The perennial call for higher salaries in the New York legislature was heard again this week, although it's probably more of a whisper at this point. 
Photo credit: New York NOW via Compfight cc Sheldon Silver is willing to trade less Albany corruption for a higher salary.
If a good compromise is one in which neither side is happy, then New York's prison system leaders should be proud of themselves for angering just about everyone with their decision to build a giant facility for ex-criminals in the middle of Gowanus. Except it kind of wasn't really a compromise at all. And they're actually being sued.
Katie Toth Construction continues on November 12 at the Brooklyn parole headquarters in Gowanus.
The lead story on the New York Post's website a little before 9 a.m. on Tuesday was headlined "Osama bin Laden 'died like a pussy.' " After 9 a.m., the headline became "Osama bin Laden 'died like a wimp.' " 
Photo credit: Jonathan Percy via Flickr Winter 2013-14 was a real pain.
Last winter, after parts of the eastern United States, including NYC, suffered an extended cold snap that broke all-time records in some places, the media latched onto the term: "polar vortex." It sounded movie-title-ish, like a sequel to The Day After Tomorrow, and so was bound to catch on. And it did.
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It's a special Daily Show edition of the Voice Film Club podcast, as we talk about Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher (starring Steve Carell) and move on to Rosewater, the movie Jon Stewart left The Daily Show for three months in 2013 to direct. Both are in theaters starting November 14.
Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in Foxcatcher.
Here's a full rundown of this week's podcast. Click on the links to read more about each topic.
- The Hobbit movies aren't just movies, they are play dates (3:30)
- Foxcatcher (8:10)
- Rosewater (21:41)
- The story of a group of kids who re-shot Raiders of the Lost Ark in the '80s (35:05)
- Beyond the Lights (51:50)
Be sure to follow our hosts on Twitter: Alan Scherstuhl (@studiesincrap), Stephanie Zacharek (@szacharek), and Amy Nicholson (@theamynicholson).
Photos by Caleb Ferguson When school gets out, hundreds of children roam Kiryas Joel.
WalletHub, some kind of financial-social-media-maker-of-surveys thingy, has dropped a bit of a shitstorm onto our downtrodden neighbors to the west.
Photo credit: Underpuppy via Compfight cc Newark is catching flak from some flack's sorta flimsy ranking.
Lately, it's fashionable to eviscerate the establishment's status quo (see: The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, what Keith Olbermann used to do), either on television or in blog-post form, and then after that decimation, there comes another blog post recapping it, thus continuing the cycle.
Gin Briggs Jerry Tallmer in 1962.
Well, consider this annihilation recap blog post 57 years late: Below is Village Voice co-founder and theater critic Jerry Tallmer dismantling a review of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the New York Times.
The production at the Barrymore Theatre on 47th Street west of Broadway, was an encore to the prior year's blockbuster New York premiere that starred Bert Lahr. It was helmed by the same producer, Michael Myerberg, and touted in the Voice (and, presumably, elsewhere) as "Negro Godot": Under the direction of Herbert Berghof (who'd also directed the original), all the cast members were black, from Earle Hyman as Vladimir and Mantan Moreland as Estragon to Rex Ingram (Pozzo) and Geoffrey Holder (Lucky).
Tallmer, who left the Voice for the New York Post in 1962, created the Obie Awards in 1956. He died Sunday in Manhattan, just a few weeks shy of his 94th birthday. Read more about Tallmer's impact on the downtown arts scene and the Voice in Michael Feingold's obituary.
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Everyone laughed at ol' man Bloomberg when dot-NYC domains became available and his lawyers bought up 400 of them, including BloombergBlows.nyc, MichaelBloombergIsaWeiner.nyc, BloombergIsanAss.nyc, MikeBloombergIsaDweeb.nyc, MikeIsTooShort.nyc, and bloombergfamilyfoundation.nyc.
GlobalAmbassador.nyc
At the end of a winding road within a nondescript corporate park in Edison sits the New Jersey Convention and Expo center, a grim gray building with an illuminated quick-change sign out front, the kind that usually shouts "GO TIGERS" or "2 FOR 1 WELL DRINKS." This one reads "WELCOME TO EXXXOTICA 2014." The building seems like the sort that hosts SATs -- until you open the doors and are hit by a wave of deafening techno and ass cheeks as far as the eye can see. 
