A Gothamist tipster emailed us this photo of a prohibitively tall bench on the median of East Houston Street near Suffolk. Is this guerrilla art or city-sanctioned furniture? The new cool “Bench Club” for East Village scenesters? A lawsuit in-waiting from the city’s more vertically challenged residents? A prototype anti-homeless bench? A photoshop hoax? Lots and lots of phone calls to the City Council representative, the Community Board, the Parks Department and D.O.T. have......

The current New York Magazine dives deep inside the navel with seven sprawling pages on Gawker. The rather tame procedural is conducted by Vanessa Grigoriadis, who's up front with the disclosures: Her NY Times wedding announcement was savaged by Gawker, New York Magazine currently employs two former Gawker editors, and Grigoriadis peeped managing editor Choire Sicha’s underwear. So have the hunters become the hunted? Not really. The article is not so much a take-down as......

Joe's Pub is going uptown and outdoors for some shows this month, and we've got your tickets to a few of the performances. First up, on September 26th, Beirut will take the Delacorte Theater stage as part of The NY Gypsy Festival. Joining Zach Condon & Co are Balkan Beat Box and The NY Gypsy All Stars. Listen: Mount Wroclai (Idle Days).mp3 - Beirut Digital Monkey.mp3 - Balkan Beat Box Kalajdziska.mp3 - The NY Gypsy......

Whoa-- apparently the 0.5% interest rate cut the Federal Reserve announced a couple of hours ago wasn't entirely anticipated by the market! Currently the Dow Jones index is up more than 330 points, or more than 2.5%! The rate reduction was the first in four years, and was unusually steep by the Fed standards. The Times reports: While an interest rate cut was widely expected, there had been profound uncertainty about whether the Fed would......

Les Savy Fav, known for rocks songs, bringing babies on stage and lovely apartment decor...are playing a couple of shows in their, and your, hometown this month. And we've got your tickets. First up, on September 21st, they're at the Music Hall of Williamsburg with Cheesburger and Fatal Flying Guilloteens opening. (Bonus: you'll get to see the new venue!) Next up, on September 22nd, they're at Bowery Ballroom with Parts & Labor opening. To win......

What better way to brighten up a Monday morning than with Björk tickets? The Icelandic singer is back, and playing Madison Square Garden on September 24th. Tickets are on sale here, but we have two pairs to give away! Last time she was in town she played Radio City Music Hall, the United Palace Theater and the Apollo Theater - so the MSG show may seem a bit impersonal compared to those. However, her voice,......

More updates below, but here's a summary so far (8:20PM): A steam explosion occurred on East 41st and Lexington Avenue (41st between Lex and Third) just before 6PM - right during the evening rush hour. The NYPD does not think it was a terrorist attack. It appears that there is a hole about 25' in diameter with a red tow truck in the center. One person has died (possibly from cardiac arrest) and there......

We've got a stack of tickets over here for you, and all you have to do is email us telling us which pair you want, and answer a little question. First up is Interpol, playing this Friday (with Calla) in Atlantic City! The show is in support of their new album Our Love to Admire. Who doesn't want to spend a day on the boardwalk, hit the slot machines and see Carlos D's mustache up......

Watching the Brooklyn Dodgers documentary on HBO made us dig for some more footage on YouTube. The team had many nicknames, one being the Trolley Dodgers, and their fans were often dependent on the trolley system to get to the games. The above film shows a Brooklyn trolley at 5th Avenue and Flatbush, 5th Avenue and Bergen Street and finally 5th Avenue and 9th Street, with some great shots of the people and area......

What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week. Being the nation's capital, DCist felt especially proud to let freedom ring this week by exposing the really important issues, like how sad they......

On Sunday we posted about the Bard Family being all but dismissed from their post at the Hotel Chelsea. As the interrogation spotlight continues to shine in the faces of the faceless "Board" that made the decision, a press release was sent out to explain what's going on behind the famous doors. The Bard Family, who have run the hotel from Mark Twain to Nancy Spungen to now, have been replaced by a new regime......

Hey everyone-- you may have noticed that we've made a few small changes to our commenting and feedback systems: 1. Commenters now have profile pages with a bit of information about them, and links to their recent comments, along with comments other people have left in response. If the commenter is also a Gothamist author, the page will include a list of their recent posts. Here's mine. You can register here-- it's fast and painless,......

All across the Ist-A-Verse (or at least the American parts thereof), writers and editors are in the midst of enjoying their three-day weekend. But after the week we've all had, we feel like the break is not only needed, but deserved. Just look at everything we've been doing! Gothamist headed into the Memorial Day weekend with a number of tasks accomplished. They worried about Long Islanders giving New Yorkers a bad name. They tried......

The Times has a sad and probably final look at the remaining horses at the Claremont Riding Academy on the Upper West Side. The oldest-operated stables in the United States closed quickly a few weeks ago when its owner said that pedestrian traffic along bridle trails in Central Park made equestrianism unamanageable in NYC. The New York Times reports today that there are three remaining horses at Claremont: Brutus, Tugger, and Monte. For Brutus, Tugger......

