The MTA's Twitter (yes, the MTA has a Twitter account) posted a photo of the new feature rolling out along the L train: real-time displays of where trains are on the route. This is comforting, somewhat, since simply not knowing when or whether a train is coming is half of the annoyance of public transit, but what about those long weekends, for example, when the F train isn't running between Church Avenue and Jay Street? Do we really want a live display of how bad our commute is going to be? Self-delusion about outages is the only thing, many times, that keeps the thronging masses from open revolt on the subway platforms. This heralds a new era of the MTA either trying to make themselves look better and more efficient or proving once and for all that they truly do not care what we think.

It's been a while, and we've missed an awful lot of publications going into stoppage time, but we were waiting for something really, truly worthwhile to post about. While Arnold Diaz has the distinction of being New York's weirdest newscaster, thanks mostly to his "Shame Shame Shame!" intro, Ernie Anastos has made a bid to take the throne. Mere hours ago, he advised a coworker—meteorologist Nick Gregory to, and we're quoting here, "Keep ****ing that chicken." It's become so popular in the intervening time, and Wikipedia's introductory paragraph already says that he's "best known for his off-color remark 'Keep ****that chicken,'" and the incident already has its own section on the page. Also, a Google search for Ernie Anastos will yield that page and, in second place, a story about this little gem of a slip.



It's this reporter's considered opinion, however, that the gaffe itself isn't the troubling thing, it's that, with full knowledge of what Gregory has apparently been doing, Anastos not only sanctioned but insisted him to keep on doing it. Hopefully, Anastos will escape Michael Vick's fate and not be... dogged by this for the rest of his life.

Photo: Tracy Collins/threece

We've already seen mockups of the post-Gehry Atlantic Yards design, but this one... well, it's lit up! Barclays, who now owns most of the post-financial crisis world, has its own "Barclays Center" letter blocks forming a V around the plaza, but most interesting is the evidence of the gentrification most feared the complex would bring to the neighborhood: if you look closely, those are all white people milling around the structure. Little, tiny, plastic white people pushing out the lower tax brackets!

Really, these models are just the latest barrage of architectural pornography, since the beleaguered and underfunded project has slowed to a crawl since the gung-ho early days, including the lawsuit that sought to halt it altogether (even though that died in the New York Supreme Court with a win for Ratner and the Yards). Now slated to open in 2011, the home of the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets may just throw off enough ambient light to scare aware the packs of rats currently holding court in the development's footprint. Surely, co-owner Jay-Z can drive them into the Gowanus Canal with his sweet, sweet beats.

Almost a year after Nicolai Ouroussoff's blistering piece on the worthless architecture of New York City, it looks like one of the most hated-by-locals square block of Manhattan may seem some change, and soon. Over the weekend, Amtrak agreed to relocate its Penn Station operations to the proposed Moynihan Station across the street to the old Farley Building. The super-massive structure, which is itself an entire city block in size, would relieve that adjacent block of its long-standing dual roles of transit hub and entertainment venue, something that has remained an uneasy truce since the current Garden was built in '68.

It bears mentioning that Moynihan Station—as beautiful as the conceptual renderings floating around the internet are—will always pale in comparison to the original structure that was demolished to make way for the "modern" sports and entertainment venue. The original Penn Station, an airy, steel-and-glass shrine to one of the most beloved American gods—transportation, has long been a cause for nostalgia and wringing of hands, and Moynihan Station is bound to be the girl New York ends up dating simply because it reminds us so much of the first girl that we ever loved, and who we subsequently allowed Mosean developers to raze and pave over.

Given its size and attendance, it's strange that the Brooklyn Book Festival didn't span more than one wayward September Sunday this year. The 4th annual festival brought publishers of all types out to the plaza at Borough Hall to ply their wares on a literary public, from giants like The Paris Review to college literary magazines (some clumped together at the same booth). As with the three previous installments, the main attractions were the panels and lectures from some of literature's most luminous talents. Brooklynite writers like Paul Auster and Ben Greenman and comedian David Cross shared schedule space with musicians Lupe Fiasco and Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth). Even the more graphic sort of novels were represented, with a full New York Comic Con alley as an appetite-whetting exercise for next month's convention. at the Javits Center.

Featuring an abundance of freshly-sickled wheat.

Good news for the rest of the country! It was announced today that Tony Award winners Roger Bart and Shuler Hensley will reprise the roles of Dr. Frederick Frankenstein and The Monster in the first national tour of The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein. The Young Frankenstein tour will launch September 29, 2009 at the Providence Performing Arts Center in Providence, Rhode Island, where the show will run until October 4th. The rest of the national tour goes as follows:

October 6-11, 2009
Mortensen Hall in Hartford, Connecticut

October 13-25, 2009
Palace Theatre - Cleveland, Ohio

October 27-November 1, 2009
Ohio Theatre - Columbus, Ohio

November 3-December 13, 2009
Cadillac Palace - Chicago, Illinois

December 20, 2009-January 10, 2010
Kennedy Center Opera House - Washington, DC

January 12-24, 2010
Hippodrome Performing Arts Center - Baltimore, Maryland

January 26-31, 2010
Fabulous Fox Theater...

Continue reading YOUNG FRANKESTEIN after the jump

On it, as always.

Seen on West 21 Street.

Seen near The High Line.