Arts & Entertainment >>

• Best savior of the printed word
  826NYC
  Imagine what a nightmare it would be if we lived in a world where children learned to wrt lk ths, no one read newspapers, and adults patted themselves on the back for making it through a 759-page children's book about a boy wizard. Oh, wait—we already do. Hoping to prevent the further... More >>
• Best hardcore band led by dogs
  Caninus
  While metal bands pathetically imitate growling animals, Brooklyn's Caninus went to the source, skipping the humans and working with another species. Female pooches (not "bitches," please) were recruited, originally adopted from local shelters. Vocals come from eight-year-old Budgie (part pit... More >>
• Best Saturday-morning radio show
  Felix Hernandez
  It is likely to start with a James Brown wail, an ever-ascending, caterwauling screech that knocks away any remnants of the morning haze. J.B. is telling you he feels good. Now so do you. Since 1986, Felix Hernandez has been starting Saturdays this way for thousands of metro-area soul-music fans... More >>
• Best one-off fluke in NYC rap history
  "This Is Why I'm Hot"
  A mere half-year after its meteoric ascendancy, the memory's already nearly faded, hasn't it? "I'm hot 'cause I'm fly/You ain't 'cause you not"? "I could sell a mil' sayin' nothin' on a track"? Hello? Anyone? Have you forgotten? That "This Is Why I'm Hot" seemed to instantly lapse into ancient... More >>
• Best crowd participation at the movies
  The Magic Johnson Theater
  The Magic Johnson Theater in Harlem has some of the cheapest ticket prices in the city at $10, and its moviegoers seem to have the most fun. It is a shush-free haven for those of us that laugh loud and have movie Tourette's, a condition that compels one to shout out advice to the characters... More >>
• Best coffeehouse folk album for those sensitive to media overexposure
  Real Life
  Norah Jones, while still mad cute, lacks a certain, shall we say, edge. Feist's The Reminder is indeed tremendous—tremulous, volatile folk-pop both your mom and your tattoo-artist roommate can love—but goddamn if every paper in town hasn't all but proposed marriage in print. So for... More >>
• Best local publisher of global mysteries
  Soho Press
  Human beings aren't the only immigrants flooding into the nation's most diverse city. Thanks to Soho Press, we're also the melting pot for crime novels set in some of the planet's most intriguing and exotic locales. Issued not so mysteriously from offices on Broadway, the publisher's Soho Crime... More >>
• Best spot to find deranged '50s and '60s music
  Crypt Records
  Crypt Records in Brooklyn is a labor of love for owner Tim Warren, and has possibly the cheapest vinyl in New York City. Customers are greeted by visions of naughty Barbies hanging from the ceiling and an amazing array of vintage posters. The place specializes in punk, rockabilly, blues,... More >>
• Best music shop to go digital
  Other Music Digital
  After saying so-long to its neighbor Tower Records last fall, the smart folks over at the beloved indie record shop Other Music opened a new store this year, Other Music Digital. Just like the real shop in the East Village, the easy-to-use online store offers the staff's expert music reviews and... More >>
• Best documentarian of New York's indie- rock scene
  Joly MacFie
  In about 30 years, when the hipsters of today are all old and tired and thinking that their Yeah Yeah Yeahs records sound better than anything coming out of the 2030s, they'll be thanking Joly MacFie for diligently going out night after night with his video camera to record just about every... More >>
• Most completely terrifying stage presence
  Dirty Projectors
  For a music editor, one measure of a band/record/social phenomenon's cultural cachet is how frequently freelancers pitch it; by this metric, Brooklyn's Dirty Projectors are currently the hottest thing going. This is largely due to the group's fascinating new Rise Above, which boldly "recasts"... More >>
• Best break-out theater company
  Nature Theater of Oklahoma
  Director Pavol Liska lifted his company's name from his countryman Kafka, who used it for the theater in his novel Amerika. But we're sure ol' Franz would approve: Deploying a fresh intelligence, an ingenious theatricality, and a pleasingly odd sense of humor, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma has... More >>
• Best provocative playwrights
  Thomas Bradshaw or Young Jean Lee
  Coke-snorting English professors, ass-slapping Korean girls, slave-owning demagogues, the opium-addled poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge—no one could possibly accuse playwrights Thomas Bradshaw or Young Jean Lee of crafting uncontroversial characters. Race, sex, class, religion—these... More >>
• Best foreign theater director we wish was a New York theater director
  Ivo van Hove
  He directs in New York every few years, but if Ivo van Hove would like to permanently abandon old Amsterdam for the new one, we'd happily dig a few canals to help him feel at home. Head of the Netherlands' Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the avant-gardist has been a regular guest director at New York... More >>
• Best punk-comedy cabaret act
  Puttin' on the Ritz
  For anyone who's torn between thrashing and crooning, rejoice: Puttin' on the Ritz thoughtfully lets you have it both ways. Started in a drunken haze at a friend's party in '04, the band is the creation of drummer Kevin Shea and singer B.J. Rubin, punk fans who happen to love the standards (Shea... More >>
