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It was previously reported that Target would be opening their promotional "Bullseye Bodegas" at four temporary locations around Manhattan on September 11th. Now the opening date is September 12th, so either the reports were wrong or someone in marketing realized that 9/11 might not be the most ideal day to launch a campaign with the word "bullseye" in it....

Well, that's that. McCarren Pool – the giant Robert Moses-era landmark that's been revived as a music, theater, dance and film venue after decades of neglect – hosted its last free 'pool party' yesterday. The Bloomberg administration has allocated $50 million to renovate the pool for swimming, restore the historic bathhouse building, and build a year-round recreation center that is to include a skate park and an ice rink. After three years of presenting free......

The surf was definitely not up on the city's waterways today, but that didn't stop a crowd of surfers from hanging ten in a paddle parade around Manhattan. The surreal sight of men and women standing on boards as they paddled up the East River was brought to you by Sea Paddle NYC, the second annual fundraiser for autism charities and the Surfers' Environmental Alliance. Razor Wire reports the 28 mile odyssey started at South Street Seaport at 9 a.m. this morning and finished in Battery Park City this afternoon. More photos here....

On Saturday, Fort Greene photographer Erin Patrice O'Brien unveiled her new exhibit at Brooklyn's Corridor Gallery. The images on display were not that of her normal clientele (she used to take portraits of celebrities), but of the young mothers living in New York. She told the Daily News, “I was interested in someone who never gets their story told as opposed to someone who always has the limelight." This wasn't the limelight that Diablo Cody......

On the humid night of August 6th, 1988, long-simmering resentments over East Village gentrification boiled over into the now-infamous Tompkins Square Park riot. Hundreds of people had gathered at the park to protest the imposition of a 1 a.m. curfew. At some point, the protest turned violent; bottles were thrown at the police, who retaliated with beatings and arrests throughout the night. According to the Times, forty-four people were injured, including 13 cops. In time......

The American Museum of Natural History has culled together their collection of historical photos online in an overwhelming library that documents their exhibits, dinosaur displays and dioramas from construction to completion. This is all part of their online exhibit, titled Picturing the Museum: Education and Exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History. They note that the "exhibitions within the Museum building grew from the simple rows of specimen cabinets to more sophisticated representations of......

New York homes, New Yorkers and their possessions -- that's what Todd Selby photographs for his "In Your Place" series. Take a peak inside and get some decoration inspiration, or just be voyeuristic without being totally creepy. Bonus: If you know someone with an interesting pad, you can suggest them for the series.......

Yesterday was an appropriately blistering day for this year's eighth annual Village Voice Siren Music Festival at Coney Island, which, with the right frame of mind, can be a total blast. Yesterday had everything we've come to expect from the annual indie rock extravaganza: massive crowds of dehydrating hipsters, fresh clams on the mobbed boardwalk, and a bulging, unmanageable lineup of 14 bands on two stages. Those who stuck through until the evening were rewarded......

There'll be an opening reception tomorrow night (at 7:55 p.m.) for photographer Miru Kim's Naked City Spleen show at Gestarc Gallery in Red Hook. The work is part of Kim's ongoing series of photographs that depict her nakedly exploring abandoned subway stations, tunnels, sewers, and even the now-demolished sugar refinery in Red Hook. Now all she needs is a shot of herself in the IKEA cafeteria. Also on view is a film and video installation......

"spectacular" by i'mjustsayin on flickr The weather held out quite nicely for last night's fireworks show. And while regular midtown viewers may have felt shorted by the southern shift of the East River barges, quite a show was put on for those downtown and in Brooklyn. If you have any exceptional or stand-out photos from last night's display, please tag them "gothamist" on flickr.......

Yesterday's overcast skies were not the optimum conditions for documenting the launch of Olafur Eliasson's NYC Waterfalls; photographs from the first day tended to deemphasize the falls amid the uniformly gray background. But that's part of what's compelling about the work; it's never the same waterfall twice, being constantly affected by the light, air and your point of view. And as we suggested yesterday, while the project may seem underwhelming when you stare straight at......

Mayor Bloomberg and other city officials joined artist Olafur Eliasson and Susan K. Freedman of the Public Art Fund at a press conference this morning at the South Street Seaport, where all four of Eliasson's waterfalls can be seen at once. An aide to the mayor noted that there was more press attending this event than when he announced he was switching his party to become independent. The mayor estimated that the waterfalls, which will......

Everyone’s a curator at the Brooklyn Museum’s Click! exhibition. Last March, the museum invited photographers to submit one photo that addressed the theme of "Changing Faces of Brooklyn." Inspired by James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds, organizers uploaded the 389 responses to the museum’s website for the general public to evaluate. Each photograph was displayed without artist attribution and at random for each evaluator, and artists were unable to forward links of individual submissions......

Photo, by joe holmes at flickr By all accounts, it seems like Saturday's Mermaid Parade was a great deal of fun, enjoying perfect weather and drawing large crowds. One can only hope that the Coney Island tradition dating back to 1903 remains as popular in coming years. Thanks to everyone who tagged and/or submitted their photos "gothamist." Update: We've added more pictures to the gallery!......

