Capital New York

A distant president and a mysterious McKinsey report send Columbia's liberal-arts faculty into an existential panic

In late October, Columbia professor Andrew Delbanco took the podium at Columbia’s Casa Italiana, an imperious building best known for its rumored funding from Benito Mussolini, to tell an audience of donor-alumni and administrators that the school’s leadership was betraying them. More

Posted on February 6th, 2012 11:45am

As gay politics become policy, New York hospitals move to reform treatment

Outside events like the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage and new rules about fair visitation rights ordered by the White House and implemented by the Joint Commission, which accredits U.S. hospitals, have New York institutions struggling to keep pace even as a raft of studies demonstrates the inadequacy of treatment in hospitals of gay, lesbian and transgender patients. More

Posted on August 8th, 2011 9:19am

Kathleen Rice, Cuomo's A.G. candidate, wants you to know she's different

As a candidate for state attorney general, Kathleen Rice has a lot going for her.

She’s the Nassau County district attorney in real life, and she looks as if she ought to play a D.A. on TV: she is 45 years old, tall and attractive with shoulder-length red hair. As the only female Democrat running for any statewide office exact year, she checks an important demographic box for ticket-balancing purposes (as presumptive governor Andrew Cuomo, who is quietly supporting her, has noticed). She is an engaging, efficient stump-speaker. More

Posted on August 30th, 2010 9:10am

Rangel, among friends, discusses war, suicide and plea bargains

Before embattled 15th District Congressman Charles Rangel took the stage at the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce's economic development awards luncheon at Columbia University this afternoon, he drank a few glasses of lemonade, joked with former Comptroller H. Carl McCall, whom he sat next to at the dais, and gave current Comptroller John Liu, another keynote speaker, a thumbs-up. More

Posted on August 5th, 2010 4:49pm

Anthony Weiner on the issues, calmly

Last week, Anthony Weiner, the Democratic Congressman representing New York’s 9th District, which includes Forest Hills, Flushing, the Rockaways, and Kings Highway in Queens and Brooklyn, got angry.

He shook his finger, yelled, and slammed the podium after Republicans used to a procedural objection to block a $7.4 billion bill that would have increased health benefits for 9/11 first responders.

“It's Republicans wrapping their arms around Republicans,” he screamed, aiming his comments at Pete King, the Republican Congressman from Long Island, “rather than doing the right thing on behalf of the heroes.”

Yesterday, he was calm. More

Posted on August 3rd, 2010 9:51am

What's wrong with Kenmare? A guide to restaurants where the food doesn't matter

On Wednesday July 6th, New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton gave Kenmare, a new Nolita restaurant co-owned by Paul Sevigny, no stars. The food was "inconsequential," he wrote, and often worse than that.

When the restaurant opened for business that night at six, a group of patrons, men with big shoulders loosening their ties, wearing Lacoste polos and striped shirts, were having drinks paid for by their various firms. They didn't plan to eat.

Others, deeply tanned and wearing spikey high heels—the future “Real Housewives of New York?”—teetered around gamely. More

Posted on August 2nd, 2010 8:26am

'Times' comes to town, sweating in its gown

As The New York Times prepares to launch its latest hyperlocal experiment in the East Village in partnership with the journalism institute at New York University, it's deflecting spitballs from the mainstream journalism world, local bloggers, and neighborhood types who see the new initiative as just another version of Whole Foods coming into town and wiping out the local businesses. Can the Times Local get the locals to put aside their mistrust of mainstream media and big companies, their love of their own existing vibrant blog scene, and get them not only to read but to contribute half the content? This fall, we find out. More

Posted on July 19th, 2010 1:28am

The Kirsten Gillibrand Diet, revealed!

After her second son, Henry, was born in 2008, she had gained twenty pounds of baby weight on top of the twenty pounds she gained when her first son, Theodore, was born in 2004. Gillibrand started a diet after a year of nursing Henry. It took her a year to get back to form. More

Posted on July 15th, 2010 11:57pm

The prehistory of The New York Girl

Candance Bushnell, J. Courtney Sullivan and Cecily von Ziegesar discussed writing young-adult fiction at Barnes & Noble. The talk began with von Ziegesar, 40, talking about about why she writes novels about teenagers.

"I'm still coming of age!" she exclaimed, and described the process of "coming of age at all ages." She likened people to volcanoes: "we have big eruptions and little eruptions, and sometimes we are just dormant. The first big eruption happens at 18." More

Posted on July 15th, 2010 1:54am

A modest viewing party for Elena Kagan

The event was co-sponsored by the Women's City Club of New York and the New York Women's Agenda which each sent a few representatives wearing jackets and sensible shoes.

"Every time I see her I think she should wear her hair longer," a Hunter College High School alum wearing patent leather flats suggested when a stock photo of Kagan was displayed on the two flat-screen TVs. "She looks so uncomfortable." More

Posted on June 28th, 2010 3:54pm