Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn have announced a plan to issue 1,500 new permits to vendors who commit to selling fresh fruits and vegetables from carts in low-income neighborhoods. The “Green Cart” plan, expected to be approved by the City Council, comes on the heels of a Health Department study comparing Harlem to the Upper East Side; it determined that supermarkets in Harlem are 30% less common than the UES, and......

Charles Mee is renowned for his distinctive approach to playwriting, which synthesizes disparate pre-existing texts into startlingly new theatrical creations bursting with music, dance, video and other inspired surprises. The superb Signature Theatre is now in the midst of their season devoted to his plays; the first production, Iphigenia 2.0, was a devastating depiction of America’s Iraq catastrophe as seen through the prism of classic Greek tragedy. The current show, Queens Boulevard, is a funny,......

During the holidays, we are all bombarded with requests for charitable giving. Sure, it's a great way to do something good and squeeze in one more tax deduction before year's end, but given the number of requests, making a choice about how to spend your charity dollars can be somewhat daunting. The Times focused this week on the dizzying number of food-related charities making year-end requests. Alongside the more traditional hunger-related organizations, "[c]haritable groups dedicated......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: shots fired on 166th St. and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, a pedestrian struck at Berry St. and Division Ave. in Brooklyn, and a found body on Richmond Valley and Arthur Kill on Staten Island. Still searching for the Staten Island ninja burglar, police questioned New York Post photographer Ron Romano because of his ninja-like ability to tightrope walk. A huge hole in the middle of Brooklyn's Pacific......

The Neighbors Project has created a way to Thank You For Shoveling, with a polite little card campaign. Their website explains: "When you're trying to get somewhere during the winter -- work, bar, grocery store, gym, etc -- there's nothing more frustrating than being delayed because you're wading through inches of snow, or slipping and falling on the ice. It's a recipe for resentment on your block. So help spread the word about how much......

A Brookings Institution study reveals that New York is a great place for walking, with 21 out of 21 walkable urban places. But Washington D.C. is the most walkable on a per capita basis while New York is ranked 10th, because New York is measured as the NYC metro area, including NJ, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The study's author, Christopher B. Leinberger, admits there are issues with the methodology, namely that walkable places are weighted the......

Freaked out about the explosions in your neighborhood, only to find out via 311 that it's just fireworks? Or wondering about the fire around the corner? Well, the city actually does want you to know about what's going on in your neighborhoods and announced the pilot program launch of Notify NYC, which will deliver "emergency public information by email, text messages and reverse-911 alerts in four City community districts." The four districts are Lower Manhattan,......

In Charles Mee’s Queens Boulevard (the musical) the titular traffic artery is no longer the “boulevard of blood” notorious for hit-and-run collisions. In fact, there isn’t a drop of blood in Mee’s colorful fairytale, which takes as inspiration the centuries old dance-drama style of Hindu theater called kathakali, among other things. In Mee’s eyes, Queens Boulevard is the symbolic common thread connecting New York’s myriad ethnicities and cultures, with Queens as the proverbial melting pot......

WWOR/channel 9 got a wake-up call that it's supposed to be a New Jersey TV station when the FCC held a hearing about the station's license renewal. Critics say the station's license shouldn't be renewed because it has failed to discuss NJ news and issues. The station, owned by News Corporation whose local media holdings include WNYW/Channel 5 and the NY Post, was moved to NJ in 1986 due to FCC law that each state......

You're tired. You have a kitchen the size of a closet. You can't handle dealing with your guests' various and sundry dietary restrictions/food allergies/food quirks. Whatever the reason, you'd rather eat out on Thanksgiving this year. You've only got a few days left to lock down your reservation, but the options are plentiful. We present you a roundup of roundups, and our picks from the bountiful and tempting options. Restaurant Girl gives her top picks,......

SFist witnessed a new apartment building tszuj the skyline with spectacular, gaudy turquoise aplomb, the (informal) renaming of the Mission/SOMA neighborhood border, the return of the Maltese Falcon, the Mayor Gavin Newsom mea culpa-ing over his Hawaiian getaway during the oil spill, and double-decker buses hitting the streets of San Francisco. Oh, and some baseball player named Barry Bonds is a liar whose pants, it seems, are totally on fire. LAist continues to cover the......

Famed New York realtor Barbara Corcoran chimed in on a matter of public aesthetics and the nature of our city by advising that homeowners would be best served by tearing up their lawns and gardens and paving them over as a suitable place to park their cars. We'll let her speak directly on the subject, as it seems too insane to try to rephrase ourselves. From Friday's Daily News:Q. My wife and I have......

Trying to walk in certain city neighborhoods is fast becoming an extreme sport. Between the new, bigger newsstands and bus shelters, the perpetually metastasizing newspaper boxes on every corner, the increasing popularity of alfresco dining, the delivery guys on their bikes and – let’s not forget – tourists, wending your way down the sidewalk without reaching for your Taser demands a degree of patience not often found in your average New Yorker. A month after......

A fire that erupted in a two-family Rosedale home yesterday morning claimed the lives of a Corrections Department captain and her two sons. The Corrections Dept. union said that the victims were Captain Renee Chong and her two young sons. The three-alarm fire broke out before 5AM. Neighbors tried to bang on Chongs' door, but the fire spread too quickly. One described the smoke as "toxic". Colleagues report that Chong was nearing 20 years of......

The serenader of the 50 states, Sufjan Stevens, grew his midwestern roots and reached New York in the late 90s -- where he has resided since. So it's only fitting a tribute to our state has arrived, after nearly a decade of soaking up the city. And perhaps separating himself from the rest of the city, he's found something special in the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. As announced this summer, Sufjan's latest muse is none other than......

