Google celebrates his birthday. - Why are the......

Either the Post is trying to rile people up even more or there really is a "Tourist Mugger" on the loose. A woman was assaulted while walking on West 93rd Street at 11AM Saturday morning. The Long Island woman was alone when her head was bashed, but it was 11AM. The attacker took $20 from her purse. The Post says police are determining whether there is any connection to last week's attempted mugging on a......