One Ring Zero is an unusual Brooklyn band headed up by Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, with a troupe of musicians and lyricists filling out their ever-morphing sonic tribe. Their lyrics have been written by some familiar names: Jonathan Lethem, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster and Dave Eggers are amongst them. This year they enter their 10th year of making music, and this Friday they'll be at Joe's Pub celebrating on stage. Join in on the......

Image of current and future Brooklyn House of Detention: New York City Department of Design & Construction The notorious Brooklyn House of Detention – immortalized by everyone from the Beastie Boys to Jonathan Lethem – has been closed since 2003, but plans to reopen the jail at twice its previous size are still moving forward. Last year many newcomers to the steadily gentrifying neighborhood decried plans to bring back the detention center, located at......

Brooklyn writers are banding together to be the latest voice against Bruce Ratner's vision for Atlantic Yards. A number of local wordsmiths have contributed to Brooklyn Was Mine, an anthology consisting of short essays and stories put together by two Vogue editor to benefit Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (a non-profit that fights development while uniting the community). From the press release:"Brooklyn has given birth to some of America's greatest literary voices," note the anthology's co-editors,......

Jonathan Lethem Selects BAM Cinématek Starting next Monday and running through the middle of November, Brooklyn author and Friends of BAM chairperson Jonathan Lethem will be programming the cinématek with some of his favorite movies. Fans of his writing know that Lethem loves pop culture but this series doesn't really have more of an over arching theme than that it features some of the author's most beloved films and plain ol' good movies. There are......

BEER: This one is pretty simple...there will be lots (58!) of New York beers, and a few bands to soundtrack your drinking them, at the Seaport tonight. Go, imbibe, enjoy! Friday // 5 to 10pm // South Street Seaport // $55 THEATER: Paso Doble was a sold-out hit at the 60th anniversary Festival d’Avignon last summer; for one weekend only sculptor Miquel Barceló and dancer Josef Nadj have brought their messy spectacle to St. Ann’s......

MOVIE: One Ring Zero is a lit-rock fans dream come true. The band features Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem, Dave Eggers and Margaret Atwood’s lyrics set to the music of trumpets, theremins, claviolas, and metallophones. Director Joe Pacheco captured the band on film and presents it now as a documentary, As Smart As They Are: The Author Project. Here's a song/video with lyrics by Michael Chabon: 7pm // Barbes [376 9th St, Park Slope] // Free......

READINGS: Jonathan Lethem reads from his new novel You Don't Love Me Yet. In it, Lethem leaves Boerum Hill for LA "to recount the near-fame experience of a Los Angeles alternative rock band". A girl, a boy and a band - sounds like a hipster love story to us! 7pm // Barnes & Noble [33 E 17th St] // Free Saul Austerlitz talks about his book Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video.......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a slashing in Queens, building collapse in the Bronx, and a 10-75 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Twenty students from the New School and Pace got arrested yesterday after they occupied a US Army Recruitment Center on Chambers Street. Some good protest pix are also available. Our pal Tricia Romano devotes a full five pages to explaining the mysterious and seductive phenomenon that is Ultragrrrrl. Don't try to fight her......

The NY Times has a good article about the second trial of Steven Johnson, who unleashed his anger by shooting people and taking others hostage in an East Village bar almost five years ago. Johnson, who has AIDS, was unemployed at the time and was allegedly looking for "happy people" to "avenge the oppression of black people like himself," according the Times. We remember the incident very clearly. It was a nice June night and......

Some high school reunions spurs thoughts of regret and schadenfreude. The 10 year high school reunion for some Regis High School alums prompted a group of classmates to attempt to ride break the record for fastest ride through the NYC subway system. Stefan Karpinski, Andrew Weir, Bill Amaosa, Jason Laska, Michael Boyle and Brian Brockmeyer teamed up to ride the subways starting yesterday afternoon at Rockaway Park station, and should be ending around 3PM......

