The misty drizzle of this morning has given way to a bit of sunshine early this afternoon. It may get a couple degrees warmer this afternoon, with the thermometer topping out around 75 if we're lucky. That's about six degrees warmer than normal. There may be a bit of fog again tonight. The fog won't stop tomorrow from heating up, however. The jet stream is switching from a mostly west-to-east flow pattern to a......

CYHSY album pre-released While Gothamist's initial reactions to the album are mostly mixed amongst the staff, one of the most discussed and intriguing points so far is the sound quality of the opening and title track, "Some Loud Thunder." Quite frankly, it sounds like it was streamed off a myspace page at 16kbps and rerecorded onto a used blank tape. This was however, 100% intentional, so they say. Some sort of digital postmodern homage to......

Gothamist doesn't make it out to Long Island very often, but last Saturday we went to Adventureland in Farmingdale to help judge Long Island's best pizza. The nominees were submitted and voted on by users of LongIsland.com with the top five vote-getters participating in the finals on Saturday. The different types of pizza that the judges sampled were regular, Sicilian, marinara, grandma, and specialty. While a marinara pizza may be self explanatory (it's all......

A woman is suing the posh John Barrett salon for $150,000 over "considerable hair damage." But ladies who lunch, don't worry - it wasn't John Barrett or any of his regular hairstylists who gave the woman a "fright wig" style hairdo. The customer, Maria Torres, who works for the Department of Housing, had a hair treatment with a training program three years ago. And three years later, it's still giving her a bad hair day!......

If subway train cars can get wrapped in ads, why not the subway tunnels? At least, that's what the MTA is thinking, as the agency test moving advertisements along tunnel walls. The ads, whose technology the MTA says "is amazing," may be tested this summer, and one provider of the technology is Sub-Media, whose placements have been on the PATH (you PATH riders get all the new technology first!). ANIMAL new york had looked at......

Yesterday, students at John Jay High School on Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn walked out to protest the cell phone ban - and slow security. Cell phones have been banned at public schools since 1987, which is surprising to us, since we know they are sneaked in; students say they are prevented from using them in emergencies. While Gothamist understands the "emergency" argument, we went to high school when they were no cellphones - and calls......

Katie Couric will uproot from the early morning crowds of the Today Show at Rockefeller Center to a few blocks away to Black Rock (the CBS headquarters) by the end of May, as she announced she is leaving NBC to be the CBS Evening News anchor. She made the announcement during the Today show, although it's the only thing people have been talking about for a while. At any rate, it's the big news of......

The always parenthetical (real estate mogul, media tycoon, friend of Regis) Donald Trump is a father again! Trump's wife Melania Knauss Trump gave birth to a boy earlier today after eight hours of labor. Already, the newest Trump is on board to help ratings for the fifth season of "The Apprentice". It is only surprising that he waited a full twenty minutes before going to the press, but no word if the baby is yooge.......

The annual march of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus elephants from Queens, through the Midtown Tunnel, and westward towards Madison Square Garden is set for 12:01AM on Tuesday, March 21 (that means it's 2 minutes after 11:59PM on Monday night - Gothamist is just spelling it out because we get confused about those thigns). The circus starts an almost four week stand at the Garden on Thursday, March 23, and tickets are......

It's Oscar Night and Gothamist is here. Tonight, it'll be a joint effort, from our resident film guru Karen Wilson and our resident Oscar freak Jen Chung. We hope you weigh in with what you think! KW: I have my popcorn, my diet coke -- I am ready for the spectacle and the excess. JC: ALL RIGHT! I just took extra Vitamin C - I'm waiting for some food delivery. 6:36PM Isaac Mizrahi has NOT......

Due to interest from brides (bridezillas?), the US Postal Service created new stamps for wedding invitations: Doves in a loose, lacey pattern in pastel green and purple. And the NY Times says that "nearly all" of the 10,000 stamps issued last Wednesday were purchased at Kleinfeld on West 20th Street! While Gothamist understands the need to have something pretty-pretty for a wedding invite, but they are somewhat boring. We're fans of using the USPS's other......

While Gothamist first had Ethiopian food several years ago at Meskerem, our most vivid memory of Ethiopian has to be Ben Stiller eating it in Along Came Polly (yeah, we rent every new release on Netflix no matter how bad). Over the weekend, we went to Ghenet with a bunch of other people, which is perfect if you're eating Ethiopian. We ordered plenty of food, which came with a couple of plates of injera.......

Earlier in the week Gothamist was despairing that the weather had grown too boring. Not any more! The uncertain weekend forecast of light snow this weekend rapidly changed into a more certain forecast of a substantial snowstorm. The National Weather Service has issued a Blizzard Watch for tomorrow afternoon into Sunday morning. Conditions are set for a classic nor'easter to form off the coast during the day tomorrow. The counter-clockwise circulatioin of the storm will......

Yesterday's Chinese New Year Parade brought out revelers of all colors - and species. As you can see from various photographs, dogs were celebrated, this being their year and all. While Gothamist loved seeing dogs wearing traditional Chinese dress (just $25.99!), we wonder if dogs really like to wear dresses and jackets like this. If any dog owners have put a qi pao on their dog, let us know, because it seems difficult. And......

With the Oscar nominations announced this week, you can expect much of the box office traffic to be people trying to cross films off of their list that they are just now realizing are "important." However, the new releases keep a coming and the New York repertory houses are programming away, so there's loads of good flicks to check out this weekend. In the wide releases category this week, Black Hollywood's new Meg Ryan, Sanaa......

