The Apple store in SoHO has become a magnet for lines, whether it's for the new iPhone or a big act performing in their intimate space. Seems the SoHo Alliance isn't happy with the company congesting its sidewalks, and the NY Sun reports that "the last straw came when thousands of teenage girls poured onto the streets en route to an in-store Jonas Brothers concert." Amongst the list of complaints were screaming teens, blocked traffic,......

Photograph by Jeff Baum The day 1 frenzy over the new iPhone 3G has extended into this sunny Saturday: People were dutifully waiting outside an AT&T store near Astor Place at 7:45 a.m. There have been mixed results with people activating their new iPhones--while some have been successful, others are getting error messages, forcing them into iPocalyptic hysteria.......

Photograph by djmac on Flickr As reader djmac captured an iPhone 3G-related fight outside a Lexington Avenue AT&T store, the customers who managed to snag the new device were bereft when problems prevented their phones from activating both in the physical stores and on the iTunes store. (Gizmodo has tips for fixing some problems.) Many AT&T stores are reporting they don't have anymore iPhone 3Gs; some remain at the Apple stores.......

Photo of proud new iPhone owner Greg Packer courtesy Engadget. According to Engadget, it’s “an absolute zoo” at Apple's 5th Avenue store, as consumers surged forth at 8 a.m. to purchase the next generation of iPhone, the 3G. Some of them have been camping outside the store (and at Apple stores around the world) since last week to be the very first geeks to own the new cell phone, and, with it, a priceless sense......

This Friday, Apple is releasing the next generation of its extremely popular iPhone. Last week, the line for the new 3G iPhone started to form at the Fifth Avenue store. ...

Photo of the JFK Apple vending machine via driopp's flickr. Why go to one of the many Apple stores in New York for your iPod when you can go to...Macy's? Racked is reporting that the department store is installing Apple vending machines, holding everything from iPods to Canon digital cameras to various accessories. (Perhaps the Macy's Pirate was looking to score some iPod booty in the Apple treasure chest last weekend.) While the novelty......

Photo of line at Apple store via Engadget. There's currently a long line forming outside of the Apple store on 5th Avenue...but not everyone in it seems to know why they are there. Engadget reports that "the group is more than 60-deep, though most people seem confused about what they're waiting for, while some believe they're actually camping out for a 3G iPhone." While the likely culprit is Charlie Todd and his Improv Everywhere......

Barbecue fans will want to start bracing their colons for the 6th Annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, which has been announced for June 7th and 8th in Madison Square Park. Gothamist tore through the festival of regional barbecue last year, devouring everything from pork shoulder to Brunswick stew to candied ribs. New York will be well represented this year by Hill Country, Rack and Soul, Blue Smoke, and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que; other purveyors range......

Rendering of retail space via Prudential Douglas Elliman. Just after Apple turned sour on New York (and vice versa) over the city's green apple logo, Microsoft is primed to plug into the retail racket with their very own outlet. The Brooklyn Paper reports that the nation's first Microsoft store might be in Brooklyn; the company is eyeing the ground floor of the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank. If they seal the deal, they'll be taking......

As The Big Apple adopts a new "green" logo, Apple (purveyor of iThings) is turning red. Wired reports that the emblem for New York City's GreeNYC campaign "shows a stylized apple with a stalk and a leaf. It bears a resemblance to Apple's famous logo -- a resemblance Apple says infringes on its trademark." While Mother Nature was unavailable for comment, rumor is the Partridge Family bird has been chirping about a trademark infringement case......

Earlier this year Bravo announced their "Real Housewives" series would be moving from Orange County to The Big Apple. The show premieres tonight, and critics have already gone sour on it. The NY Post describes the five women chosen to represent NYC as "status-hungry, money-mad matrons" (a real life Cashmere Mafia living in a Lipstick Jungle?). Appalled that out of "8 million residents representing every known corner of the globe" the network picked five who......

You may have heard that New York City will have two new ballparks to attend in 2009. Of course that means that Shea Stadium and Yankee Stadium will close their doors forever after the 2008 season. And if you want to be there for the last scheduled game at either venue, you better have a lot of money. Tickets for the finale at Yankees Stadium are being scalped online for as much as $17,000 with......

by Marcus Woollen at flickr After the many questions about the unofficial Democratic primary results, the NYC Board of Elections has released the official results for the February 5 primary results, confirming a Clinton victory in the Big Apple. She won 55% of the vote with 527,941 votes, to Barack Obama's 43% (413,898 votes). A total of 955,966 votes were cast, meaning 34% of the city's registered Democrats voted. Since you might be curious......

Buildings, clockwise from upper left corner: Prada Store Soho, American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center, Hearst Building, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Morgan Library expansion, Apple Store Soho, Conde Nast Building, and Seagram Building; in the center, Grand Central Terminal interior and the Chrysler Building The Chrysler Building. The Seagram Building. The Apple Store Soho? The Center for Architecture's executive director Rick Bell made a list of 10 great buildings to see in New......

The City Council may have passed an electronics recycling law recently, but Mayor Bloomberg says it's lame and illegal! The bill requires electronics manufacturers to establish recycling programs for their products and establishes fines of $100 by 2010 for people who throw their computers, printers or other electronics in the trash. Manufacturers will also be penalized $50,000 if they fall behind set recycling requirements. The mayor said he would refuse to enforce such a law......

