A gamer with an early copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, the videogame set in a hyper-realistic version of New York City, has already tried out the one new feature we were most intrigued by. Niko Bellic, the hot Serbian immigrant at the center of Rockstar's videogame, can now stumble around intoxicated, and make drunken booty calls. View a clip by clicking the thumb; the longer gameplay is at Gametrailers.com. And here, if you missed them, are screenshots of Liberty City, the alternate New York City in which the fifth borough is not Staten Island but an industrial wasteland loosely based on New Jersey.

Even if the Brooklyn Literary Scene is dead, or as Colson Whitehead put it, annoying and irrelevant, there still are a lot of writers kicking it in the borough of churches. In today's New York Observer, Fort Greene's own Doree Shafrir made an extensive list of the Brooklyn literarati, including neighborhood listings. Not to sound like an asshole, but even I didn't know about some of the writers and editors on the list. The Observer's non-college educated readership will be totally lost.

When Ang Lee took on the task of bringing Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain to the screen, he famously asked, "What do I know about gay ranch hands in Wyoming?" The director will be better informed about his adopted home state of New York. He and frequent collaborator James Schamus adapt the story of Greenwich Village interior designer Elliot Tiber, the man who gave the permit for the legendary doinkfest Woodstock Festival, where your parents went to drop acid and have unprotected sex in tents. Seriously, just ask them. The festival has inspired several popular documentaries, but the expensive cost of licensing the music discouraged a fictional treatment until now. Tiber's book Taking Woodstock: The True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life was blurbed as "a queer memoir that puts the wood in Woodstock," source material that should entertain despite the lack of Joan Baez et al. In light of his recent comments against Canadian censorship legislation, he may want to use every sex scene the novel allows for, and several more it doesn't. With a small budget of $5 to $10 million, they may still be able to afford the penises of Jason Segel and Seth Rogen, which would be quite a coup. [Reuters]

Would the downtown Manhattan nightspot Beatrice Inn like to shed its reputation as a coke den where insiders say that two of the Six Rules For Getting Laid are to flout the rules, then flout the rules some more? There should certainly be no rule-flouting in the presence of these small paper signs warning against sex and drugs, which are posted in the bathrooms, where they can do the most good. Of course, they might make an exception for Josh Hartnett and friends.

Rudy Giuliani's legacy is being tagged away. Graffiti is back and more popular than ever &mdash complaints of taggings have risen 81.5% from 2006 to 2007. "It's not art - it's just scribble," said a random dude complaining to the New York Post. But even though graffiti has become more prevalent under Bloomberg's tenure, let's not forget that he has protected the rich from other eyesores like fatties and smokers. [NYP]

The subway is maybe the only place in New York where you can pick your nose, eat McDonald's and read chick lit without shame. That's part of the magic of this city. But occasionally someone goes too far, and the pact of no staring, touching, or judging is broken. Like when someone openly pees into a cup in front of a steel column while waiting for the D train. But that was just the first transgression. After the jump, a picture of the same man about to perform transgression number two.

We can't actually improve on that headline. Kudos, City Room. But yes, a giant beaver was pulled to safety this afternoon by NYPD scuba units, who "were patrolling the United Nations in connection with the visit of Pope Benedict XVI and said the beaver appeared to be struggling to swim." Also: "It was not known if the beaver was male or female. ('It has pretty big claws,' Lieutenant Harkins said.)" [NYT]

Facing possible fines and jail time, local gene sequencers Navigenics and 23andMe will have to get permits if they want to continue testing resident of New York state. Meanwhile, California is investigating 12 complaints against unnamed gene sequencing companies, with officials noting that "all genetic tests must be ordered by a licensed physician." Trying to distance themselves from health regulators, 23andMe spokesman Paul Kranholdt told Forbes that "23andMe's services are not medical ... they are educational." In other words, getting tested amounts to a $1,000 exercise in vanity. No wonder people in the Valley love it.

A Page Six reporter has sold her debut novel to Simon & Schuster. Paula Froelich's Mercury in Retrograde centers on three New York women: a newspaper reporter named Penelope Mercury, who gets fired; a wealthy socialite fashion editor, Lena "Lipstick" Lippencraff, and a newlywed corporate lawyer Dana Gluck, who moves out on her husband when she discovers he's having an affair. Finally, some insight into New York women who have it at all, but still feel unfulfilled, by attractive female New York journalist. Except we've been there before, so many many times.

This man is just waltzing around SoHo, in this ridiculous Speedo thing, holding a Whole Foods bag. He is attracting attention. He doesn't seem to care. No apparent hidden camera crews indicative of a "punking." So. Spring? Attached is a camera phone shot of the weird naked SoHo dude. Two more after the jump!

