People & Places >>

• Best Media Swallower
  Charles Dolan
  Cablevision's Charles Dolan struck one of the year’s biggest media deals in May by swallowing whole the entire Newsday behemoth. Rupert Murdoch was the other contender after the Tribune Company announced that it wanted to rid itself of Long Island’s big monopoly daily. But Cablevision came up... More >>
• Best Sex By A Local Ex-governor
  Jim McGreevey
  Is there any doubt? It’s New Jersey’s Jim McGreevey, hands-down, with New York’s Eliot Spitzer just looking on—which is what Spitzer is into anyway, if his D.C. hookers are to be believed. Spitzer’s fall was lightning-quick, and he didn’t even spend much time on the dais in front of TV cameras... More >>
• Best Place To See Graffiti
  5 Pointz: The Institute of Higher Burnin’
  If you’re a contemporary-art lover trekking out to Queens to ogle whatever’s inside P.S. 1, you’ll be happy to note that there’s more to see just a stone’s throw away—just look outside. 5 Pointz: The Institute of Higher Burnin’ is an old factory building whose walls are a museum. Curated by... More >>
• Best Desecration of a New York City Landmark
  John Varvatos
  Anyone with enough money can destroy a piece of New York history—just ask the folks in the Chase Bank branch that now occupies the Second Avenue Deli’s old digs. But it takes a true visionary to really violate and pervert the abandoned spaces of pre-gentrification New York. Enter, then, John... More >>
• Best Way to Tag a Building Without Leaving a Mark
  Graffiti Research Lab’s Laser Grafitti
  Just as Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work once straddled the streets and the galleries, Graffiti Research Lab’s Laser Grafitti also occupies both worlds. Since ’07, GRL’s James Powderly and Evan Roth—using a laptop, projector, and laser pointer—have been able to tag buildings hundreds of feet away and... More >>
• Best Place to Say Good Riddance to Bush
  Metropolitan Museum’s Ancient Near Eastern Art galleries
  Commune with a 5,500-year-old ceramic ram’s head or an even older stone fertility figure in the Metropolitan Museum’s Ancient Near Eastern Art galleries, and you’ll get a sense of what was lost when U.S. troops were ordered to stand down while mobs looted the Baghdad Museum in 2003. Donald... More >>
• Best Local Collection of Grisly Statistics from a War You Never Heard Of
  Human Rights Watch
  More than three million people have been killed in the factional and sometimes international war that’s been raging for decades in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And as the misery continues, our city’s own Human Rights Watch—one of the top NGOs in the U.S.—continues to keep an eye on it from... More >>
• Best Way Out of the City for the Lazy
  Adventure Society
  For everyone who swears that this year they’ll really go camping—or take that long bike ride in the Hudson Valley, or get upstate to check out the leaves or taste some vino—but then never makes it, the Adventure Society might be the thing to finally get you off your ass and into the wild. Trips... More >>
• Best Excuse for a Walking Tour of New York Even Though You Live Here
  Accomplice: New York
  One wouldn’t necessarily say that having to ask a bum for directions is a sign you’re on a quality walking tour—unless that tour is Accomplice: New York. This integrative theatrical mystery go-round has walkers dealing with all kinds of shady characters that blend right into the city (in some... More >>
• Best Way for Women to find Non-Stereotyped Jobs
  Non-Traditional Employment for Women
  In 1978, a mere 2 percent of jobs in the construction field were held by women, despite a 6.9 percent guideline issued by the government. That’s why the nonprofit organization Non-Traditional Employment for Women (NEW) was launched back then; it has since provided a regular free six-week... More >>
• Best Place to Completely Forget You’re in NYC
  Fort Tilden
  Those in the know about Fort Tilden, a remote bit of shore on the southern end of the Rockaway peninsula, might be annoyed by this press mention, but they’ve got nothing to fear. No amount of media attention could convince the masses to corrupt this faraway place, because it’s basically a pain... More >>
• Best Subway Busker
  Blind Musician on YouTube
  There are better musical acts in underground New York—several expert doo-wop groups, for instance—but we’ll take the Blind Musician on YouTube, as he calls himself: the frail subway vocalist who looks down and out but sings in the way-high registers. You’ll see him on the R and F trains, among... More >>
• Best Outer Borough You Can Still Afford
  Downtown Jersey City
  You can still afford it, but just barely. As we write, luxury condos are sprouting up like mushrooms (not the magical kind) in Downtown Jersey City, but in their shadows are rows of brownstones, skyline views, a massive state park, and some diverse and delish grub. Transportation to Lower... More >>
• Best ’hood for Gays to Go Unrecognized In
  Hell’s Kitchen
  If you hail from Chelsea, the Village, or Anywhere USA, you’ll go unnoticed in Hell’s Kitchen, because the slightly lower rents there make it a place filled with newbies, transients, and drop-ins who don’t always know last month’s club stars. At HK bars like Vlada, Posh, Urge, and Therapy, the... More >>
• Best Way to Live Like the Who’s Tommy (Though Without the Messiah Complex) (1 Comment)
  The NYC Pinball Association
  Though it sounds quaint in the age of Wii/Xbox/PlayStation, the seemingly ancient art of coin-operated arcade games is still in vogue with a hardy crew of players: Max Pinball (as he’s called) has headed The NYC Pinball Association since this January. The favorite haunt for the association’s 18... More >>
• Best Space-Age relics
  Hall of Science in Queens