Last we checked in on Gwyneth Paltrow she was being wheeled into Mount Sinai Hospital for what ended up being a "gastrointestinal situation." Bouncing back quickly, she was at a UNICEF event last week where she dropped the bomb about a new bambino:“People who have a lot also often feel like they have a lot to give. I have a good friend who always says that if you’re a person of means at all, then......

This week in the Times, Bruni three-stars Le Cirque, bumping the restaurant's rating up from the two stars he awarded it in 2006. Executive chef Christophe Bellanca’s menu “nimbly straddles the line between predictable decadence… and creative flair,” he says. He also says that you’ll pay—a lot—for what you get, and that Le Cirque isn’t quite as reliable as other three star restaurants. In $25 and Under, ">Peter Meehan is at Soba Totto, where he......

Today Lego celebrates the big 5-0, even getting some Google-love for hitting the half century mark. New York has long been recreated in Lego-form, our favorite was at an exhibit housed in the Storefront for Art and Architecture late last year. Do you have a favorite Brick Apple? We love Sean Kenney's Greenwich Village (pictured) and Nathan Sawaya's Brooklyn Bridge. In a related story, this past Saturday was the city's first Lego League Citywide Championship,......

Hey, tourists, NYC may want you to spend lots of money when you visit the Big Apple, but just don't get really sick or else the Administration for Children's Services will take your kids in! Because that's what happened to one British family last month! Yvonne Bray and daughters Gemma and Katie, who live in Devon, England, were visiting New York for four days, staying at the LaGuardia Courtyard Marriott. The mother fell ill with......

The Federal Reserve's interest rate cut helped the stave off a huge drop the stock market yesterday. Though the Dow Jones did fall 465 points at one point, it ended 128 points down. Another feature of the rate cut: Home loan applications jumped. The global markets had tumbled on Monday (during the U.S. Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday) because of U.S. recession fears, but Asian markets gained a little today after news of the......

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Mesa Grill (pictured), knocking the restaurant down from the two stars given it by William Grimes in 2000. Says that while the Bobby Flay restaurant “has considerable charms… on balance [it] presents only flickers of the excitement it did [when it opened] in 1991… It’s an overly familiar, somewhat tired production. More to the point, it’s an inconsistent one.” Peter Meehan goes to Hakata Tonton for $25 and......

Two deliverymen-turned-thieves ripped off a shipment of Apple iPhones headed for Hong Kong, and traded in their loot for matching maroon cars and "diamond stud Yankee earrings." Really! Cathay Pacific Airlines reported the theft when they discovered not the almost $150K of digital devices (475 of them), but reams of copy paper. Nassau County cops traced the theft to two workers who delivered the shipment to the airport and had quit their jobs almost immediately......

Us Magazine is reporting that Gwyneth Paltrow was admitted to New York's Mount Sinai Hospital yesterday afternoon. The reason for the hospitalization is not known, but could it have something to do with her history of crazy diets?"She was slumped over in a wheelchair pushed by [husband] Chris Martin," an eyewitness tells Us. "She looked not well." At 6:30 p.m., a bag — labeled "Gwyneth Martin" — from NYC organic home supply store Organics Avenue,......

The upside to the weak U.S. dollar? NYC made $28 billion from tourists last year. The Mayor announced that tourism to NYC was at record highs, with 46 million people visiting the Big Apple. Of the 46 million tourists, 8.5 million were from other countries, which is another high. From Mayor Bloomberg's speech:This incredible surge puts us well on our way to reaching our goal of drawing 50 million annual visitors by the year......

Twice a year the Department of Sanitation sets up an electronic recycling event in each borough; in Autumn ’06 they collected 191 tons of electronics and 1,245 pounds of cell phones. It’s a step in the right direction, but for New Yorkers trying to save space in cramped apartments, these events are far too infrequent and inconvenient. So a huge amount of e-waste – 25,000 tons a year – ends up in landfills, where it......

THEATER: Over the summer the Belarusian Free Theater was arrested, along with their audience, during a performance of their play Being Harold Pinter, which uses Pinter’s magnificent Nobel Prize acceptance speech as a springboard for theatrical dissent, something the Belarus police state isn't really so into. (For that reason, the company’s performances are normally held secretly in alternating private apartments.) Unable to bring the entire production to New York for his Under the Radar festival,......

THEATER: Under the Radar, arguably New York’s most exciting theater festival, begins today at The Public Theater and a few other odd locations like the Whitehall Ferry terminal. (There are also a few shows at the Classic Theatre of Harlem, P.S. 122 and The Kitchen.) One of the most buzzed about site-specific shows is Etiquette by the London company Rotozaza. It was a surprise hit at last year’s Edinburgh Festival; here the experience takes place......

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......

Thanks to the soft real estate market everywhere except our fair city, many New York City residents have been able to pick up and move out of the Big Apple for less expensive and literally greener pastures. The NY Times had an article yesterday about people who cash out of their NYC apartments and "get much more for their money outside the city." The first example is a couple who sold their Upper West Side......

Earlier this week, the NY Times had an article about how Apple's retail stores were uncommonly successful. The Apple Stores contribute to 20% of revenue, unlike other big brands whose brick-and-mortar offerings tend to be more about brand presence than actual ringing of cash registers (example: the Samsung Experience store at the Time Warner Center doesn't actually sell Samsung products). Experts credit Apple with creating stores that seem like a community gathering places, where......