• Best reason to start working on your rubber-band ball
  City Reliquary
  To most, a museum exhibit called "Selzter Bottles of Brooklyn" sounds about as appealing as, say, a two-part PBS series on cinder blocks. But in their lovingly detailed displays at Williamsburg's City Reliquary, the worn-out bottles, and other such seemingly unremarkable detritus, shine like... More >>
• Best way to honor street musicians
  Buskers Hall of Fame
  The fine art of busking (a/k/a street performing) is practiced throughout the boroughs, but you can find the Buskers Hall of Fame in Manhattan at Pier 17. The hall was initiated by the South Street Seaport organization in 2005; the first inductees included juggler Josh Weiner (who'd been... More >>
• Best murder mystery by phone
  Canal Street Station Installation
  Bored stiff waiting for your train? If you happen to be at the Broadway–Canal Street subway hub, you're in luck—artist/actor Ryan Holsopple has put together the Canal Street Station Installation in conjunction with the nonprofit arts organization free103point9. If you call the... More >>
• Best martial-arts comedian
  Master Lee
  A tall, thin Chinese man in white robes with long dark hair walks onstage and says, "I, Master Lee, will take this wooden board, smash it against my head, and howl in pain. But first, I'd like to talk about my childhood. . . . " Despite a background in kung fu, William Lee started out busking... More >>
• Best way to impress your friends with your newfound art smarts
  The Contemporaries
  Since structured museum tours aren't for everyone, anyone looking for a more social and hands-on way to indulge in art has another option: The Contemporaries, founded by a handful of Harvard Business School friends in 2003 to engage in art-related dialogues with peers and expose members to... More >>
• Best multi-colored tower that isn't the Empire State Building
  Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Clock Tower
  If it survives 2009, what's been known as the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Clock Tower will celebrate its centennial. At its debut, the 700-foot structure was the tallest building in the world; for 12 hours a day, four huge bronze bells (ranging from 1,500 to 7,000 pounds) would chime a... More >>
• Best (and hottest) teacher
  Jo Boobs
  In the immortal words of Van Halen: "I think of all the education that I missed/But then my homework was never quite like this/Got it bad, got it bad, got it bad/I'm hot for teacher." Those lyrics should spring ineluctably to the mind of any student who contemplates taking the Burlesque Master... More >>
• Best be(a)st
  Taylor Mac
  Sure, you could call Taylor Mac a drag artist. But though he dons the occasional gown or tutu (and looks lovely in them), it's not really ladies he's aping. Rather, Taylor Mac does fish drag, flag drag, alien drag, monster drag. As he says in his artist statement, he believes people "are hateful... More >>
• Best pop-cult composer
  Michael Friedman
  Most rhyming dictionaries wouldn't offer "Kinshasa" as a natural pairing with "tabula rasa"—in fact, they might distinctly recommend against it. But thank goodness composer/lyricist Michael Friedman doesn't pay attention to such hidebound rules. Friedman's incidental music—recently... More >>
• Best reason Tuesday should be the new Friday
  Slavic Soul Party
  Isabella Fonseca, an American author of Romany origin, has noted: "The Gypsies have no heroes. There are no myths of origin, of a great liberation, of the founding of a nation,' of a promised land. . . . They have no monuments, no anthem, no ruins, and no Book." But they have really great bands.... More >>
• Best tribute to Stevie Wonder
  Keistar's Annual Wonder-Full: Stevie Wonder Tribute Party
  Stevie Wonder is the kind of cat whose music transcends generations, dominating the classic r&b pantheon almost the way Bob Marley does with reggae. Ask anyone: The moment a DJ slips on "All I Do," the crowd goes bananas. But as beloved as Stevie may be, even the staunchest T-shirt-wearin'... More >>
• Best way to relive your teen angst
  Cringe Night
  On the first Wednesday of each month, there's standing room only for Cringe Night at Freddy's Bar & Back Room. Well, actually just the back room, where mostly twenty- and thirtysomething women reveal the contents of their teenage diaries in humorous confessions of first lusts, adolescent antics,... More >>
• Best MP3 blog/zine hybrid that will add to your intelligence without insulting it
  paperthinwalls.com
  The problem with most MP3 blogs is that they either make no attempt at all to provide critical insight along with their free music, or they inundate you with twee, narcissistic ramblings that make you wish you hadn't complained about that first group in the first place. A rare and splendid... More >>
• Best antidote to the burgeoning Bushwick arts scene
  Ralphy's Towing
  You've seen it happening in other people's neighborhoods, and now it's happening in yours: ill-conceived art thoughtlessly hung in some shoddy, poorly lighted ex-industrial space, bearing price tags that are highlarious in that witless grad-school way typical of the overprivileged and... More >>
• Best place to hear self-important design professionals talk about themselves (and sometimes each other), and occasionally also see some excellent work
  The American Institute of Graphic Arts
