A rendering for a building that will replace a Cooper Union engineering building has emerged (above). Designed by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, the 440,000-square-foot mixed-use building will replace the brown tribute to banality that currently hunkers across from the historic 1859 Cooper Union Foundation building. The 51 Astor Place building is to be demolished; the fate of the connected Starbucks (between Third and Fouth Avenues) is uncertain. The Observer says the proposed building “will......

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......

As chains take over every nook and cranny of this city, some people in the East Village are forming a united front against them. The Villager reports on the corporate takeover, the resistance and the new spin on this story as old as time. Multiple Starbucks in Astor Place act as a welcome sign to the East Village, but the East Village Community Coalition would like to say good riddance to them, and more than......

EVENT: Berlin takes over New York this month with the Berlin in Lights Festival. Through the 18th you can soak up the German city through film, music, art, architecture and more. This evening you can check out a couple of Berlin-esque events. First up is the "Urban Design and Memorials" dialogue. A panel discussion which will touch on the "challenges of integrating memorials into the urban fabric, and how Berlin and New York address issues......

READING: We originally thought this was going down yesterday, but you still have a chance to see it! Not in a million years would we have thought we'd be listing a reading by former Guns n' Roses guitarist, Slash. But it turns out old rockers love to dish on their sordid lives, and this mysterious musician is no different. Tonight he'll read from his book, called Slash, which apparently "redefines sex, drugs, and rock 'n'......

Reader ianqui took this photograph of a cardboard box getting into the Halloween spirit early - by trying to be the Astor Place cube! Granted, it's not painted black, but white is so much more fetching to passers-by who want to scrawl various messages. We like to think of this box as Alamo-ette. In 2005, the Astor Place cube, also known as The Alamo, was removed for repairs (and returned eight months later). It......

Ah, City Councilman Peter "I hate graffiti" Vallone weighs in on the chalk "graffiti" made by 6-year-old Natalie Shea on her home's front stoop. Back in 2005, Vallone introduced the law that requires property owners to clean up graffiti, so when a neighbor called 311 to complain about Natalie's drawings (again, mind you, on her own stoop, not a neighbor's stoop), her parents got a warning letter from the Department of Sanitation. The Daily News......

Mayor Bloomberg is back from London, just in time to deliver an address at Cooper Union while the world's media is milling about NYC for the U.N.'s General Assembly. Bloomberg will be appearing as part of a panel near Astor Place to discuss national policy matters. According to The New York Sun, an online site is attracting a growing number of supporters to draft Mayor Bloomberg as a third party candidate in the 2008 Presidential......

Brooke Astor passed away today. A gentleman should never ask a lady her age, but once Brooke Astor passed the century mark, she probably didn't care who knew how old she was. Brooke Astor was the wife of Vincent Astor, the only son of John Jacob Astor IV, who died in the sinking of the Titanic. The Astor family's roots stretch back almost as far as the history of New York City itself. The subway......

MUSIC: Didn't get enough partying done yesterday? Come out and see Shearwater (which includes Will Sheff of Okkervil River) play a free show. Hard tickets will be distributed two per person, outside the venue on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 5:00pm on the day of the show. Listen: White Waves.mp3 5pm doors, 7pm show // Note: show is moved indoors to The Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University // Free Over......

It's the longest day of the year, so you should be able to fit Shepard Fairey's exhibit and at least one of the following events in. READING: Tommy Trantino was convicted and sentenced to death in 1964 for the murder of two New Jersey police officers. While doing time, he wrote to Leonard Weinglass, the lawyer who defended the Chicago Seven. From the letters came a book deal, and his stories (along with poetry, drawings......

READING: FreeNYC points us to a reading at B&N; featuring Gong Show guru and possible CIA assassin, Chuck Barris: "In addition to bringing the world the Newlywed Game, the Gong Show and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Chuck Barris has now turned his attention to the phenomenon of reality TV in The Big Question, a dystopian view of what television will become in the near future.Come meet Barris and have your copy of his latest......

The bookstore chain Barnes & Noble confirmed that the Astor Place location will be closed due to high rents. A spokesperson told the Post, "We'd like to stay there, but we really can't afford it." Business analysts have rated the chain's stock to be "overweight" or simply "neutral." We suppose they'll stay open to take advantage of the seventh and final Harry Potter book going on sale, but compared to the big Union Square location,......

The Manhattan office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) served Starbucks a steaming hot cup of charges of anti-labor practices Friday. The move by the NLRB followed complaints by International Industrial Workers of the World organizers that the company was suppresing their union-forming efforts. According to its official website the website of its service industry branch, the IWW is "The anarchosyndicalist trade union, workers' confederation and section of the Anarchist International." driven by solidarity......

EVENT: Bluestockings is a great little place on Allen St, if you haven't already checked it out. Tonight the UnCoolKids tell us this bookstore (and more) is having an event called "Where Have You Been? Conversations on Travel": ”New Yorkers go all over the world, but the city has a way of swallowing their homecomings. At “Where Have You Been,” three intrepids share stories with other travelers as well as those of us who don’t......

Gridskipper solicited picks for the city's ugliest buildings from eleven architecture-minded New Yorkers. The list includes Astor Place’s The Sculpture for Living building (which replaced a parking lot), the Queens Citicorp Building, the Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building), the AT&T; Building on Church St., the Cross Bronx Expressway and anything by Trump – but the Trump World Tower isn't really that ugly. Someone even mentioned the Hearst Tower. Wow. Gothamist thinks these structures......

