Arts & Culture

• Brooklyn Museum adds specialized gallery tours for visitors with smart phones (New York Post)

• The tiniest green roofs in NYC (City Room)

• Highlights from Transportation Alternatives' District 25 Council candidates debate (Streetsblog)

• Funding the M.T.A. (2nd Ave. Sagas)

• Check out the Web/futurist film We Live in Public this weekend at I.F.C. (A VC)

Flickr via edans

Andrew Rasiej.

In our new series, we send our questionnaire about the future of New York City to notable New Yorkers and post their responses. To start off, we spoke to Andrew Rasiej, the founder of Personal Democracy Forum and our partner in the New York Future Initiative.

What are some of the biggest challenges facing New York City right now?

To compete and remain relevant in the 21st century with other major cities around the world is its biggest challenge. Updating its antiquated infrastructure, continuing to attract talented citizens, connecting them to each other and the world, investing in new industries, becoming green, and creating a new generation of enlightened political leadership. These are just a few examples where we are woefully behind other cities.

Can you suggest a few innovative, outside-of-the-box ideas for improving daily life in this city?

Here are a few:

Thurston.

Last Monday night, Baratunde Thurston, "vigilante" political pundit, stand-up comic and Web editor for The Onion, was at New York Times City Room reporter Jennifer 8. Lee's Chelsea loft, watching the premiere of his new TV show, Popular Science's Future Of, which airs each Monday night at 9 p.m., on The Science Channel.

Mr. Baratunde, who wears thick-rimmed glasses and sports a bushy goatee, is the show's host--a kind of oracle on the future of play, sex, combat, even immortality. In a series of short segments, he interviews inventors, entrepreneurs and scientists about their latest gadgets and experiments, and even tests them himself, giving viewers a glimpse of the Jetsons-like technologies that could change the world faster than they think.

At the party at Ms. Lee's loft, producers and talent agents for Discovery, The Science Channel's parent company, and other New York Times writers were noshing on tiny sliders and tuna tartare on sliced cucumber and staring at a giant screen beamed on a wall, displaying Mr. Thurston's live-tweeting on the show's official Twitter account. He posted links to bios of scientists he interviewed and factoids about the show. One update: "Theme song of #futureof was composed and sung by a member of Divo!" and another, after a commercial break: "and we're back. hope you looked at the commercials and bought everything!"

>>READ THE REST OF THE STORY ON OBSERVER.COM

• Mayor Bloomberg has pledged $50 million to strengthen the city's community colleges (New York Times)

• Today's broadband stimulus deadline has been extended (Government Technology)

• Broadband and One Web Day get spots on Media Minutes (Free Press)

• New photography corps will document how the city's built environment has changed since 2001 (Urban Omnibus)

• Here's a short documentary about one farmer and the Union Square Greenmarket (Serious Eats)

• Planning a John Hughes memorial Web service (Upper West Side Journal)

Susan Lyne, the chief executive of Gilt Groupe, a members-only, luxury designer sale Web site, noticed something curious about the 20-somethings who were clicking their afternoons away at gilt.com: They were torturing themselves, drooling over deeply discounted outfits and accessories from high-end brands during the 36-hour “flash sales,” and watching as $3,175 ostrich feather jackets from Alessandro Dell’Acqua went for just $618, or as a silk, strapless Oscar de la Renta red-carpet-ready number that was slashed down to $2,398 disappeared. They weren’t buying. They were window shopping, from the cubicle.

“What we discovered was that, one, even though we discount significantly on the brands we carry on Gilt [up to 70 percent], it’s still expensive for them,” Ms. Lyne explained. “A $200 or $150 dress is still a big purchase for them. They say, ‘I love looking at the stuff but it doesn’t really fit my lifestyle. I don’t have a place to wear those clothes.’”

So on Wednesday, Aug. 12, Gilt Groupe is launching a new site: Gilt Fuse, another private sale destination geared toward 20- and 30-year-olds on a budget—the kind of gals who shop at J.Crew and Saks Fifth Avenue on the same day and maybe swing by the thrift store for a gently used vintage dress. It’ll be the Barneys CO-OP of private fashion sale Web sites.

