Turns out the number parking placards sloshing around New York is over 142,000, twice the number guesstimated by Mayor Bloomberg’s office when he announced a 20% cutback on the placards, which allow police, teachers and civil servants to park for free at meters and many off-limits areas. The new total does not take into consideration the number of counterfeit and expired placards, and the city is still not done counting, so this preliminary total is......

The scandal around the memoir-turned- fake-recalled- from-bookstores memoir Love and Consequences continues to embarrass the book publishing industry. Writer Margaret Jones, who told her publisher she was a half-white, half-Native American raised by a black foster family in South Central L.A. and former Bloods gang member, was exposed as Margaret Seltzer, white private school graduate from Sherman Oaks, California. Her real (white) sister called the publisher Riverhead Books after reading a lengthy NY Times feature......

Today the Times’s chief food critic Frank Bruni revisits WD-50 (pictured) and elevates the Lower East Side avant-garde restaurant to three stars (a 2003 Times review by another critic had awarded it two). Chef Wylie Dufresne has made WD-50 a destination with his experimental, transgressive menu, and Bruni concedes that in the past “too many of his creations were gratuitously perverse… many visitors understandably feel that what they’ve experienced isn’t so much a meal as......

For all the noise of this Yankees offseason, as far as the team on the field goes, all it amounted to was the status quo. Alex Rodriguez, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera are all back -- and richer. Young pitchers Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy and center fielder Melky Cabrera didn't go to the Twins for Johan Santana. The 2008 Yankees will be a slightly older albeit considerably more expensive version of the 2007 team. And......

Brooklyn Heights residents may have thought their neighborhood had earned a respite from anti-Semitic graffiti after the arrest and confession of Ivaylo Ivanov, who committed and then confessed to a string of vandalism incidents last year that left Brooklyn Heights peppered with swastikas in spray paint. But last week another wall was defaced with a symbol of hate. The incident involved a a brick apartment building at 22 Remsen St. The swastika was first spotted......

THEATER: It would be pretty boss if The Cherry Orchard Sequel – a long-overdue follow up to Chekhov’s play about downwardly mobile Russian aristocrats – involved the titular clear-cut orchard rising from the ashes to go on a rampage against their axe-wielding oppressors. But playwright and director Nic Ularu took things in a different direction, and the result sounds just as interesting. His story picks up again 18 years after Chekhov’s play ends, and......

It all started with a NY Times reporter-blogger's ride on the DC Metro. The Times' Jennifer 8. Lee spied a poster in a Metro subway car, showing a rat along with the copy (emphasis is ours): "Unlike some subway systems (which will remain nameless), you don’t see rats the size of house cats roaming the Metro. Why not? Because we are so strict about eating and drinking in the system. So help us keep......

THEATER: Hemingway’s play The Fifth Column takes its now-familiar name from the Spanish Civil War, when General Emilio Mola, advancing on Madrid with four columns of troops, boasted of a hidden “fifth column” of fascist sympathizers waiting within the city. Hemingway, of course, was there for the action as a newspaper correspondent and dashed off the play while fascists bombarded his hotel. His rarely produced drama tells the “surprisingly funny story of the private......

Photos: AP/David Guttenfelder The New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s historic concert in North Korea concluded hours ago, marking the first performance by an American orchestra in the impoverished, totalitarian nation. The event also marked a first for much of the press, who are routinely denied access to North Korea and, once inside, usually find their movements tightly controlled. The Times has a stunning slideshow of photos snapped en route from the airport to the center of......

The only way to save Harlem for the benefit of its longtime residents is to economically cripple the neighborhood. So says Dr. James Manning of the ATLAH World Ministry church. He's proposing an economic boycott of the area in Manhattan between 110th St. and 155th St., from the Harlem River to the Hudson River. The plan is that once interloper businesses have been driven out via bankruptcy, Harlem will become a less desirable place to......

In an echo of its 2006 article about her Senate re-election campaign spending, the NY Times finds Hillary Clinton donors are concerned over her campaign's spending. Some of the line items that emerged after her campaign finance report was published: $100,000 in party platters and shovels for Iowa caucus parties (where Clinton placed third - and where it did not snow), $25,000 in hotel rooms at Las Vegas' Bellagio, $275,000 to a South Carolina firm......

The NY Times' article about presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain's superclose relationship with a young, attractive female lobbyist (more about her here) has drawn a lot of criticism, especially from McCain himself. His campaign seized the moment to raise money for his campaign. Campaign manager Rick Davis' fundraising letter read, "With John McCain leading a number of general-election polls against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, The New York Times knew the time to attack......

Governor Spitzer is facing opposition in his attempt to snuff out any Javits Center expansion by selling land surrounding the center to fill budget gaps. The administration still plans to renovate the convention center, but it will result in far less space than what was originally envisioned for the expansion, which would have cost between $1.8 billion and $3 billion. Senator Charles Schumer, Mayor Bloomberg and City Council speaker Christine C. Quinn oppose the land......

A rendering for a building that will replace a Cooper Union engineering building has emerged (above). Designed by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, the 440,000-square-foot mixed-use building will replace the brown tribute to banality that currently hunkers across from the historic 1859 Cooper Union Foundation building. The 51 Astor Place building is to be demolished; the fate of the connected Starbucks (between Third and Fouth Avenues) is uncertain. The Observer says the proposed building “will......

Photograph of Uno, a 15-inch beagle who won the Best in Group, by Seth Wenig/AP It's that time of year again - the Westminster Kennel Club will be naming the Best in Show dog tonight. Today is day two (of two) of the Westminster Kennel Club's 132nd Dog show, and the best in group for the sporting, working and toy groups will be determined. Those dogs will face off against the winners of the......

