The charges have been dropped against four people arrested at last Saturday's massive "Costumed-Roving-Street-Party-Apocalyptic-Dance-Rock-Battle" flash mob in Williamsburg, the Brooklyn Paper reports. The event was intended to lure party people into a direct action 'take back the streets' protest, but Capt. Dennis Fulton, commanding officer of Greenpoint’s 94th Precinct, wasn't impressed: "They said they were protesting high rent — and I guess ‘the man’ — but really, they were just individuals in their twenties that......

Vlad at the Glass Bead Collective let us know about another video taken during Saturday night's Pandamonium in Williamsburg, where a roving street party (with a panda theme) was deemed too much by police, who tried to clamp down on festivities. He writes "the basic story here is that after the panda party was broken up, people started assembling on street corners and chanting," which is when the clash started to become more aggressive......

Last night, Pandamonium--the self-described "Costumed- Roving- Street- Party- Apocalyptic- Dance- Rock- Battle" event took place. And it did cause quite a pandemonium! The group only announced its start location yesterday (via websites and Twitter)--Union Square at 8:30 p.m. After converging, some in white-and-black face paint and masks, the panda group headed to Williamsburg via the L at Union Square. But little did they know the police do not take kindly to pandas. Or at least......

Here's some Saturday afternoon cuteness. We're hoping for a day when pandas can come to NYC, but we suppose panda paperwork takes a while.......

MUSIC: Ever wonder what former Weezer bassist Matt Sharp has been up to? Well, he's back fronting his other old band, The Rentals. With a long list of former members, amongst them Maya Rudolph and Petra Haden, the group is now six-strong, and playing Nokia Theater tonight in support of their new EP, The Last Little Life. 8pm // Nokia Theatre [1515 Broadway] // $22.50 Over at Sound Fix Camera Obscura will be serving a......

Every third Saturday, Glennis McMurray and Eliza Skinner join forces as I Eat Pandas, a musical improv group that takes suggestions from audience members and creates musicals - yes, with the singing and the dancing, the drama and the comedy. Before their performance this weekend at Mo Pitkins, we asked them a few questions. Okay, first things first: Why are you called I Eat Pandas? Do pandas seem very tasty to you or something? E:First......

We're guessing most of you are hungover from St. Patrick's Day. We are too. But still, we're going to muddle on through our green haze and give you (drum roll please...) this Week In -ists. We start with SFist which broke the -ist record for comments with nearly 500 comments on a post about our Mayor's girlfriend. She responded back on charges that she's not a "girl's girl" and, whoo boy-- the floodgates? They......

This morning, we were excited to see a picture of a panda on the NY Times' Business Day section. It was related to a story about traveling in China - one of the Times' Frequent Flier articles where road warriors share their travel tales. Naturally, Gothamist turned to page C6 to read the article and find out why pandas are hanging out on conveyor belts and how we could get a piece of that......

In some Chinese families, some relatives are referred to by their birth order instead of a name, like "Number 1 Sister" or "Number 4 Brother." And this goes for baby pandas, too, as the Wolong Nature Reserve's Research and Conservation Center for Giant Panda scientists refer to the baby pandas born between July and September of 2006 as numbers 1 to 18. Eager to change this, the research center is asking the public to......

Today, the AP reported that 30 pandas were born in China in 2006, making it a record year for the number of pandas born in captivity. And we do love the CNN headline for the story, "Baby pandas! Baby pandas! Baby pandas!" because it says it all and so much more. Just last month, Australia's The Age reported:At Wolong, the biggest of several conservation centres, 19 cubs have been born. This has led to......

Happy Thanksgiving indeed! Researchers say that two-year old trick of showing pandas DVDs of pandas properly mating has really helped the lovable creatures successfully mate. From the AP:It is one of many techniques tried over the decades to get captive pandas — notoriously poor breeders — to do it, and do it right. The efforts to understand and simulate conditions for mating and raising cubs have paid off in China, the panda’s native habitat.......

Today, a drunken man visiting the Beijing Zoo climbed into the panda habitat - and there was also "hugging" and biting. Reports say that 35 year old Zhang Xinyan had drunk "four draught beers" before heading to the zoo, where he was suddenly overcome with a desire to touch Gu Gu, a 6 year old male panda. Gu Gu freaked out and bit Zhang's, so then Zhang bit back. Zookeepers managed to get Gu......

+ City air unsafe for mosquitoes, asthmatics as the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene continues its shock and awe bombardment of the West Nile carrying buggers. Helicopters will be spraying parts of the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island with pesticide through Friday morning. Only one person has been infected with the disease this year compared with 14 last year. + Anorexic ladies, we feel your pain: skinny dudes have societal pressures too. + Overweight......

If there is one thing we here at Gothamist love it is Pandas. We may not all agree on the merits of procedural dramas like L&O but who doesn't love a good panda? So we have to admit we were kinda excited to stumble onto the above video on Google Video. We've written about the above "Panda Dog" before (it's a poodle/Maltese hybrid and also a dye job) but we hadn't seen it live......

God, we're so sick of Snakes on a Plane that we want to kill anyone and everyone that makes a "something on a something" joke. But then we realized that there was no way we could ever win this fight, and, hell, if you can't beat them, we might as well join them. And with that, you have the theme of this weeks' Gothamist network post. Austinist makes it easy for us, with Candidate......

