New York City Subway

Subway Commuters Should Expect a Repeat of Thursday's Long Lines on Friday and Possible Delays for "Next Several Years"

"This is bullshit," a Hispanic twenty-something said. Fidgeting, he looked at the subway entrance, then to his phone, then down the block to the ever-growing line of tired commuters, then back to his phone. "It's my girl's birthday. I'm supposed to go see her." He took one last glance toward the ent ... More >>

ConEd Explosion Could Leave Downtown Manhattan in Darkness for a Few Days

At around 9 p.m. last night, this happened. The video shows a flash of electrical fire at the ConEdison plant on 14th Street and Avenue D. Soon after, most of the East Village and the Lower East Side was shrouded in darkness. Not sure if we've seen anything like this before.According to a ... More >>

"Love Your Muslim Neighbor" Campaign Organized To Counter Anti-Islam Subway Ads

As some people spray-paint and vandalize the anti-Islam subway ads currently posted in 10 New York City subway stations, others are using different, more legal methods to discredit the Islam-o-phobic message in the ads, which compares Muslims to "savages."Sojourners magazine, a faith-based "social j ... More >>

Ads Calling Jihadists Uncivilized "Savages" To Appear in NYC Subways. What Could Go Wrong?

There's a reason you see an army of law-enforcement officials armed with semi-automatic weapons in New York City's subways: Public transportation in New York City is a prime target for terrorists who want to blow us up.So where better to place provocative ads insulting Muslim jihadists than New York ... More >>

Nominated Actor From One Man, Two Guvnors Tells Me Why He's Openly Gay

Tom Edden has gotten Tony and Drama Desk nominations for his hilarious performance as an old helper who's pretty much helpless in the farcically funny play One Man, Two Guvnors. At a Drama Desk meet and greet at Oceana the other day, Tom told me he's openly gay and has a boyfriend--soon to be a hus ... More >>

Unsane Tap In

On the band's strange place between the record store and the Octagon

Cuomo's DNA Databank: Adultery, Being Loud In Church, and Fortune Telling Now Crimes That Give the State the Right To Your DNA

​If you're a fortune teller, cheat on your spouse, or are loud in church, in New York State, the government will soon legally have the right to retrieve your DNA and put it in a DNA Databank -- that's thanks to an agreement Governor Andrew Cuomo reached with legislative leaders earlier this week o ... More >>

Media And Entertainment Commissioner Katherine Oliver Talks New York As Set Piece

via @NYCMayorsOffice​Though much of the real-life drama in the city this past week was worth of a couple Law & Order episodes, the mayor's office brought our attention to on-screen travails. Not only was there the Thursday Gossip Girl hoopla (xoxo, Mayor Mike), but on Tuesday the film Extremel ... More >>

MTA Introduces New Subway Map to Make You Less Angry on Weekends

A portion of one of the new Weekender maps​Have you heard of "the Weekender"? No, it's not this. It's a new online mapping system that the MTA hopes will help make you less angry on weekends! Basically, this is the MTA's admittance to you that, yes, they mess up a lot of your plans on weekend ... More >>

Live: Tom Zé Sings The Phone Book (And Then Some) At Lincoln Center

André Conti​Tom Zé Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater Tuesday, July 19 Better than: The last artist you heard who sampled anything Brazilian. What was impressive wasn't that the 74-year-old Tom Zé leapt from the Avery Fisher stage-lip five times during his Tuesday performance, nor that ... More >>

Live From The Pit: Titus Andronicus Find Joy In The Seemingly Bleak

Willie Davis​4Knots Music Festival: Titus Andronicus Pier 17, South Street Seaport Saturday, July 16 Better than: Shakespeare. After a race through the New York City subway system, I charged triumphantly out onto the waterfront as Patrick Stickles of Titus Andronicus sang the slow opening ly ... More >>

MTA Weekend Follies, Again: An Investigation

​This should absolutely not come as a surprise, but anyone who uses the New York City subway system will experience some trying times this weekend. Do you take the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, A, C, D, E, F, G, L, N, Q, or R trains? Sorry 'bout that. For us Williamsburgers, this is par for the course. Th ... More >>

Sad Sack Uncle Sam Stumbles Around Chinatown in New Beast Installation

​Last month, the street artist Beast made the New York City subway map, usually a "limp dick," into an erect penis thrilled over the death of Osama Bin Laden. Yesterday he was back at work with a new installation he calls "Sam & Fred & Mike & Tom & Jerry go to China," which depicts a dilapidat ... More >>

10 Places Better Than the Apple Store to Take Pictures in NYC

Really?​There are a lot of neat places in New York, tourist attraction or otherwise, which is why we were pretty shocked to learn that one of the most photographed spots in the city is the Fifth Avenue Apple Store. (The findings were based on one researcher's experiment with Flickr geotags.) C ... More >>

5 Reasons It's a Bad Idea to Ban Food on Subway Trains

​Following the Spaghetti Incident of '11, in which a woman and another woman behaved quite badly pursuant to a fight about food on a New York City subway train, the MTA has been thinking, and a board member has posited the "informal" idea of banning food and drink altogether on trains. This is ... More >>

