The ragged march to winter weather continues. Unlike last month, which was mostly warm for days on end, November keeps bouncing between cold and warm episodes as the atmosphere struggles with the transition to a wintertime circulation pattern. Today will be warmer than normal as the morning rain tapers off to a drizzly fog. The rain's not going away! The tree lighting at Lincoln Center looks to be a soggy occasion. A low pressure......

The libraries of the borough of Queens were announced as being the most utilized in the entire country. The Public Library Statistical Report just announced that Queens public libraries loaned 20.2 million items to residents in 2006, and the borough's on track to retain the top spot after loaning 21 million items in 2007. According to the 2000 federal census, Queens had 2.2 million residents, so that means the average person in the borough is......

Like an elementary school kid who sees his teacher at a movie theater or in the grocery store, and is shocked that he or she doesn't sleep in the school's gym at night and requires food to survive, the media occasionally will note that librarians are not uniformly dour spinsters intent on shushing you and collecting late fines. The New York Sun ran an article Thursday regarding the growing number of librarians who live and......

Since the only truly green event is the one that doesn't happen, Live Earth is certainly being met with some criticism - but either way it's going to cast some green over the world tomorrow. If you aren't heading over to the "New York" event yourself, NBC Universal will be bringing the concert to the world with a three-hour primetime special Saturday night on NBC, 18 hours of live coverage on Bravo, seven hours on......

This week's weather looks like it will be a half-baked repeat of last week's weather. It won't be nearly as warm but the same general progression will take place. The combination of air mass size and speed of mid-latitude atmospheric circulation this time of year often yields a roughly weekly repeat of summer weather patterns. Today will be sunny, dry –the dewpoint is in the 40s– and a little cool. High only 75. Tomorrow, as......

Over the past few days the storm off the coast has been the Fugazi of weather systems. It's been doing its own thing, shooting spokes of clouds and rain over New York and New England, completely independent of the world of weather circulating around it. Over the next day or two, however, it appears that the low will get ambushed and be incorporated into the mainstream atmospheric circulation. Today's cooler weather is one sign......

We saw Spider-man take over the city for a week, now get ready for The Silver Surfer to take over your change purse. A deal between 20th Century Fox and Franklin Mint has landed the Marvel superhero on the quarter. 40,000 of them, to be exact (no doubt fans will be trying to collect these now that they're in circulation). This is all, of course, to promote the upcoming movie, Fantastic Four: Rise of the......

Even in the shadow of the Queensborough Bridge, the Maison Tropicale looks aloof. Hovering above a cleared and graded strip in Long Island City, this compact machine for living wears the architectural equivalent of sunglasses, safari helmet, binoculars, and shorts. It is haughty and cute at the same time. The aluminum outpost, one of three prototypes sent to Congo and Niger in the early 1950s, was designed by Jean Prouvé as a prefabricated home......

Adam Moss, editor-in-chief of New York magazine may have one of the most dangerous-looking offices in publishing this morning, as it is probably crowded with a number of large sharp-edged and -angled Ellies, or National Magazine Awards. New York was nominated for seven awards and its capture of five of them added an air of upset to the proceedings. MediaBistro's FishbowlNY live-blogged the event last night from Lincoln Center:9:16PM: The magic night for Adam ("I'm......

This week's weather is all about the waves. The snake-like long wave pattern of air circulation well above the earth's surface is going to shift in mid-week. Today and tomorrow the circulation has dipped to our south, allowing all this cold air to be here. By Thursday it looks like we will be warming up under the crest of the wave. Even though today, tomorrow and Wednesday will be a bit warmer than the......

Spring continues its sneak preview today. A low pressure system centered over Toledo this morning is pumping all sorts of warm, moist air our way. Most of the area will top out around 70 degrees this afternoon. Areas along the shore will be much cooler as conditions are ideal for a sea breeze. A sea breeze is a small circulation that sets up when ocean temperatures are much lower than those over land and if......

Today, many businesses are closed in honor of President's Day. Wall Street is closed, as are banks, government offices and schools. There's no regular garbage pickup, but the Department of Sanitation will be picking up garbage that has been stranded due to last week's storm. Alternate side of the street parking rules are suspended, and mass transit is on the weekend schedule - sorry, 7 train riders. President's Day is the day that celebrates......

Busy, busy day in the Gothamist weather center. First, yesterday's temperatures were exactly normal. Our high of 38 and low of 26 were precisely equal to the average high and low for January 11th. Thus Central Park's streak of above normal temperatures ends at 32 days. However, our streak of no below normal temperatures continues into its 34th day today. That streak is likely to end next week as major changes are taking place......

If it weren't for this morning's lingering fog, we'd be warming up to near sixty degrees this afternoon. Instead temperatures will probably only reach the mid-50s. Still, that's at least ten degrees above normal. Another weak cold front moves through town this evening. The front's passage will clear out the skies and bring in slightly cooler air tomorrow. That particular burst of "cool" air, it will still reach the low-50s on Saturday, won't last long.......

