In yet another gem from Modern Mechanix, folks from 1932 ponder "How Much Longer Will Our Big Cities Last?" Photos of subway tunnels collapsing and apartment fires in New York set the apocalyptic tone for the piece which claims "scientific prophets" see the mammoth cities becoming obsolete. We're to pictured a cobweb-enshrouded Empire State Building and dandelions overtaking Wall Street after "exhaustive studies" concluded that we're pretty much, well, screwed.According to such writers as......

By now you've either seen Cloverfield, or decided you didn't need to see NYC destroyed yet again. But with a sequel on the way, this monster just isn't going away anytime soon. To be sure of that, Hasbro has now created a Cloverfield monster toy (photos are after the jump for those who haven't checked this guy out on the big screen yet). This is some bad news for Barbie! The 14" tall monster features......

Last June Scientific American took a look at a human-less New York, a vision that was fairly on par with how the city was portrayed in I Am Legend. Now it's The History Channel's turn to jump on board the post-apocalyptic train, their show Life Without People will premiere this Monday (at 9pm). The scene is eerily similar to how Chernobyl looks after decades without human inhabitants. The show's site tells us: "Abandoned skyscrapers......

The last sentence uttered before all hell breaks loose is, “Forget about the rest of the world and hold onto the ones you care about.” Though probably unintentional, those words of brotherly advice – spoken to a lovesick young yuppie named Rob – perfectly sum up the prevalent attitude in fin de siècle New York: the world’s spinning into a cataclysm of total war and catastrophic climate change, but fuck it; let’s party and......

Silver and gold are so last season, if you're a trendsetting criminal -- you know it's all about the copper these days. And where better to find it than in brownstone Brooklyn? The Brooklyn Paper reports:At least four heists of the once-cheap electrical conductor have been pulled off in Brownstone Brooklyn since June, and a few others were foiled when the cops caught the bad guys red-handed before they could make off with their ill-gotten......

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......

Did anyone go see destructo-porn blockbuster, I Am Legend, this weekend? Apparently New Yorkers who saw the movie up close and personal when it was being filmed gave it two thumbs down, or rather -- one middle finger up! amNewYork reports on Will Smith's run-ins with disgruntled locals."I would say, percentage-wise, it's the most amount of middle fingers I have received in my career. I'm used to people liking me… [all those] middle fingers, I......

SHOP: Still looking for that perfect gift? The Brooklyn Historical Society is holding the 4th Annual NY Creates Craft Fair, and they may have just what you're looking for. Check it out today and tomorrow, and it will be back the 22nd and 23rd for the real last-minute shoppers. Friday and Saturday // Noon to 6pm // BHS [128 Pierrepont St, Brooklyn] ART: Too much is going on the First Friday of every month, so......

It seems like just yesterday that the Brooklyn Bridge was being blown up by Hollywood. How time flies. I Am Legend, the movie for which this post-apocalyptic craziness occurred, is opening today (get your promotional survivor kit ready!). In the 100 minutes of watching it, you'll meet three main characters: Manhattan, Sam the dog, and Will Smith ("Robert Neville"). The combination is apparently a winning one, as the reviews have been frighteningly positive...it will scare......

The DC Comic Watchmen is coming to the big screen, and the NYC sets were recently revealed! They aren't tearing apart town or stopping traffic like Cloverfield or I Am Legend, instead they're filming the alternate universe New York, mostly circa 1985, in Vancouver. Director Zack Snyder said:After a couple months of shooting at various locations and on stages, last week we finally made the transition to our New York City backlot. Since the New......

The new trailer for Cloverfield (the JJ Abrams movie due out in January) has been released, and only proves a tad more revealing than the first. With a giant monster destroying New York City, this movie will certainly be for those who like "destruction porn," because nothing really beats the Statue of Liberty being decapitated... Abrams turned the Lower East Side into a war zone earlier this year, but he's been hush-hush about any details......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: 2007 American Music Awards (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., WABC 7) Most awards shows are basically useless and awards shows where people vote on line are even more so. This year this awards show invented by Dick Clark in 1973 gets even more useless. Jimmy Kimmel hosts. Nature: The Beauty of Ugly (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., WNET 13; Wednesday, 8:00 p.m., WLIW 21) A look at some of the strangest......

You know you’ve finally arrived when your name appears in an Onion headline. The satirical paper of record paid that respect to the decades-spanning indie-rock phenomenon Yo La Tengo some years back with an article titled “37 Record-Store Clerks Feared Dead In Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster.” Since 1984 the band, started by husband and wife duo Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan, has been blazing an independent trail of restlessly inventive guitar rock. Their most......

Ghostbusters has been in the form of a videogame ever since it hit the big screen in 1984, and since then it's been through many versions and platforms. Seems it has taken nearly 24 years to perfect it though, as it's just been announced the movie will haunt us til the end up time with a series of top-notch videogames to come.First title in what the publisher hopes will be a series of Ghostbusters games......

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......

A lot of the filming for the upcoming Will Smith zombie movie I Am Legend took place in Washington Square Park and at the Brooklyn Bridge, but Union Square gets the star treatment on the I Am Legend website. Well, star treatment if you consider a rather bombed-out looking New York to be glamorous. The website offers a pseudo-360-degree perspective of the popular gathering place. Yes, that's Whole Foods above and here are some......

