Last night's Silent Rave in Union Square seemed to draw a fair number of people. The concept was to have everyone congregate and dance to their own music played over personal headphones. Judging from the pictures, it looks like the event was a success. The event's official FaceBook page has another 600+ photos and counting. Video of the event is available here.......

The countdown is on, and even the pickiest of neighbors can't complain of noise at this evening's public rave. An "exchange student who only moved here from London a few months ago!" is behind the outdoor public and SILENT rave (yes, of course there's a Facebook page dedicated to it).The basic premise is thousands of people turn up in a public place, plug in their own iPods, listen to their own music and dance and......

The pillow fight just started 30 minutes ago, and the pictures are already coming in. Part of World Pillow Fight Day, this is the third consecutive year the feathers have flown around Union Square. Were you there? Don't forget to tag your pillow fight pics with "Gothamist" at Flickr. UPDATE: Some locals aren't too happy with the feathers blanketing Union Square -- National Geographic has a Green Guide to pillows, which may explain why. For......

Photo via fotopm's flickr. There may be some snow showers this Saturday, but don't let that get in your way of good old New York City pillow fight! That's right, it's that special time of year again when strangers pummel each other with pillows, leaving feathers to fly all over Union Square. We're told "there are over 10,000 people confirmed on Facebook! Last year there were only 1715 on Facebook and probably about 2,000......

The holy Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, adored for its succulent burgers, righteous shakes and hellish lines, will soon expand into multiple locations. Owner Danny Meyer has signed a lease for a branch at 366 Columbus Avenue (at 77th Street), the former home of New Orleans import Jacques-Imo's. The new location will be entirely indoors, enabling delicate Upper Wide Siders to do their time on line out of the elements. And two Shake Shack......

Andy Warhol once said, “My favorite smell is the first smell of spring in New York," and now someone has stepped in to capitalize on the scent (good thing he didn't say summer in New York). Along with the Gap now using Warhol's "hot dead celeb" status to sell khakis; Laurice Rahmé, creator of Bond No. 9, launches her latest neighborhood fragrance (in collaboration with The Warhol Foundation) this month: Andy Warhol Union Square. The......

If there is no such thing as bad publicity, then we suppose yesterday's Cash Tomato promotion was a resounding success - if a melee as people tried to grab money works for you. The event, which involved giving away $29 to individuals in honor of Leap Year - wait, make that $29 attached to tomatoes, resulted in a Union Square riot with one person hospitalized and police and paramedics on the scene. From the......

Photograph of Running of the Brides participants by Mark Lennihan/AP Early this morning brides-to-be lined 14th Street in hopes of finding their dream dress at a discount price. The annual wedding dress sale at Filene's Basement, dubbed The Running of the Brides, included around 2500 gowns (of which reportedly zero are left). And every lady wants to find the designer dress with an off-the-rack pricetag, which can be akin to finding a needle in......

Last year, the Health Department unveiled its free NYC Condoms on Valentine's Day. For this year's Valentine's Day, not only will volunteers from the Health Department be distributing condoms again, there's a new packaging and a new ad campaign with the tag "Get Some." Don't worry - the condom is the same lubricated Lifestyles latex condom as before. The Health Department gave out 36 million NYC Condoms last year and Assistant Commissioner for HIV......

Photos of snowboarders at the Union Square Street Sessions by Tien Mao Perhaps the only place you'll see snow in New York City this winter is today in Union Square and this weekend in Central Park. On the north end of Union Square, where the farmers market and skateboarders usually are, there's now a man-made hill with 132 tons of snow trucked in from Mountain Creek in New Jersey. The Union Square Street Sessions,......

Photograph of a Giants fan in Times Square by Johnia! on Flickr After the stunning Giants' Super Bowl win, people cheered like they hadn't seen a Super Bowl victory in 17 years! Throughout the city, folks were stumbling onto streets, chanting the names of players and even getting arrested. A thousand people flooded Times Square, reportedly jumping on cars and sitting on top of phone kiosks, but the Post says no one was arrested.......

THEATER: Lisa Kron’s solo play 2.5 Minute Ride, which won an OBIE when it premiered at the Public Theater in 1999, is currently being revived with Nicole Golden as the autobiographical “Lisa.” The play concerns Lisa's attempts to make a documentary about the life of her father, a German Jew who survived the Holocaust but lost his parents at Auschwitz. 2.5 Minute Ride finds him, in his later years, a blind diabetic with a heart......

Preliminary rendering of what the bike parking lot could look like, courtesy The 34th Street Partnership A group of business execs in the 34th Street Partnership are teaming up to build what would be New York’s first bikes-only parking lot; it would be located on space secured on West 33rd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. As currently envisioned, the lot would have a full time attendant and hold 100 bikes, with room to......

Yesterday was No Pants Day 2008, the 7th Annual Improv Everywhere event that includes hundreds of people riding the subway with no pants on. According to IE's initial report, yesterday's event drew 900 participants, requiring that the group split up onto three different lines--the 6, the R, and the 2 trains, which they rode from downtown Manhattan to Union Square. Or as someone noted on Gothamist Contribute, "Those retarded pantless freaks boarded a downtown......

No one knows for sure what’s to become of the future Union Square pavilion, but a strong contender for the space – formerly occupied by the shabby Luna Park – is a new restaurant helmed by Danny Meyer, who opened the Union Square Café in ’85 and whose Shake Shack in Madison Square Park is an object of obsession. Construction begins on a new pavilion this winter, but some insiders are betting Meyer wins the......

