News and events from NYC

Yamamoto combat boots

Only $459/pair in SoHo; hurry in, before the cuurency collapses!

Signs of our times

You'll find fewer Rolex watches on Canal Street this week.

WTC Dust Needed

Seen at Greenwich and Murray Streets.

Visit the Guggenheim Museum

Freshly renovated, the Guggenheim Museum is one of many highlights during this weekend's Open House New York festival.

Tags: guggenheim, open house new york

Visit Federal Hall

Historic Federal Hall is but one of the many attractions featuring special programs during this weekend's Open House New York.

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US Custom House: Open House New York

The US Custom House, better known as the National Museum of the American Indian, is one of the many free attractions that await you this weekend during Open House New York.

Tags: National Museum of the American Indian, open house new york, us custom house

Green Card a/k/a Diversity Visa Lottery Starts Today

In what's become an annual ritual, the US Department of State opens the lottery today for immigrant visas. A maximum of 55,000 Diversity Visas (DV) are available each year to persons from countries with lower rates of immigration to the United States. Just about everyone is eligible, except those countries sending a total of more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the previous five years (Brazil, Canada, China [except those born in Hongkong or Macau], Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Peru, Poland, South Korea, UK, and Vietnam). To enter the lottery, you must meet either the education or work experience requirement of the DV program. The biggest winners proportionally by population density in last year's lottery appeared to be Cameroon, Morocco, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, Bangladesh, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Fiji. Entries for the DV-2010 Diversity Visa lottery must be submitted electronically between noon today and noon on Monday, December 1, 2008. You can apply by clicking HERE. Remember: it's free to apply, so do not pay someone to submit your application for you.

Tags: dv lottery, green card, us department of state

Fade into the sunset: The New York Sun folds

"It shines for all" declares the conservative daily's masthead, yet this peach-tinted paper that continued to view the economic and political disarray of these United States through Grover Norquist's rose-tinted glasses goes the way of the newsprint dodo bird today. While the Sun had excellent arts and dining coverage, its national political commentary was just slightly left of historic Mussolini diatribes. However, rather than our beating a dead newspaper to death, we do want to offer a modest requiem for its decent local news coverage. Today's exposé of Sheldon Silver's taste for flying USAir via Washington to Albany—rather than simply relying on his taxpayer-paid chauffeur or Amtrak to get him these faster—stands as a reminder that crooked politicians of every stripe need to be examined under the microscope. Sadly, there's one less microscope left in Albany, a capital whose coffers are shrinking faster than you can whistle Dixie. Speaking of Dixie, it seems two-thirds of most vulnerable House members voted 'no' to $700 billion financial bailout; lots of them are Dixie Republicans. Nobel-prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz notes: "In a situation like this, there's no way the Americans will return the party of the outgoing president to the White House." It seems eight years of Norquist policies and Sun editorials reinforce that all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put this economy back together again. How very fitting to release the final issue on the day after the Dow's historic 777 point drop. As the Sun allegedly needed "tens of millions'' of dollars to cover losses, it would appear the tidal wave of hedge fund redemptions that crests today came crashing down, down like glistering Phaeton upon the private-equity funded Sun.

Tags: grover norquist, new york sun, sheldon silver

New York Magazine's 40th Anniversary Issue

One of the fun things about reading archaic glossy print magazines is admiring how they don't believe in the tyranny of the wiki or user-defined content such as illustrious websites do. When they do deign to print corrections, it's generally due to hundreds of readers pointing out an egregious error—or two. We flipped through these cute glossy portraits (above) with glee. For we learned that Martha Stewart used to live "On 114th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue." Of course, West End Avenue ends several blocks south of West 114th Street, so it's safe to say Martha doesn't really remember her old cross streets—or New York Mag got it wrong. Then we saw the mug of old Martin Scorsese, who used to live at "Elizabeth Street and the Bowery," two streets that don't intersect but run parallel to each other. Anyhow Martin, we know you're from da hood. We then put down the magazine to have a stiff drink. Happy 40th, New York Mag. $1.2 trillion in equity vanished on your anniversary.

Tags: martha stewart, martin scorsese, new york magazine

The Intrepid returns this Thursday!

You've got just one chance in this lifetime to witness the homeward voyage of the Intrepid, which will return to port this Thursday. Nearly two years have passed since the Intrepid left her 42nd Street / Hudson River berth, and it's high time to enjoy the festivities celebrating her return. Call (800) 53-FERRY or visit the website of New York Waterway to learn more.

Tags: intrepid, new york waterway