Results tagged “watts”

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on East 169th St. and Franklin Ave. in the Bronx, an aircraft emergency at Laguardia in Queens, and a power outage on Laconia Ave. in the Bronx.
• The suit about seizing private property for another private owner in the name of public gain will move to the Supreme Court after a 3-judge panel ruled that Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards eminent domain actions were O.K. with them.
• Some subway graffiti suggesting who the real Cloverfield monster is.

Last night, the G'Day USA Australia Ball was held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, concluding Australia Week festivities. But the week held sadness, after Australian actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his Soho apartment on Tuesday. At the ball, Australian Counsel-General John Olsen read an unexpected letter from Ledger's father Kim:

"Heath is, and always will be, an Australian.

Continue reading "Father Remembers Heath Ledger "With His Skateboard, a Canvas Bag and His Beanie""

Disinformation is not an easy show to describe, which is a good thing. The first to note is that Reggie Watts, the show’s mad theatrical scientist with Sideshow Bob hair, is one wickedly funny man. In Disinformation he’s supported by a quartet of tireless performers as he coaxes the absurdity out of the corporate bromides, 2012 eschatology, gangsta rap posturing, and commercialized sex that litter the post-modern landscape. Watts prods his subjects obliquely while relating some wildly fantastic stories about secret underground grottos and science fiction camouflage suits like those found in Predator. Mixed with these hilarious monologues, he’s produced a series of bemusing promotional videos for a friendly/sinister corporation called Carnaidesai, a company with a vague purpose but one portentous mission statement: “There’s not much future left, but we’re using all of it!”

ART: Last night the works of ex-Guided By Voices frontman Robbert Pollard were unveiled at an invite-only opening, and today it's a free-for-all. Come by and check out his debut art exhibit, which "will consist of more than 50 collages that date from 1990 through 2007. Using elements from 1950's -70's era magazines, pamphlets and obscure pictoral paperbacks as his primary tools, he portrays allegorical personas and hallucinogenic-type environments to create small, almost random synapses...

A safety bar on Coney Island's Polar Express ride broke, causing a 15-year-old girl to be thrown from the ride. Lanique Watts was knocked unconscious (but regained consciousness by the time she got to the hospital), and one witness told the Daily News, "She fell out the car and just rolled down the hill. Everyone started panicking. It looked pretty bad. She was bleeding." She added that a worker had checked all the safety bars before the ride.

MUSIC: Tonight The Ladybug Transistor (who sadly just lost a band member) have their record release show (band pictured at right). Joining them on stage will be Pipas and Alasdair Maclean from The Clientele performing an acoustic set. Buy tickets here.

EVENT: What do Bob Dylan and the Brooklyn Bridge have in common? They both get a year older today! Bob turns 66 and the Bridge turns 124. To help celebrate the latter, there's a bike ride across the structure. There will also be cake and historical stories to keep you physically and mentally satiated.

We caught Pete and J earlier this year at the Living Room and their sound fit and filled the space perfectly. They put their own twist on folk rock that you can check out this Saturday when they play the venue again. But first, get to know your friendly neighborhood troubadours...

Coffee Shop was closed for a few days when the Department of Health tallied up 102 points of violations - 28 or more requires a closure - at the restaurant, finding "Cooked or prepared food is cross-contaminated" and issues with plumbing among the concerns. The Union Square eatery posted a snippy sign explaining the closing, and owner Charles Milite went to the NY Times and said Coffee Shop was "caught in the cross hairs of this unfortunate Taco Bell Situation," since Coffee Shop had operated for 17 years without incident. And he promised the restaurant would reopen yesterday.

7:06PM First thoughts: Gael Garcia Bernal is so cute. Ryan Seacrest is an idiot, as are Joan and Melissa Rivers. But we want to know what Jennifer Lopez is wearing! (It turns out to be Marchesa.)

The advent of home urinals means more water conservation and less piss on the floor. It makes perfect sense; why shouldn't every bathroom have one? But according to a Times article, the fixture has leaped straight from commercial men's rooms into luxury master suites, bypassing mass-market budgets for the moment. High-end manufacturers and one twisted porcelain artist from San Francisco have begun releasing a steady flow of new residential urinal designs over the past few years.

The Villager is reporting that the Greenwich Village Society of Historic Preservation last week submitted a report calling for the creation of a South Village Historic District. Comprised of 38 blocks and about 800 buildings, it would be the city’s first tenement-based district.

The food world can be a rough place. Restaurants and markets come and go with the blink of an eye -- your favorite place can be there one minute and belly up the next. This week, we've got good news and bad news, take your pick.

JC: ALL RIGHT! I just took extra Vitamin C - I'm waiting for some food delivery.

New Feature Alert! In a city filled with music, bands and venues we sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed and underenthused. So here's the deal, we are going to write about one NYC band each week. We want to introduce you to some new music that we've heard, and we want you to introduce us to some new music as well (see end of post). We're all listening through cluttered ears, but that's only because we know there's something worth listening to out there.