We have some exciting news to share with our readers - Jen Chung, co-founder, editor of Gothamist, and executive editor for all Gothamist sites, has won a Wired Rave Award! The Rave Awards look for people that are "innovators, instigators, and inventors" in their field, with Jen receiving the award for blogs (she's "The Town Crier"). Lest you think Wired hands the award out to anyone, Jen has some pretty good company. Some of......

Two more big pet-food brands joined the massive pet-food recall announced on Friday. Nestle Purina and Hill's Pet Nutrition voluntarily recalled some of their products. Pet-food manufacturer Menu Foods, which sells food to stores and other brands that then market the food under their own names, has not found out what is causing pets to become ill (10 cats and dogs have died so far), but believes the problem is related to wheat gluten in......

The Atlantic Yards Report's Norman Oder weighs in on the financial documents on the Atlantic Yards project. Developer Forest City Ratner only released three pages after Freedom of Information Act requests. Oder sent the docs to an affordable housing expert, David A. Smith, who was unimpressed and said, "They make one hungry for more detail, without which it is impossible to have a properly informed opinion." Oder also notes there are "unexplained gaps" in the......

As we know, yesterday's problems on the N, W, and R lines were caused by a "rail condition" on the N line at Lexington and 59th Street. Today, the NY Times delves into the cracked rail situation; we have cobbled together thsi timeline:6:55AM Queens-bound N operator sees a red signal when it should have been green 7:15AM Track maintainers investigate and find a crack in the rail 1,200 feet from the "east edge of......

- Florentine specialty gundi gets the Sunday treatment in the Daily News from Irene Sax. April Bloomfield speaks about the “fluffy little bites of love”, Iacopo Falai calls them a “woman's dish”, and Mark Ladner’s recipe from Del Posto is included. Hit DiPalo’s to find the sheep’s milk that is essential for a winning dish at home. - Apparently Paper Magazine is moving/has moved to K-Town, and have decided to celebrated with a nice round-up......

Everyone freaked out by the crazy noise from the Con Ed plant on 14th Street and C late Monday night can relax further. Because Con Ed tells amNew York everything is fine and it was only steam that was released repeatedly around 11PM. There was a malfunction, but the everything "worked just as it should have," according to Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert. His explanation is that a "generating unit tripped as it was......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

A day after the Daily News reported that City College had allowed a campus center to be named after two controversial figures on its cover, complete with scorching editorial criticizing the school, City College's chancellor Matthew Goldstein had the sign taken down. The center was called the Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community Center. Guillermo Morales was a radical for Puerto Rico's independence and made bombs, including one that killed four people at Fraunces Tavern in 1975.......

Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Londonist wants you to know where to......

Police have charged Eugenio Cidron with vehicular manslaughter after driving the West Side Highway bike path for at least a mile and fatally hitting bicyclist Eric Ng on Friday night. Cidron, who had been drinking at a company party at Chelsea Piers, was also charged with drunk driving and reckless endangerment. Cidron's brother told the Post, "This is the first time I ever heard of him drinking and driving. He was saddened by what happened,......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a hazmat condition in L.E.S., a "car vs. house" in Queens, and a suspicious package on 34th and 7th. Rose Mattus, the co-creator of Haagen-Dazs, died this week at age 90: "Around 1960, while sitting on their couch in the Bronx, Mr. and Mrs. Mattus fabricated the foreign-sounding name. It was Mr. Mattus’s idea to include a map of Denmark on the carton and to put an umlaut over......

Darn - if only we had gone to Uniqlo a couple hours earlier yesterday. We would have seen Mayor Bloomberg join Uniqlo founder (and CEO of parent company Fast Retailing) CEO Tadashi Yanai and Uniqlo USA president Nobuo Domae (we think) in the ribbon cutting ceremony of the Soho store. Yanai said, "Not only is New York City the international fashion capital of the world, but it is also where the original idea for......

There's news about Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer's transition team (which includes El Diario publisher Rosanna Rosado and Time Warner Chairman and CEO Richard Parsons), but you can also visit the spiffy transition website. TransitionNY.org has some bios for Spitzer, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, the transition team, and links to the state's various agencies. Okay, it's sort of thin on information now, as it's most notably an open call for people to apply for state jobs,......

Halloween is Tuesday, which means this weekend is really the time for all of the –ists to celebrate. And whether they’re designing super-spooky costumes or talking about the super-spooky upcoming elections, we’d say that they’re doing a fine job of it. Austinist knows that few things in life are scarier than zombies, people with way too much money, and politicians who try too hard to be funny. Slightly less scary, depending on whom you......

It's been three months since the MTA and Mastercard unveiled the contactless payment system that is mostly along the Lexington Avenue line. The system has been in trial, and now they have unveiled the next part: The NYC Mobile Trial. If you have a Citbank Mastercard with Paypass - and a Cingular account - you may be able to sign up and use your cellphone to pay your fare.Tap your NFC enabled mobile phone......

Usually I get my restaurant recommendations out of my fares. The time we spend together in the cab is perfect for my screening process. After weeding out (and occasionally kicking out) those who would send me to Applebees, I can judge a fare for ten or twenty minutes before deciding if we have similar taste buds and philosophies on life as well as, by extension, eating. But a few weeks back, one of YOU,......