Her debut album appeared just six weeks ago, but this summer’s already shaping up to be a big one for Santogold (myspace), the suddenly red-hot pop/dub/hip hop fusion artist from Brooklyn (by way of Philly). She’ll be headlining Central Park Summerstage, opening for some of Coldplay’s dates in the U.S., and joining an ad campaign for the 100th Anniversary of Converse sneakers (The blitz kicked off recently with a new song she made with with......

From the ashes of the beloved Read Cafe in Williamsburg (that space is now occupied by the decidedly un-funky El Beit coffee shop) comes owner Laurence Elliott's new baby, The Rabbithole. Opening this Sunday, his latest venture is further south but still on Bedford, between South 4th and South 3rd Streets. When we spoke with Elliott back in March, he still had a long way to go turning the former apartments into a restaurant/cafe with......

Last week the website Mental Floss discovered a treasure chest of old Polaroids online, all chronologically ordered and taken throughout the years 1979 to 1997. Soon after the discovery, Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn provided the full story behind what seemed like a very mysterious website. The site was in the process of being created by Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid, who were in possession of over 6000 Polaroids taken by their late friend Jamie......

After last year’s stuffy exile at NYU’s Skirball Center, the Village Voice Obie Awards were back at the raucous, open-bar Webster Hall – or rather the Ritz, as Stew, co-creator of the phenomenal Broadway rock musical Passing Strange recalled. For over fifty years, the Obies have honored the best of Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway theater; coming on the heels of last week's Tony nominee announcement, the awards serve as a pointed reminder that the......

Google is now revving up their maps engine with even more information, as you can see from the above screen shot of the Red Hook map. Now when you choose a map, a new “More” tab at the top gives you exactly what it promises: So far there are two additional map interfaces, with photos and Wikipedia entries. Clicking the Photo option packs the screen with relevant geo-tagged photos provided by Panoramio, and you......

New Yorker and Polaroid appreciator, Joe Howansky, has started a project to commemorate the soon-to-be-extinct Polaroid film, while simultaneously connecting with strangers through the medium. He explains:I will send you a Polaroid of anything anywhere in New York City. I don’t already have these stocked up - each one will be taken just for you. You will have the only copy in the entire world of a picture that was taken by someone else for......

Even though it had been open less than a week Wildwood Barbeque, the latest addition to the burgeoning New York City barbeque scene, was mobbed with merry meatheads Wednesday night. Folks were queued up at the entranceway, as they waited to taste meats from Pitmaster Big Lou Elrose. Big Lou had been deputy pitmaster of Hill Country and has cooked many a barbeque competition. He's clearly just at home smoking with the Texas post oak......

Photograph from the Bike New York/5 Boro Bike tour The 5 Boro Bike Tour is this Sunday, the one day of the year where 30,000 cyclists will have total right of way throughout New York City. The tour begins in Battery Park and ends in Staten Island after winding 42 miles throughout New York. In addition to the approximately 30,000 riders, The 5 Boro Bike Tour happens with the help of about 1,500 volunteers.......

Modern Mechanix has an old National Geographic from 1965 with a huge spread on the World's Fair in New York. Step back to the atomic era and see the now-endangered Tent of Tomorrow in its glory days. Not many of these structures and rides exist today, at least not in New York; the giant tire is alive and well in Detroit, and of course, the Walt Disney-created ride, "It's a Small World" is still going......

© MURAKAMI, a retrospective of the work of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, opens Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, where it was on view until February, the exhibit primarily focuses Murakami's work between 1991 and 2000, when the artist began exploring "his own reality through an investigation of branding and identity." (One additional work, Murakami's 6,613 pound, 18 foot-tall Oval Buddha sculpture, will be on......

The tenth edition of The Armory Show, the International Fair of New Art, starts tomorrow and continues through Sunday at Pier 94, on the West Side at 55th Street. The massive show hosts over 150 galleries and nonprofit organizations from around the world; here's a small taste of some of the 2,000 works on display.......

The endless debate over how to classify hipsters has been tearing this city apart for years, pitting brother against scenester, native New Yorker against arriviste, trust funder against squatter, even self-hating hipster against himself. So it's important for everyone to step back a bit and acknowledge that while we may never agree on a singular definition for hipster, like Supreme Court judges watching porn, we know it when we see it. Sure, the word hipster......

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......

In yet another gem from Modern Mechanix, folks from 1932 ponder "How Much Longer Will Our Big Cities Last?" Photos of subway tunnels collapsing and apartment fires in New York set the apocalyptic tone for the piece which claims "scientific prophets" see the mammoth cities becoming obsolete. We're to pictured a cobweb-enshrouded Empire State Building and dandelions overtaking Wall Street after "exhaustive studies" concluded that we're pretty much, well, screwed.According to such writers as......

Photos: AP/David Guttenfelder The New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s historic concert in North Korea concluded hours ago, marking the first performance by an American orchestra in the impoverished, totalitarian nation. The event also marked a first for much of the press, who are routinely denied access to North Korea and, once inside, usually find their movements tightly controlled. The Times has a stunning slideshow of photos snapped en route from the airport to the center of......