The awkwardly named 20th Annual Anti-Gentrification Community Awareness Festival, a protest-cum-block party organized by the anti-expansion Coalition to Preserve Community (check out their impressive new site), went down this afternoon down the hill at Tiemann Place. Articles and pictures from the CPC’s past exploits festooned a central table, staffed by its ever-present leader Tom DeMott […]

Floridita 3219 Broadway (at 126th Street) Average entrée, roughly $8 Si te gusta la comida barata y rica, y si puedes entender estas palabras, el restaurante de tus sueños está situado cerca de la universidad. You don’t need to comprehend that sentence to appreciate Floridita, the large celery-green restaurant in south Manhattanville. It has all […]

A few days ago, the University of Pennsylvania rolled out its shiny new plan for a huge construction project on its eastern edge. Bwog’s mind jumps to Columbia’s own troubled efforts in Manhattanville—but the parallels are a little more complicated. A few facts: – The cost of Penn’s expansion is about the same, $6.7 billion […]

According to the New York Times, PrezBo & Co. have kicked off a drive to raise $4 billion in seven years. That’ll buy a whole lot of fruit and cheese platters, fo sho. And everyone’s favorite cosmonerd Prof. David Helfand gets some airtime defending the administration. Word up! Meanwhile, over in the Magazine section, we […]

…or so says a flock of neighborhood residents and students in biohazard t-shirts protesting right now in a police-barricaded rectangle outside the gates at 116th. Pants suited journalists, angry community activists, and bemused passersby found good company on the sidewalk. But Bwog did feel slightly sorry for earnest Young Spartacist manning a little table outside […]

‘subtly layered urban experience’ ‘the weight of history and the lightness of clouds’ ‘the work of a master who has reached full maturity.’ Esoteric new form of free verse? No–just selections from today’s New York Times review of the latest creation of Renzo Piano, the Italian architect whom Columbia has retained to design its space-agey […]

Tao Tan speculates on why Columbia might not be as special as it thinks: It’s amazing that the Greene Foundation would pony up $200M. Last year’s IRS 990 reflected $80M in assets (pdf): If I had to guess, my guess would be that this is the Greene Foundation’s close-to-last hurrah. There’s been a philanthropic philosophy […]

According to an email from Lee C.– and we trust him on these things– Dawn Greene just gave Columbia “the largest gift ever received by any U.S. university for the development of a single facility.” The single facility being the Jerome L. Greene Science Center dedicated to poking at the brain and stuff. For those […]