  If you have neurasthenic shudders from seeing the Google logo too often, or find yourself clinging to tattered copies of defunct magazines such as Flair and The Smart Set like a drowning man or furtively searching those grimy blankets of bootleg DVDs for a copy of Gary Hustwit's feature-length... More >>
• Best neo-Britpop/Northern Soul revival/art- damaged band comprising some ex-Yalies who now live in Brooklyn
  Harlem Shakes
  Or pseudo-twee bombast meets intellectualized disco. Or More Songs About Joseph Beuys and Other Carpetbaggers. Lethally charming and poised for certain success, Harlem Shakes was formed a year or so ago by five gents who pillaged their well-stocked bookshelves and iPods to create their own... More >>
• Best place to get on point
  Baryshnikov Arts Center
  New York's favorite former Muscovite has thrown all his artistic capital—and a good chunk of the more familiar kind—into the proposition that the city is starving for quality dance performances. So far, it's paid off in spades. Since its opening in 2005, the Baryshnikov Arts Center... More >>
• Best child of Andy Warhol
  Cary Leibowitz
  Since the early '90s, New York conceptual-art virtuoso Cary Leibowitz, a/k/a Candy Ass, has worked his outsider credentials as a "Jew fag" (to quote Kiki & Herb's Kenny Mellman about his own stage persona) to great effect, creating delightfully tacky, acerbic artifacts that use purposely banal... More >>
• Best museum to contemplate La Deutsche Vita
  Neue Galerie
  Just a stone's throw from the Met, the Neue Galerie offers one of the most intriguing collections of German and Austrian art and interior-design exhibits from the early 20th century. Of course, the centerpiece of the collection is Gustav Klimt's portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, an engrossing... More >>
• Best made-up musical genre
  Upper West Side Soweto
  The distinguished gentlemen of Vampire Weekend—purveyors of delightful, intricately arranged indie rock with African pop flourishes and wise-ass twentysomething slacker overtones—have in their short life already amassed a certain keyword-based reputation. Each praiseworthy review... More >>
• Best rising theater director
  Annie Kauffman
  Over the past 60 years, only two women have won the Tony Award for best direction of a play. (I used to think three women had, but it seems that Vivian Matalon is a man.) Annie Kauffman hasn't won a Tony, and it will likely be a decade or so before her name shows up on the list of nominees. But... More >>
• Best New York theater production that may never appear in New York
  Gatz
  In a wonderful party scene in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, various characters cling to one another as a band plays "Ain't We Got Fun." To answer the band's question, no, fun we ain't got—namely, we ain't got Elevator Repair Service's version of The Great Gatsby, entitled Gatz.... More >>
• Best didactic gallery
  The Grey Art Gallery
  And we mean that in the best possible sense, as in Webster's: "intended to convey instruction and information as well as pleasure and entertainment." Part of NYU, the Grey Art Gallery delivers all the scholarly trappings—wall texts, erudite catalogs, lectures, symposia—for full-dress... More >>
• Best overtly political gallery
  Daneyal Mahmood
  "I don't care if I alienate anybody," gallerist Daneyal Mahmood explains when asked about the volatile work he exhibits. He adds, "I like the theatrical, the spectacle," and his exhibits are generally both. One gallery stalwart is former Soviet soldier Andrei Molodkin, who sculpts clear plastic... More >>
• Best way to get smart about dance
  Works & Process
  People often claim they don't understand dance. The sweat is real, and so are the movements, but they worry over those meanings that can't easily be pinned down in words. Not to fear! They, as well as those who know the names of every New York City Ballet dancer and saw Martha Graham's... More >>
• Best MFA writing program
  Hunter College
  If you're considering an MFA in writing, you either don't love money or don't need to worry about it. Those of the latter stripe can cope with Columbia's $50K price tag. The bargain seekers who can't leave NYC should gravitate to Hunter College: In addition to a financial-aid package the school... More >>
• Best café to write in
  Doma
  OK, it's cramped. You'll only get a seat by sheer aggression, and an electrical outlet by the grace of God. You're guaranteed to bump your neighbor's elbow or accidentally whack her with your shoulder bag. But in the rustic, Czech-flavored café and art gallery Doma, the music's always low... More >>
• Best NYC rock album
  Mirrored
  With all the fuss over what constitutes a summer anthem—its sound, its look, its sentiment—and with all due respect to Rihanna’s splendid “Umbrella,” let us admit to ourselves that the official such jam of 2007 was a ludicrous, mortifying battle cry with bleating,... More >>
• Best New York movie this year (so far)
  Day Night Day Night
  A frail-looking young woman, outfitted with a bomb, wanders through Times Square—her finger on the switch, searching for the moment to blow up. That, in a sentence, is the premise of Julia Loktev's Day Night Day Night, which had a week-long run at the IFC Center last spring. Emerging from... More >>
• Best venue to see experimental dance
  Dance Theater Workshop
  For the uninitiated, going out to see a dance performance is presumed to be boring. But the well-versed know that New York has some of the most provocative, forward-thinking dance in the world, with Dance Theater Workshop among the city’s mainstays. Supporting innovators in the arts... More >>