On November 5, New Yorkers will choose their next mayor. Whether City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is on the ballot or not, her seat in the Third District, which covers Chelsea, the West Village, and the Highline, will be in contention. And, as of now, one Democratic candidate named Corey Johnson (shown above) is in the running as her replacement. But he faces many of the same attacks on Quinn's mayoral campaign, some of which are mired in too-easy-to-leapfrog judgments.

More »

@freecooperunion

School's been out for weeks, but the controversy over Cooper Union's leadership instituting tuition for the coming school year is still moving along at a nice clip. The latest entry: The Cooper Union's part-time faculty have joined the fray, dissenting against the school's administration.

The Voice has obtained a copy of a statement submitted just hours ago to President Jamshed Bharucha, the Board of Trustees, the students still occupying the president's office, and the alumni organization's publication, the Alumni Pioneer, in which the part-time faculty come down in favor of continuing tuition-free education.

As the tuition controversy continues, this is a crucial vote by the 149 professors classified as part-time form the majority of the faculty at the school. Check out the body of the letter after the jump.

More »

On a shelf with the classics.

Big news! Novelizations are still a thing! Here's the one you've no doubt been looking for, because, like any reasonable person, you just know that your time would be well spent reading a cheap-o paperback rewrite of the nonsensical script story of the new movie remake of an old movie and its sequel that themselves retold the story of comic books and TV shows that had already been around for the better part of a century.

That is what reading is for: to help us kill those sad moments before bedtime when we are briefly not staring at images of licensed characters.

Anyway, not everyone has the 45 free minutes it would take to read Greg Cox's Man of Steel. To help you decide if you should drop $7.99 at Walgreens, here's how it holds up to the key test for any mass-market paperback: How good are its end-of-chapter keep-you-reading hooks?

More »

C.S. Muncy

"These bills arraign that we have the best police department we possibly can," Councilman Brad Lander said around 11 last night. At a stated meeting in City Hall, the legislature convened for a vote on the discharged parts of the Community Safety Act, in an attempt to pass measures that would drastically change the way our police conduct business. And they did: The council voted 40-11 to install an Inspector General for the NYPD and 34-17 to allow citizens to sue the police department on race-related issues.

More »

"Hey, sweetheart, let's move to Virginia and make a life for ourselves there free of intolerance and inequality," said no gay couple ever. Or at least, that's what an effete writer working for a New York publication long-entwined with the city's gay community might assume.

You see, there's an odd geography problem here that our Federalist system produces: Before yesterday's overturning of DOMA, that act's restrictions, coupled with the inconsistent patchwork of anti-discrimination laws state-to-state, would make any gay couple with a brain cell between them stay away from states that, shall we say, didn't have their best interests at heart.

More »

The raucousness of this morning's overturning of DOMA died away quickly.

This morning, at just a touch past 10, the Supreme Court announced its long-awaited ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act, striking the law down in an uncharacteristically sweeping 5-4 ruling. In all the media analysis mumbo-jumbo since the case was argued back in February, the fundamentals of the case got all tangled up in conjecture and hypotheses about the court ruling this way or that.

See Also: Scenes of Jubilation at the Stonewall Inn as the Supreme Court Strikes Down DOMA

Well, no more need for guesswork: With the demise of DOMA, married gay couples in the states where it's legal (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Washington, Maine, Maryland, Rhode Island, Delaware, Minnesota, and D.C.) can now enjoy the over 1,000 federal rights and benefits attached to marriage. And here in New York, it means more than 10,000 couples living with skim-milk marriage can now get their cut of the fat.

More »

C.S. Muncy

This morning, The Supreme Court ruled the federal definition of the Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional. The 5-4 vote cleared the way for marriage equality in 12 states and Washington, D.C. In addition, California's Proposition 8 appeal was dismissed, making this a landmark day for gay rights. We were at the Stonewall Inn to capture the celebration.

More »

Prosecutors in the Bronx will unseal indictments today of 10 Correction Department staffers for the brutal July 11, 2012, beating of an inmate and other misconduct, in a case first exposed by the Village Voice last August.

In addition, the Voice has learned that the Manhattan District Attorney's office is investigating an incident in which Correction staff allegedly planted evidence, which also took place on July 11 at the Manhattan jail known as the Tombs. The Justice Department is also said to be nosing around.

The indictments to be announced tomorrow and the Manhattan D.A.'s investigation center on a shadowy "anti-violence task force" or "special search squad." The unit roamed the island off the books, assaulting at least two inmates and planted evidence in at least one case. The task force was sanctioned by top uniformed officers in the DOC.

More »

Raillan Brooks

Parked on Union Square West, in front of a nondescript NYU dorm, sits a truck painted in primary colors. There's a carnival awning on it. It's high noon, and the shade seems like a nice place to get out of the swelter.

