Arun Venugopal

Street art isn't what it used to be. And for a lot of New Yorkers, that's probably a good thing. Gone are the days when entire subway trains were coated in spray paint.

That isn't to say that street art is irrelevant.

Check out "Exit Through the Gift Shop," the documentary that at once celebrates and hilariously sends up the significance (and the very definition) of street art. The movie, directed by the ever-mysterious artist Banksy, is up for an Oscar this year.

So, who are the newest street artists making their mark in (and on) the city?

One of them has been penning "moustache" on the upper lips of various actresses, at least their two-dimensional selves (Reese's moustache here). The penmanship isn't anything to write home about, but still, there's a certain Gallic charm to the enterprise, and an impishness. These days, it's striking just how innocent and inoffensive so much subway graffiti is. Sure, you get the predictable assortment of four-letter words and body parts and all-around disfigurement. But not all that often. To a much greater extent subway posters seem to have been defaced by really happy, well-adjusted people. Whatever became of urban rage?

 

The number of black-owned businesses in the New York metropolitan area rose by 61 percent between 2002 and 2007, according to census data released Tuesday. Nationally, it grew by ab...

Opponents of congestion pricing are worried it's about to stage a comeback. Although confident that it would be dead on arrival in Albany, Queens Assemblyman David Weprin voiced concern about a possible resurrection.

In an attempt to shift the political climate on gun control, post-Tucson, the Bloomberg administration released a series of undercover videos Monday pointing to lax enforcement of laws at a gun show in Arizona.

Many Muslim New Yorkers said they felt moved by the events in Egypt, as protests in the Egyptian capital of Cairo calling for the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak conti...

The number of students suspended at city schools has skyrocketed in the last decade, with black and disabled students comprising most of those disciplined, according to findings compiled by the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Hotel Carter, ranked the No. 4 dirtiest hotel in the U.S., has made the annual survey of the nation's top 10 filthiest hotels for the fifth time in six years, according to TripAdvisor's Dirtiest Hotels 2011.

Mayor Bloomberg, at a rally championing gun control, called on President Obama to lead the charge on reforming the nation's gun laws in the wake of the Tucson tragedy during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night.

Old computers, outdated cell phones, unloved fax machines — they found their way,by the ton to an electronic recycling event on the Upper West Side on Sunday.

It's being called the largest operation the FBI has ever coordinated, resulting in the arrests of more than 100 reputed members of the mafia. For one former FBI agent, it also represents the recognition by the Department of Justice that counter-terror efforts have thrived since 2001, at the expense of domestic crime-fighting.

Tom Robbins at the Village Voice reported the NYPD screened an anti-Muslim film "The Third Jihad" to police earlier this month at a required counter-terrorism training.

Police spokesman Paul Browne told us the film "was not screened or used for cadets. It was reviewed by instructors at our counter-terrorism bureau and rejected." But the Voice quotes Browne saying it was shown "a couple of times when officers were filling out paperwork before the actual coursework began."

Chair of the New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Zead Ramadan said he brought the screening to the attention of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly last September after a police cadet had attended a viewing of the film. Ramadan said he approached Kelly during an Eid celebration at Gracie Mansion. The commissioner, said Ramadan, was surprised to hear about the movie.

"He looked at me like I had two heads," said Ramadan. "My problems are two-fold: Who the hell are these instructors? And why didn’t the NYPD audit what’s to be shown to their cadets and officers?"

Ramadan said his fear is that "cadets then hit the streets thinking any hijabi woman might blow herself up on the streets." An unnamed officer quoted by the Voice said he was stunned by the film.

"After it was over, I was thinking, 'What was that?' " said a cop who saw the movie at a training facility used by the department in Coney Island. "It was so ridiculously one-sided. It just made Muslims look like the enemy. It was straight propaganda."

The 72-minute film was produced by the Clarion Fund, which was also behind "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West." The trailer for the "The Third Jihad" can be found below.