Photos by Nate "Igor" Smith Stoya at Exxxotica. See more Exxxotica 2014 photos.
Jerry Tallmer, one of the Village Voice's founding editors and the creator of the Village Voice Obie awards, died Sunday morning, just a month short of his 94th birthday. For those who knew him or his achievements, it will take some effort to imagine New York, the Village, and the downtown arts scene continuing without the presence of his observant eye. Nothing escaped Jerry. As the Voice's first Associate Editor, with a passionate interest in every new development in politics and the arts, he recruited and nurtured many of the extraordinary contributors who established the Voice's reputation: Jules Feiffer, Nat Hentoff, Jonas Mekas, Jill Johnston, and Andrew Sarris were among his edit clients. 
Gin Briggs Jerry Tallmer in 1962.
The New York City Police Department announced Monday that officers will be adopting new guidelines when it comes to marijuana possession stops. What does that mean for you? Here's what you need to know, you goddamn hippie: 
dankdepot via Flickr You can get away with carrying more than this.
See Also: A Day in the Life of Your Friendly Neighborhood Weed Messenger
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New Yorkers are people who rarely stand still, especially on their commute. 
Katie Toth Nicolas Ryan, 44, snaps a photo while Nadiv and Asean Maqami take in the new space.
But this morning, the Voice counted about 50 people taking photos, staring at the ceiling, wandering leisurely, and talking with friends -- in the subway, of all places.
Fulton Center, the much-hyped and long-awaited redesigned subway station serving the financial district, was unveiled during a ribbon-cutting ceremony Sunday. The station's centerpiece is its 53-foot-diameter glass oculus over the main atrium. Within the glass cone sits the "sky reflector-net," an art piece made of "112 tensioned cables, 224 high-strength rods and nearly 10,000 stainless steel components," according to an MTA press release.
"I'm really impressed," says Nicolas Ryan, who says he spent two and a half years with Grimshaw Architects as a project manager turning the center from an idea into a reality. "This was a really challenging integration."
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The holidays are fast approaching, with the accompanying seasonal joy, department store stampedes, and mommy-on-mommy assault charges. To help you avoid disappointing everyone you love with boring gift cards, we went to the Exxxotica love and sex expo in Edison, New Jersey, over the weekend and found a perfect gift for everyone on your list.
All photos by Nate "Igor" Smith A stocking-stuffer spotted at the Exxxotica expo in Edison, New Jersey.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Commissioner Bill Bratton are reportedly ready to announce a big change in the way the NYPD deals with low-level pot arrests. Police officers will begin issuing tickets for pot possession rather than making an arrest, according to a report published by the New York Times on Sunday. The change would mean anyone found in possession of a small amount of pot would be given a notice to show up in court, rather than put in handcuffs and hauled down to the station, where they would have to be fingerprinted and have a mugshot taken.
Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Bratton are set to hold a press conference at 1 Police Plaza on Monday
Rikers Island has not been having a good year PR-wise, to put it mildly. 
DOI report Getting a whole bunch of drugs into Rikers Island is super easy.
With more than 35 million views, the video of Shoshana Roberts walking through Manhattan and being subjected to dozens and dozens of catcalls from men about her appearance and figure pulled back the curtain on an uglier part of our culture. It also spawned several cringe-inducing parodies by enterprising dudes (mostly dudes, anyway) who wanna hop on the pageview train by offering comparisons between getting catcalled as as a woman alone in New York to, oh, trash-talk you might hear as an unshaven Jets bro walking through Union Square on a Sunday. Here are the worst, from worst to least-worst.
Red cup season is upon us once again and with it, hark! A raving homophobe. Anti-gay Harlem pastor James David Manning, he of "Obama has released the homo demons on the black man" notoriety, is back and he brings urgent news about your Gingerbread and Eggnog Lattes. Starbucks, he says, has spiked them not with rum (as per tradition) but semen. Not any old semen, either--the semen of Sodomites! 
Atlah Worldwide via YouTube James David Manning
With the closing of Rivington House fast approaching, patients at the Lower East Side care center for people with AIDS fear that they're going to get lower-quality care anywhere else.
Katie Toth Rivington House is closing, which means its outpatients have to decide where to go next.
A recent study estimates that there are about 2 million rats in New York City, thus busting the urban myth that there are as many rats as people -- around 8 million -- in the Big Apple.
Photo credit: Arian Zwegers via Compfight cc
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