Several years ago writer/performer Christen Clifford, whose second child is due in November, wrote an essay called BabyLove that was named one of the “5 Most Shocking Personal Essays” in Nerve.com’s 10th Anniversary issue. The subsequent stage adaptation, in which Clifford stars, is a funny and unflinching look at love life after pregnancy, exploring everything from masturbating with an infant in earshot to postpartum sex and the "eroticism of breastfeeding." After performances at last year's......

David Bouley, the acclaimed chef from Connecticut whose eponymous restaurant brought four star dining to Tribeca in the '80s, has a lot on the stove these days, as his big plans to expand his culinary empire in the neighborhood are finally coming to a boil. Sometime in the next month or so, Bouley expects to relocate his flagship restaurant to 161 Duane Street, where a Renaissance ambiance, replete with stone from Versailles, awaits his flock.......

The D.C. trio Jukebox the Ghost has created poptimistic tunes that will wash your worries away. Their piano rock is anything but jaded, and may even make you smile (gasp). Tonight they put another notch on their NYC bedpost when they play Southpaw with Tally Hall. Check them out, they'll make you young again. P.S.: Their album will be released onto the streets April 22nd. Where did your band name originate? A combination of......

Glenn Mercer was the frontman of a band called The Feelies that burst into the New York music scene in the 1970s. By the '80s their debut album, Crazy Rhythms, was voted one of the top 50 albums of the decade by Rolling Stone magazine. R.E.M., who they later toured with, cited the album as a major influence. By 1991 they disbanded, but Mercer continued making music on his own. Rumors of a reunion this......

If you haven’t yet seen the phenomenal new Broadway show Passing Strange, you’re really missing out. There are plenty reasons why you don’t dare pass on this electrifying, decidedly un-Broadway triumph, but it’s Stew, the single-named writer, co-composer and onstage narrator of Passing Strange, who’s best equipped to sell you on it: “You wanna know the most terrifying combination of words in the English language to me? Rock Musical. Because the music featured in such......

In the years since the demise of the '90s cult phenomenon Soul Coughing, Mike Doughty's been assiduously cultivating a fruitful career in the singer-songwriter mold, though he's not above sharing the spotlight with other musicians like his admirer Dave Matthews. His 2005 album, Haughty Melodic, was his first to feature a full band; PopMatters praised the album's marriage of "post-Soul Coughing singer-songwriter compositional style with the tapestry of brightly colored sounds and snarled grooves......

John DeLucie has been entrenched in New York's restaurant scene for well over a decade, with stints at three-star restaurants and high end hotel kitchens along the way. Most recently running the show at La Bottega, he is currently a partner and the chef at the Waverly Inn, where New York's celebs go to see and be seen while dining on haute versions of comfort food classics. You recently had a group of second graders......

Composer Adam Mirza, and saxophonist Michael Ibrahim both lead their own groups. One's called Amp, the other Riot. Judging by titles, one might expect death metal, or by appearance, chamber music. But like many ensembles in New York today, these two groups fall under the category "new music," a term used to denote a genre that employs a vast lexicon of extended techniques to coax sounds from instruments generally deemed classical. Like the technology that......

Jonathan Butler has been talking real estate and renovation over at his blog, Brownstoner, since 2005. This year he brings his know-how offline with the most massive flea market Brooklyn has seen, aptly called Brooklyn Flea. While honing our haggling skills, we asked him a few questions about what to expect when it opens this weekend. How, and when, did you come up with the idea for Brooklyn Flea? I was a regular visitor to......

Since first appearing on film in Woody Allen’s Manhattan, Wallace Shawn has become one of Hollywood’s most distinctive character actors, familiar to audiences for his striking performances in everything from The Princess Bride to The L Word. But theatergoers also know another side of Wallace Shawn; the relentlessly daring playwright whose work challenges conventional ideas about theater, power, sex, class, and, most unsparingly, liberal complacency. Tomorrow night Shawn will be participating in an “evening of......

