An unidentified man was forcibly removed from a United Airlines at JFK before it took off last night because he wouldn’t sit down and stop praying. A San Francisco author named Ori Brafman, who was on the flight, told WNBC the Orthodox Jewish man ignored instructions from flight attendants to remain in his seat. During the minutes before take off, he walked to the back of the plane to pray, and when he continued to......

Olympics planners and San Francisco authorities made many attempts (making up the route as it went along) to prevent demonstrators from disrupting the Olympic torch's only North American appearance on Wednesday, they couldn't stop a torch bearer from the Bronx from expressing her pro-Tibet sympathies. Majora Carter, a 41-year-old environmental activist from the South Bronx, had tucked a small Tibetan flag up her sleeve, with the torch in the other. The NY Times described her......

While San Francisco is bracing for tomorrow's Olympic torch relay--protesters scaled the Golden Gate Bridge and unfurled "Free Tibet" banners yesterday --torchbearers hailing from New York City say they aren't worried about potential disruptions. A retired NYPD cop, James Dolan, told the Daily News, "I've seen enough demonstrations in my career. I'm confident the city will be able to make the event go off smoothly." The Olympic torch is only visiting San Francisco in the......

As the creative class has grown in Brooklyn, it has been equally growing in the East Bay area of San Francisco. The NY Times is reporting on a bi-coastal trend that has Brooklynites flocking to the Bay Area, and vice versa, as both of the locales appeal to the DIY generation of freelancers. But what's this, SFers are calling their East Coast doppelgänger ugly? One Facebook employee residing on the sunny side of the......

Whether you call them variety meats, off cuts, or simply offal, hearts, tripe, tendons and the like aren’t the first things that spring to mind as fit for a gourmet feast. But thanks to the offal wizardry of Chef Chris Cosentino, just such a dinner was served Tuesday at the Astor Center. Cosentino, the executive chef of Incanto, graced New York with his annual “Head to Tail Dinner,” which he usually holds at his San......

Photo by Andy Sternberg/LAist A posthumous tribute wall dedicated to singer/songwriter Elliot Smith sat defaced by graffiti for months on end -- LAist said enough, so did the fans and city council.SFist was surprised to learn that chronic presidential candidate Ralph Nader picked former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez as his running mate.Phillyist explored the possibilities of green cleaning.In the latest edition of Reel Toronto, a bi-weekly feature looking at films shot in Toronto......

If there is no such thing as bad publicity, then we suppose yesterday's Cash Tomato promotion was a resounding success - if a melee as people tried to grab money works for you. The event, which involved giving away $29 to individuals in honor of Leap Year - wait, make that $29 attached to tomatoes, resulted in a Union Square riot with one person hospitalized and police and paramedics on the scene. From the......

Photo credit: sniderscion Torontoist spent its week uncovering who was behind mysterious ads for a drug called "Obay" that popped up across the country (Scientology? Frank Shepard Fairey?), first tracing them to an advocacy group called Colleges Ontario and then confirming their suspicions a few days later.Phillyist learned how to put on a puppet show – it's not as easy as you might think!Shanghaiist discovers that the average starting monthly pay for fresh graduates......

MUSIC: Of course we're going to recommend you come hang out with us tonight at our 5 year anniversary show. Come on by and check out Pattern is Movement and The Forms, along with a special guest band at midnight. On top of all that, you'll get Craig Wedren deejaying between sets. What more could you ask for? Buy tickets here. Friday // 9pm // Union Hall [702 Union St, Park Slope] // $10......

A video artist and teacher visiting from San Francisco claims she’s the latest victim of police harassment of photographers in New York – and this time the overzealous cop may have been acting on behalf of Forest City Ratner, the corporation behind the controversial Atlantic Yards project in downtown Brooklyn. Katherin McInnis tells Atlantic Yards Report that she was on the Pacific Street sidewalk shooting “blurry, arty video” of the rail yards on Sunday when......

The big sports news of the day isn't the Super Bowl. It's the probable Johan Santana trade that the Mets and Twins agreed to yesterday. And from the reaction of the local papers and sportswriters, it seems like the Mets pulled a fast one on the rubes from Minnesota. If the Mets can sign Santana to a contract extension, it's likely that he will become the highest paid pitcher in baseball, surpassing Barry Zito......

RENT, the surprise smash hit musical that premiered in 1996 and went on to become the seventh-longest-running Broadway show in history, will close June 1st, producers have announced. Over the years the show cultivated a fanatical army of young repeat viewers (“Rentheads”) whose ardor has translated into profits of $280 million on Broadway, four Tony awards and a Pulitzer. Productions have been mounted on six continents, while an ill-conceived movie version of the show, filmed......

New York magazine's cover feature is all about crime in the Big Apple. There are a number of articles, from getting the murder rate to zero (last year it was at the lower in 40-plus years with 494 murders) to those Criminals Gone Wild videos and a look at the violence plaguing Brownsville. But most intriguing is Adam Fisher's personal account of getting mugged in Bushwick. Fisher moved to Bushwick because it was "the New......

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......

SFist saw Christmas Day turn tragic after a Siberian tiger escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo, killing a visitor and mauling two others. Phillyist counted down the top ten items on Philadelphia's New Year's wish list. Gothamist looked at the wooden bikes being offered for NYC's first bike share program on Governors Island. LAist received a Christmas present in the form of a drunk Santa Claus in a g-string. Bostonist launched......

