Photos from the Met's exhibition of Lee Friedlander's Work Art is often accused of being contrived, especially in comparison to nature. But some of New York's most well-loved natural landscapes are themselves largely artificial, so it's interesting to see an artist like a photographer double-back on a landscaper's craft. Photographer Lee Friedlander did exactly that with with a lens pointed at the work of Frederick Law Olmsted, the co-designer of Manhattan's Central Park and......

The area of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue that stretches through the East New York/Stuyvesant Heights area isn’t exactly a culinary destination, but what it does have is the Carolina Country Store, a one of a kind grocery that has been covered here before. The tiny storefront is also favored by chefs like Zak Pelaccio, primarily because it specializes in southern style ham and cured meats that are hard to find elsewhere in the five boroughs. Salty,......

A con artist has been using Craigslist to scam gullible apartment seekers out of hundreds of dollars, according to the Daily News. Nothing new here, except this time the scheme so sketchy it’s hard to feel too sorry for the victims. Using the alias JoAnn Rinaggio, a compulsive check bouncer named JoAnne Smith has been posting listings for a fully furnished two-bedroom with a balcony in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. This amazing place can be yours......

Former Mets pitcher Don Cardwell died yesterday at the age of 72 in North Carolina. Traded to the Lovable Loser Mets in 1966, Cardwell's performance during 1969 mirrored that of the team itself and helped the Mets win the their division title on the way to their first World Series Championship. Like the Mets, Cardwell started the '69 season in a lackluster manner, posting a 3-9 win-loss record through the first four months of the......

Native New Yorker Melissa Murphy is the mellifluous force behind Sweet Melissa Patisserie, a beloved Brooklyn house of tempting treats that opened in Cobble Hill in 1998. A graduate of New York’s French Culinary Institute, Murphy has spent the past decade building a budding dessert empire, bolstered by a profile-raising appearance on the Food Network and a baking book to be published by Viking in March. Last year Murphy added a second Sweet Melissa location......

READING: Dave Eggers has delivered two (out of three) great novels, and tonight he reads from last one (which is just out on paperback), What is the What. He'll be at the Strand discussing the book and he'll also give a slideshow presentation from a recent trip he took to Sudan. More info here. Friday // 7pm // Strand Bookstore [828 Broadway] // Free EVENT: We love a good pillow fight, and tonight there's a......

Yesterday afternoon, a tractor-trailer dangled from the side of the Staten Island Expressway. Authorities believe the driver, James Christian of North Carolina, may have lost control of the rig when another car stopped short. The tractor-trailer fell off the SIE onto South Avenue - hitting the front of 61-year-old Jenetta Christopherson's car. Christopherson, who was driving with her baby granddaughter, said she was lucky she braked when she heard a loud noise above her, "If......

Some more sad details about the Tuesday car crash in Virginia that claimed the lives of six people, five of them believed to be siblings in a Bronx family of Trinidadian immigrants. The fire destroyed the Honda Accord so badly that mother Pamela Ramharrack of the Bronx was asked to go to Virginia to identify the bodies, but she was only able to identify her 13-year-old son Anderson. She must gather more dental records to......

Animal rights protesters held a rally outside the National Football League's Park Avenue headquarters yesterday to ask for quarterback Michael Vick's suspension from the league. Earlier, the Atlanta Falcons star was indicted on federal felony charges for dogfighting. Here's what the Department of Justice's press release (PDF) said:According to the indictment, the defendants were involved in an ongoing animal fighting venture based out of a property located in Smithfield, Virginia, from early 2001 through......

Police arrested one man but are still looking for two others involved with Monday's violent traffic stop in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. When police officers Russel Timoshenko and Herman Yan approached over a BMW SUV with stolen license plates, shots rang out from the car, injuring both officers. Twenty-nine-year-old Lee Woods was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault on a police officer and criminal possession of a weapon. The two other men being sought have......

Virgin Mobile's "You Rule" campaign has been in town for a few weeks, but the confusion still runs high. Ad agency Havas McKinney developed an ambitious outdoor campaign that involves specific posters and billboards to praise residents of various New York neighborhoods, such as Chelsea, Murray Hill, Lower East Side, Upper East Side, and Bed-Stuy. But some people have been insulted by the ads (such as one Chelsea resident who called Virgin Mobile to......

The New York Times looks today at the community of golf caddies who live in Harlem, and commute by public transportation to the many private golf clubs in the tri-state area to practice a trade that they've been doing for decades. Dozens of older men who live and socialize near Harlem mainstays like Sylvia's have been caddying almost their whole lives and represent the first-string of caddies who work at the nearly 200 private golf......

It's hard enough when a loved one passes away, but reading a story from last week's Village Voice about abuses at a funeral home is absolutely horrifying. The story is one of mutilated, decaying, stolen bodies, as well as lost ashes. The Voice found that Riverton Funeral Home in Harlem had an ugly, ugly history. Riverton opened in 1957 near Harlem Hospital and was eventually shut down (it changed its name to Riverton Funeral Home......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: 7th Heaven (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., WPIX 11) Last year when the show was on the WB it had a series finale, but was brought back by the new CW. This time the show is over, finally. Funniest Mom in America 3 (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., Nickelodeon) Despite sounding like a sequel to a bad summer comedy, this is actually a Mother's Day special of a search for a......