Duke Castiglione became sports anchor for Fox 5 in June 2007. In addition to his sports anchor duties at 10 p.m. from Sunday-Thursday, Duke hosts “Sports Extra” on Sunday at 10:30 p.m. He sat down with Gothamist recently to share his thoughts on baseball and more. Your father does play-by-play for the Red Sox, but professes to have been a Yankees fan growing up, which baseball team did you root for growing up? Yes, my......

Sure, you know Dave Eggers as the celebrated author and founder of McSweeney's, that plucky independent book-publishing house in San Francisco, but were you aware that back in the day he was on track to be an art curator? While it’s been a long time since he’s organized an exhibit, he’s in town now to put together a show at apexart that explores, in Eggers's words, “a very small and specific type of artmaking exemplified......

Real Emotional Trash, the fourth post-Pavement solo album by Stephen Malkmus, is arguably his best, and at the very least rivals the acclaimed Pig Lib for inventiveness. A well-crafted balance of catchy pop, multi-part prog rock compositions, heady guitar shredding and his signature lyrical whimsy, the album is sure to stymie Pavement fans on a nostalgia trip and the skinny jean set appalled by any song that dares last longer than five minutes. Joined by......

Later today ABC will join together Barack Obama with the ladies of The View. While they tell us the main focus of their interview segment is on the "controversial remarks of Reverend Jeremiah Wright" (something that Elizabeth Hasselbeck has slammed him for in the past), one of the clips shows Barbara Walters telling Obama he is, "very sexy looking." At which point the presidential candidate needs to fan himself from the 78-year-old news legend's......

Jazz in New York is lingering in a precarious state. It’s certainly not for lack of musicians, or audiences -- but it’s something that has been plaguing New York for decades: there just aren’t enough venues. Last summer, Adam Schatz, a jazz studies student at NYU, and organist in the band The Teenage Prayers, started a rock series in Brooklyn called Zombieville. After a successful first few months, some of his buddies suggested he start......

NYC TV's New York Noise just returned with a slew of new episodes for their 8th season. The show has been on the air for 4 years, having quickly become an institution for music fans and a place for bands (local and otherwise) to showcase their videos. This season promises a mix of new and old, with everyone from Yeasayer to Les Savy Fav popping up throughout in unique sonic-driven segments. We recently got some......

Three years ago, Adam Mansbach shook up the world of fiction with his debut novel Angry Black White Boy, or The Miscegenation of Macon Detornay, a satire about "race, whiteness and hip hop." Dubbed "a remarkably successful remix of the traditional race novel," the book was hailed as the 21st century's answer to Native Son. Not bad for a guy who at the time was barely 30. With his latest novel, The End of the......

Like a Jedi knight with an offset spatula, pastry chef Jehangir Mehta switched over to the savory side last September when he opened his first restaurant Graffiti in the East Village. Armed with a few induction burners and assorted kitchen gadgets, Graffiti’s 4-person staff prepares and serves Mehta’s eclectic food out of a pint-sized kitchen. Before Graffiti, Mehta worked with Jean Georges Vongerichten, Rocco DiSpirito, and lots of other chefs. He was most recently pastry......

Jim Knipfel is a Wisconsin native who arrived in New York City many years ago via a stint in Philadelphia. Knipfel has a condition called retinitis pigmentosa, which is a degenerative disease that leads to blindness. He's been writing a weekly column, Slackjaw, for more than a decade. Originally published in the New York Press, it can now be found online every Sunday at electronpress.com. In addition to his column, Knipfel has written a number......

The Museum of the City of New York explores the past, present, and future of New York City and celebrates heritage of diversity, opportunity and transformation, making it a natural stop for anyone learning about the Big Apple. Among the museum's many educational offerings is its year-long history education program, which attracts hundreds of students from all over the city. Sunday, March 30th, marks the 18th Annual NYC History Day, a fair which will include......

