Above the shrieks of dancing teenagers and the rumble of passing buses, Manuel Vega played the piano at Fordham Plaza in the Bronx. He's not a concert pianist. He's just a regular guy who happened to see a piano on the sidewalk.

New York is a city of islands, irregular masses of land that straddle rivers, creeks and bays. Yet, other than a minority of folks who regularly ride one of the few ferry systems, we are a culture that is tethered to the land, traveling along subways and roads that pass over and under the water. We admire it from the safety of a vast assortment of waterfront parks—but rarely engage with it directly. And, rarer still, in a watercraft that doesn't have engines.

If art exhibits, outdoor music or car-free bike-riding aren’t enough of a draw, consider visiting Governors Island for a peek at a massive urban redevelopment project.

A clown, a mask-maker for pro-wrestlers, the Hasidic Jew on Conan O'Brien, Stanley Allan Sherman is a modern-day Renaissance man. 

Know Your Neighbor puts the spotlight on the unsung souls living right next door. 

The halls of Stuyvesant High School are home to some of the city's brightest students—and a Korean-American Lady Gaga. Meet 17-year-old Chong No from Bayside, Queens.

 

Musician Julianna Barwick creates multitiered, otherworldly songs with her voice, a few machines, and Garageband. And it all goes down right in her bedroom in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Keeping dogs happy is a serious business for Malcolm Smart of Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. With a doggie daycare center, grooming shop and supply store, he has made a love for pups his life's work.

A massive renovation is underway at the United Nations. Luckily for aficionados of mid-century modern design, there is also an elaborate strategy in place to preserve and restore the complex's iconic features, keeping the U.N. looking like it's 1952.

Samuel Menashe of Greenwich Village writes poems. Really short poems.

Your kid's art isn't just good for decorating refrigerators and office cubicles. It's also a glimpse into imagination and the creative process.

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The Takeaway reclaims the mighty pig this Memorial Day and gets a cooking lesson from pork-loving restaurateur Craig Samuel at Peaches, his joint in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Learn how to make his signature "Watermelon Salad with Country Ham," shop for the best-tasting pork, and turn anyone into a pork lover.

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Networking technology has radically changed how we do many things -- including startling other people. The group Improv Everywhere uses it to pull off pranks—or, as they call them, missions. Two of their best known missions are the famous annual no-pants subway ride, and the Grand Central Station freeze. Now the Improv Everywhere guys have a book: Causing a Scene: Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places with Improv Everywhere. It's part a documentation of their work, part a how-to manual. Co-author Alex Scordelis joins The Takeaway to discuss the group and its methods.

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This year 3.2 million students are expected to graduate from high school and of those, roughly 70 percent will go on to get a college education. But with two-thirds of college graduates carrying debt—and the average student loan debt topping $20,000 dollars—is a college degree worth it? What does it get you in today's global economy?

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Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke to the graduating class at New York University yesterday. Did she tell the new grads what they wanted to hear?

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It's a recipe for frustration. In tough economic times, many people are working too hard to take off for an hour-long lunch. And who wants to leave your desk empty when the threat of layoffs is looming? So we dine "al desko": a sandwich in one hand and the mouse in the other. The culinary cost of "just grabbing a sandwich" everyday quickly adds up. But the task of making lunch the night before can be daunting, and boil-in-bag food can be dull. Is there anything you can do at your desk to prepare or pep up your midday meal? New York Times food writer and friend of The Takeaway Melissa Clark has some tips.

Check out a video response from YouTube user BradyDale, who tells us the one condiment Melissa forgot to include!

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You can't get swine flu from eating pork. (And it’s not even called swine flu anymore—technically it’s H1N1 Influenza A.) Nonetheless, the pork industry can’t be happy about having its product associated with a frightening illness, even if that association is completely imaginary. Advertising consultant Cindy Gallop joins The Takeaway with her creative suggestions for resuscitating a product that has been sullied by circumstances.

What does a pandemic mean? We hear it and we think panic. But strangely the word pandemic has no other synonym in the English language. The Takeaway asks Grant Barrett, lexicographer, dictionary editor and co-host of public radio program "A Way With Words," to break it down for us.