Mayor Bloomberg's un-campaign for President is losing momentum even before it could officially get started. Bloomberg's position on a run has always been that he is not running at any particular point at that time, even as his Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey aggressively pursues advance work for the campaign that is not happening. Political consultant Doug Schoen confirmed that Sheekey has a formal plan in place already that merely needs the Mayor's go-ahead to begin.......

EVENT: Angels and Kings is hosting a Nerd Nite, described as: "the Discovery Channel with beer." This evening brings zombies to life, sort of, with a presentation on the undead titled "Zombies Are Real: Actual Zombies of the Natural World And Why You Might Be One." Drink, learn, be nerdy. 7pm // Angels & Kings [500 E 11th St] // Free LECTURE: Come get schooled on "green architecture" tonight at the kick-off event for The......

Photograph of Hillary Clinton giving a speech last by Angela Radulescu on Flickr After successful (if not decisive enough overall for the nomination) Super Tuesday primary results, Hillary Clinton is thinking about the immediate future of her campaign, by considering loaning $5 million to the effort. And this comes as her campaign spokesman Howard Wolgson revealed she already loaned the campaign $5 million last month! From the Post, here's Wolfson's quote:Late last month Sen.......

New York State Senate leader Joseph Bruno is still under FBI investigation for possibly improper ties to unions that deal with state pension agencies! In 2006, Bruno said of the FBI's look, "I have nothing to hide. They are going into background over the past five or six years," but the NY Times describes the feds' current investigation as widening. At issue are tens of millions of dollars paid by Albany labor unions in fees......

A study to be published later this year in the Journal of Food Safety proves that George Costanza’s cavalier method of double dipping his chip is, in fact, “like putting your whole mouth right in the dip.” For those who may have missed the Seinfeld episode or somehow not seen it reenacted at every party serving dip since it aired in 1993, we’ve posted the scene below. Suffice it to say that Costanza’s preferred dipping......

Photo of Eli Manning by AP/Bill Kostroun; Photo of Tom Brady by AP/Stephan Savoia When Super Sunday rolls around, there will be a lot of questions that will be answered. Will the Giants stop the undefeated season of the Patriots? How will Eli Manning perform in the biggest game of his career? And how Tom Brady's foot be? While there are clearly lots of other questions, one question that isn't so obvious is...who's the......

graffiti internet, by Rob Hoey at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an aircraft fire at JFK terminal 4 in Queens, a robbery on Central Park West in Manhattan, and a missing child on Pennsylvania Ave. in Brooklyn. Surf cams (permanently installed cameras monitoring surf conditions) are a great way to notify surfers of conditions, until one realizes that surfers don't want conditions notified for fear of crowds. No matter what you've ever seen......

Just a days before the Florida primary, someone gave the New York Times a 1998 NYPD memorandum advising Mayor Giuliani that the department felt locating the city's emergency command center in 7 World Trade Center was not a very good idea. The eight page memo was written by a panel of police experts with help from the Secret Service. Its conclusions were overruled by Giuliani and the command center was destroyed on September 11 as......

The NY Times' editorial board has made its endorsements for the upcoming primaries. While the Times' selection of Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama is interesting (the Times cites experience), we're very taken with the editorial about the Republican candidates. The Times thinks John McCain is the best Republican candidate and notes some problems with him. But the heart of the editorial is an evisceration of former mayor Rudy Giuliani:Why, as a New York-based paper, are......

Hey, tourists, NYC may want you to spend lots of money when you visit the Big Apple, but just don't get really sick or else the Administration for Children's Services will take your kids in! Because that's what happened to one British family last month! Yvonne Bray and daughters Gemma and Katie, who live in Devon, England, were visiting New York for four days, staying at the LaGuardia Courtyard Marriott. The mother fell ill with......

The Times ran a follow-up today about their investigation that found abnormally high levels of mercury in fish served at area restaurants. Toxicology reports from 44 pieces of sushi, ordered from places including Nobu Next Door and Sushi Seki, may in fact contribute to some New Yorkers’ 3 times higher-than-average blood levels of mercury. It turns out, however, that most New Yorkers just don’t care. The mercury issue, while especially serious for pregnant women and......

There are no "garage bands" in New York City. Unlike some of their suburban counterparts, musicians here have to pay the piper for their practice spaces, which can be hard to find in a city where every no-frills square-foot costs something. In fact, to really be a "garage band" in New York, one may end up paying $225K a year. The NY Times reports on where musicians city-wide are rehearsing these days, and how it's......

MOVIE: Delve into the mind and life of H.L. “Doc” Humes (pictured) in a documentary by his daughter. Titled Doc, the 96-minute film focuses in on the counterculture icon. "In the 1950s and early '60s, Doc co-founded The Paris Review, wrote two acclaimed novels, and was a gregarious fixture of the cultural scene in Paris, London and New York. Doc was a 1950s NYC intellectual, a 60s free speech militant, and a 70s visionary crazy......

Photo of tuna at Tsukiji Market in Tokyo courtesy Tien Mao. Hold onto your chopsticks; the Times recently commissioned a toxicology report on sushi from 13 local establishments and got back some rather unappetizing results:More than half of the restaurants and stores surveyed sold sushi with so much mercury that eating just six pieces a week would exceed the amount the EPA says can be safely consumed by an adult of average weight, which the......

Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his downtown Manhattan apartment by the police. Some reports say he died from an overdose. UPDATE 5:00PM :According to the NYPD spokesman, Ledger, who was living in an apartment at Broome street, "had an appointment for a massage...The housekeeper who went to let Ledger know the masseuse was there, and found him dead at 3:26 p.m" with "pills strewn all around him." The housekeeper and masseuse tried......