A Gothamist tipster emailed us this photo of a prohibitively tall bench on the median of East Houston Street near Suffolk. Is this guerrilla art or city-sanctioned furniture? The new cool “Bench Club” for East Village scenesters? A lawsuit in-waiting from the city’s more vertically challenged residents? A prototype anti-homeless bench? A photoshop hoax? Lots and lots of phone calls to the City Council representative, the Community Board, the Parks Department and D.O.T. have......

A crane at One Bryant Park, aka the Bank of America tower on Sixth Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets, reportedly lost some materials it was carrying. Curbed is reporting that the materials/debris/ garbage bin fell at least 35 floors - and it looks like a cab was hit. A Gothamist reader who works near the building writes:Our windows look out at the construction site and it looks like some beams were dropped right......

The New York Film Festival doesn't begin until Friday but you can get your first taste of what will be unspooling on screens at Lincoln Center tonight at the Soho Apple Store. Director Wes Anderson and stars Natalie Portman and Jason Schwartzman will be on hand for a screening of Anderson's new 12 minute short film Hotel Chevalier at 9 pm. The short was shot entirely in a Paris hotel room and serves as a......

Dunh dunh DUNH! It's the most insane shopping day of the year, thanks to most people being off and feeling that the day after Thanksgiving is an acceptable beginning to the Christmas shopping season. However, some stores were actually open yesterday, giving turkey and football some competition. Some stores opened at 5AM today, others at 6AM. In fact, some people have been flying in from overseas, perhaps to take advantage of the exchange rate!......

- A Gothamist tipper says that there are state troopers turning people away from the Comic-Con. Anybody know anything more? - Remember Gifford Miller? NYU owns him now. - A judge upheld a $2 million jury award for a couple whose stillborn infant was discarded before the family could conduct a religious burial. - "A child welfare worker was arrested after screeners at Kennedy International Airport found two glass crack pipes in his carry-on......

With the Golden Globes happening this past weekend, everybody catching up on big winners Brokeback Mountain and Walk the Line while waiting for the Oscar nominations a week from Tuesday, and movies less than a month old already receiving their second releases (Terrence Malick's The New World reopens today in a slightly shorter version), it might seem like this period between New Year's is still all about the movies of 2005. But in reality, there......

Ah January. That lovely first month of the year which big Hollywood uses as its annual dumping ground. The Awards eligibility period is over, and now is the time to catch-up on all those films being talked about that came out at the same time over the past few weeks. Still, New Yorkers are lucky as we retain many filmgoing options. Sure you can check-out the latest video game adaptation from hackmeister Uwe Boll, but......

No don't worry. Gothamist doesn't plan to subject you to yet another film Top 10 list. If you want a good ... uhm ... "overview" of this year's Top 10 lists, you might want to check-out The Reeler's Top 10 Top 10 lists. (Nos. 10-6 appeared yesterday. The top five went up this morning.) If you're looking for something more traditional, you should probably look at The Village Voice's Take 7 film critics poll. Meanwhile,......

There's only one major wide release this weekend, and although it stars an Oscar winner, we can pretty much guarantee Paramount isn't expecting any year-end kudos for Aeon Flux. In fact, it looks like the studio is hoping to slyly score a big opening weekend on the draws of Charlize Theron in skintight rubber and fans of the old MTV animated series because they aren't letting critics anywhere near it -- apparently no press screenings......

The holiday movie season is officially upon us. In fact, it started yesterday. We already spent more than enough time mentioning some little musical that will likely see its box office hopes dashed by the continuing dominance of Harry Potter. Nevertheless, several other big releases also appeared yesterday (at least in New York) in an attempt to grab a piece of the five-day weekend holiday marketplace. The big Oscar hopeful is Syriana from Oscar-winning Traffic......

The holidays are upon us. Tomorrow sees the release of two of the more eagerly awaited films of the season, and we haven't even hit Thanksgiving yet! We've been hearing fantastic things about the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. It wowed audiences at the Toronto Film Festival in September, and now critics are talking about Joaquin Phoenix's performance as they did last year about Jamie Foxx. One huge difference: Foxx lip-synced everything in Ray;......

A Gothamist reader tipped us off and Florence Fabricant confirmed that Black Pearl, the New England style clam and lobster shack in the back of the East Village bar, Julep has closed. We will mourn quietly and head back to Pearl Oyster Bar. New York Metro rounds up places to find deviled eggs, but somehow managed to leave off Blue Smoke. We didn't even know we liked deviled eggs until we tried these, light and......

Another week, another slew of new releases available for our viewing pressure. If you've been watching TV regularly, you might think that Rent, Walk the Line or Aeon Flux are all coming out tomorrow, but no. Still, there's plenty to see such as the adaptation of Myla Goldberg's novel Bee Season; Kiera Knightly taking on Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice; and although we might not otherwise be too excited for Zathura, our interest is......

Celeste's Pasta alle Vongole...

As the country mourned the 2,000 soldiers who have died in Iraq since 2003, Cindy Sheehan, the mother who has turned her grief over her soldier son's death into a public anti-war crusade, is telling people not to support Senator Hillary Clinton. Sheehan told the AP, "I believe that any candidate who supports the war should not receive our support. It doesn't matter if they're Senator Clinton or whoever." Essentially, Sheehan feels that Clinton has......