The wedding season is in full swing: Second week in a row where there are over 30 weddings in the NY Times Weddings & Celebrations section. Here we go: Total Number of Weddings: 32 (including Vows column) Total Number of Same-Sex Weddings: 2 Youngest Bride: 24 Oldest Bride: 47 Youngest Groom: 24 Oldest Groom: 62 Biggest Age Difference: 17 years Number of Couples Where Bride and Groom Are the Same Age: 2 (24, 38) Number......

Get ready for this Sundays 60 Minutes, because there's an intriguing segment: Anderson Cooper interview rapper Cam'ron about the hip-hop community's code of silence when it comes to crimes. In fact, here's an excerpt of their exchange from CBS News:"If I knew the serial killer was living next door to me?" Giles responds to a hypothetical question posed by Cooper. "I wouldn't call and tell anybody on him — but I'd probably move. But I'm......

Yesterday morning, on Sixth Avenue outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown, three people were injured after a taxi hit another cab and started a chain reaction with two other cabs. A witness told the Times, "Taxi No. 1 hit taxi No. 2, which hit taxi No. 3, and then taxi No. 4" at 53rd Street and Sixth Avenue. Taxi No. 4 then hit a female pedestrian - police think the driver hit the gas......

If you haven't heard about Christina Ricci, Samuel L. Jackson and Justin Timberlake's Southern Gothic exploitation movie, Black Snake Moan, you may have been living under a movie-free rock. Ricci plays a bad, bad girl who must learn to mend her ways under the racially and sexually fraught tutelage of jazz musician Jackson. How shall he do that? Why chain her to the radiator until she repents of course. One of this movie's key words......

The results are in for the 2007 Design Awards from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) New York Chapter. The jury, composed of notable architects and designers from around the world, reunited for a public symposium and discussion panel last night at the Center for Architecture. The judging criteria were defined as "Quality of design; resolution of the program or idea; and innovation, thoughtfulness, and technique." The following list includes only the highest award......

Wayne and Dianne Guay, whose bodies and car were found on Monday after being missing for days during what should have been a half-day trip from South Carolina to Queens, died from drowning. The determination of death now raises questions about how authorities handled reacting to a 911 call from a motorist who noticed a car accident off a North Carolina stretch of 1-95 last Thursday. Authorities say that the caller misidentified where the accident......

The bodies of Wayne and Dianne Guay, who had been missing while traveling to NYC from South Carolina for the holidays, were found yesterday. The car had crashed off I-95 in North Carolina and was found in a swampy creek off the highway. The Guays were former city employees - Wayne worked for the sanitation department, Dianne for the Board of Education - who had lived in Queens but retired to South Carolina six years......

That radar image is showing one bad-ass line of thunderstorms extending south from Rochester. The weather is heating up today, literally and figuratively. Central Park topped out at 69 degrees, while Teterboro reached 72. The 16 degrees above average is our most abnormally warm day since April 20th, when the high temperature was 21 degrees above normal. What we have to look forward to for the remainder of this spring-like day is lots of wind,......

You know you've been waiting for it -- the finalists for the Second Annual Vendy Awards have been announced! These four finalists will attend the gala event on Sunday, October 22nd from 6 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. where a panel of judges (including at least one who might be familiar to Gothamist readers) will select their favorite. The event is a fundraiser for the Street Vendor Project of the Urban Justice Center, a non-profit a......

Were you in NYC on September 11? There's a fascinating article in the NY Times about psychological and perceived differences between New Yorkers who were here on September 11, 2001 and those who were not. Lots of interesting quotes, like:“I think for the people that seen it on TV, it is more painful than for the people who saw it here,” said Paolo Gonzalez, 29, who manages a parking lot under the Brooklyn Bridge......

Yesterday was the West Indian American Day Parade, and it was as festive as ever, especially with the gorgeous weather we had. Politicians were present - and who knew that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Suozzi had lived in Trinidad and Tobago years ago? Newsday reports he sang "Tiney Winey." But most of all, it was the parade marchers, dancers, and perfomers and all the spectators that made the event exciting. The parade was so......

First novels are dangerous, risky creatures. They’re a gamble for the publisher and the novelist, and for everyone in between. Perhaps that’s why truly daring first novels are so few and far between, and why they garner such disproportionate attention amongst their peers. For the almost irrelevant hullabaloo about Marisha Pessl’s literary debut, with the hefty Special Topics in Calamity Physics, it was difficult to know what the book was actually about. Bloggers from......

After a decade of being featured on America's Most Wanted, Charles "Chaka" Raysor turned himself in at a Brooklyn police precinct. Raysor, who had been a "Most Wanted" fugitive on the program 11-13 times, had been indicted in 1996 for leading a drug gang that made weekly profit of $90,000 in Bed-Stuy. The gang which was called "The Killers" was also accused of killing many people, including three people they wrongly thought would testify against......

Tropical depression Alberto is sort of affecting the weather here today. The storm itself will stay well to our south. It is over North Carolina at the moment and is expected to head out to sea later today. The high clouds overhead originated with Alberto and will keep temperatures down into the mid-70s today and tomorrow. Mix that tropical moisture with an upper-level disturbance and we're likely to see a thunderstorm or two pop up......

Ali Farahnakian, Comedian...

Unfortunately, Gothamist isn't old enough to have watched Floyd Patterson fight. Our childhood memories of him consist of hearing Billy Joel sing "Liston beats Patterson" about their 1962 fight. Born in North Carolina, Patterson and his family moved to Bed-Stuy when he was a child. After a brief period in Upstate New York, where he first took up boxing, Patterson returned to the city and, before long, started to train with Cus D'Amato at the......