  The New York Hall of Science in Queens offers plenty of worthy exhibits: microbes, molecules, mathematics, etc. But the main attractions may be on the lawn outside, in Rocket Park, where linger two fantastic-looking remnants of the U.S. space program, an original Atlas booster and an original... More >>
• Best Way to See the Effects of Global Warming with Chalk Marks
  High Waterline Project
  Even Dubya admits that this planet’s cooking, but how do we experience this phenomenon up-close and personal? To address this problem, artist Eve Mosher drew some lines, but not on a canvas. Starting from last spring, she’s pushed around a blue chalk sports-field marker on wheels for her High... More >>
• Best Restaurant for Getting Pumped for a Show at the Garden
  Kabooz's Bar & Grille
  The immediate area around "the world's most famous arena" doesn't have many obvious dining choices, but if you go down into Penn Station and walk past the LIRR entrance, you'll notice an establishment that's just right for the evening. Since opening in 1997, Kabooz's Bar & Grille has served... More >>
• Best Place to Contemplate Sacrilege
  Jackson Heights Butala Emporium
  Apu, that charming entrepreneur from The Simpsons, is often called upon to utter: “Please do not offer my God a peanut.” When you see the dozens of absurdly cute statues of the elephant-headed Ganesh at the Jackson Heights Butala Emporium, you might feel tempted to offer them snack foods, too.... More >>
• Best Reason to Be Rude to a Stranger
  The man or woman, cellphone to ear
  You’ve all been there: rushing toward the subway stairs, clutching your Times or Savage Detective on your hurried way to work, part of the ever-flowing crowd that is New York City. Ever-flowing, that is, until you reach that person—the man or woman, cellphone to ear—who has decided it’s... More >>
• Best Local TV Reporter
  Roger Clark
  Well, perhaps “most appealing” is the more appropriate sobriquet—or “most pleasantly goofball.” NY1’s Roger Clark isn’t exactly Edward R. Murrow, though he does get sent to exotic places early in the morning to report on whatever local color happens to be up at that strange hour. Roger’s charm... More >>
• Most Adorable Hipsters
  Renegade Craft Fair
  Names can be deceiving. Case in point: the Williamsburg Renegade Craft Fair. The sobriquet suggests something aggressive and fierce, with maybe a bit of camo clothing and pirate chic thrown in for accent. But this annual fest is cuter-than-thou rather than cooler-than-thou. You’ve never seen so... More >>
• Best Brooklyn Ruin
  Abandoned MTA power station
  There’s something especially charming about a Brooklyn ruin these days. With so much of the borough gentrifying and filling up with Manhattan spillover, it’s actually reassuring to see an old industrial building still looming in proud decay, not yet converted into dot-com offices with... More >>
• Best Place to Get Murdered, Raped, Robbed, or Assaulted
  East New York, Brooklyn
  The fact that East New York, Brooklyn, remains the overall violent-crime leader in New York City is not surprising. After all, there's been so much mayhem there over the years that the place has earned not one but two nicknames from the detectives working there: "The Killing Fields" and "The... More >>
• Best Future Beachfront Property
  Arverne
  Wall Street too expensive, even with a bailout? Brooklyn too hip? Looks like you may be headed to Arverne, in the Rockaways. At the risk of sounding like just another real-estate ad, we point out that Arverne is on the Atlantic friggin’ Ocean, and that, unlike Long Beach, it isn’t steadily being... More >>
• Best Refuge for Our Remaining Mafiosi
  Florio’s Grill & Cigar Bar
  If you're an old-school mobster who hasn't already entered a witness-protection program and craves a taste of the real Little Italy, it's best to avoid the overpriced tourist joints on Mulberry Street, where the food quality has plummeted since Paolucci's closed a couple of years back, and where... More >>
• Best Crushing Media Oversaturation
  Sex and the City movie
  The constantly regenerating movie-poster avalanche that infects subways, billboards, taxi roofs, etc. (you even see ads tacked above urinals!), has become an inevitable part of the New York way of life, and we’ve learned to either ignore it or tweak it for our own amusement. (Back when those You... More >>
• Best Cult
  Scientology
  What a year it’s been for the Scientology-watcher. From out of nowhere, the leaderless group Anonymous, the hip new thing among the college-age and computer-literate, suddenly emerged in February to protest L. Ron Hubbard’s wacky “church.” Tom Cruise’s dim co-religionists, meanwhile, obliged... More >>
• Best Love Letter to the Old, Seedy Lower East Side
  Richard Price
  The latest novel from beloved novelist, screenwriter (The Wire!), and generally hyper-articulate/hard-boiled badass Richard Price is technically set in 2003, but its dazzling portrayal of a rough, desperate, and quite possibly lethal Lower East Side feels distinctly pre-Giuliani in its lawless,... More >>
• Best Barometer of the Decline of the Manhattan Literary World
  Brooklyn Book Festival
  Brooklyn as literary hotbed has been pretty well established at this point, even past the point of cliché. But while the borough has yet to see its own version of Elaine’s, it now has something vastly finer than that once-storied, now-calcifying eatery. Indeed, perhaps nothing better signals the... More >>
• Best Shoe Repair (1 Comment)
  Cowboy Shoe Repair
  Not long ago, a friend of ours bought on sale the knee-high boots of her dreams. Trouble was, they didn’t zip up over her calves. Three cobblers and many, many dollars later, the boots still didn’t fit right—in fact, all the cheap fixes made them look a little strange. Enter our hero,... More >>