The incoming president of the Obesity Society has resigned amidst controversy surrounding his work on behalf of the restaurant industry. Last month Dr. David B. Allison (pictured), a professor of biostatistics and nutrition at the University of Alabama, drew fire from colleagues when he submitted an affidavit questioning the city’s new rules requiring chain restaurants to prominently display calorie information on their menus. The Obesity Society supports the requirement, which will go into effect at......

If you’re the type of parent who wears a Ramones T-shirt to a P.T.A. meeting, the idea of taking your kids to some sappy Christmas show is probably abhorrent; you wouldn’t be caught dead at Radio City’s spectacular and schlepping into Times Square to spend a fortune on “Grinch” is unthinkable. But if you’d still like to catch a holiday show with the whole family, there’s a limited-time-only alternative in the heart of the......

Love 'em or hate 'em, hipsters have made their way into a real-life bounded book that will be available for purchase next spring. What does Generation Hipster look like in black & white? It ain't pretty. 6 Sick Hipsters, by Rayo Casablanca, follows "Williamsburg's reigning elite" and brings some noir to the neighborhood...as well as a feral baboon. The press release tells us a bit of what we can expect: "Lately someone has been laying......

"I feel I’m losing my mind. I wish I knew what was the matter with me. It would be better to die than go on feeling this way." - Anthony Marshall's recollection of what his mother Brooke Astor said in a 2000 letter Is there a smoking letter in the battle over recently deceased philanthropist and New York City social fixture Broke Astor? As her son Anthony Marshall and her court-appointed guardians battle over whether......

35-year-old Alison Pace has made a career out of thoughtful chick lit novels set in New York, where man's best friend (dogs), not girls' (diamonds), play the key role. From dogs getting fed at the dinner table and treated, literally, like family, to DB Sweeney, the dachsund (named after the actor) companion of her third and latest novel, Through Thick and Thin, who captivates lonely restaurant critic Meredith and changes her priorities, Pace makes pets......

Twenty-three-year-old police officer Russel Timoshenko died yesterday at King County Hospital, five days after being shot twice in the face during a Monday traffic stop in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Doctors took him off life support after finding he had no brain activity yesterday afternoon. KCH director of trauma service and surgical critical care, Dr. Robert Kurtz, was visibly upset as he reported Timoshenko's death. From Newsday:Kurtz, who choked up, said the case "affected us emotionally......

Researchers at Purdue University released a simulation of a plane crashing into World Trade Center, which shows that fireproofing material was stripped from the building as the planes crashed into them. Professor Christoph Hoffman told the AP, "One thing it does point out... is the absolute essential nature of fireproofing steel structures. This is something that wasn't done originally in the World Trade Center when it was built. It wasn't code at that time."......

The new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee says the NYPD thinks it's the NPD - the National Police Department. The Daily News reports that Democratic Mississippi representative Bennie Thompson is critical of the NYPD's tactics that stretch into other jurisdictions. He told the News, "While I understand that chasing down leads in other locales might help keep the city safe, I emphasized that the NYPD is not the FBI, that it does......

If you can read this right now, you don't need me to explain blogs. These days everyone has them, from preteens to political figures. Personally, I came to the party a little late. I didn't own a computer until the year 2000 and I never even considered blogging...that is until I had something I really wanted to talk about. When my husband and I were excitedly awaiting our first child, we wanted to find a......

The pseudonymous Lux Nightmare burst onto the alt porn scene as a college student at Columbia where she launched the naked-guy-and-girl site That Strange Girl, featuring stills and video of herself and numerous other models who looked like they could be her fellow classmates. At a time when Suicide Girls and Burning Angel were coming to prominence, That Strange Girl (who, full disclosure, this interviewer posed for) was a homegrown, indie entry in the genre.......

Bizarre! Representative Vito Fossella admitted that his brother John was in fact driving a car that almost hit two Asian couples. The incident is extremely bizarre. Yesterday, the Daily News reported that two couples had purchased some chrysanthemums at a florist on Richmond Road in Staten Island last Saturday. A blue Mazda almost hit them, and then the driver got out of the car, chasing the couples with a baseball bat. But the man stopped......

