Torontoist discovered their city's most ridiculous holiday lights setup, with 80,000 lights and two––two!––synchronized music routines. Naturally, they snagged a video. Chicago tragically loses one of its most recognizable neighborhood icons, the pigeon man of Lincoln Square. LAPD leaves body in car at crash scene, then tows it. Massachusetts plus mullet equals PR mayhem. Londonist sleeps in a Haunted plague pit. UC Berkeley students strip naked and race through campus, NSFW floppiness ensues. Phillyist......

TREE LIGHTING: Earlier this year, New Yorkers Fountains of Wayne transformed Demetri Martin into a lonely suit living in Brooklyn in this video. Tonight the band will be rockin' around the Stuy Town Christmas tree. A reader writes in:I just happened to see this flyer hanging up for the annual christmas tree lighting. And what the hell is this...7:30-8:00pm, FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE. Seems like it's top secret, but there are flyers everywhere.Random! But if you're......

Robberies are down a little more than 8% from a year ago, but the New York Post reports that some spots around town have seen stunning jumps in the incidence rate of muggings. In 18 of 76 precincts in NYC, robberies are heading up rather than down, like in the rest of the city. Assaults, however, are static citywide--increasing from 15,025 to 15,097 which is statistically insignificant. The increase in robberies is anomalous mostly because......

Not making their way to the greenmarket this week are domestic matsutake, one of the most prized mushrooms in the world. Matsutake have a slight pine flavor and give off a wild, funky cinnamon aroma when cooked. This fragrance is said to do things to people, like instantly transport them to Xanadu or make choruses of ladybugs hail from the sky in intense, Busby Berkeley style formations. Hand foraged and scarce, matsutake are in fact......

An author of the comic book series Optic Nerve, graphic novels like Summer Blonde and a frequent illustrator for New Yorker, Esquire and Rolling Stone, Adrian Tomine draws beautiful pictures about bad relationships—banalities, messiness, thrilling encounters and accidental connections. His new graphic novel Shortcomings follows Berkeley movie theater manager Ben Tanaka and the final days of his flawed relationship to Miko, who is considering a move to our fair city for a job. Cranky Ben......

The New York Times's City Section this past Sunday had a special focus on seventeen-year-old New Yorkers. According to the paper, more children were born in 1990 than at any point since the Baby Boom. Now they're on the cusp of adulthood and the Times has a series of oral histories that one can read or listen to online. It's an interesting project; here are a few of the teens:Neil Allicock lives in East New......

EVENT: "Home Buying for Hipsters" would like to help out all of you "creative non-traditional wage earners" during your quest to own a home. Buying property is an art, after all, so creatives may even have a head start! They "aim to specifically address your concerns and break down the process into steps you can understand." Their classes are free and open to everyone ("hipsters, non-hipsters, art stars, rock stars, designers, freelancers, sculptors, poets, part-time......

The Brooklyn Paper is reporting on a local B&B; with themed rooms in an 1860s Victorian mansion in Bed-Stuy. The Akwaaba Mansion, owned by Monique Greenwood and her husband Glenn Pogue, purchased the property in the mid 1990s and spent about $100,000 renovating it. The result is four suites decorated in African textiles and Victorian antiques. The MacDonough St. B&B; also has a library, courtyard, garden and glass-enclosed porch. It even caters to fussy "salt-free,......

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network." It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA......

It's time go over this weekend's NY Times Weddings Announcements! Total Number of Weddings: 24 (including Vows column) Total Number of Same-Sex Weddings: 0 (but the Styles section had a feature about "Dinah Shore Weekend," aka "The L World") Youngest Bride: 22 Oldest Bride: 38 Youngest Groom: 23 Oldest Groom: 42 Biggest Age Difference: 11 years Number of Couples Where Bride and Groom Are the Same Age: 3 (25, 32, and 35) Number of Columbia......

Remember that smart-alecky retort, “It’s a free country”? That's the brazen spirit behind Radical Living Papers: A history of the free, alternative, counter-culture and underground press, 1965-75. Situated in the Passerby bar, it no doubt will inspire many fervent debates about freedom of the press. The rag-tag collection of zines promotes everything under the sun: politics, revolutions, evolutions of the planets, freak-outs, love-ins, support of green politics, gay liberation, power to the people, the peace......

A look at some noteworthy programs this week: 60 Minutes (Sunday, 7:00 p.m. WCBS 2) George W. Bush is interviewed days after his announcement of the Iraq War escalation . 24 (Sunday, 7:00 p.m. WNYW 5) Yet another season of 24 starts with the first two hours of its new season tonight. Jack's back, but does anyone still care? Nature - The Best of Nature: 25 Years (Sunday, 7:00 p.m. WNET 13) A 90 minute......

Maybe the new badge of infamy is how quickly your story gets co-opted by a Law & Order show. Apparently the antics of former Attorney General candidate Jeanine Pirro and trouble-making husband Al will be dramatized for an episode of Criminal Intent that will air next year. The Post has details:In the episode, a very Pirro-like politician has her eyes on becoming the first female mayor of New York. But her husband, who's described as......

These days, the police get more and more calls about "suspicious packages." And luckily, most of the time, the suspicious packages are just bags left aside. But yesterday, there were a number of suspicious bags found all around Park Slope. The Daily News reports:About 3 p.m., police started spotting suspicious briefcases, luggage and duffel bags in Park Slope. A grid search of the area turned up bags on Eighth Ave. and Carroll St. as well......