The obvious 800-pound, 2000-pound or even 20-ton gorilla in the room is anyway. Just brave the crowds and get it over with already.

The big budget spectacle, King Kong, will open in two weeks, and while most of the trailers seem to play up a fight with Godzilla and lots of jungle scenes (Naomi Watts - hot and sweaty!), part of the story does more to New York. Now, director Peter Jackson decided not to film in NYC because finding 1933 New York in today's New York is difficult. (Gothamist sorta buys that, but we actually believe that once you've created Middle Earth, then you've got a god complex.) The NY Post reports at what the King Kong New York, part model, part computer generated, includes:

Depression-era big town, Model T Fords roll through intersections of red and green streetlights (no yellow), blasting that wheezy dying-duck horn and narrowly missing a swarm of jaywalkers.

Continue reading "King Kongs New York"

Scott Coffey, Director, Ellie Parker

How was last night's Village Halloween Parade? Glenn Hall III, all of 10 years old and representing New Orleans, led revelers in a celebration along Sixth Avenue. The police at Watts Street made sure only those with costumes joined the parade. rion took this great photograph above; check out her others here. And here are photographs on Flickr tagged with "halloween parade" and "nyc" - add links to yours in comments.

We're not sure how we missed this, but a few days ago the boys at Low Culture caught a couple of pictures of what is possibly the most inexplicable window display we've ever seen in New York City (and that's really saying something!) We all know that the Apple brand has long been strong on white power; they've released white laptops, iPods, and computer towers for years now. What we did not suspect was how seriously they took this commitment... or how horrifyingly deep it ran! Sadly, our muckraking excitement was deflated when we tracked down the book on Amazon and read the description:

The first trailer for Peter Jackson’s King Kong finally hit the internet, featuring Adrien Brody, a digital King Kong and Naomi Watts as his love interest, a few Jurassic Park leftovers, and Jack Black (who is so hard to take seriously). We’re quite optimistic LOTR’s Jackson can pull off an updated version of Hollywood classic and so far, Jackson insists he's refrained from reinventing the storyline: “Our story follows the same structure. It starts in New York, goes to Skull Island, and there are dinosaurs on the island. Then it comes back to New York and there's the Empire State Building and the biplanes and the whole thing."

When you look at the big picture the weather and climate of the Earth is quite simple. Energy in the form of light comes from the Sun. When it arrives at the Earth sunlight is either reflected back to space or or absorbed by the oceans, land, and plants. All that absorbed energy eventually makes its way back to space. Because the absorbed and emitted energy varies over the surface of the earth there a places with an excess of energy and places with a deficit energy. Mother Nature doesn't like energy excesses or deficits and tries to balance out those differences by putting the atmosphere and ocean into motion. That is, we get weather and climate.

New Yorkology helps solidify the list of Manhattan bars you can smoke in! NYology asked the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (someday, Gothamist will figure out what mental hygiene means because we know that we can't wash our brains) to compile the list, and here are six more bars, added to Karma Lounge in the East Village and cigar bar Club Macanudo on East 63rd that we knew about: Carnegie Bar & Books at 156 West 56th Street, Lexington Bar and Books at 1020 Lexington Avenue, Circa Tabac at 32 Watts Street, Kush at 183 Orchard Street, Hudson Bar and Books at 636 Hudson Street, and Grand Havana Room at 666 Fifth Avenue, 39th Floor. Many of these places are allowed to skirt the smoking ban because they also sell cigars; some charge a "smoking cover" if you don't buy a cigar, because a certain amount of the revenue needs to come from cigar sales. Also, you can smoke in the Campbell Apartment at Grand Central.

"Cheap" doesn’t always come to mind when you're wading through $400 sweaters in Soho, but if you're looking to find bang for your buck, stop in at Mooncake Foods, the anomalous Pan-Asian bistro-diner on Watts Street, for eats that won't swallow up your wallet.

, you can almost hear Hollywood shouting for joy at their windfall. Take a tried and true foreign project, add pretty white stars, shake gently and voila! Box office gold. Which is why the rule of thumb going forward should always be, seek out the foreign original and leave the remakes to the chumps.

The Hollywood Reporter is running a series of articles about how great New York is for film and TV production. One of them, Location report: New York, gives us some interesting information: "The original "L&O" has contributed more than $650 million to the city during 672 weeks of regular production spanning nearly 15 years." Wow! And that's just ONE of the Law & Order shows. Katherine Oliver, the Film, Theatre and Broadcasting Commissioner, says that L&O is a "repeat customer" coming into for permits "every single day." Commissioner Oliver will also help out films that are shooting entirely in the city: "[Stay, an Ewan MacGregor-Naomi Watts film] was a $50 million-budgeted film, and they shot the entire film in New York City," New York film commissioner Katherine Oliver says. "We diverted Manhattan-bound traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge for 10 nights; this is not something easy to do, but the message was that if you're going to spend that kind of money, do the entire project here and employ New Yorkers, we will give you the Brooklyn Bridge." There are you go: You get the Brooklyn Bridge for 10 nights, at a cost of $50 million.

Duncan Watts, Columbia Professor