THEATER: Under the Radar, arguably New York’s most exciting theater festival, begins today at The Public Theater and a few other odd locations like the Whitehall Ferry terminal. (There are also a few shows at the Classic Theatre of Harlem, P.S. 122 and The Kitchen.) One of the most buzzed about site-specific shows is Etiquette by the London company Rotozaza. It was a surprise hit at last year’s Edinburgh Festival; here the experience takes place......

READING: It's another First Tuesday event at McNally Robinson, and this time around author and activist Mark Crispin Miller invites Anthony Lappe to center stage. The executive editor of the Guerilla News Network also produced an award-winning documentary on the war in Iraq for Showtime. More recently, he's created a graphic novel called Shooting War with illustrator Dan Goldman, which is "a spoof of the network news, the war in Iraq, and the burgeoning 'citizen......

Go! Go! Curry: This Japanese fast food hot spot had lines down the block when they opened in the Garment District last spring; now they’re building on the buzz and branching out in the East Village. We’ve become addicted to their belt-busting Grand Slam (pictured), “a monster platter that comes with fried chicken, pork sausages and a hard-boiled egg, among other things. The thick, sweet sauce has a tiny kick of heat and is served......

Word on the street is that Union Square's mammoth Virgin Megastore is closing up shop sometime between now and February 2009. Billboard reports the space is "being offered by a real estate broker for 2009 availability. According to retail sources, New York-based Winick Realty is shopping the space and has sent out packages highlighting its features." The 58,000 square-foot space is being offered together or subdivided and may become another retail space or (wait for......

Two years ago Snapple flooded Union Square with a bad attempt at a very large popsicle. Given it was the summer, the pop melted and chaos ensued. Right now there seems to be more panic in the Square, but the thermometer (and guys in hazmat suits) tells us it's not another Snapple snafu. We just received this notification: "MANHATTAN +SUSPICIOUS SUBSTANCE+ E 17 ST & UNION SQUARE EAST/ SOMETHING SPREAD AROUND THE PARK. [MNS3]," followed......

The architect who was in the construction site trailer crushed by 14,000 pounds of steel that fell 25 stories from a crane may never walk again. Doctors believe Robert Woo was likely paralyzed; his mother said, "He might not walk again...I've been telling him he's lucky to be alive." It is amazing Woo is alive - seeing photographs of the site, it's incredible he survived - but given the amount of construction and development......

With Christmas less than two weeks away, the annual holiday light display is raging through the nights in Dyker Heights, home of TV’s Scott Baio. Every year tens of thousands of people from around the world flock to the outer-borough Brooklyn neighborhood to gawk at the private homes decked out with millions of dazzling lights. It’s an epic spectacle that has to be seen to be believed, and it doesn’t stop at the lights......

A woman shoved into the Brooklyn-bound Q train tracks at Union Square was saved by two bystanders on Monday night. Suzanne Trotman only suffered bruises as she was pulled from the tracks less than a minute before a train pulled in. Two people, a man and a woman, jumped into the tracks to help Trotman out. Trotman told the Post she 'got up really quickly," adding, "Good thing I didn't get knocked out... I kept......

We've been monitoring how I am Legend, the big budget post-apocalyptic zombie movie set in New York, will be portraying the Big Apple ever since filming took place on the Brooklyn Bridge (it eventually gets blown up). Now, with reviews starting to pop up, we're hearing mixed things about the movie but raves about how a futuristic people-less New York City looks. The Observer's Sara Vilkomerson was freaked out, noting how the city is......

The reviews are in for the $180 million production of The Golden Compass, and they’re lackluster at best, which is a pity not just for fans of the novel from which it’s adapted but for New Line Cinema, which was banking on another Lord of the Rings cash cow. Times critic Manohla Dargis calls it flawed and cluttered, although her description of Nicole Kidman ought to sway any dudes reluctant to see a movie starring......

A Brookings Institution study reveals that New York is a great place for walking, with 21 out of 21 walkable urban places. But Washington D.C. is the most walkable on a per capita basis while New York is ranked 10th, because New York is measured as the NYC metro area, including NJ, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The study's author, Christopher B. Leinberger, admits there are issues with the methodology, namely that walkable places are weighted the......

Crave on 42nd: Top Chef Season One's Dave "I'm not your bitch, bitch!" Martin has found a home in New York serving comfort-driven American bistro fare. He reprises one of his Top Chef dishes -- the Black Truffle Mac ‘n’ Cheese, with black truffles, brandy and fontina slow cooked with fresh thyme and oregano, and the menu offers wood grilled pizzas, burgers, and hearty entrees, like "Sassy Sea Bass," farm raised bass, dry rubbed and......

Since the Subway Sweethearts are so over, we're turning our slightly interested, but mostly disaffected, heads towards the "Love Spammer". The mysterious man who has apparently approached every girl that walks by him on 6th Avenue with the same exact line. What gumption! His name is (coincidentally) Patrick, his line is asking where Union Square is, and he somehow manages to get some of these innocent passerby to come to his "art studio" for some......

Hallelujah! Yesterday the judge presiding over the Reverend Billy case dropped the charges that claimed he harassed public officials. The Rev was arrested in June while reciting the First Amendment in Union Square during a Critical Mass ride which coincided with the protest of the proposed MOFTB rules. Turns out the prosecutors didn't meet their deadline to file papers explaining the arrest and its justification. The Reverend's (whose real name is Bill Talen) lawyer, Earl......

No, no these photos aren't models from I Am Legend's portrayal of Union Square, but an "Apocalyptic Manhattan" two guys constructed. They've recreated 50 Manhattan buildings (via MUG) in three rooms of their apartment. Perhaps the most impressive part of their Manhattan creation is the background wallpaper - complete with buildings, and clouds/smoke. While there's no mention of any specific neighborhood, the architecture makes it look like parts of Lower Manhattan despite the inclusion......