Remember that introduction to HBO programming back in the 80s, the one that soared over a lavish scale model of a Gothamesque cityscape, then out above the suburbs and beyond toward a seductive glow on the horizon, before abruptly blasting up into the cosmos where the HBO logo twirled like some benevolent entertainment monolith? Well, here’s a funny short documentary about how they put together that state of the art intro intended to "tease and......

Lunar New Year, by Harris Graber at flickr This afternoon was the parade celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year; it's the Year of the Rat. Chinatown in Manhattan is one of the earliest concentrations of Chinese people in the United States. After the jump are more early pictures of the parade.......

After Letterman announced his show's comeback with new episodes, writers' strike or no writers' strike, the leaders of late night all followed suit. Conan O'Brien, who has been growing a "strike beard" and paying his non-writer employees out of pocket, will return on January 2nd -- and his West Coast network-mate, Jay Leno, will do the same. Yesterday the WGA released the following statement regarding this move.“The AMPTP walked away from the bargaining table on......

Alycia Lane, the anchorwoman from the CBS owned station KYW in Philadelphia , who was at one time linked to WCBS anchor Chris Wragge, sent bikini photos to a married man, and is frequently mentioned in the Post’s Page Six column got into some more hot water in Chelsea around 2 a..m. Sunday morning. The Long Island native, allegedly punched a female police officer from the 10th Precinct in the face at W. 17th Street......

Kevin Walsh of Forgotten NY directed our attention towards this site, which features a number of photographs from a New York that brings to mind the fact that we're not just in another decade in this city; we're in another century. The picture above is identified as probably 55th St. near 8th Ave. in Manhattan and taken in 1970. We wonder if "Sexual Freedom in Denmark," then playing at the Eros Theater [right-hand side......

Recently, legend became reality when a 10-story building in SoHo was being converted to a luxury condo. Unearthed in the walls was a large mural created by graffiti pioneers Fab Five Freddy and Futura 2000.The artwork contains a variety of images and writing executed in spray paint, grease pencil, magic marker and whatever else was on hand — in silver, gold, pink and red. There are cartoonlike pictures of a bomber airplane, images of a......

A Columbia grad student, Arun Wiita, and the New York Civil Liberties Union brought a lawsuit against the NYPD last Thursday. Over the summer, Wiita was photographing a subway station entrance and its surroundings at 207th Street and 10th Avenue as part of an ambitious 10-day photography project. He was detained by police, handcuffed and held for 30 minutes; now Wiita is "seeking compensatory damages and reimbursement of legal fees." He believes that his South......

If you were wondering what that posse of Santas wandering around NYC was yesterday, that was SantaCon 2007, when red-suited and bearded men and women roam the streets and crowd the bars of our fine city. If one isn't satisfied by the pictures below, more can be found on flickr here. SantaCon 2004 SantaCon 2005 SantaCon 2006......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a severed limb on 55th St. in Brooklyn, a person fatally struck by a train near the East Tremont Station on the 2 line in the Bronx, and an armed robbery on Bradhurst and 147th St. in Manhattan. A mother brought her 15-year-old son to the hospital when she discovered him assembling what appeared to be a bomb in their home. The ER at Hoboken University Medical Center was......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Franklin Ave. and 169th St. in the Bronx, a missing child on West 54th St. in Manhattan, and a stabbing on Fulton St. and Red Hook Lane in Brooklyn. Walter O'Malley was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame recently. The former owner of the Dodgers, he infamously moved the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles because the city wouldn't build him a new stadium. Times......

Possibly the most haunting thing we've seen is coverage of the Staten Island woman who had a coat hook pierce her face - and how a plastic surgeon who helped save her face. Fifty-three year-old Geri Rivero was at a co-worker's party last month when she slipped in the bathroom. According to the Daily News, she grabbed the metal coatrack, but "somehow, the hook pierced the bone under her right eye, plowing through muscle and......

Paramore Arrives One of our favorite albums of the year is by these girl-fronted teenage pop-punkers, and they were in town this week to headline their largest local show yet at Roseland Ballroom. It was the last show of a massive national tour, but you wouldn't know it seeing front woman Hayley Williams running around stage with the rest of her band. Paramore may not win any originality contests, but they've got more fire and......

Beginning at noon this Saturday the New Museum will open its new doors, but this morning we snuck a peak inside. The gray aluminum mesh exterior of the building is a whimsical stack of rectilinear boxes shifted off-axis, not unlike a pile of blocks arranged haphazardly by a toddler. It's a bold, dynamic presence on the Bowery and, along with the Bowery Hotel, signifies yet another firm step away from the area's gritty past.......

A day after the NY Post served up a Thanksgiving day front page cover of Knicks president and coach Isiah Thomas as a turkey, the embattled Thomas proclaimed he would stay in his job, saying, "I don't foresee there being any changes this year." Which the Post calls "LOAD OF BULL?" But really, if there's one thing that the Post and Daily News must have been thankful for, it's having such a spectacularly poorly managed......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn, a high-angle rescue on West 18th St., in Manhattan, and a multi-vehicle accident on Farmers Blvd. and the South Conduit in Queens. Hoboken mayor David Roberts was apparently prescient to ask how many stops his SWAT team made on the trip back north--fearing more embarrassing photos of his police force as they returned from relief efforts after hurricane Katrina. Additional pictures of......