Lafayette Street, New York City, 6:30pm. It's finally warm enough for lighter clothes. (More nightlife photos from Nikola Tamindzic at Home of the Vain.)

Talk about a cock-block. Community boards are making it so hard for new Manhattan bars to get a liquor license that allows them to serve liquid happy until 4 a.m., because they hate the things that make New York better than everywhere else. Also something about noise pollution or whatever. But what about not-getting-any pollution? These new bars will have to close up at 2 a.m. and everyone knows that true love is only found in the hours between 2 and 4 a.m. And here we thought the city was trying to get us to use all those free condoms. [NYSun]

The Executive Directory of the Port Authority—the nebulous but reliably corrupt and incompetently managed organization that owns all New York's airports and the WTC site, soon to be home of the Target Presents 9/11 Memorial Office Park and Citibank Playground at Ground Zero—resigned this morning. Anthony Shorris, appointed by hooker-lovin' ex-guv Eliot Spitzer last year, "told his staff that he has advanced every goal he tried to set for the agency—including growth at the ports, upgrades to the PATH commuter rail system and buying a fourth airport for the region." He advanced them all from "daydreams" to "fantasies." He was forced out because current adulterous New York Governor David Paterson is replacing everyone Spitzer appointed, and also because of 9/11. [NYT]

Santiago Calatrava's improbable residential skyscraper on South Street, a tower of boxes as unsteady as Jenga blocks at a late stage of the game, is dead. And the Port Authority is scaling back the Spanish architect's daring design for the financial district's PATH station. The architectural critics will no doubt bemoan the loss of New York's civic ambition, and wonder why rival world cities such as Shanghai and Dubai have taken up the mantle. (Oh, yes: authoritarian regimes, unbridled capitalism and cheap labor, but let's not go there.) Truth is that the drawing boards are littered with visions of Manhattan that were never realized. Here are my dozen favorites.

Highbrow pink newspaper the New York Observer—home to Gawker employees past, and probably future—launched their fancy new book review section, "O.R.B." (guess what it stands for) with a review of Keith Gessen's book, a profile by Leon Neyfakh, and a Joshua David Stein review. Which means that nearly all the names on the front page of the section belong to people who have, at one time or another, dated former Gawker editor Emily Gould. There are only like ten people who write things in New York, you see. This is like a nightmare we used to have! Click to enlarge the section, with names helpfully circled by a stalky anonymous tipster.

The Barnes & Noble bookstore on 21st and Sixth closed on Monday after fourteen years in the neighborhood. "We can't pay those kinds of rents," a bigwig told City Room. When you're finished mourning and moaning, please be sure to visit one of the eleven other Barnes & Nobles in Manhattan and Brooklyn. (What kind of New York do we live in when otherwise sensible people get upset over the demise of a big-box corporate bookstore?)

Bad/ good news: New York is attempting to double its cigarette tax to $3 per pack, which would bring the overall cost of a pack to almost $9, the most in the nation. But the New York Association of Convenience Stores is lobbying hard against the increase, saying it will only drive smokers to bootleggers and Indian reservations to stock up. Gosh, how evil of these cursed Convenience Store lobbyists to oppose this vital public health measure! Also, does anybody know where I can send contributions to the Convenience Store lobby? This is tearing our society's fragile smoker-nonsmoker peace agreement apart! Luckily, the crack New York media found one smokin' teenager to put this difficult issue in perspective:

Manhattan really let itself go. Here to the right is a topographic map of the upper part of the island, before the landfill that expanded its girth. (Also, why do modern maps have to be so ugly?) Click on the thumb to expand.

Henry Kissinger once said, "Academic fights are more brutal than our fights in the real world because the stakes are so low, so the passions are very high." He was referring to University politics, but the quote also applies to Horace Mann, the tony private school in Riverdale, New York. Horace Mann was founded in the 19th century to get bratty kids into Harvard, and that honorable goal continues into the 21st century, despite satirical novels, nasty Facebook groups and now incriminating New York magazine cover stories. After reading New York's story, you may want to give more consideration to Fieldston.

Madonna, in this month's Vanity Fair "Green" issue, says that New York is "not the exciting place it used to be. It still has great energy; I still put my finger in the socket. But it doesn't feel alive, cracking with that synergy between the art world and music world and fashion world that was happening in the 80s. A lot of people died." Oh how novel. This is mighty rich coming from a singer/actress/whateverelse whose only interaction with the city in the past many years has been through carefully planned media events and bodyguard-escorted trips to her schmancy Upper West Side gym. I guess this is just how some artists get when they age, always pining away for the halcyon days, never realizing that they're so entrenched in their mansions and clothing and plundered babies that they wouldn't know "cracking...synergy" if it bit them on the airbrushed ass. [NYMag] Inside photos from the issue after the jump.