By Matt Chaban 9/17/12 5:10pm

Dizzying Designs

If you build it... actually, please don't. (wongbooks.com)

Just What Chinatown Needs, a 2,173-Foot Tower of Insanity Created by Some Retired Local

“Ordinary People, Middle Class, The Rich & Government Officials. All live in Harmony under the Same Sky. To Generate a Utopian Society with Great Dreams.”

Is this some zen koan? A communist manifesto? The message inside a fortune cookie? No, it is the introduction, and the vision, to a 120 page pamphlet proposing a 128-story mega skyscraper covering some five blocks in the heart of Chinatown. Think the World Trade Center meets that crazy hotel in Pyongyang. It is the work of a humble man, retiree Wong San Yan, his gift to the neighborhood he loves. Read More

By Kim Velsey 8/29/12 3:09pm

Manhattan Transfers

Moving on. Always moving on.

Forget It, Judith Regan—It’s Chinatown: Editor Walks Away From Downtown Loft

Famed editor Judith Regan decamped for Los Angeles years ago, but enjoyed keeping one foot in the city where her meteoric rise to fame happened. So she bought a sprawling 3,200-square-foot loft in Chinatown (or Soho, depending on whom you ask) back in 2005. But as she told a Daily Beast reporter in 2010, her affection faded after the apartment flooded. Twice. The water ruined almost all of her art and furniture: “My apartment is like all the men in my life—really good-looking and assholes.” Read More

By Foster Kamer 1/11/12 4:08pm

FRENCH GUYS

Andre.

Le Baron, New York City’s Most Anticipated Nightclub Basically Ever, is En Route

French nightlife impresario Andre Saraiva’s Le Baron—with respective locations in Paris and Tokyo, easily two of the most exclusive nightlife spots in the known universe, the likes of which you will never see the inside of—has been anticipated as the messanic salvation of New York City nightlife. Especially ever since word of its stateside arrival was confirmed…in March 2010. Read More

By Drew Grant 9/20/11 12:08pm

Science

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Chinatown Outlets Busted for Selling Rat Poison That Looks, Smells Like Cookies

We once saw a poster that said “Birds don’t have careers,” and it really made us stop and think because, you know, they really don’t. Unless they are carrier pigeons, or those parrots that live on pirates’ shoulders, or are part of a magician’s act. Otherwise nope: birds are more the freelancing, artsy type.

But if birds don’t have careers, cats definitely do, at least according to those highly toxic pesticides that the D.A. recently confiscated in Chinatown that read, “The Cat Can Be Unemployed.” Just a warning! Also, these products can kill you and your children. And they smell like cookies. Read More

By Jeremy B. White 4/26/11 7:44pm

Knock It Off

Chin to Knock-Off Buyers: Not in My Neighborhood

Tourists scouring Canal Street for cheap imitations of designer bags would face a police crackdown under legislation introduced today by Council Member Margaret Chin.

“Our laws are incomplete in that they only target the supply of these items and not the demand,” Chin said after introducing a bill that would make buying knock-offs a misdemeanor Read More

By Aaron Lake Smith 5/28/10 6:23pm

Chinatown’s Long Tendrils: Bargain Bus Reaches the Mississippi

The Chinatown bus is famous as a cheap way to shuttle between New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. But in the past two years, some bus companies have been quietly extending their service. Now a Chinatown bus serves dozens of unlikely cities like Orlando or Little Rock for a fraction of the cost of a Read More