New York – Liz Hardaway

Meet Mr. Big Ears

If there was space, there was art.

Eileen Millan, an artist with a tenure of 40+ years in Chelsea, sprawled out her work in the Vermeer co-op’s boardroom. On the table, in rolling chairs, in bins and even the carts were filled with greeting cards, collages, watercolors and flowers galore.

And one character in particular was painted dozens of times with a different color palette for each face, all with differing personalities, yet mimicking the same round frame, protruding ears and a gaze that intrudes into the most dark and blissful parts of a soul. Meet Mr. Big Ears.

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Gunman robs $700K in watches

A similar Madison Avenue heist happened last year.

A man armed with a handgun and a hammer robbed a Madison Avenue boutique of timepieces worth more than $700,000 Tuesday morning in what police suspect is his second robbery of an upscale watch retailer on the posh avenue in about a year.

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A hot lunch line

Hundreds of New Yorkers queue up daily at the tiny Soup Spot on West 31st Street.

Walking down 31st Street across from Madison Square Garden at lunchtime, there’s always an intimidating line running outside of the tucked-away, hidden gem that is no bigger than a typical college dorm room.

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A Night at the ‘Zombie’ McDonald’s

Inside an Eighth Avenue hangout, with fights, stretchers and nodding-out patrons

With ten, maybe twenty bags of trash slushing onto each other on the curb, the doors open to four men leaning a little too far into their chairs. Are they asleep? They’re not really moving. A line curls, immobile, from the lone cashier. This is 10 p.m. on a Monday at the McDonald’s on 34th Street and Eighth Avenue.

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‘Tis the Season

A look, and a few tastes, at the shops in Bryant Park, Union Square and Grand Central.

BY LIZ HARDAWAY & CARSON KESSLER

Most of the holiday shops are up and running, some since even before Halloween. We perused dozens, in Bryant Park, Union Square and Grand Central, to distil the best of the best. Here’s a guide to the gift spots, food and unique stores in the winter wonderlands.

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“The spirit of the neighborhood”

Five days after the downtown terror attack, the NYC Marathon gave New Yorkers something to cheer about.

With a rented truck, a lead foot and eight dead in an act of terror, flashbacks of last week’s fatal collision haunted the minds of New Yorkers as the NYC Marathon quickly approached.

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New York ‘is not going to be stopped’

Director of the Village Halloween Parade reflects on the city’s spirit hours after the tragedy

There were lights. Reds, purples and blues danced across the made-up faces and costumes of intricate zombies, Marie Antoinettes, Pennywises, jedis and inflated T-rexes bobbing their heads above the spooky crowd. The fictional beings promenaded in throngs, the booming drums echoing down every block of Greenwich Village.

It was almost as if there hadn’t been an attack a mile away just four hours earlier.

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