As one half of “New York’s bravest and bawdiest” somersaulting, trapeze-swinging, burlesque duo The Wau Wau Sisters, Adrienne Truscott has wreaked her fair share of mayhem around the world. As a choreographer, she’s slightly more tethered, but still terrifically entertaining. In her latest work genesis, no! Truscott explores the concept of the museum, and wonders why we as a society preserve the things we do. In anticipation of a four-night run at Dance Theater Workshop......

Five years ago today, the U.S.-led "coalition of the willing" invaded Iraq. Some $600 billion later, with over 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers, more than 6,000 U.S. casualties, and some some 82,000 dead Iraqi civilians, the U.S. continues to occupy the country. A Nobel prize-winning economist has calculated that the war will ultimately cost the U.S. more than $3 trillion. On Monday, during Dick Cheney's visit to Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed 43 people in Karbala.......

Five years ago today, President George Bush announced the start of the Iraq War. Some $600 billion later, with over 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers, more than 6,000 U.S. casualties, and some some 82,000 dead Iraqi civilians, the U.S. continues to occupy the country. Jason Christopher Hartley, a National Guard soldier who was living in New York City on 9/11 and subsequently served at Ground Zero, maintained a blog during his 2004 tour of duty in......

ESPN International’s Tommy Smyth is an International soccer analyst and New Yorker by way of County Louth, Ireland. Today, Smyth will serve as the 247th Grand Marshal of the St. Patrick's Day Parade and become the first Grand Marshal to march with his native contingency. Tommy has called Irish football games for years and years in Gaelic Park (Bronx), along with Irish dances for that matter. He calls himself "a New Yorker with an Irish......

On Tuesday night at St. Ann's Warehouse, David Byrne, longtime advocate of bikes, big suits, lamp dancing and PowerPoint, will be joining a who's who list of New York performers to observe the fifth anniversary of the official start of the Iraq invasion. Called Speak Up!, the sold-out show is raising money for United for Peace and Justice and Iraq Veterans Against the War. If you don't have tickets, you might want to skip......

Joined by a small cadre of adventurous theatrical renegades, Michael Gardner has helped turned Williamsburg's Brick Theater into one of the city's most reliable sources for smart, funny, and surprising performance. Gardner is currently presenting a revival of his 1999 stage adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground, starring Brick co-founder Robert Honeywell as the book's rather tortured main character. Performed in the theater's backstage area, which has been transformed into a book-cluttered, candlelit......

Morgan Taylor, a Brooklyn-based illustrator/musician, has created a little yellow cone headed alien creature who's enchanting kids and adults alike. The little guy is called Gustafer Yellowgold, and the brainchild of Taylor joins him on stage via animated projections. The mellow songs have grabbed the attention of parents and kids alike, but Taylor has also crossed over to the indie world opening for bands like Wilco and The Polyphonic Spree. As for Gustafer, it's been......

New Hampshire native Nat Baldwin has some serious ties to Brooklyn's music scene, even though he still lives in his home state. His latest album, Most Valuable Player, is due out in April and was recorded in (Dirty Projector) Dave Longstreth's living room (Baldwin used to be the band's bassist). Longstreth also plays guitar on the album, which was produced/engineered by Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor. Baldwin reached the stage after taking a pass on the......

Wildly successful young chef and restaurateur Michael Psilakis – whose Anthos is one of only two Greek restaurants in the world with a Michelin star – refined his talent not in culinary school but in the kitchen beside his Greek mother during his childhood on Long Island. After earning a business degree, he found himself drawn back to the food world, where he worked his way up from waiter to owner of the Long Island......

Drawing on his roots in the fecund 1970s East Village avant-garde film scene, critic J. Hoberman has spent his three decades at the Village Voice introducing readers to the more adventurous cinematic worlds awaiting beyond the realm of Hollywood. He is the author of nine books, most recently The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties, which was described by Slate as "an extraordinary publishing event." To commemorate his thirty years at......