Queens prosecutors announced yesterday that a teenager acting as a drug mule was arrested at JFK airport on Tuesday. Anthony Cruz, 16, was stopped by customs officials as he arrived on an American Airlines flight from Santiago in the Dominican Republic. X-rays of his body revealed 80 balloons of heroin with a total weight of 988 grams (nearly 1 kilo and more than 2 pounds). According to officials, the heroin was worth $500,000. Richard Brown,......

Yesterday, the New School held a forum to discuss how New York City will save its public housing. The New York City Housing Authority, which is the city's primary sources of affordable housing to 400,000 residents, has an annual shortfall of $225 million. The Daily News reports that Sean Moss, the Regional Director for the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the NY/NJ region, offered a suggestion that "prompted shocked murmurs." His idea: Sell......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a double stabbing at 14-19 31 Drive in Queens, a double shooting at 138th St. and 59th Ave. in Queens, and a commercial robbery on East 12th St. between 3rd and 4th Aves. in Manhattan. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is committing millions of dollars to residents of the South Bronx, pleasing some, rankling others, and infuriating the Mayor of Caracas, which is Venezuela's desperately poor capital. Marilyn Kaytor, who......

Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Quinn urged the State Assembly to pass a bill authorizing the marine transfer station at the Gansevoort Pier. The MTS, part of the city's Solid Waste Management Plan, would handle recyclable paper, metal, glass and plastic and would help to ease garbage truck traffic. Bloomberg said there would be "a disaster" if the plan doesn't pass. Assembly members whose districts are affected by the plan, such as Richard Gottfried,......

boardwalk ciclista - JANUARY The friends and artists behind the I Heart Brooklyn Girls calendar series have put their 2008 version online and up for sale. The calendar is a continuation of the series that looks to feature realistic representations of Brooklyn femmes by reinventing traditional genres of calendar girls. 2008's theme is a swimsuit calendar and all of the shots were taken at Coney Island. Here's Gothamist on the 2007 calendar that featured......

If you've ever struggled to figure out which direction you're facing when you step out of a subway station (and there are no landmarks or sun to guide you), you won't have those problems at four subway stations in Midtown anymore. That's because the Department of Transportation and the Grand Central Partnership are placing temporary directional compass decals outside them. DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan explained, "Not a single person, native New Yorker or visitor, can......

Time was that Glendale and the surrounding neighborhoods were the place to go if you wanted to have a few beers and some old-fashioned German food. Now that the venerable Niederstein's has closed, and been turned into an Arby's no less, it would seem that the only place in the nabe to have some brats or a meaty hunk of kassler rippchen is the antediluvian Zum Stammtisch. There's nothing wrong with Zum, but if you......

If you’ve got time-pressed guests from out of town who can’t decide between seeing a show or taking a tour, Accomplice: New York is a great solution. Described as “an adventure in organized crime”, the show is part mystery/scavenger hunt and part walking tour through downtown Manhattan, orchestrated by a gang of seasoned improv actors. It is never exactly clear who’s part of the production and who’s just part of the woodwork, which makes the......

In addition to running the kitchen at NY dining landmark Brasserie, Chef Franklin Becker is also a tireless advocate for two particular causes: Raising awareness for Autism research, and developing recipes and healthy food choices for diabetics. Becker, who turned 38 at the beginning of the month, has been in the business for a staggering 24 years. Many New York Times stars later, he now cooks at Brasserie, and was an awarded a StarChefs Rising......

Five architectural firms have banded together to brainstorm ideas for adding green space to the far west side from the Village to Tribeca, also known as Hudson Square. A plan to add more garbage trucks to the neighborhood, writes Downtown Express's Patrick Hedlund, led local stakeholders to elicit architectural visions. Five firms - Arquitectonica GEO , FLAnK, LTL Architects, SPaN and Zakrzewski + Hyde (in association with Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners) - were......

The NY Times has an article this weekend that focuses on the overused and so over H word. Hipsters! They're still here, in all their b&w; print glory. This time they're settling down in Staten Island to make babies. The new slow-growing hipster mecca has been a nearly silent Siren for a few years, drawing the hipster crowd over from Brooklyn -- the Times even tells us that at least one resident there wears "black......

Drivers living on exceptionally clean streets could earn a respite from the burden of alternate-side-of-the-street parking. Residents of Red Hook, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Park Slope were granted a stay of parking execution by the Dept. of Sanitation yesterday. Because the area has consistently received scores of 90% or higher for street cleanliness over the last few months, residents will no longer have to move their cars to comply with street cleaning requirements. According......

On the heels of the NY Times' Alex Williams calling Brooklyn "over" -- Park Slope has been named one of the 10 best neighborhoods in the country! Take that Gray Lady. In fact, "the historic area, just steps from Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, is the only New York City neighborhood to make the first-ever list from the American Planning Association (APA)." Which would mean that a Brooklyn 'hood bested a Manhattan 'hood......

Want to complain about your terrible neighbor to someone other than 311? Or want to know a little more about a neighborhood you're thinking of moving to? The website Rotten Neighbor aims to do both: Educate newcomers to neighborhoods and collect information about neighborhoods from the veterans. From their site:Our goal is to be an exceptionally smart assistant when you are looking to move into a new neighborhood. We hope that you will be......

On tap for this year’s 33rd Annual Atlantic Antic festival, taking this Sunday from 10 AM to 6 PM (rain or shine, buddy) is the usual bonanza of pony rides, live music, and balloon animals. This year’s Antic has an added emphasis on food, which should hopefully make it a remedy to all the street fair food fatigue that’s been going around recently. For starters, decent street food will be offered in overwhelming abundance-......