In Print
Next American City
An App A Day
February 16, 2010
Last week, New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the winners of NYC BigApps, a competition for software developers using municipal data. With BigApps, New York follows the lead of Washington, D.C. in publicizing its government-2.0 initiatives with a splashy software competition. More>
The New York Observer
The Man Who Closed Times Square to Traffic
January 26, 2010
Standing along a busy downtown Manhattan street, Mark Gorton lamented all the traffic. “It’s not that cars are inevitable; it’s that we’ve tried really hard to jam these cars in here,” said the founder of The Open Planning Project (TOPP), a nonprofit dedicated to transportation reform. More>
Study: Subprime Loans Went to Minority-Heavy Neighborhoods
November 19, 2009
Residents of largely non-white neighborhoods in New York City were far more likely to receive a subprime loan than those in largely white neighborhoods, regardless of the borrower’s race, according to a new study from NYU’s Furman Center. More>
East Villagers, Unite! Documentary on Ending Poverty Rich in Critiques
November 16, 2009
It wasn’t all doom and gloom at Friday’s premiere of “The End of Poverty?” at Village East Cinemas. The film, which traces the origins of global poverty back to the Age of Exploration, offers a reason for hope: things might soon get so bad that the impoverished will rise up in armed rebellion. More>
Splendor in the Glass: Shards in the Carpet at NYPL Party
November 3, 2009
The New York Public Library’s Young Lions benefit party Monday night got off to an innocuous start. Library donors in their 20s and 30s gathered under the glass dome of the Bartos Forum in the main branch at 42nd Street, avoiding the dance floor while the DJ spun hits from their youth. More>
Designer Jacobs Lauded by Pratt as Trustee is Carried Out on Stretcher
November 3, 2009
“For me, a legend is someone I look up to and I respect and admire, and I guess I’m not there yet for myself,” said designer Marc Jacobs humbly on Thursday, Oct. 29, at the Pratt Institute Legends award benefit, where he was one of the evening’s honorees. More>
At n+1 Panel, the Cat Got Douthat’s Tongue on Topic of of Gay Marriage
October 21, 2009
Ross Douthat, conservative op-ed columnist for the New York Times, was made visibly uncomfortable for a moment while onstage last night at the New School’s Tishman auditorium. Having sailed through a discussion titled “Meet the Neo-Cons: They’re Young, They’re Bright, They Tilt to the Right” alongside his friend and co-author Reihan Salam, moderated by Marco Roth of n+1 magazine, Mr. Douthat became suddenly fidgety when asked to respond to a question from the audience on gay marriage. More>
At Wild Things Premiere, We Could Eat Celebs Up, We Love Them So!
October 21, 2009
“Since I was a kid, I’ve been hoping that I could get kids on my side, because they’re the coolest and smartest,” said Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the New York premiere of Spike Jonze’s movie version of the Maurice Sendak children’s classic Where the Wild Things Are, held at Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday Oct. 15. “They know better than all of us.” More>
The New York Film Festival Opens Quietly at Alice Tully with Alain Resnais’ Wild Grass
September 28, 2009
“It’s like prom night didn’t happen this year,” said documentarian Aviva Kempner (Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg) on Friday, September 25, standing in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall, where the New York Film Festival was celebrating its opening night. She was disappointed at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s decision to move the party from its traditional home at beleaguered restaurant Tavern on the Green. More>
But Will it Play in Peoria? Esky Nervously Fetes Moore’s Anti-Capitalism Doc at Ultimate Bachelor Pad
September 22, 2009
“They promised me I would mellow as I got older, and it didn’t happen,” a graying Michael Moore bellowed before the New York premiere of his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, at Alice Tully Hall on Monday, Sept. 21. The screening, a pre–New York Film Festival event put on by Esquire and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, drew noted capitalists like chef Mario Batali and editor Tina Brown despite its radical premise: that capitalism is, in a word, evil. More>
The Kindest Keats? Campion Talks About Demure New Biopic, Starring Dreamy Whishaw
September 15, 2009
Ben Whishaw, the young British actor with a Romantic poet’s mop of tousled black hair, stood alone by the bar at the Plaza’s Oak Room during lunchtime at Tuesday, Sept. 15, wearing black Vans, black jeans and an untucked white dress shirt. Although slightly out of place among a crowd of carefully primped movie-industry types, Mr. Whishaw looks the part for his role as a love-struck John Keats in Jane Campion’s new biopic Bright Star. More>
Bright Lights, Big Brooklyn Book Party
September 14, 2009
On Saturday night, at the Brooklyn Book Festival’s Gala Mingle, literary stars from Francine Prose to Colson Whitehead sipped white wine and chatted politely about one another’s work under the harsh glare of flourescent lights. Indeed, where past years’ galas have been held in elegant digs at the historic Dime Savings Bank and the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, Saturday’s festivities took place in a large hall and an adjacent cafeteria downstairs at St. Francis College, a block away from Borough Hall. The venue’s very thorough lighting made certain that most things were illuminated. More>
Oxford UP Goes All Out as Harper’s Books Man Moser Brings Clarice Lispector to the U.S.
September 11, 2009
“When I met Ben many, many years ago, the first thing he told me was about Clarice,” said Dutch novelist Arthur Japin. “I don’t know if it was our first date, but it might have been.” Mr. Japin was talking about his partner Benjamin Moser, the “New Books” columnist for Harper’s and the author of Why This World, a new biography of the Brazilian author Clarice Lispector. More>
The Rumpus
The Rumpus Interview with Robert Sullivan
September 6, 2009
Journalist Robert Sullivan often documents unlovely corners of the natural world: The Meadowlands (1998) turned a naturalist’s eye on a dispiriting region of northern New Jersey notable for its Mafia dumping grounds, while in Rats (2004) Sullivan gave Ratus norvegicus the Dian Fossey treatment. His latest book, The Thoreau You Don’t Know, attempts to recuperate Henry David’s reputation among those who remember him from high school English as a voice of unyielding asceticism. More>