It is a day for rodents, that's for sure. To the excitement of Big Apple animal lovers, the NY Times reported the first beaver in 200 years has been spotted in the city. A 2- or 3-year-old beaver has been seen in the Bronx River, doing one of two very New York things: Looking for a mate or trying to make his home better (the Times says he was spotted "looking for more material......

EVENT: Talking Head David Bryne joins Elizabeth Diller, recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, for a talk about new tendencies and relationships between architecture and music. Christopher Janney moderates. More information here. Friday // 7 to 9pm // Center for Architecture [536 LaGuardia Place] // $15 THEATER: The 3 Legged Dog Art and Technology Center (3LD) saw its headquarters at 30 West Broadway destroyed on 9/11. They’ve since rebuilt a fantastic new space, which......

Walking by Astor Place around noon yesterday, we noticed some art students adding an unauthorized chapeau to the Alamo monument. By 3 PM, high winds had begun knocking the wooden structure off-- no word on whether it survived the night. Related: Alamo Cube Cleaning, 2005 Cube Chalking, 2006 Cube Attacked with LEDs, 2006......

Here's a video from Kelly Loudenberg, who writes, "The League of Humane Voters and The Church of Stop Shopping along with the vegan community and East Village residents teamed up this weekend for a rally to stop the closing of The Whole Earth Bakery on Saint Marks. Owner of the bakery, Peter Silvestri was there serving warm food and sweet treats to all." And here's an update about what happened after Reverend Billy was......

Yesterday afternoon, Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping went to the Astor Place Cube to protest Starbucks' refusal to let Ethiopia to trademark coffees. The Ethiopian government tried to trademark coffee names, like Sidamo, Harar, and Yirgacheffe, which could bring nearly $100 million to farmers, but the US Patent and Trademark Office denied Ethiopia's trademark applications. Reverend Billy was arrested and taken to the 9th Precinct; we're guessing the Starbucks across from......

THEATER: Adventures in Mating uses the “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel device to stage this comedy about “a girl, a boy, and their stunning inability to make even the most basic of decisions. Miranda and Jeffrey are on a blind date... a magical date? A disasterous one? Only you, the oh-so-fickle public, can decide.” The show opens tonight in New York after a successful debut at the 2005 Minneapolis Fringe Festival. - John Del Signore......

Tomorrow, Visual Resistance and Time's Up have organized memorial events to honor Eric Ng, the bicyclist who was killed by a drunk driver while biking on the Hudson River bike path last Friday evening. Here are the details from Visual Resistance:1PM: Memorial bike ride. Meet up in Washington Square Park at 1pm. We will ride together to the site of Eric’s death at 1:30 SHARP. Non-bikers can go directly to the West Side Greenway, near......

EVENT: Tonight PowerHouse books is having a signing event for the release of photographer Ron Galella's "Disco Years". This visual diary of the New York club scene in the 70's and 80's is sure to make you nostalgic for Studio 54 - even if that was before your time. 5:30 to 7pm // Rizzoli Bookstore [31 W 57th btw 5th & 6th] // Free THEATER: The workaday lives of office temps are brightened by rumors......

THEATER: Stephen Belber, whose Tape was made into a riveting film by Richard Linkater, unveils his latest opus, A Small, Melodramatic Story at The Public Theater. Previews start tonight so there are no reviews yet, but the synopsis is intriguing: “In Washington, D.C., a widow struggles to figure out whether life is worth re-engaging with. In her path are the 1968 riots, the first Gulf War, the Freedom of Information Act, and herself. There's also......

Our pal Jesse Chan-Norris lives in a building up on 8th Street and Broadway. It's a nice place, but they've been doing a lot of renovation on the exterior lately, and it's begun to drive him a little bit insane. This morning, he sent us a link to this post, complete with audio sample of the brain-melting noise: For the past several months they have been doing construction on the outside of my building. This......

READING: READINGS: Looks like literary talent might just be genetic - 26-year-old Owen King, son of best-selling spookmaster Stephen King, has a collection of a novella and short stories out and is reading tonight at the Astor Place Barnes & Noble. We're All in This Together has been called "compelling" and "imaginative", and having a famous father can't hurt, right? - Krissa Corbett Cavouras 7pm // Barnes & Noble [4 Astor Place] // Free THEATER:......

Yesterday morning's delays on the Lexington Avenue subway line were caused by an early morning suicide at the Astor Place subway station. A man, "described only as in his 60s," went onto the southbound tracks as a 6 train was pulling in. The Daily News says the train stopped 100 feet away (the Post says the train stopped inches away), and the "man looked toward the train and placed his head on the electrified third......

Yesterday at 6:16pm, a couple of hundred people converged on Astor Place for Newmindspace's Bubble Battle. A soapy good time seemed to be had by all-- the highlight was definitely the double-barreled bubble-blowing machine shown here-- it was gunning those suckers out at hundreds a minute. [More pix on Flickr-- check the BubbleBattle tag.]......

- The Department of Transportation will add more credit card-accepting parking meters; they have been in the Theater District and will soon be added to parts of the Upper West Side, Long Island City, and Forest Hills - First foie gras, now lobsters - Whole Foods announces the inhumane treatment of lobsters is causing the grocery chain to stop selling them! - NYC is considering creating job centers for day laborers - Gammablog has......