Subway Makes Beautiful Music

Conductor: www.mta.me from Alexander Chen on Vimeo.Have you seen this subway art? Web designer Alexander Chen used the New York City subway's actual train schedule to plot this rather awesome musical piece, called "Conductor," which, he says, makes the system into "an interactive string instrument," ... More >>

The Runnin' Scared Gift Guide: 100 Presents for the Drunks, Exes, Neurotics, Sex Fiends, and Loved Ones on Your List

#76, Golden Girls Xmas Ornaments​So many gift guides, so little time. But how many lists of gifts under $50, or gifts for moms-to-be, or gifts for boyfriends and girlfriends and dogs can you really look at before wondering, where is the gift guide to end all gift guides? Where is the gift guid ... More >>

Winter Guide: A Guide to 2010 Holiday Gifts

For the Less Neiman Marcus-inclined. P.S. Get your damn hands off the ostrich!

The Five Best Things Lil B Raps Over on His Great New Mixtape, Red Flame

​If you've looked at the incredibly prolific, California-based rapper Lil B's twitter at any point over the past few days, you know that he's just released a new mixtape, Red Flame. B, of course, is heralding it as the greatest of all time. After a couple listens, this seems to be a bit of an ... More >>

Morgan Stanley Fires Employee Who Attempted to Make the Subway "Friendly"

​There are certain rules that we all implicitly agree to live by in New York City. Such as: don't interact on the subway or in the streets when you can do it on Craigslist; don't make eye contact unless at least two alcoholic beverages in; don't try to be friends unless in a pre-approved frien ... More >>

Westway, the Highway That Tried to Eat New York, Defeated 25 Years Ago This Week

​The Saw Mill, the Bronx River, and parts of the FDR were closed due to flooding this morning thanks to the monsoon that kicked in before dawn. But the West Side Highway, a.k.a. the Joe DiMaggio? Traffic is flowing fine there, thanks in large part because we never built Westway, the crazed mul ... More >>

Awesome New York Subway Signage: Spoilers and Lubrication on the L

via Second Avenue Sagas​With any progressive change, there are detractors. For example, those who find the MTA's new countdown clocks to "spoil" the delicious mystery of When is my freakin' train gonna come? While we don't mind knowing when our train is going to come -- we even like it -- we d ... More >>

Nick Denton's Latest Traffic Boast: Gawker Media's April Readership "About the Population of Canada"

​According to an internal company memo, Gawker Media had a record month in April! And all it took was maybe some potentially irreversible psychological damage to an Apple employee!

The Seven Year Itch

Lousy Al Qaeda Operative is From Long Island

We understand why the local papers want to make a big deal of Bryant Neal Vinas of Patchogue, New York, whose federal indictment on charges of helping Al Qaeda was made public today -- you know, hometown boy makes good and all that. But it doesn't seem as if Vinas accomplished much as a traitor. Th ... More >>

70s Subway Map Dress: $249.90 from Nordstrom

New York city subway blogger Benjamin Kabak of Second Avenue Saga likes his old-school Vignelli subway maps: "In the annals of New York City subway history," he says, "nothing is more fetishized and analyzed than the Massimo Vignelli 1970s-era subway map. Over the last few years, I've written posts ... More >>

Peanut Board Funds Subway Ads; Food Safety Regs Remain Unsatisfactory

Spotted on the D train: one of the National Peanut Board's ads bearing its new slogan, "Peanuts: Energy for the Good Life." The ad could be for cell phones or anti-depression medication. It depicts a young man in a suit slumped on what appears to be a New York subway bench, clutching his phone as h ... More >>

The Met's Century of Photography

A striking, revealing lineup of giants from photography's first hundred years

Helvetica

Exposing Sexual Harassment on the Subways

Toronto Confidential

Mob scenes and murders: An action-packed installment of an all-encompassing festival

Holland Tunnel Vision: Fighting the Terrorists Where?

Strike Report 12/22/05
It's Over (Almost), But Pension Battle for All U.S. Workers is Just Starting

Marching to Montgomery: The Cradle Did Rock

2003

What's So Scary About a National ID

A Ground Zero Wish List

Going Underground

Framing an abstract expressionist and comics maestro in the entrance to the subway

Yury and His MagicBike

Technology, powered by passion, makes the resistance so cool

Sure Shots

The photo shows you can't miss

Make Robots Not War

Some Scientists Refuse to Get Paid for Killer Ideas

Unearthing a Lost NYC in Sargent's Great Train Robbery

The First Annual Cryogenic Baseball Quiz

Figure Out These Freeze Frames of History and Win a Prize or Two

The Other Ghosts of Ground Zero

Unlike Other New York Landmarks, the Twin Towers Were Built on Landfill(ed) With Drama of the Past

Big Apple for Sale

City Peddles Spare Parts Online

NY Mirror

Lucidity on Fire