[A view of New York from, we're guessing, the top of the Brooklyn Bridge. By photographer Sergei Yahchybekov, via Flickr]

[The view from 42nd and 3rd yesterday evening, when the setting sun aligned with streets in Manhattan to create the yearly event known as "Manhattan Solstice" or "Manhattanhenge". Image via jonbell has no h's Flickr.]

More accounts from Obama's dinner at Blue Hill in the Village via the Daily News. Choice quote, from one of their co-diners: when they got up to leave, "this blasé New York crowd stood up and exploded in spontaneous applause." [NYDN]

Padma Lakshmi—the zombified host of Top Chef and former paramour of Salman Rushdie—may have moved to Chelsea a lil' bit back, but she still owned a place in the East Village. But now she's given it up to a personal trust, for $0.

Mayor Mike! What a lovable guy! One minute he's palling around with adorable muppets, the next he's telling a City Hall reporter "you're a disgrace" because the guy asked him a pertinent question about his bullshit rationale for buying a third term.

[Lawn chairs dot a stretch of Broadway in Times Square today. Sections of the thoroughfare there and in nearby Herald Square just became pedestrian walkways; image via Getty]

Hey, New Yorkers - not neurotically self-conscious enough these days? Well, congratulations: you're next contestant on Bust Ass In Front Of The Google Street View Car.

Fleet Week is in full swing here in New York City, in honor of Memorial Day and all. I'm blowing off seventh and eighth and going to see the new Christian Slater, but I figured I'd leave with a sexy (um, sorta) sailor photo gallery. Happy Patriotism, everyone!

Mayor-for-life Mike "Bitches Ain't Shit" Bloomberg has all the money in the world, and he is going to spend it to beat his mayoral opponent, The Great Gazoo, a Martian Democrat only Bloomberg can see.

[The new fountain at Washington Square Park is finally open, after 18 months of construction. The new fountain, 23 feet from the original, now aligns with Fifth Avenue and the arch. Image via j_bary's Flickr]

The Observer reports today that embattled and failed Lehman Brothers exec Dick Fuld is selling his massive Park Avenue home for around $32 million. On the market for a mansion? Let's take a look inside.

John Gechter, the gay porn power bottom from a Christian college, is moving to New York. And now some helpful gay has written him a letter to help ease his transition. It's wonderful! And horrifying.

Page Six gossipeuse Paula Froelich has written a novel! One of those thinly-disguised novels about real New York people. But just who is she parodying in the book? She's teased some blind items:

Up there in the sky, look at that cloud, is that a silver lining we see? Sure the 'conomy's in the shitter, but let's focus on the positive. New York might be livable again!

You know what was a great idea? To send a low-flying plane cruising down the Hudson river this morning, days after a dude was fired for authorizing a similar flight that scared New York.

This Kirsten Gillibrand lady, who became a Senator from New York because Paterson wanted upstate support? She is a wiley one.

Eliot Spitzer, the prostitute-hiring ex-governor of New York, has been seen in public with his wife, Silda, for the first time since he confessed to paying for sex with aspiring musician Ashley Dupré.

Molly, the heroic cow who escaped a Queens slaughterhouse yesterday, is now living with hippies who run a farm upstate where she can munch on "organic hay," reports City Room.

Breaking police radio news: "Queens. Loose cow. 103 Precinct. 109 Avenue. E.S.U. reporting a loose cow at the location." Call the horse cops!

[30 Rockefeller Center in December 1933. A photograph by Samuel H. Gottscho. Via Shorpy]