Last night the Starbucks Salon opened with a private event for press which included a performance by Aimee Mann and free cocktails and coffee drinks. We forgot to go. We do look forward to heading out there at some point though for one of the following performances. Love 'em or hate 'em, they have some good acts coming up: 9/08 - DJ Skott Johnson & SloMo Video, Eugene Mirman, Buck 65 9/09 DJ Dom Leon......

The VMA's are in town, but there's more to do beyond screaming outside of Radio City or attempting to hit up one of the red carpet parties... EVENT: If you're in to PDA then head uptown tonight, there's going to be a "makeout party". We prefer the sound of silence over the sound of hundreds of people smooching, so we'll probably skip this. Of note: they mention that "this is a kissing-only event, so all......

- Bronx students want sex ed classes; it's crazy that 12-13 year olds haven't taken sex ed classes yet - A plane headed from LaGuardia to Cincinatti was diverted to JFK because of engine trouble; luckily planes have more than one engine - the passengers and crew are okay - State senators want to repeal the 5 year statute of limitations on rape cases - Jonathan Lethem writes his letter asking Frank Gehry to......

Only a decade ago, mostly it was just people up to no good who could be found outside on Smith Street after a certain hour. It was the edge of a particularly rough Brooklyn neighborhood known as Gowanus that real estate developers pretend no longer exists. People who visited Smith Street late at night in those days were not in search of the gourmet. Today, however, Smith Street is perhaps the one street in all......

Before we get to the weekly events which are sure to dazzle and amaze, Gothamist would like to note the passing of one of the great science fiction writers, Octavia Butler. Butler died after falling down the stairs outside her home this weekend, and will be sorely missed. She's the only science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur grant, and in a field dominated by men, Butler was a woman notable not only for her strong......

Dave Eggers and Paul Auster start a band...it sounds like the beginning of a joke. For better or worse, it's not. Joe Pacheco's documentary, As Smart As They Are: The Author Project documents how the McSweeney's in-house band, One Ring Zero, collaborated with some writers to make Lit Rock. The documentary includes live performances, studio sessions and interviews with the writers and musicians, while exploring relationships between music and literature. The featured players are Dave......

Last year, when everyone else was reading The Fortress of Solitude, we picked up Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem’s previous novel, about a South Brooklyn detective with Tourette’s. Given our general suspicion of It-books and buzzy fiction, we were pleased to find that it was good—really good, in fact, intelligent and true, more entertaining and earnest and linguistically acrobatic than anything we had read in ages. Even more surprising was the way strangers would approach us......

NY Times Ethicist Randy Cohen announces to readers (Gothamist assumes he means all NY Times readers, though he just mentions "Book Review" readers) that he wants their suggestions to make a literary map of Manhattan, places where literary characters walked, brooded, or traipsed. Email suggestions to bookmap@nytimes.com (there are more rules and regs, like having page numbers and quotes, here), credit will be given to the first person who sends in a submission for a......

Housing Works Bookstore Café is self described as Soho's best-kept secret, and it looks like we're not very good at keeping secrets. Starting this Sunday (and recurring on Sundays) Air America Radio will begin taping their new "Liberal Arts" show live from Housing Works. The program is hosted by Katherine Lanpher, who also co-hosts "The Al Franken Show" on Air America. In the continuing series she will entertain authors, singer-songwriters and artists in an evening......

Brooklyn gets two new magazines: One, BKLYN, looks like something perfect for multi-culti yuppies on in Park Slope (okay, maybe that's the idea Gothamist gets from the cover, but wouldn't you?), whereas the other, NRG, seems just right for hip and politically motivated Clinton Hill and Fort Greene residents. According to the Times, the first issues of the magazines include: BKLYN - advice to Brooklynites from the Park Slope writer Jill Eisenstadt about how to......

Author Jonathan Lethem gets the work up: A profile AND Michiko review in the Times today. The reason? His new book, Fortress of Solitude, his first since his National Book Critics Circle-winning, Motherless Brooklyn. Ah, the Doubleday publicists are earning their keep. The profile examines Lethem's Brooklyn roots, in the pre-gentrified days of Smith Street, when blacks and Puerto Ricans were the dominants groups and whites were a small minority - made up of socially-minded......