 

Losing sleep over the US-China trade deficit? Worried about China taking over the world?

China understands. Or at least its publicists do. After decades of watching American spinmeisters work their magic across the world, they're bringing their game onto U.S. soil.

This promotional video debuted at Times Square. From the WSJ:

"As President Hu Jintao begins his visit to the U.S. this week, China is blitzing America with a flashy television ad that mixes images of ordinary Chinese citizens with celebrities like NBA star Yao Ming, Web tycoon Jack Ma, and a quartet of fashion models. The minute-long video is scheduled to run on CNN and to be shown 300 times a day—once every four minutes during peak periods—on the giant display in New York's Times Square from now until Feb. 14.

"The ad is part of China's broader push in recent years to use its culture and people to ease international fears about its rise."

The fuss over Pale Male may have seemed more like a stealth Upper East Side real estate story than about urban wildlife, but now Lola, the red tailed hawk's famous mate with whom he shared a nest at 927 Fifth Ave., has gone missing and may be dead.

From Bruce Yolton at the Urban Hawks blog: "Lola hasn't been seen since mid-December and is unfortunately presumed dead."

But Bruce posted this really nice video, so you can get a sense of how a hawk snacks on squirrel (scroll to 1:44). Seriously, at times it's quite beautiful but can be graphic.

In the wake of the shootings in Arizona, a New York senator plans to introduce a bill Monday that would keep guns out of the hands of people suffering from mental illness.

Under pressure from my friend, I caught the end of Peter Greenaway's multimedia spectacle at the Park Avenue Armory, The Last Supper, which turned out to be spectacularly underwhelming. So when that same friend told me to come and see his work as well as that of other young South Asian artists in a new group show, I expected a mixed bag.

As it turned out, I was way off the mark: The show, Reprise 2010 (at Aicon Gallery, on Great Jones) is consistently good, at times great, and showcases the vitality of Indian and Pakistani contemporary art in a variety of media. This at a time when the Indian economy is booming, creating a generation of new collectors and galleries. Also figuring into this is the growth of big trade events like the India Art Summit, which takes place this week in New Delhi and includes Aicon artists from New York.

The Reprise show's on through Feb. 5. Take a look.

The shootings in Arizona have thrust the mayor and his gun-control group back into the national spotlight. For Bloomberg, who's been dogged by criticism over his handling of the snow...

After the discovery of toxic PCBs, New York City school officials have closed two classrooms at PS 36 on Staten Island. In a letter to Michael Mulgrew, the head of the teachers union, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott said the measure was taken as a "precaution," and that the rooms would remain closed "until we are certain there is no health concern."

A new viral video entitled "Bloomberg Blamed for Mishandling Snowpocalypse" is making the rounds online in a segment that takes jabs at the city's blizzard response with the help of strangely compelling CGI animation.

The blizzard may be long over but the damage and bad PR keeps on coming. Ned Berke at Sheepshead Bites brings to our attention the matter of dozens of gravestones that were toppled in Brooklyn, after a snow-packed cemetery fence gave way. Locals say sanitation workers are to blame.

From his blog post:

...Department of Sanitation workers packed load after load of snow and ice against the fence of Washington Cemetery on Bay Parkway, between McDonald Avenue and 57th Street. The metal gates buckled under the weight, toppling approximately 30 gravestone over the weekend.

“[Sanitation workers] were continually dumping snow there for several days,” said Washington Cemetery (5400 Bay Parkway) employee Mike Ciamaga, who added that cemetery officials first noticed the broken gravestones on Sunday morning.  ”As of this morning they were still dumping there.”

General Electric has agreed to carry out the next phase of cleanup on the Hudson River, decades after polluting the waterway with toxins. The announcement came Thursday, a few days after the Environmental Protection Agency laid out a comprehensive cleanup plan. The plan would restore a 40-mile stretch of the river, north of Albany.