For a good six years, the mysterious Swoon has been pasting her evocative and eye-catching cut-outs on walls around town, slowly and steadily establishing herself as one of the more intriguing street artists in the game. The work eventually won her gallery showings at prominent venues like Deitch Projects, where she returns Sunday with a solo show at the gallery's Long Island City satellite. The installation is part of a bigger, collective project called......

The four waterfalls installed by artist Olafur Eliasson and the Public Art fund at various spots on the East River are supposed be taken down on October 13th, but some Brooklyn residents fear that could be too late. In response to mounting concerns that spray from the salty, semi-polluted East River is blowing onto trees and slowly killing them, Judy Stanton, head of the Brooklyn Heights Association, is calling for the falls to be stopped......

This week Frank Bruni files two shorter reviews for the Times instead of handing down his usual hefty decision on a single restaurant. He heads east to follow up on Sushi Yashuda on 43rd Street, declaring that from the time it opened "more than eight years ago, when William Grimes awarded it three stars in The New York Times, it has been among the best. And a recent visit suggested that there’s been no slippage,......

This thrilling little video was uploaded to YouTube last summer, but with the city's (and the world's!) bedbug armies still on the march, it's well worth watching as a cautionary tale. Finish what you're eating and behold in horror as the videographer gets up-close and personal with a spectacularly infested apartment, scored to a jaunty cover of The Band's "The Shape I'm In." The whole thing kind of fizzles out at the end, but maybe......

You know summer's over when the biggest movie opening is Hamlet 2, a Sundance hit about a high school teacher's struggle to save the school's drama program by writing, directing, producing and starring in a zany time-travel musical. (Okay, there's also Death Race, which the Times calls "a supercharged junkyard apocalypse powered by an unabashed relish for brutal comeuppance and a flair for delirious vehicular mayhem.") British funnyman Steve Coogan – you know, the......

Annette Mateo appears to have been one toke over the line last night when she allegedly carjacked an NYPD van and took it for a joyride that almost immediately became devoid of joy. According to the Post, Mateo had gone to file an unspecified complaint at a police station in Harlem and became frustrated with the lackadaisical response from officers there. Storming out of the building at 9:40 p.m., she came upon two rookie cops......

The city spent five years and an estimated $1 million, give or take, fighting off a lawsuit brought by a group of 52 activists who were arrested en masse during an Iraq war protest in April 2003 outside the offices of the Carlyle Group, an investment firm with ties to the Bush family and major holdings in the military-defense sector. And that “bonfire of legal expenses,” as the Times puts it, is just the cherry......

Get ready to "slow your roll" New York; the mass-produced version of "Purple Drank" will hit shelves in Manhattan and the Bronx tomorrow, Fork in the Road reports. According to Wikipedia, the homemade version of the beverage is "a recreational drug popular in the hip-hop community of the southern United States. Its main ingredient is prescription-strength cough syrup containing codeine and promethazine." Purple Drank was supposedly popularized by Houston's DJ Screw, who then died in......

The Seneca Nation is pressuring Governor Paterson to veto a bill that would tax cigarette sales to non-Indians; officials estimate the tax could generate $400 million in revenue, and Mayor Bloomberg recently said that tax revenue could save us from MTA fare hikes. The tribes argue that treaties dating to the 19th century make them exempt from state sales taxes; greedy white man legislators insist that sales to non-Indians are taxable. The debate is happening......

The state law banning hand-held cell phone use while driving doesn’t extend to text messaging, something Councilman David Weprin, father of 16-year-old twin girls, would like to change fast. Motivated by last summer’s fatal accident in the Finger Lakes region, in which five girls in a sport utility vehicle died when the text-messaging teenage driver swerved into oncoming traffic, Weprin will introduce a measure today that would ban the sending or reading of text messages......