We here at Gothamist love our movies, but this is getting regoddamndiculous. After a weekend where the only major release to make even a little bit of money was the one that didn't screen for critics due to the studio's awarenessof its suckitude, distributors this week have gone hog wild. There are 19 -- count 'em nineteen! -- new releases in local theaters this weekend, seven of them from major Hollywood studios. Some of these......

Beloved memoirist Augusten Burroughs will be giving a reading next Tuesday of his latest book, Magical Thinking, at Coliseum Books. And he's going to dish about the new film adaptation of Running with Scissors (Annette Bening will play his mom, Gabrielle Union his mother's girlfriend; Brian Cox is his mom's shrink and Gwyneth Paltrow, Kristin Chenoweth, and Evan Rachel Wood seem to be play his daughters). His last event, at Cooper Union, was totally packed......

You won't have to hear us babble on about the New York Film Festival anymore as another edition has come and gone. Some of the films that played are already in theaters -- Good Night, and Good Luck, The Squid and the Whale, Capote -- and others will be coming out in the coming weeks and months including the fantastic Korean political assassination satire, The President's Last Bang. As usual, New Yorkers are treated to......

Another week, another slew of choices for New York film lovers. We reach the half-way point of the 43rd New York Film Festival this weekend. We've already presented some coverage from the fest, and there will be more to come tomorrow, and through the very busy weekend and next week at Alice Tully Hall, the Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual celebration of the best of world cinema will continue to dominate the attention of......

Once again, movie lovers have plenty to rejoice about over the next week. Three international heavyweights have new releases and we're not including Jodie Foster going crazy on an airplane in that equation. One of New York's most important production companies gets saluted at MoMA plus there's this little thing starting at Lincoln Center tomorrow night which should dominate much of the city's film landscape for the coming fortnight just as it does this week's......

With 50% chance of rain and air so thick we actually hope it will, we'd be perfectly happy spending the coming days inside a nice, cool movie theater. Of course, Gothamist doesn't need choking humidity to head to the movies, especially when there is a collection of new releases and old programming around town like we have this week. From RESFEST to CMJ Filmfest, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride to Thumbsucker, Notorious to The Lost Weekend......

September is generally considered a slow time for the movie industry, but Gothamist sees plenty of interesting cinematic diversions, both new and old, on the horizon for New Yorkers. There are several new releases this week, and while the widest opener among them -- The Man -- looks like a big bust, some of the smaller releases such as Keane and Touch the Sound seem enticing. But as is often the case, the city's alternative......

It's Labor Day which means the "official" (if not the technically scientific) summer is coming to and end. No more summer Fridays and no more outdoor Summer film series. After this year's (dare-we-say unwarranted) freak-out about box office grosses, Hollywood studios are likely happy to close the book on the season. Labor Day weekend is notoriously weak for the box office, therefore, we're not generally treated to anything good. In fact, the major studios think......

The Post's Bridget Harrison delves into the world of trying to hit on hot ladies and get your tech on - by gauging the mojo of the SoHo Apple Store. However, the revelation of tech-temple as mating-mecca will come to as no surprise to anyone who read Keith Allison's City Magazine story, Babes In Toyland. Gothamist loves the graphics that accompanied Allison's piece, but Harrison does get some seriously inane quotes from Apple Store customers,......

This week's NYT Dining section dove into one of Gothamist's favorite subjects: street food. The Times highlights the "Arepa Lady," who is very well known to visitors to the Chowhound message boards; Alpha hound Jim Leff has attempted to explain her magic: Nearby, others grill arepas on street carts, but they are not The Arepa Lady (look for the tiny, ageless woman with the beatific smile). They all use the same ingredients and similar grills,......

Before this summer's bloated monster showdown of Alien vs. Predator was barely a twinkle in the eye of the Hollywood pitchmen, those Japanese B-movie geniuses at the Toho Studio had concocted an even better match up: King Kong versus Godzilla (1962). Film Forum will be screening this Toho gem, also directed by the original Godzilla helmer Ishiro Honda, today and Saturday as a part of their continuing series, "They Came From Toho: Godzilla and the......

We successfully moved to a new server last weekend, thanks for Jake, so we hope that loading Gothamist has been faster and easier than ever. There may still be a few bugs, so please let us know if there's anything you think we need to address. - City Hall shooting: The chaos during, trying to understand, and the detective who got a promotion - Dirty thirty - Mel Gibson and his Jesus Christ - Brooklyn......

It looks like now that the New York State Legislature has overridden Govenor Pataki's veto of the budget and New York City aid, they have found some teeth on other issues. The Daily News reports today that two Brooklyn legislators have introduced bills to counteract the State's impending draconian smoking ban. Meanwhile, on the other coast, California Governor Gray Davis is being threatened with a recall vote for sins that seem no worse than those......

A Gothamist friend sends the following story for the Stupid Criminals file. Robin Loftin, 18 was sentenced to two days in jail for dropping a joint in a courtroom. From the article: After the judge entered the courtroom, Loftin removed the hat he was wearing and the marijuana joint fell from the hat onto the floor. Parr immediately cited Loftin for contempt of court and ordered him to the Eddy County Detention Center. Well, duh.......