LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

Last night Beverly Sills lost her battle with lung cancer, she died at her home in Manhattan at the age of 78. While she was a lifelong non-smoker and only found out about the cancer a few weeks ago, this wasn't her first experience with it - she underwent a successful surgery for cancer in 1974. Sills, born Belle Miriam Silverman (and called "Bubbles" in her youth), was a Brooklyn-born soprano, and one of the......

Governor Spitzer nominated H. Dale Hemmerdinger to be Peter Kalikow's replacement as MTA Chairman. Hemmerdinger is a real estate developer with long and varied ties to New York City. He is the president of ATCO Properties and Management, which owns and manages two million square feet of residential, commercial, industrial, and retail space. A longtime backer of Democratic politians, Hemmerdinger's wife donated $40,000 to Spitzer's campaigns since 2000, and Mrs. Spitzer hosted a fundraiser at......

Many look at Woodlawn Cemetery as more than just a graveyard. The NY Times reports this will be true on another level soon as the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, who took title of the cemetery archives a year ago, is now receiving "the family correspondence that illuminates the backgrounds of the dead and their mourners." A new spirit has been released at the 144-year-old cemetery with the transfer of the cemetery’s vast archives......

EXHIBIT: Apparently there's an exhibit of Anna Nicole Smith photographs starting tonight. We can't find much info on it, but What's Up NYC says there's a "reception and exhibit of portraits and candid photographs of, wait for it, Anna Nicole Smith." 6 to 8pm // Gallery of Fine Arts [511 W 25th St] // Free PARTY: It's Prom time at Unisex Salon. Tonight put on your best formalwear and head to the basement of the......

Last night we headed to one of our favorite local bars, Lolita, for a Sunday night, post-CMJ, drink. The bar rotates artwork every month or so and right now it's all New York themed pieces. The Greek coffee cup, the parking ticket, the Metrocard, the subway sign...you get the idea. For some reason, they are all painted on canvas that is meant to resemble a refrigerator door. Example at right. This sort of makes Lolita......

PARTY: Disorient & Kostume Kult invite you to The Black & Light Ball; a Black-Lit Burner Formal. It's like a rave, in your dorm room...but in a gallery, with a lot more blacklighting than you could afford in college. With lighting art on display and blacklight flooding the space - we think it's okay if, just this once, you wear your sunglasses at night. Much more art, craziness and music (er, of the "techno" and......

Oh man, when was the last time we had a good artistic freedom vs. religion controversy? Hmm... maybe the Black Virgin Mary covered in poo back in 2000-- which itself was nothing compared to Serrano's Piss Christ back in 1989. Well, here's a new one! CBS reports on the National Black Fine Arts Show at the Puck Building: But the writer had big problems with a painting by Harlem artist "Tafa". It depicts an......

Well, despite overwhelming public opinion against it, and numerous setbacks, the Arts Commission has spoken: The fountain in Washington Square Park, and the two statues that abut it, will move twenty-two-odd feet to the east. The vote, in case you are curious, was 10 for and 1 against the changes. The Villager (we love them) does an excellent job covering the issues at hand. From how one joins the Arts Commission to the curious......

- Tonight gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson gets his final wish: his ashes will be shot exactly six months from his death out of a cannon over his Colorado compound. - The Times has an interesting story on a cryptosporidiosis outbreak(sounds like a Neal Stephenson disease to us) based around Geneva, N.Y.. The parasitic disease, which spreads through water and dirty hands, was somehow camping out in water tanks feeding into the Sprayground water park.......

Francesca Kaplan, Artist/Designer/Stylist...

Gothamist Wants You! Yes, you. We are looking to add some contributors to the ever-expanding Arts & Events section. More specifically we need people who can write two posts a week in one of the following areas: -Fine Arts (photography and other art exhibits, gallery openings, etc - to coordinate with our other Fine Arts contributor) -Theater (Broadway and Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broaday!) -Literature (New York authors, New York themed books, NY-centric art books) -Movies......

Murtaza Vali, Graduate Student...

Rachelle Socol, Designer...

As many can tell, sometimes Gothamist doesn't have the greatest grasp on the ABC's. Luckily, there is Michael DeFeo's children's book, Alphabet City, which teaches kids (and bloggers) how to recognize words, using DeFeo's street art. DeFeo pasted drawings of different objects, like ladders or tomatoes, onto the walls of NYC buildings and photographed them. What's pretty is awesmoe is that DeFeo, a street artist and high school fine arts teacher, has a map of......

Margaret Braun, Sugar Artist...

Tonight & Tomorrow night @ Volume come witness some large scale art as installation artists show off their works before some of them head out to Burning Man. The event will feature: Saul Melman, Anakin Koenig Airways, Alejandra Airaldi (an installation artist with a background in architectural and fine arts), Dennis Del Zotto (his large indoor cavernous environments were prominent in the early 90's NY nightlife scene), and Fake-Air (a 20,000 cubic ft walk-in......

Ack - a fine arts framer left his portfolio containing a Picasso drawing and a Sophie Matisse painting on the 1/9 platform at West 79th Street Thursday morning. Framer W.H. Bailey, who also framed Starry Night (but did not lose it), sobbed when the subway clerk told him the portfolio hadn't been returned. This makes Gothamist wonder what other high-ticket items that one wouldn't think should be transported in the subway are actually in the......

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be opening its newly renovated $30 million cafeteria on June 17. The Times notes that it's like the Conde Nast cafeteria in its price tag, use of metal and glass (laminated, thought), and the chef who formerly headed up the 4TS Conde Nast cafeteria, but the main difference is that the Met cafeteria is open to the public, not underfed fashionistas, although Gothamist would like to see a......

One reason I like press releases from the Martinez Gallery is their use of flowery prose: "The primary examples of this bloodline of real, authentic Bombers are Ghost, in the 80s, VFR, since ’88, JA, since ’90, and Giz, since ’93. Not one of them kowtows before the idols of (1) legality, which of course changes with time; (2) Muralism, practiced so majestically by the Mexicans in the wake of their 20th century revolution (Orozco,......