Last night, Stephen Colbert had a reading for his book I Am America (And So Can You) that was full of fans of truthiness and enemies of bears. The Washington Square News reported that the erstwhile maybe-presidential candidate said, "It's time to impregnate this country with my mind." Unexpected, though, were probably the members of a theatrical anti-war group, Sparkle and Cybil War, who were decked out as "patriotic Texas oil baronesses with patriot......

Did you happen to catch Stephen Colbert announce his candidacy for President of the United States of America? The NY Times reports he's planning to run in South Carolina primaries, and that he's "serious enough about the stunt that his staff reached out to the state’s Democratic and Republican committees in advance of his declaration." The S.C. Democratic committee says they'd have no problems with him running. Colbert already has his own tv show, a......

I’ve been covering theater on Gothamist for exactly one year now, so I thought it might be worthwhile to gaze wistfully back at all the theatrical peaks and valleys and call attention to some of the more noteworthy summits. (Okay, maybe one bleak valley deserves special mention.) And since I’m on vacation until the end of the month, what better time to bust out the internet equivalent of a sitcom clips show? I hasten to......

Earlier this year, I Am Legend, the latest Will Smith extravaganza took over the Brooklyn Bridge. Warner Bros. spent around $5,000,000 for a 6 night shoot in New York, after getting approval from 14 government agencies, with hundreds of extras, including 160 members of the National Guard in full combat gear. The plot: "Robert Neville (Will Smith) is a brilliant scientist, but even he could not contain the terrible virus that was unstoppable, incurable, and......

THEATER: There’s a growing cultural phenomenon in Japan called hikikomori, in which young people (as many as 1 million) withdraw into their rooms and refuse any contact with the outside world, sometimes for years. (In America, it’s called adolescence.) The Attic, by acclaimed Japanese playwright Yoji Sakate, is about “a mysterious company that sells tiny ‘attics’ over the internet to people who want to withdraw from society. One man embarks on a quest to find......

First the Brooklyn Bridge was shut down for Will Smith's new movie, I Am Legend, and now Matt Damon is causing some traffic by the Lincoln Tunnel. We hear the scene was a big 'ol mess with some pretty impatient travelers and commuters on Friday, and in the midst of the chaos stood Damon. This is for the latest of The Bourne Identity films, The Bourne Ultimatum (the last shot of The Bourne Supremacy......

The typeface that defined high modernity and thrives today as something "at once populist and authoritarian," according to graphic designer Steven McCarthy, is getting its own cinematic biography. Helvetica, the film, will survey the panorama of “typography, graphic design and global visual culture” that has evolved since Max Miedinger unveiled the bedevilingly sleek Helvetica typeface fifty years ago. New Yorkers and other city dwellers wallow in the Helvetica typeface; we encounter it many times......

While people downtown thought they would be able to breathe easy once I Am Legend finishes shooting at the Brooklyn Bridge (they are expected to wrap at 4AM tomorrow), they'll have to think again. Because President Bush is coming to the city tomorrow. Bush will be in town to give a "State of the Economy" type speech at Wall Street. The President will probably discuss the country's economic health and drop a "what happened a......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: jumper down on the Triboro, an actor injured on the I Am Legend Set, and "white powder" at a High School on the West Side. Hide your wife: Prince Charles is in town this weekend! A documentary about young African-American kids and their preference for white dolls is stirring up some controversy. Why does the Brooklyn Critical Mass get police cooperation, while the Manhattan ride gets nothing but trouble?......

Bundle up: Arctic air is coming in and it'll be very cold tonight - WABC 7 says "by midnight it will be 18 degrees with a wind chill of zero degrees" - and tomorrow Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: airplane emergency at JFK, a stolen armored car in Queens, and a bank robbery in Midtown. Has Exxon been dumping "100 million gallons of partially treated ground water - water laced with the known carcinogen......

The end of the world as the producers of I Am Legend know it has arrived. The film started work on an elaborate "escape from New York" scene that involves thousands of extras, as well as tanks and helicopters. Many people went down to check out the scene in the cold, The Black Hawk helicopter was docked near the Brooklyn Bridge and huge klieg lights were shining onto the bridge. And since some bloggers......

Possibly to pre-empt freaked out phone calls to 911, the production folks from the Will Smith film I Am Legend have alerted not only residents and businesses downtown and near the Brooklyn Bridge, but the major papers to to tell everyone not to freak out if they see Black Hawk helicopters, tanks, military activity, hundreds if not thousands of people, and lots of lights near the Brooklyn Bridge. Because it's just filming, not an......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an electric shock at 10 Penn Plaza, a fall victim down a hole at Beaver and William Street, and a person stuck between train cars at 96th Street on the 2/3. A tip from Marianne, via Gothamist Contribute: "The public should not be alarmed by activity beginning tomorrow in the vicinity of the Brooklyn Bridge. Beginning tomorrow at 4:00 PM, Tuesday, January 23, and continuing on weekdays through January,......

Our Wednesday nights have purpose again, as Project Runway starts its third season and pull us out of our rerun doldrums. The audition show was on last night and will repeat tonight at 9PM before the 10PM season three premiere. And have you read Tim Gunn's blog entry about the season three auditions? Here's Tim's transcript of what happened in LA:Our next candidate enters holding a top with a hoodie shaped like a dragon head,......