Yes, people, get your faux bamboo mats ready for free yoga in the heart of the city. Below is a video from the same event in 2007.

The classes will go throughout the day cycling through Bikram, intro, prenatal and postnatal. As of right now, the 6:30 pm spot is the only one open for registration. The 3:30 pm one is open for waiting list. So get your acts together if you plan on yoga’ing it up. Click here for more info.

Om – Yoga in Times Square from hotpotato on Vimeo.

Watch movies at the Park

NYC parks always have great things to offer. As May approaches and the floral landscape of the city changes from barren wasteland to allergen-heavy blooms, wildflowers take center stage.

But for those who have no interest in botany can still enjoy the parks.

Central Park is a year round treat, but as the weather gets nicer, look for more activities happening there too.

Bryant Park has laid out benches on its lush green lawn for picnicking locals and stress free work time lunches. Did you know Bryant Park offers Tai Chi & Yoga classes on a regular basis?!

And for those of you too lazy to partake in physical activities. Great News! You can watch movies in the park for free. Brooklyn Bridge Park is holding a free series of flicks throughout the summer to keep a smile on your face too.

And finally just because I don’t want to leave out Queens. You can always check out some of the finest parks in the city in the more domestic and cozier of the boroughs. Your choices are Alley Pond, Botanical Gardens or even Flushing Meadows.

It is not unusual for the co-op to take a political stand, reflecting the tradition of the community in which it is situated. This latest proposal would be in protest of Israel’s recent activities in Gaza.

Persimmons are one of the products from Israel sold at the Park Slope Food Co-op

So, my suggestion to all of you New Yorkers is revisit the greatest city in the world before it is too late. . . as in before it becomes a disheveled mess and you have nothing worth seeing left.

I went to the Statue of Liberty the other day but not from Staten Island, instead I entered through Liberty Park which comes right before the Holland Tunnel while traveling through New Jersey. This park is beautiful and also holds less lines than its NYC counterpart. Several hours will be spent on just waiting on the line if you are not careful.

Rockefeller Center’s Observation deck offers a spectacular view of the city but at nearly half the wait time of Empire State Building. But King Kong only climbed one of them, so you pick.

I think some of these monumental landmarks are worth visiting now and seeing them from a new perspective. There was a street hustler who was selling the Wall Street bronze bull statue. He said “Everyone is buying these right now man, everyone. People from Italy, England, China and all over the United States too.” Apparently we’re still hopeful and want to feed our imaginations the comfort of a bullish market.

If you have a day or two to spare, it might not be a bad idea to hit up one of those tour buses that take you all around town. A lot of the stuff that they tell you about is very interesting and I bet you didn’t know half the things they talk about.

Oh! And we happened to be in the downtown area near Wall St. when Trinity Church was having services. The beautiful organ along with the fascinating structure made for a nice peaceful meditation break during the day’s busy planning.

Oh and before I forget, go on a super cold day – freezing preferable – to Central Park. Walk along Literary Path and visit the frozen over lake. Be sure to take vegan energetic snacks from home as the food in the Park is not all that great and overpriced (read: $2 for honey roasted peanuts).

Once it’s dark, head on over to Times Square and magically all that fatigue you experienced while touring your own city will disappear.

So take some time out and revisit your favorite city before Metrocard prices go up!

As an example, it took me 1 year to find 9th street Espresso. I know, how hard could it be to find an espresso shop whose name itself tells you the location? I have no idea. I’m slow and I looked in every single direction except for the right one when trying to find the shop.

I accidentally bumped into mondomaps yesterday while trying to find the name of a restaurant in Curry Hill. We were search for Tiffin Wallah—but their Web site is not listed on mondomaps. But a bunch of others are and the way it is linked up is very helpful. I don’t know if they update the site and if so, how often…I definitely see some missing information. But I’m always looking for new tools to find my way around the city, so I thought I’d share. Here’s a link to all of Chelsea’s art galleries. This one particularly excited me because I rarely know where all the great art in NYC is and I’m definitely going to check them out now using the data from the map.

Enjoy discovering.

Queens is where I grew up. It is the school of hard knocks if you grew up in the 90s—not because it was rough—but as a hip hop fashion statement in the form of a t-shirt.

My favorite pizza place was Gino’s on Grand Avenue right next to Queens Boulevard. It was actually the same intersection where McDowell’s is shown to be in the movie Coming to America.

In last night’s episode of Entourage which I consider to be one of the best season finale’s of a show ever, we saw some of the neighborhoods in Queens showcased in recent films.

The part where Vince and the guys live was a combination of Forest Hills a la Spider-Man and Kew Gardens as seen in Boiler Room.

The place where Johnny Drama opens up his new bar is exactly like a scene in Glengarry Glen Ross and also in the lesser known and sometimes forgotten George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez starring Out of Sight. And the scene in which they have a picnic looked very much like a scene from Goodfellas…though the latter took place in Brooklyn—Queens’ worst enemy.

But it was interesting to see how Queens always has certain elements of simplicity associated with it. Queens is never the place you see opulence go down or anything crazy happen. But Queens is also so picturesque and unique that an editor friend of mine tells me that when he was cutting a short film I directed at a major (not to be named) studio in Hollywood as a favor, someone walked by and immediately recognized her hometown of Queens on the television screen.

Though simple, Queens rules. That’s sort of the point.

Now that the time has changed we are heading straight on to the end of the year. I find the light to be absolutely beautiful this time of year.

Photo credit: Jeanne Fleming/Wikimedia Commons. Picture from the 1998 Village Halloween Parade. Notice the Twin Towers lit up in the background.
.
Thank you Pamela Skillings, About.com’s Manhattan guide.

A vegan ice cream shop owner just had his bike stolen last week. Then he found the same bike a few blocks away chained to a post. The cops told him that if it was his, he could clip it and then he did. Just a few more days later, he parked the bike outside (where it was initially stolen from) and found the perp trying to re-steal the bike claiming that it was his own. But thieves are often liars too and the bike is, for now, safe.

Why is thievery on the rise? Is it due to the weakened economy? What the hell is going on here people? Is Bloomberg’s third term going to help? Damn you thieves and your lying.