Perhaps in anticipation of the dog days of summer, New York magazine is investigating happiness - why some people are very happy while others aren't so much, as in New Yorkers. It's a long piece, and we need some more time to read it, but essentially it looks at whether our nature as New Yorkers prohibits us from happiness, crossed with a lot of other research. There are also some suggestions for New Yorkers......

How awesome would it be if along with stray cats and dogs - and rodents and occasional ferrets, etc. - Gotham had a population of street pandas meandering through town, getting high on bamboo and sleeping on scaffolding? Sigh. As you can tell we have a far too active fantasy life. But still, maybe someday China will lease us a panda (2 million dollars!). In the meantime at least New York does have some......

It's been a long time since we've visited with our black-and-white (and a little dirty brown) friends, the panda. National Geographic's cover story this month is Panda, Inc., the million dollar industry behind having pandas on U.S. soil. It focuses mostly on Tai Shan, the adorable, nearly year old scamp in DC, and has many cute pictures and video. Of course, Gothamist hopes that panda leasing prices come down (China charges $2 million now),......

After reading our umpteenth post dreaming about pandas in our own backyard, a reader who was at the National Zoo sent us some exciting news:Just thought you'd like to know, that when I was there, one of the pandakeepers said the Bronx Zoo had already filled out its paperwork for "borrowing" some pandas from China. So pandas might be closer to NY than you think. Of course the NY Times article on how pandas don't......

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We have read the enlightening NY Times article about how pandas in U.S. zoos are like money pits, though adorable ones. The reason is because China leases the each panda to zoos for $2 million (in "panda cost and research"). And then there are the habitats the zoos must build, plus the expensive diets they have - oh, and if there's a baby, that's another $600,000 per year. The director of the Giant Panda......

So far we've found nothing funny about the month of January, hopefully things will change starting this week. Check out our comedy picks: When something is called Bar Mitzvah Disco (the Variety Show) you just have to go. The BMD is brought to you by the one and only Movable Hype 6.0 host Nick Kroll, who may or may not be going by the name of Enrique Goldfarb - Northern New Jersey's #3 name in......

On Gothamist Contribute, someone pointed out Johnny Cupcakes, a website devoted to selling t-shirts (and a few other things) with cupcakes on it. Excellent, we thought. But better than just a cupcake shirt is the panda eating a cupcake shirt! The shirt is $31.99, which is a bit steep but unlike the 15-18 cupcakes you could get for the same price, it's a little more permanent and less damaging on the waistline. Another panda shirt......

We're always promoting the native photographers and painters of New York City-- but we've been remiss in not giving enough attention to another indigenous art form: cake decoration. Check out this set of cakes decorated by Ameliaaah on Flickr-- our favorites include the Spycake, the TaurusCake, and the FishCake. Her cakes make Fudgie the Whale look like a pile of poo! Our third birthday is coming up on February 8th-- maybe we should commission......

It's so obvious that the NY Times wishes New York City had pandas of its own, because they resorted to putting a HUGE photograph of DC's own Tai Shan on the front section of the Science Times today. And to justify this act, Natalie Angier wrote an article about "The Cute Factor," explaining what Gothamist has secretly suspected: People love round, fat things. Babies? Check. Pandas? Check. Baby pandas? Check. Extra zeros on a......

Finally! It's as if our Christmas wish was answered early, for we must hail pandafix, the only website (that we know of) that aggregate all the insanely cute pictures of pandas DC, SF, China, and more in one place. Pictures of sixteen panda cubs from the breeding center in Wolong? Check! Somewhat embarassing photos of Bass's 25th birthday? Check! Side by side comparisons of Tai Shan and Su Lin climbing outside? Check! Thank you,......

Unbelievably, it's the last week of the year! How time flies! We'll be assembling our own Best of 2005 lists (Most Interesting News Stories, Best Shots of Pandas, Most Poorly Thought Out Gothamist Posts, etc. etc.) But until we can get the Gothamist supercomputer to spit those out, here are some lists from our friends (and one enemy!) in and around the city: Morning News Top 10 Albums Best of MUG 2005 Best Books by......

The current NY Times above-the-fold/ breaking news photograph is of Tai Shan, the National Zoo's four month old panda, who made his media debut today. Obviously, this is a call for New York City to stop shuffling our feet and to finally get our own set of pandas who can breed (naturally, artificially, who cares?!) and make adorable little pandas for us to coo about. Otherwise, we'll be heading out of town to DC......

The American media is desperate to report on "designer dogs." So desperate that they sought out a dog owner in Japan who dyed his poodle-Maltese hybrid (Maltepoo? Pooese) to look like a panda, coining the phrase, "panda dog." Now, Gothamist loves pandas and dogs and would love to own a panda dog. But dyeing your dog's hair every month, to maintain its perfectly panda fur? Yes, we have a dreamed of panda dogs before, and......

Whew, it's not a nice day out. You might even say that it is cold, wet, and generally unpleasant. Luckily for you, Gothamist knows what you need: Cute, adorable little pandas. Specifically, Washington D.C.'s newest panda, Tai Shan (a.k.a. Butterstick) who is all set to meet his public on Decemeber 8. And what a public he's got. The National Zoo made some 13,000 timed-entry tickets available to the public on Monday only to have only......