Features

Where’s the Party?

They’re young and hip, they’re New Yorkers, and they’re . . . Republicans. With their party’s membership outnumbered five to one, New York’s young Republicans are fighting back aggressively and packing a punch with their checkbooks.

Our Savior Isiah

Listless, creaking, saddled with a bloated payroll, lacking quickness almost completely, the Knicks were basketball’s walking dead. Then along came Isiah Thomas, their new director of basketball operations, and a string of sudden—fun, even—wins. Is this a miracle? And can the resurrection last?

Departments

Letters to the Editor

Readers sound off on celebrities gone wild and more.

Help Desk

Coping with co-worker crushes and music snobs; flirting with security; breaking up (with your colorist) is hard to do

Smart City

Best of New York

Bella Blu’s hearty homemade minestrone soup may be the best medicine for keeping winter at bay

Best Bets

Limited-edition Pumas, merino- wool pillows, and jelly sandals by Salvatore Ferragamo

Warp Drive

A designers’ clubhouse grows in Brooklyn.

Who Can Update My Fur Coat?

My mother gave me one of her best furs, but it’s a little too Dynasty for my taste. Is it possible to alter the style without ruining it?

Test Drive

The bottom line on the city’s richest hot chocolates

Sales & Bargains

Deal of the Week: Contain your excitement: Colorful wastebaskets from the Container Store

Plus, this week's sale listings

Intelligencer

Intelligencer Column

David Blaine's next stunt. Plus, Keifer Sutherland's ba-humbug Christmas.

Last Gasp

How would you wrap up the final season of Sex and the City?

Let Us Eat Steak!

Particularly if it’s prime meat. New Yorkers blithely brave the right sort of beef.

Saying Good-bye to Greeting Cards

What darling children! Now, where’s the recycling bin?

Shabano . . . What?

It looks and feels like a shahtoosh, but it's legal!

The Hunger Artist

A jailed Basquiat faker goes without food so that he can make (and sell) art.

Before the Fall

Timely new books about the old New Economy.

Columnists

This Media Life

Dethroned press lord Conrad Black is a Citizen Kane for our time—but what was his Rosebud?

The City Politic

Why Democratic Party animal and inevitable gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer is spending so much time and energy in the state’s lesser precincts

Critics

Movies

Restored and enhanced, Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 Battle of Algiers is a stunningly provocative—and timely—study of terrorism and the meaning of liberation

TV Notes

John Leonard reviews Degas and the Dance, Forbidden Iran, and more.

Theater

In Rose’s Dilemma, Neil Simon creates a ghost story trapped in the memory of his own past comic triumphs; revisiting the assassination of JFK, Frame 312 leaves you wanting more—as do two engrossing plays about the art of cooking; The Last Letter is a haunting, intimate tale of a doomed mother and her surviving child

Underground Gourmet

Alias gets a new chef and an evolving menu of full-flavored dishes; sublime Turkish specialties abound at Divane

The Week

Restaurant Openings & Buzz

Spicy & Tasty: Flushing's newly relocated Sichuan hotspot lives up to its name

New On DVD

This week: Jeepers Creepers 2, Out of Time, The Days of Wine and Roses, Ikiru, Sitcom

In the Dumps

Every January, smart audiences catch up on the Oscar contenders that opened in December, while studios dump their disasters.