Soft serve lovers rejoice, a compromise on the the Mr. Softee jingle has been reached. The proposed reforms last year to the city's noise code by Mayor Bloomberg called for Mr. Softee to be muted. No more jingle at all hours, no more jingle at all. The compromise reached by the City Council only calls for the jingle to be stopped when the ice cream truck is stopped. Other parts of Bloomberg's noise crackdown seem......

While Gothamist rarely ventures west of the Hudson (Hoboken excluded) the current bear hunt in Vernon, NJ caught our attention. In an attempt to thin out New Jersey's ursine overpopulation, a 6-day hunting season began today which brought out nearly 5,000 hunters to the state's northwest. As in 2003, animal rights groups attempted to block the event, to little success. Although we're not thrilled about the event, we're at least relieved that the hunters......

Oh, dear. While Gothamist admits to being bemused by rapper DMX's various run-ins with the law and antics at the Queens court house where he's facing charges of violating a previous sentence (when he crashed through a gate at JFK Airport), this is too much. He was almost three hours late for his latest sentencing hearing yesterday, so the judge issued an arrest warrant for him. When he finally showed up, he was asked to......

After years of teasing, the film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are is finally moving forward. The NYTimes reports that Being John Malkovich's Spike Jonze (called “the strangest little bird” by author Maurice Sendak), is set to direct the “odd” screenplay he wrote with Dave Eggers for Tom Hanks’ production company. So far, the film will extend beyond the children’s classic simple plot to delve into Max’s journey home (semi-minor change: Max escapes......

Wow, Apple puts U2 on an iPod and all of a sudden, U.S. politicans want a piece of the Irishmen! The New York Times says that the globally conscious band is "distancing" itself from campaign fundraising, as Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Rick Santorum are both planning fundraising events tied to U2 concerts. According to the article, in response to a report from NewsMax about Bono "teaming up" with Santorum, Bono's Debt AIDS Trade Africa......

There's a great article about the wonderful retail space, Emerge NYC, at 65 Bleecker Street, in the NY Times. While Gothamist has taken into wandering into Emerge NYC during our lunch hour, ooh-ing and aah-ing over hot messenger bags, delicate earrings and cool clothes from young designers. Started by Nicholas Petrou, who created The Market NYC, which is at 268 Mulberry Street and most people call "The Young Designers' Market," it allows new talent to......

A few things to think about on a warm Saturday night: -The icy man, bringer of shaved ice and sugar syrup on hot sticky days, is an urban staple. Mr. Softee is nice and all but he just doesn't have the same charm as the icy man (though he does have that fun truck). With that in mind we were interested to read about the strange legal troubles that can befall an unlicensed icy man.......

Gothamist has a pretty standard taxi routine: get in the cab, say our destination, repeat our destination, repeat our destination a third time (we sometimes speakabitquickly), roll down the windows because the AC is off or sucks, wait, pay and tip the driver, get out. Occasionally we'll get into a conversation with the driver of the standard "where are you from" or "how's traffic" variety but most often we get too absorbed in looking......

As summer starts to laze its way to a close (can you believe that some kids are already going back to school?) Gothamist finds that our thoughts, and the A train, keep taking us back to Rockaway. But wouldn't it be nice if going to the beach didn't automatically require an hour-long train trip? What if you could just hop onto a boat to get there (á la the Staten Island Ferry)? Last week......

Police stopped a car that was speeding on the Henry Hudson Parkway at around 2AM. The Mercedes then sped away as the police went to check the driver's license, only for the car to crash into a wall and explode! Who knows what the driver, who died at the hospital, was trying to flee from, but turning the car into a fireball was probably the last thing he or she was thinking. And in another......

While Gothamist has some reservations about single-sex education, mostly in regards to the all-boys model, we are totally interested to find out how New York City's first public all-girls school works out. Opening its doors in September within P.S. 15 (on E. Fourth) Girls Prep is one of the 16 new charter schools starting up this year and is still accepting applications for a limited number of spots. Not only will the lucky girls who......

Yesterday, the New York Post reported that the Yankees and Mets had preliminary discussions about swapping right fielders, Gary Sheffield for Mike Cameron. While the trade has since been taken off the table, Sheffield took it a step further during an interview with Mike and the Mad Dog yesterday afternoon: "I made a lot of concessions to come here. And I'll make it clear: If I have to go somewhere else, a lot of things......

Mayor Bloomberg is lucky that New York City has a ton of sports teams in the area, because now the Mets are part of the city's plan to win the 2012 Olympics, with a new Shea Stadium as the centerpiece of the plan. And Mets fans and Queens residents, don't worry: The Mayor is still lukewarm about your team and borough, saying, "This was not our first choice. But when you don't get your......

In a shocking move, Infinity Radio has dumped oldies from their stalwart station WCBS FM 101.1. Out with "The Greatest Hits of All Time" and in with Jack FM which is "the best songs from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, right up through today." So long Harry Harrison, Ron Lundie, and Cousin Brucie. The Daily News reports that they ended the oldies format with Frank Sinatra's "Summer Wind" and entered the Jack era with "Fight for......

While Gothamist greatly enjoyed Michael Slackman's NY Times article about fringe NYC politics, because it shed some light on the emerging power of independents and the fascinating background of co-founder Dr. Fred Newman, we decided we loved it most for the 1990 photograph by Angel Franco where you can see a very fat Reverend Al Sharpton. Earlier this year, the NY Times talked to the Reverend Al about his diet and even had photos of......