A modest crowd is gathered, less frothing political rally and more absent passersby watching older men tinkering with a Rube Goldberg machine on the back of a car. By 12:30 the crowd is mostly people who heard some white guy was passing out dollar bills.

More »

At the end of March, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn flip-flopped. She had stood in opposition to a paid sick leave bill for years, arguing that the measure would cause economic harm to a city deep in the Great Recession. But the mayoral race's influence trumped all: Pressing her Democratic base, she switched positions and eventually passed the bill with few exceptions for small businesses. In exchange, she handed the Service Employees International Unions Local 32BJ chapter a victory, resulting in their endorsement of her campaign yesterday.

More »

In late April, the polling team at Marist released a survey titled "Weiner Candidacy for Mayor Could Scramble Democratic Primary Contest." it projected major percentage points of approval for the former congressman, should he decide to step into the fray. A few weeks later, he did. And, nearly two months after that original sampling, its title has validated itself: according to the newest WSJ-NBC New York-Marist poll, Anthony Weiner is now the leading Democratic candidate for mayor in New York City.

More »

Joseph, aka RIME, just moved back to Brooklyn after spending eight years in California. Like his work? Unlike some graffiti artists', his can be commissioned (on his own terms) through Klughaus Gallery, a graffiti and street art gallery that connects companies and individuals looking for something cooler than mass-produced wall art. Check out his story, after the jump.

More »

A man who spent a year in jail before robbery and kidnapping charges were tossed out of court is suing the New York City Police Department and the city for "generating false evidence and ignoring evidence of his innocence," court records show.

More »

Amy Ning

How many times can New York state lawmakers kick the can down the road on important housing and employment discrimination laws before they get legislator's toe? Probably many, is a fair guess. And they had at least one big punt left in them this past weekend.

Just before the Senate adjourned until 2014, Democratic leadership failed to bring GENDA, a sweeping law designed to protect transgender people from employment and housing discrimination, to an up-or-down vote. The Assembly has passed it six years running, so maybe senators got do-the-right-thing fatigue?

More »

Kenneth Langone's latest political investment.

On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court decided that corporations were people, too. The Citizens United ruling unleashed a new wave of influence in American elections; one that still has modern democracy reeling, as the last presidential election witnessed billions of dollars coming in from all over the country. Mega-millionaire Kenneth G. Langone, 78, was (and still is) at this frontline of legal corporatism, and his ties are everywhere, including NYU's much-talked-about loan compensation program and the wallet of the Republican frontrunner for City Hall, Joe Lhota.

More »

Last night, Collections, Bushwick's newest vintage outpost, hosted a formal opening party replete with a well-stocked mini bar and (maybe consequently) a decent portion of every street-style trendsetter and Jemima Kirke dress-alike ever to grace the Morgan L stop.

More »

Your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from thrift stores, estate sales, and flea markets.

Woman's Day magazine

Date: January, 1964
Publisher: Fawcett Publications
Discovered at: Vermont Antique Mall, Queechee, Vermont

The Cover Promises: The only thing that could possibly have soothed a nation shaken just weeks before by the assassination of its president, "Special Feature in Full Color: A Gallery of Cat Portraits."

Representative Quotes:

Flirt with the manager of your favorite supermarket and then insist that he order all of the low-calorie food you want to try. (From "Weight Watchers Diet" by Gael Greene)

Fifteen years from now ... there will be not TV as we know it today: all circuitry will fit into a box the size of a cigarette pack, and the picture will appear on a flat screen hung from the wall. (From "The Fabulous Future" by Hollis Alpert)

More »

Photo Credit: &y; via Compfight cc

What do you get when you mix one part smart-ass lawyer with one part overly litigious city government, and shake it all up in the merciless expanse of the Internet? The sassiest legal document to ever hit the blogosphere, that's what.

The story: Jake Freivald of West Orange, New Jersey, opened the website westorange.info as a clearinghouse for the goings-on in the tiny Jersey suburb. Apparently the City Council of West Orange was none too pleased about it, because a website that looks like it was made on an Etch A Sketch could have been confused for the city's official web portal.

More »

Sam Levin

Another week, another Citi Bike dilemma. As the bike share program blows past the 250,000 rides mark, the placement of stations has become the subject of contention since its Memorial Day inauguration. The reasons are varied: The streets are too narrow to fit them; the streets are too packed with them; the streets are too ugly because of them. But, as it turns out, the physical response by the Department of Transportation has created a more income-based controversy.

More »

The recent round of DC scandals has been good for rightbloggers -- for about a month they've been devoted to plumping up Benghazi, IRS, NSA, and other controversies, and have succeeded in knocking down the President's approval ratings. High fives all around!

But seasons change, and Scandal Spring is giving way to the Summer of Same Old, Same Old, as events intrude and conservatives are obliged by them to talk about their own policies, which for reasons that will become apparent isn't likely to be as successful.

More »