For the past few months, the Queens Museum of Art has been exhibiting Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao's photographs of Queens life around the 7 train in the show, Habitat 7. Like river valleys that flowed through and gave birth to early civilizations, the IRT 7 Train of the New York City Subway system serves as the conduit that connects many ethnically diverse neighborhoods in northwest Queens to the heart of Manhattan. While I’ve been living......

Charlie Todd wrote in to say that the last of the people arrested in January's No Pants 2006 subway ride had her case dismissed yesterday. Apparently "Agent Omega" overslept the court date last month, so it took a little longer for her to get cleared. Charlie scanned in the dismissal order-- it contains some amusing judicial prose: The second question then becomes, what was Respondent wearing? Respondent verbally and physically described the bottom she......

A few times a week, Gothamist publishes music reviews by our contributor Jeff Baum. The opinions below belong entirely to the author. The Morning After Girls seem able to adapt to whatever situation they are put in. A few days after CMJ last fall, Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre was supposed to play a solo acoustic show at Pianos with them. As was fairly well documented, Anton acted as a parody of himself......

It's time for...Unsolved Mysteries of the Subway! Let's tackle subway station dirtiness first: Emily at Amy's Robot happened to spy some vomit on the stairs at the 42nd Street A/C/E station on February 3...and then she still saw it there on February 10. So she called 311 - cut to February 13 and her email to the MTA:However, yesterday, February 13, I saw that the vomit (now indelibly dried to the staircase) is still there.......

Stacey Blume, Designer/Owner Blume...

Jon Bloostein, Owner Heartland Brewery and Spanky's BBQ...

Jessi Klein, Writer/Comedian...

My office has asked everyone to contribute a small gift to a "holiday grab bag" for the office party. While I'm not against the idea of a little holiday cheer, we're limited to spending $10 and it seems like all you can get for that amount is disposable, impractical junk. I hate the idea of buying junk just for the sake of buying junk, so how can I stretch my $10 into something, I......

Regina Schrambling, Food Writer...

Craig Wedren, Musician...

Like many freelancers, I am without health insurance. The last time I had to see a doctor I ended up in the emergency room for something that I could have seen a regular doctor for but I didn't know where to go and it was a Saturday. Anyhow, for the last few days, I've been having pretty bad pains on my lower left abdomen but not bad enough to warrant a trip to the ER.......

I've been working in a small office environment with this beautiful, talented woman for the past year and a half. While I've always had a crush on her, I have never voiced anything because she has been in a relationship with the bassist in her band. Last week, she told me that the band is "looking for a new bassist because of problems" and asked me to go to a movie on Friday night with......

Gigante Says He Was Crazy...Like a Fox if only because that's something Gothamist would write. [Jake]: for fans of Gigante, you can walk by his old headquarters at 208 Sullivan Street- the "Triangle Civic Improvement Association", between Bleecker and West Third. Gigante actually lived right across the street, at 208 Sullivan, and would often take walks through the neighborhood. This being Manhattan, there is a lively debate about which mob family had the best clubhouse......

I find it hilarious that all these broadband companies are hiring people to create content portals for their customers, with the idea that people will use a service called "My Comcast" or "My Time Warner" instead of "My Yahoo" once they sign up for broadband. While I was at Oven Digital, I worked on a similar project for a company called WINfirst, which was later bought up by SureWest. Before they went out of business,......

In honor of our mayor, Michael Bloomberg, coming in at a hot #63 on the Forbes World's Richest People List, Gothamist is taking suggestions for nicknames. Mayor Bloomberg has no nickname - Mike doesn't count, because it's pretty bland...if I said Mike, you'd think of Michael Jordan first. Or Mike Piazza. Unlike the use of "Rudy." Molly once spotted the "Gooliani" written on the subway, which has a certain ring to it. Much like a......