Watch your back, Dick Cheney! Actor Ed Asner, former Dallas Cowboy Mark Stepnoski, and formerly famous hip hop group Arrested Development are leading a petition drive to get a referendum on New York City’s November ballot that would establish a new 9/11 investigation. If the group, called 911 Truth, can collect 30,000 signatures before September 4th, the City Council will be required to consider the measure, which calls for an investigative panel with subpoena......

After four decades controlling the New York State Senate, political analysts expect Republicans to lose their majority to Democrats this November. And that possibility has real estate executives “really scared,” as one Manhattan developer told the Times, because most Senate Democrats support changes to the rent laws, which were diluted by Republicans in 1997 to favor landlords. Now the real estate industry is scrambling to get the Democrats in their pockets by throwing lots of......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni hands down a generally favorable verdict on Persimmon Kimchi House, the 20-seat, communal table restaurant from chef Youngsun Lee, who cut his teeth with David Chang (Momofuku). Bruni admits that “…at least a third of the dishes I tried prompted yawns or head-scratching. But at least another third riveted me, and all in all I enjoyed what struck me as the polar opposite of a cookie-cutter, fashion-driven meal, the......

Gotham Gazette has an in-depth look at potential pitfalls in the city’s new law requiring chain restaurants to prominently display calorie info on all foods and beverages. Namely, the Health Department does not conduct systematic testing to ensure that restaurants are not miscalculating – or misrepresenting – their data. Chipotle’s calorie info was previously disputed, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest found that Olive Garden’s cappellini pomodoro, posted as under 640 calories,......

A 72-year-old wheelchair-bound Bronx woman is suing the fire department for laughing and injuring her after she called them for help last March, the Post reports. The ex-husband of two-hundred pound Ziola Garcia called 911 after her "self-powered" wheelchair, which elevates 3½ feet to allow her to reach objects, got stuck in the "up" position. But it was all a big joke to the firemen who responded, she alleges: "They were laughing at me, making......

Shawn Brackbill In Joseph Campbell's hugely influential work of comparative mythology, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, the world's hero myths are boiled down to three narrative stages: the action, the trials, and the hero at home. But what about that fourth stage, when the retired hero is puttering around the house with no greater trial than cleaning the leaves out of the gutter? In mythic figurations: a power triptych, the plight of the washed-up......

Iridesco Watercooler put together this cool graph of the data released earlier this week by the Center for Urban Future breaking down chain stores in NYC. With a borough by borough breakdown, the graph illustrates how Dunkin Donuts outer borough presence (including a whopping 29 Staten Island locations!) gave it the top spot amongst the retail giants. The blog also pointed out this alarming statistic: there are as many American Apparel locations in the five......

Swing Vote, anyone? You know, starring Kevin Costner as an “apathetic, beer-slinging, lovable loser, who is coasting through a life that has passed him by, until his daughter sets off a chain of events which culminates in the election coming down to one vote: her dad’s!” HAHAHA! Take it away, Boston Globe: “Swing Vote is a satire that's afraid to satirize. It's predicated on so many forces of incompetence converging in a single spot......

Restaurant Week, which was supposed to end after Friday night, has been turned into Restaurant Summer, with 130 restaurants extending their prix-fixe deals on weekdays all the way through Labor Day. The special three course menus – $24.07 for lunch and $35.00 for dinner – have proven extra-popular with recession minded diners this month, according to NYC & Company, which organizes the biannual deal. Restaurants participating in the Labor Day extension include such well-reviewed places......

NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters yesterday that in a “relatively short period of time” people will be able to send “video and text straight to 911 to increase the flow of information.” Kelly didn’t go into details about how the technology would work, but he did say that “generally speaking, it’s helpful when people record an event taking place that helps us during an investigation.” The commissioner’s statement would seem to include recent “events”......

The Center for Urban Future has compiled what they say is the first-ever ranking of national retailers that have the most stores in New York City. Fittingly called “Attack of the Chains,” the ranking includes data on more than 160 retailers operating in the city. (The recently announced Starbucks closings will reduce the coffee retailer's presence in New York to a scant 235 locations – unless the passionate protests of one Bay Ridge man......