When there's an El Niño, and there's a mild one right now, the atmosphere is more likely to circulate in a zonal, or west-to-east, pattern. A zonal circulation keeps the cold air to the north and the warm air to the south. Kind of like a McDLT! New York is far enough south that we mostly stay on the warm side of things. We're in a strongly zonal air flow pattern right now, and we......

Yesterday, the Mets organization and various city and state officials broke ground on the new Mets stadium, Citi Field. There had been criticism about the Mets taking $20 million a year for 20 years (aka a "multi-faceted strategic marketing and business partnership") to name the stadium after CitiGroup, and not name the stadium Shea again or after Jackie Robinson. To which the Mayor said, "The people who said that aren't the ones putting up......

There's nothing like a NY Post vs. NY Daily News pissing match! Yesterday, the Audit Bureau of Circulations announced the latest circulation figures, the Post now has a daily circulation of 704,011 copies (a 5% increase over last year) while the News is at 693,382 (1% increase). This makes the NY Post the fifth largest paper in the country - even ahead of the Washington Post. And the Post wasted no time in proclaiming......

Important things first: Shea Stadium will see a bit of rain and wind this evening. Not ideal weather for baseball, but they should be able to get the game in. Yankee Stadium will also see a bit of wind and rain, but it doesn't really matter. The rain won't be limited to the baseball stadia. We can expect off-and-on drizzle and showers through Friday morning. The greatest chance of rain will be late tonight. With......

Mayor Bloomberg released the 2006 Fiscal Year Mayor's Management Report yesterday. The MMR is the Mayor's way of being accountable for city initiatives and agencies, and during the press conference, the Mayor felt that there was still work to be done, saying, "Two-thirds of the things are going in the right direction. A third aren't going as fast as I'd like, or in the right direction.": Like what? The quality of streets has declined (which......

Today marks the thirteenth straight day of below normal temperatures. Interestingly, if you're the sort of person that finds these things interesting, high temperatures during this stretch have been much more below normal, by 5.5 degrees, than low temperatures. The reason for the difference has been the clouds and rain, which don't let us warm up during the day, rather than a colder air mass, which would keep us cooler during the day but even......

- It's the Battle for Newark - the Newark Mayor's race! Here's a section from the Star-Ledger and the NY Times blog - The man who shot four people - killing a 3 year old child in the process - was actually trying to aim at his girlfriend - The Post is all excited about Daily News circulation numbers being down - Great article about the Grand Concourse in the Bronx in the Times......

Gothamist tends to throw our small change into the tip jar at coffee bars or in our piggy bank at home, awaiting getting changed into bills, but after reading about how an avid coin collector is putting valuable coins into circulation in NYC, we'll be looking more closely. Scott A. Travers tells the NY Times, "I'm planting a seed and I hope that a new generation of people will come to appreciate the history that......

Gee whiz do we like a good tabloid fight. And lucky for us, it looks like that age-old battle between Rupe Murdoch's New York Post and Mort Zuckerman's Daily News is about to get interesting again. Well, interesting if you find the ever dwindling newspaper circulation numbers interesting. Which for whatever reason, we actually kinda do. So here's the story: This week is the end of one of two Audit Bureau of Circulations reporting......

February review: Lots of temperature swings as the atmospheric circulation pattern shifted mid-month. Central Park temperatures wound up slightly above average for the month. Precipitation was slightly below normal but more than an average amount of snow fell. All in one storm. March preview: In like a lamb today. Tomorrow will be a bear. Pussycat weather on Friday. Today will be very pleasant, if cool. Tomorrow is looking ugly. You have waterproof boots, right? The......

You complain about the dirty subways, the MTA complains about the media: The MTA put the blame on free newspapers for giving subway riders more things to drop on the floor and cause track fires. The MTA says that trash pickups have increased by almost 43% (35 tons in 2004 to 50 tons last year), which may have led to the 40% increase in track fires (the Daily News has lower numbers, which we can't......

As we all know by now, Staten Island Chuck, Gothamist's favorite rodent (he's bigger and cuter than a rat!), did not see his shadow yesterday morning, meaning an early spring. While Chuck was not seeing his shadow, Gothamist was photographing these snowdrops emerging from the ground in Morningside Park. By our recollection they were coming out a couple of weeks earlier than last year, which one might assume is another sign of an early spring.......

Every day we throw our pocket change into a little box by the door, and once every six months or so, we sit down and roll it into bank coin wrappers while watching television. Sure, we could just take it to one of the coin-sorting machines at the local Commerce Bank, but rolling coins is relaxing and it only takes about an hour to roll a couple of hundred bucks worth of coins. Anyway,......

Miriam Datskovsky, Sex Columnist, The Columbia Spectator...

Wow, you put Mayor Bloomberg, resplendent in cash money, on the cover of your alternative weekly and the next thing you know, you're sold to a bigger company! Village Voice Media, which represents the Voice and five other alt weeklies (including LA Weekly), is announcing its sale to the New Times today. New Times is the largest alt weekly publisher with eleven papers (Dallas Observer, Miami New Times, SF Weekly, Cleveland Scene), which would mean......

Liev Schreiber, Everything Is Illuminated ...