House and Home

Vegetable Literacy Author Deborah Madison Loved Vegetables Before It Was Cool

Deborah Madison lives in Galisteo, a tiny adobe village just south of Santa Fe. It was in her backyard there -- an eighth of an acre of beds raised above New Mexico's clay soil -- that she noticed the similarities among vegetable blossoms and fell into studying botany. Years before we collectively ... More >>

Edible Garden On Top Of North Square Restaurant

Talk about an extensive herb garden. Located on top of North Square Restaurant in the Washington Square Hotel, Jake's Edible Garden is an herb garden that has just sprouted and will be providing all the herbs for executive chef Yoel Cruz's dishes. The herbs, chilies, and tomatoes come from Oak Gro ... More >>

THE BRONX GIVERNY

Walk in Monet's French garden

'Philip Glass's 75th Birthday'

Adorable Bed Bug Hotels Show New Yorkers Where There Are Bed Bugs

BedBugHotels.org​This summer was supposed to be the Summer of the Bed Bug (before it became the summer of the rat, and the summer of the hurricane, and the summer we worked a lot). But, thank goodness, the great bed-bug-ification of New York City never truly came to fruition in June, July, and ... More >>

The Exterminating Angel

Bed Bug Insurance Is Here; Bed Bugs Still Attacking

​Finally some potentially good news in the ongoing war against bed bugs: insurance. According to a press release issued yesterday, Aon Risk Solutions, Global Excess Partners, and Terminix have joined forces to provide bed bug insurance for "hotels, landlords, student housing, corporate busines ... More >>

'Summerstage Festival Presents Yo-Yo Ma'

Men Relax More When Their Wives Are Doing Chores (Seriously)

​Today in stereotype-reinforcing studies, we get this: Guess what? The stress levels of married women drop when their husbands help them with chores. But married men relax most when their wives are busy doing things besides relaxing. Hm! And we wonder why women seem to be less interested in ge ... More >>

Macy's 37th Annual Flower Show: Fake Daisies and Dogs in Floral Snuggies

Heather Holland via The Lush Side​It's a good thing the wall of daisies was artificial, since the near-freezing wind that swept through Herald Square would have made short work of any exposed bloom at Macy's annual Flower Show on Sunday. Still, midtown tourists and shoppers took little notice ... More >>

Apartment Vermin: If You Can't Beat 'Em,
Eat 'Em! Recipes for Cooking Your Pests.

Who needs Dean & Deluca?​ Ah, city living. The museums, the opera, the vermin. Damn annoying those pests, making themselves so at home in your apartment. An urban inevitability, perhaps, but if so, why not put them to use, such as saving money on your grocery bill? Make infestation a good thin ... More >>

New York City Rats, Bed Bugs Getting Their Own Reality Show

​Bed Bugs have infested bedrooms, the Gramercy Hotel and have even scared away tourists. Rats are on the subway and even someone's face. It's inevitable that someone was going to give our local celebrities a reality television show. But you too can be a part of the action!

Gene-Morphing Bed Bugs Now Virtually Indestructible

​Have we properly freaked out about bedbugs yet this year? Not really? Let's do it, now! The Wall Street Journal published a piece today that had even our most hardened staff members quivering in their cargo shorts. Here are the scariest bits: --"bedbugs may have boosted their natural defense ... More >>

Bedbugs Are Biting 7 Percent More New Yorkers

Once there's a T-shirt, you know it's real.​Bedbugs. They are terrifying. They are gross. They are everywhere. And they are continuing to reproduce with a vengeance. According to the latest stats from New York City's Department of Housing, Preservation, and Development, via the Wall Street Jou ... More >>

Rich People Are Totally Outsourcing Christmas

via Apartment Therapy​Among all the outrageous holiday things we do, whether we're rich or poor or simply middle-class, there is the outrageousness of paying someone else to do it for you. We're all a little bit guilty of this, most likely -- store gift-wrapping? Buying the pies instead of mak ... More >>

Is This a Bed Bug on the New York City Subway? (Video)

R is for "Narsty"​We can't confirm that this video is of an actual bed bug (it looks pretty big to us, as bed bugs go), but we can confirm that YouTube poster thefredelement has videotaped something on the Brooklyn-bound R. He says: "On my way to work (11/16/2010) a lady across the aisle had a ... More >>

Here Are 10 of New York City's Creepiest (Unhaunted) Places

Creepy abandoned smallpox hospital. ​We're feeling kinda Halloweeny, and, luckily, New York has a whole host of reputedly haunted locales, including the Algonquin (now, creepily, a Marriott), the Dakota, the Empire State Building, and Washington Square Park. But it struck us that each of those ... More >>

Are Bedbugs Scaring Tourists Away From NYC?

​Tourists afraid of bedbugs? The Associated Press thinks so! Today's national wire carries a terrifying (and mostly anecdotal) piece about how bedbugs -- this year's trendiest New York annoyance/epidemic/infestation -- are threatening the city's "$30 billion tourism industry."

New Yorkers Most Afraid of Rats; Lower East Side Is the Second "Rattiest" 'Hood

​A new survey conducted by a leading pest control manufacturer says rats are still New Yorkers' least favorite pest. So how do jaded New Yorkers react when these dreaded home invaders are on the prowl? And which Manhattan neighborhoods are considered the "rattiest?" Let's find out!