In the wake of the horrific tiger escape resulting in one death and two injuries at the San Francisco Zoo, zoos around the country are examining their tiger exhibit set-ups. Tiger Mountain at the Bronx Zoo has the following set-up, per the Post:Tiger Mountain is surrounded by a moat about 10 feet wide and is enclosed by a fence that is 15 feet high and has a five-foot overhang. That means that the last......

While it may be beautiful now, yesterday's weather was awful enough to cause some holiday travel headaches for those flying out of area airports. Winds were gusting up to 47 MPH, and travelers arriving at LaGuardia had two hour delays, which wasn't bad considering arrivals at Kennedy and Newark had delays of four to four-and-a-half hours. A non-weather incident, though, caused a JetBlue flight from San Francisco to New York to be diverted to Denver......

Last week Gothamist was in San Francisco for the third time this year. It was sunny and warm and we took an odd pleasure in watching the natives hustle about wearing wool hats and gloves. In our three trips to the west coast we managed to avoid the Valentine's Day snow storm, the April nor'easter and resultant flooding, and last week's snowy/icy/rainy pair of storms. We will leave it to our readers to decide......

Intertube-savvy metropolitan diners now have yet another way to make sure their every culinary craving is sated: the new website FoodieBytes, now beta testing, lets users search restaurant menus based on the food they desire. For instance, typing in “pesto” and “whole wheat pasta” yields over a hundred New York eateries. You can narrow your search by neighborhood and, once you find a restaurant that seems appealing, peruse the entire menu, get the hours,......

Food bloggers from around the world are offering delicious prizes as part of Menu for Hope 4. Menu for Hope is an annual fundraising event hosted by Chez Pim. Last year, Menu for Hope raised an incredible $62,925 to help the UN World Food Programme feed the hungry. Want more details? Well, here’s the FAQ. From December 10-21, you can buy raffle tickets to bid on any on the food-related prizes being offered. Tickets cost......

SFist witnessed a student interrupt Sean Penn's Dennis Kucinich-endorsement speech at San Francisco State University, with sexy results. Sort of. Speaking of sort of sexy, SFist readers demanded to know: at what age does one become a cougar most? In local political news, it looked like San Francisco Public Utilities Commission chief Susan Leal might get the ax. Au revoir! And we found a startling aesthetic connection between the Omaha mall shooter and Rick......

Crews are working to remove oil from Long Island shoreline that spilled into the ocean sometime on Thanksgiving Day and started washing ashore. Surfers called the Coast Guard to report "tar-like balls of oil." A number of agencies, including the Coast Guard and NY State DEP, are working on the cleanup. The spill seems to be about 500 gallons of no. 6 oil, an unrefined bunker oil, and Newsday reports the samples from the spill......

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......

Fun Fun Fun Fest 2007 Recap from Super!Alright! on Vimeo Austinist attended a town hall meeting about proposed noise ordinances that could undermine the city's future as the Live Music Capital of the World, and lamented the possible loss of Texas's only feminist bookstore. Throughout the week, they interviewed a bunch of indie fashion designers and D-I-Y websites—Etsy, Ornamental Things, 31 Corn Lane, and Aorta Designs—for the upcoming Stitch Fashion Show. They also did......

In a case of gilding a withered lily, the MTA is improving service to New York City transit riders by more effectively informing them when routes will be obstructed, interrupted, and otherwise delayed. It's almost become a cliche that subway service becomes interrupted when the weather turns bad, or if any technological problem crops up. Now the MTA is offering to ameliorate its shortcomings by informing riders of service interruptions with text and email updates.......

In a 33-15 game, it is cliché to say that it was closer than the final score, but this game really was. It is even more cliché to say that this game turned on only a few plays, but again, it did. The fact is, San Francisco’s inability to hold onto the football was the key difference in the game. Things looked great for the Giants at the start, taking the opening kickoff and......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian struck on 11th Ave. and West 43rd St. in Manhattan, a shooting on 21st St. in Queens, and a shooting on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. Veteran political reporter Gabe Pressman weighs in on the wave of mortgage foreclosures sweeping New York and finds overwhelming evidence of racism. A privately funded program to encourage lower income and minority students to take Advanced Placement courses will pay cash for......

It was a tale of two halves at the Meadowlands on Sunday. In the first half, the Giants did everything they could to hand a game to the Jets, in the second half, they woke up and took control of the game. Kerry Rhodes returned a Brandon Jacobs fumble for a touchdown to get the scoring started for the Jets and after the teams traded touchdowns, Eli Manning threw an awful interception in the......

Brooklyn Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (D, 51st District) wants to ban alcohol ads on buses and subways. The ads provide just $3 to $5 million of the $100 million in revenue the Metropolitan Transportation Authority gets from ad sales and the MTA has not taken a position on the proposed legislation. The state’s Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services did express support for the legislation calling it "consistent with our strategy of preventing alcoholism......

Those geniuses at Fallon London are at it again for Sony BRAVIA. First they had the bouncing balls in San Francisco, then the tower of paint in Glasgow, and now bunnies on the streets of Manhattan. Fair warning - if for some reason you're scared of bunnies, don't watch this video. The advertisement, titled "Play-doh" features 200 plasticine bunnies hopping around and a large 30 foot bunny in Thomas Paine Park in Lower Manhattan.......