Recently, we passed by the flower kiosk outside our local Key Food at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Carroll Street in Park Slope where we noticed a piece of art tacked to a brick wall alongside tied-up, broken-down boxes, milk crates, a hand truck and piles of trash. We didn't really know what to make of it, until, that is, we got a closer look. Entitled Recycled Bouquet, the 2006 work identified on......

Michelle Goldberg, Brooklyn resident and senior political reporter for Salon.com, recently published her first book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, a detailed examination of the rise of Christian Nationalism. Her research took her outside the largely secular NYC, and even further afield from the liberal ideology of which New Yorkers have grown so accustomed. In her book, Goldberg details the actions and intentions of the Christian right and presents a clear picture of......

Well, the big day has come and gone, but not without leaving us with some impressive stats (feel free to help us out in the comments with better stats and info!): Number of people who attended: Tens of thousands (our guess) Number of people who won a new Macbook: 15 out of a possible 24 Number of people who didn't: Tens of thousands minus 15 Number of Auctions on eBay selling commemorative t-shirt: Four......

There are few things in life at Mexican restaurants better than fresh guacamole prepared at your tableside, so when Gothamist spied a bowlful of avocados ready for smashin', we headed into Park Slope's inviting La Taqueria, a long, narrow joint smattered with paintings by local artist Jeramy Turner. Margaritas are a must-have, though nearly a dozen bottled beers appear on the menu including Tecate and Pacifico along with fresh fruit juices and the house......

Here are this weeks Weddings and Celebrations, by the numbers: Total Number of Weddings: 33 Number of Heterosexual Weddings: 33 Average Age of Brides: 34 Average Age of Grooms: 36 Oldest Bride: 71 Oldest Groom: 74 Youngest Bride: 25 Youngest Groom: 25 Average Age Difference: 2.8 years Biggest Age Difference: 13 years Number of Older Brides: 5 Number of Older Grooms: 20 Number of Same-Age Couples: 8 Number of Native New Yorkers (State): 20 Number......

Mary Kate, we hardly knew you! Okay, so we knew you liked to dress like Mrs. Roper if she lived in Berkeley with $150 million start the trend of bohemian chic and drink coffee and party around town and not move into your deluxe apartment. But when we went to People.com to see if there were any new pictures of Brad and Angelina, we read this troubling, if not entirely unsurprising, news. We know you......

A young lawyer who regularly rode her bike was killed when she was crushed by one of two trucks she was trying to pass in Park Slope. The Daily News says, Elizabeth Padilla, who lived on Berkeley Place, "attempted to pass a 10-wheel Edy's Ice Cream truck," when the driver of a parked P.C. Richards truck in Park Slope "opened his door"; "Padilla swerved to avoid the door but hit the side of the moving......

Russell Moore, a chef at Chez Panisse Restaurant & Cafe in Berkeley, CA, is used to cooking delicious meals for demanding crowds. Gothamist once spent a summer interning in the pastry department at Chez Panisse and had the chance to remember our glory days while talking to Moore about the Thanksgiving meal he has planned for his own friends and family tomorrow evening. His menu left us drooling and wishing we were eating dinner at......

If you consider yourself a child of the '80s, chances are the Steven Spielberg movie The Goonies (1985) holds a special place in your heart. This Friday and Saturday, it's the Midnight Movie at the Sunshine Theater on Houston Street at First Avenue. The programmers at this weekly event have been going mach-ten on the nostalgia factor this summer with earlier showings of flicks like the Dark Crystal and the Muppets Take Manhattan, and Gothamist......

For some, watching Elizabeth Berkeley lick a pole in a Vegas show girl sparkling thong is enough to put them off their Thursday evening buzz but not Gothamist. The Dutch king of schlock Paul Verhoeven's 1995 travesty of cinema resurrected by the generosity of camp, Showgirls (1995) will be playing tonight at 8 pm at the Clearview Chelsea (260 W. 23rd Street between 7th and 8th Ave.) in its unedited NC-17 "director's cut" version. An......

Gothamist works in a cave... the flourescent lights are off (or covered with black fabric) and the windows, which wallpaper the entire office are covered with blinds. This is all fine and good, if we were bears hibernating for the winter. And we know all too many people who are trapped in a window-less office, cubicle, or just have a crappy view of the restaurant vent with leaking congealed grease sputtering out of it.......

Take a double-amputee beer baronness who wants to raise beer sales, two brothers who want the find the saddest music in the world, and the wild imagination of Guy Maddin and you have The Saddest Music in the World, a film directed by Maddin, that opens at the Landmark Sunshine Cinemas. As A.O. Scott says in his review, "Plot summary is hardly sufficient to evoke the splendors and surprises of this movie," Gothamist is intrigued......

Young Jean Lee, Playwright/Director...

Rachel Kramer Bussel, Smut Editor/Writer...

As the marketing machine steps into high gear to push the new Julia Roberts movie, Mona Lisa Smile, Gothamist can't help but think it's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie lite, complete with a cheery Cranberries song in the trailer and TV commercials. A one-liner for the movie is "This is the story of a free-spirited Berkeley graduate in 1953 who takes a position as a teacher at the women's college, Wellesley." Add Julia Roberts'......