During Gilt Fuse’s first couple of weeks, they’ll offer frocks and stock from familiar brands including BCBG, Modern Amusement, Chelsea Dagger, Juicy Couture, Laundry, Guy Laroche and C&C, among “maybe less distributed but very cool brands,” Ms. Lyne said.

>>READ THE REST OF THE STORY ON OBSERVER.COM

• City's first free Wi-Fi hotspot in a low-income neighborhood launches today. (NYCwireless)

• The NYCEDC is looking for a spot for the NYC Media Lab. (NYConvergence)

• Here's a report from the Fashion 2.0 Startups Showcase at the W Hotel. (NYConvergence)

• The latest Natural Resources Defense Council report rates the city's beaches. (Daily News)

• Another N.R.D.C. report: Recycling will help New York reach its 2030 emissions goals. (Huffington Post)

• Some advice on taking advantage of the bike access bill. (Streetsblog)

• There's a new listserv for discussing N.Y.C.'s application for broadband stimulus funds. (ISOC-NY)

Getty Images

• The National Resources Defense Council's annual Smarter Cities study ranked New York the 12th most sustainable city in the U.S.

• New York might have something to learn about transparency at this weekend's Wiki Conference.

• Mayor Bloomberg unveiled a new plan for Brooklyn's industrial waterfront, and changed his stance on a proposed freight rail tunnel that would run from Brooklyn to New Jersey.

• The first free Wi-Fi hotspot in a low-income neighborhood in New York City will be launched on July 31 at a park in Clinton Hill.

• These days, just what exactly does the term "green" mean, anyway?

• The city's transportation department has dipped its toe in Brooklyn's secret dumpster pools.

• If the mayor is re-elected, how far will he take tech initiatives by the time next year's Internet Week rolls around?

• Virtual doormen!

• Jennifer 8. Lee loves NYC.is, the first New York-centric news aggregation Web site that leaves homepage curation up to readers.

Photo by Antonia Belt

Back in June, Jocko Weyland, one-third of the trio behind Brooklyn’s much-hyped dumpster swimming pools, attended a dinner event at a Lower East Side arts space on the second night of the New York Bicycle Film Festival. There, Mr. Weyland got to meet a real New York City celebrity—Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn, whose pro-cycling, pro-pedestrian, pro-public-space agenda has made her something of an urbanite rock star.

 “I’m not usually one for fanning out at this late age,” said Mr. Weyland, 42, “but after hearing her speak I was like, ‘I’ve gotta meet this woman!'"

When he finally got his turn, (Mr. Weyland offered the rather hip analogy that trying to talk to Ms. Sadik-Kahn at a bike event is like trying to talk to Thurston Moore at a Sonic Youth concert), he took the opportunity to tell her about the dumpster pool project, which has turned a junky lot near the Gowanus Canal into something of an urban oasis, complete with cabanas, bocce ball, grills and, of course, three fully functional, chlorinated, lifeguard protected, 8- by 22-foot dumpsters-turned-pools.

At the time, the site—the location of which Mr. Weyland and his colleagues, David Belt and Alix Feinkind, at the futuristic SoHo-based urban design firm, Macro Sea, are keeping secret for security reasons (or at least trying to!)—was still under construction. They’ve since been hosting private parties and film screenings. It's safe to say the pools have become the latest cool-whacky thing (as in “Look at this cool whacky thing!”) to infiltrate the New York blogosphere.

But before all that, when Mr. Weyland mentioned the project to Ms. Sadik-Kahn, she was enthusiastic, and pointed him toward her director of strategic communications, Dani Simons, to discuss it further, Mr. Weyland recalled.

• Does a 22-acre park on the edge of Coney Island need a $64 million makeover? (City Limits)
• Matt Scheurman checks in on the Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning (WNYC)
• A proposal for regional rail improvements in New York City (The Transport Politic)
• A report from the New York State broadband stimulus information session earlier this week (Stimulating Broadband)
• Check out All Day Buffet's New York 100 list for innovative ideas (All Day Buffet)