Bedbugs Are in NYU Dorms with "Bedbug-Proof" Mattresses

via Mammakaze​This just goes to show that nowhere can really truly be bedbug-proof, not even the dorms of the naive and young-blooded -- all the better for the vampire-like parasites. Welcome to New York, kiddies; hope you packed your cortisone cream, because NYU representative Beth Morningstar co ... More >>

West Nile Virus Made a Comeback this Season -- Save Yourself from Its Wrath

​West Nile -- it almost sounds like something that should be on VH1's I Love the '90s -- but it's still among us and it can be dreadful, especially for those on either side of the age spectrum. The disease, first found in the U.S. in 1999, is at its highest levels in New York since 2000. There hav ... More >>

NYC Rental Negotiations Will Now Include Tales of Bedbugs, Extreme Itchiness

Landlord or bedbug?​On what may someday be considered a monumental day in the annals of bedbug history, Governor Paterson has signed into law the bedbug disclosure bill. Yes, starting immediately, New York City landlords have to tell prospective tenants -- in writing -- if there has been a bed ... More >>

NYC Is the Most Bedbug-Ridden Place in the USA!

​As Rosie mentioned last week, maybe it's time to accept the bedbugs as our overlords. Personal anecdote: This very blogger walked down 2nd Street on Sunday and saw no less than 6 mattresses waiting in the rain for garbage collectors. Since it's neither the last nor the very first of the month ... More >>

Bed Bugs Are Way Worse Than Mice

Friends don't let friends do bed bugs. ​Drag star Vodka Stinger knows this, having hideously been through both infestations. See, Vodka and her boyfriend (yes, she has a boyfriend, too!) suffered the horror of bed bugs last year and they're still having flashbacks about the 30 bags of laundry ... More >>

Let's Just Give Up and Accept that the Bedbugs Have Won

​Bedbugs have now infested the AMC movie theater in Times Square. Yes, it's horrifying. But at this point, the idea that bedbugs are all over the damn place is not new. Let's look at all the places that have been infested by the little critters this summer:

Press Clips, Day 6, Late Edition: The Beautiful Bedbugs of Elle Magazine

​Bedbugs! VICE! And can you "haz" a "dead" web? Find out in today, Day 6, of Press Clips.

Bedbugs Take Over Hachette Book Group's Offices

​Coming to you with the latest in bedbug news: Hachette Book Group's three floors at 237 Park Avenue and East 46th Street are infested and undergoing "aggressive treatment" for the bugs on Thursday and Friday while, we presume, the lucky/unlucky Hachette employees "work from home" or "go to th ... More >>

Victoria's Secret Falls to the Scourge of Bedbugs, Gets Back Up Again

Bedbugs!​I know, it's wrong...but it's almost enjoyable to watch all of these places we never, ever shop (except last year, you know, to buy a Halloween costume) fall prey to bedbugs. There was Hollister, which we've only walked by on occasion to catch a glimpse of a nude torso...then there wa ... More >>

Free Will Astrology: June 23-29, 2010

Q&A: Earth Day Art Exhibit Commemorates Demolished NYC Gardens

​In honor of Earth Day, we wanted to tell you a story about a garden -- The Magic Garden -- that's going to be torn down to make room for a high-rise housing development. Oliver Rios, an East Harlem-bred artist, grew up around gardening when his mother Lydia Roman began transforming abandone ... More >>

HOOTERS

They're cute and fuzzy, and now you can eat off them!

Why Garden? Because Dirt Is the New Prozac.

woodleywonderworks/flickr​The Huffington Post has an interesting piece on how getting down and dirty with nature in, for example, a vegetable garden can keep us emotionally healthy. The microbes in dirt, apparently, affect the same neurons that are stimulated by Prozac. A British study from a ... More >>

Dinner Party Download

Elin B @ Flickr Ever find yourself ignoring your dinner companions because the conversation at the next table is so much more interesting than the one you're having? Show up at your next dinner engagement better armed. The Dinner Party Download is a weekly public radio podcast offering up 15 minutes ... More >>

Office Holiday Parties Down, Says Shaken Office Party Supplier

This Bites: Called for Bedbugs, City Shuts Astoria Apt. Bldg.

Video Tuesday Continues, with Bedbugs

Manny Farber 1917-2008

Remembering the painter, professor, and underground model for scores of American film critics

Manny Farber 1917-2008

Remembering the painter, professor, and underground model for scores of American film critics

Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson's Brief Documentary A Man Named Pearl

PROJECT COBBLEWAY

Meatpacking district gets repackaged

The Rose and the Thorn

Nodding Out in the East Village

How the Other Half Lives

America Gets in Touch With Its Interior Designer

Two-Story 1800s Wooden Back House

War of the Roses

Garden Vote Could Settle Perennial Problem

Device Squads

Currently on View: Puppets, Politics, Pianologue, and Peonage

Law of the Jungle

Spring Catalogue

Plots thicken as gardens head for auction block

Rich and Strange

Three Women Ignite Asian Traditions

Uprooted

The City Yanks More Gardens Out of Harlem

The Mod Squad

Prowling the showrooms of Soho