Today’s police brutality video comes via a security camera that caught an NYPD officer beating a handcuffed Army vet. The Daily News has a description of the July 18th attack, but the video isn’t on line… yet. According to police sources, the officer (not pictured here) paused for 90 seconds during the beating to take a call on his cell phone, and then resumed “smashing the man with his baton.” The recipient of the alleged......

Environmental group Times Up! is taking advantage of all the publicity generated by the video of a cop shoving a cyclist off his bike by reminding everyone that this is hardly the first such incident, nor the only one caught on video. The group points out that in 2007 one Richard Vazquez was taken down by a cop in Times Square during a Critical Mass ride, and in 2006 Adrienne Wheeler, a Critical Mass legal......

Photo courtesy Mike Xinnachs / WCBS 880; image artwork by mattmolnar. Today's a worse-than-usual day to fly American; it’s being reported that the airline’s baggage system is “not functioning” at JFK. Flights were being delayed earlier this morning while workers struggled to fix the unspecified malfunction, but finally the airline just said the hell with it and resumed flights without checked luggage on board. This also means the TSA is manually screening bags. AA has......

That video depicting a rookie cop bodyslamming a cyclist to the curb in Times Square? Just routine policework, according to the president of the police union. Apparently 22-year-old rookie Patrick Pogan was simply acting "under direct orders” when he spotted cyclist Christopher Long “creating a hazardous condition for the public and took action," union head Patrick Lynch told reporters yesterday. See, the video actually proves Pogan was just doing his job:Instead of slowing down or......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni opines on Scarpetta (pictured), the new Meatpacking District Italian restaurant from Scott Conant (L’Impero, Alto) that the Village Voice loved and the Sun disdained. Bruni bestows a big three stars, raving about the unassuming dish of spaghetti, tomato and basil: “However Mr. Conant is choosing and cooking the Roma tomatoes with which he sauces his house-made spaghetti, he’s getting a roundness of flavor and nuance of sweetness that amount......

In May a lavishly appointed homage to New Orleans's French Quarter opened in the theater district. Called Bourbon Street Bar & Grille, the two-story restaurant evokes the Big Easy with gas lamps, wrought iron railings, reclaimed stained glass windows, and a massive high-topped bar that dominates the ground floor lounge, where Allen Boyd's classic New Orleans cocktails are served with all fresh ingredients and accompany a casual dining menu. Upstairs, there is an outdoor......

The cyclist who was videotaped being body slammed off his bike in an apparently unprovoked attack by an NYPD officer during Friday night’s Critical Mass ride has been identified as Christopher Long, a 29-year-old resident of Bloomfield, New Jersey who works at the Union Square Greenmarket. His boss tells the Daily News that Long is an Army veteran and "mild-mannered environmental activist." Craig Radhuber, 54, was riding behind Long Friday night and describes incident:......

Another Critical Mass ride, another stunning display of police brutality. Watch as one of New York's finest violently shoves a cyclist off his bicycle, launching him through the air to the curb at 46th street and Seventh Avenue during Friday night's monthly Critical Mass ride. digg_url = 'http://digg.com/world_news/NYPD_Knocks_Cyclist_to_Curb_Unbelievable'; Although a judge ruled in 2006 that the monthly Critical Mass bicycle rides could proceed without a permit, the NYPD's stance remains somewhat adversarial. Though the city......

For a couple years now, a Chicago-based group called the Neighbors Project has been encouraging gentrifiers in cities across America to “connect with their diverse neighbors to improve the neighborhood for everyone.” The goal is to neutralize the “polarization” caused by widespread urban gentrification, and also offer advice for people who have had it with the corner bodega’s refusal to carry the New York Times and stock more produce beyond the usual “bananas that look......