Last night at City College, it was Gotham Girls Roller Derby fever. The two-time defending champions the Queens of Pain faced off against the Bronx Gridlock to decide who would reign supreme for the 2007 season and take home a pretty sweet trophy. Raymond Haddad was on the scene for the championship match and took some amazing pictures. He reports, "The Queens of Pain made a ferocious comeback [apparently 31 unanswered points', led by......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery at 1 Broadway in Manhattan, a person under a train at the Queensboro Plaza station in Queens, and a child struck by a city bus on Parkside Ave. in Brooklyn. Thieves are targeting open houses across the Upper West Side--stealing personal possessions after gaining access to homes. Oddly, one of the two woman thieves is suspected to actually be a man in drag. Chants of "No......

Natavia Lowery, the personal assistant of Linda Stein -- who she is accused of murdering, was indicted on the murder charges yesterday. Last week Lowery confessed to bludgeoning her old boss with a yoga stick, claiming Stein blew pot smoke in her face. Despite the confession, Lowery's friends and family are insisting she is innocent, and shouted out some choice pull quotes at yesterday's hearing:"Liars!" several people among more than a dozen supporters of 26-year-old......

Ghostbusters has been in the form of a videogame ever since it hit the big screen in 1984, and since then it's been through many versions and platforms. Seems it has taken nearly 24 years to perfect it though, as it's just been announced the movie will haunt us til the end up time with a series of top-notch videogames to come.First title in what the publisher hopes will be a series of Ghostbusters games......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Nostrand Ave. in Brooklyn, an overturned auto on the LIE and Oceania St. in Queens, and a fall victim on 170th St. and University Ave. in the Bronx. Two NJ teenagers attempted to escape the wrath of a parent, who caught them drinking alcohol last week, by tieing together bedsheets in order to rappel down the side of their highrise building. The incident ended badly, although......

Londonist got the big scoop of the week with what may be the first images of notorious street artist Banksy in action. They also got on a runaway train without an operator provoking a response from the transport authorities. Elsewhere, London's answer to Central Station is about to open for business, and Londonist got a sneak preview. Meanwhile, spooky goings-on beneath London Bridge, where a cache of skeletons provided an apt story for Hallowe'en.......

Thrilled that he'd finally won custody of his five-year-old daughter Michelle after a bitter custody battle, orthodontist Michael Malakov asked his father to snap a few pictures of him and his girl just a few minutes before he was killed on a Queens playground. Both the Daily News and the New York Post feature the pictures today, with slideshows of the final photos of Michelle, her cousins, and Malakov. Later that Sunday, Malakov was killed......

Three-year-old Curlin, jockeyed by Robby Albarado, won the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic yesterday after finishing the 1 1/4 mile race with a home stretch run that ended with a 4 1/2 length victory. Curlin set the track record for the distance at Monmouth Park, despite conditions that were left sloppy after days of rain. It was an exciting race, with Curlin even with Street Sense coming out of the final turn--both chasing front......

The Critical Mass Halloween Ride is tonight! If you go, get some good pictures! THEATER: Sam Marks’s new play The Joke peels back the thin gauze separating comedy from an open wound. Set in the last throws of the Catskills comedy circuit circa 1965, the story concerns the disintegrating comedy duo of Steady Eddie and Doug the Mug. Doug has let his envy of Eddie get the better of him and begins adding more of......

Forget terrorists or crippling airline delays: Cats are enemy number one at JFK Airport. After years of airport and airline employees taking care of the many feral cats who make Kennedy their home, the Port Authority is trapping the cats. Rescue groups are worried, because the cats are feral, they are very unlikely to be placed in homes - which means they will probably be killed. A large cat population has grown at the......

For the past few weeks, an art gallery has been locked down by judge's order as angry partners and clients claimed that the gallery sold their works without permission and that the gallery's owner reneged on millions of dollars of debts. And yesterday, a judge toured the toured embattled art gallery Salander O'Reilly to examine its conditions as many artworks are still hanging on the walls. The accusations range from John McEnroe and other investors......

Nannies tattling on the foibles of their well-to-do employers are very last year. The Internet has spawned a forum that makes hidden cameras and GPS tracking seem like child's play when monitoring the people monitoring one's children. ISawYourNanny is a site where people can post incidents that they found suspect, and some of the descriptions of the people and places are meant to be specific enough that parents can figure out if it's their child......

Hey Everyone-- as part of our continuing efforts to make Gothamist a friendly and reasonably polite place, we've eliminated "guest" comments on our posts. This means that to comment on the site, all users will need to complete a short registration process. We've decided to do this because the vast majority of bad behavior (trolling, spamming, incivility, etc) seem to come from the guests. That's not surprising: as many internet pundits have observed, total anonymity......

During his weekly radio address yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg proposed that Governors Island be turned into the site of a sprawling public health institute that he would bankroll with funds from his own private foundation. After the city bought the island for $1 from the federal government several years ago, the former military site and Coast Guard station has been relatively underutilized. Bloomberg's plan envisions an institute that would draw health experts from around the world......

When most people think of ethnic cuisine in Queens the first thing that pops to mind is not Polish food. It’s more likely Korean, Indian, or Thai. Nevertheless there exists a pocket of Polish restaurants and groceries in the decidedly old school neighborhood of Maspeth. One of the best places to sample hearty stick-to-your ribs fare as well as lighter Polish dishes is Krolewskie Jadlo, or “King’s Feast.” With all the pictures of Polish royalty......