Could One Of These Teen Pop Songs Be This Summer’s “Call Me Maybe”?

April 30th, 2013 by Ben Murray

In middle and high schools, I used to pride myself on being a Top 40s junkie. If a song was hot, I not only made sure to know it, but also attempted to memorize every word, study every music video, and in some extreme cases, teach myself associated dance routines. (Yes, I can still do the “1, 2 Step”)

I’ve always assumed that I’ve carried this borderline obsession with Top 40s with me throughout college, but this past weekend, I had a rude awakening. I was checking out the top trending songs on Twitter’s new #music app, and although I recognized some familiar ones — like Ciara’s “Body Party” and JT’s “Mirrors” — there were a ton of teen pop songs that I had never heard of. Who is this Cody Simpson character? I thought. Why is a Nickelodeon star collaborating with Mac Miller? And why did no one tell me Selena Gomez has a new song? 

In an attempt to reclaim my identity, I binge-listened to all of these teen pop songs. While some are just as bad as you might expect, others are actually pretty great. But with summer just around the corner, the question remains: Are any good enough to become this summer’s ultimate pop hit, á la 2010′s “California Gurls” or 2012′s “Call Me Maybe”? We investigate.

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[PHOTOS] (Almost) Summertime And The Livin’s Easy In WSP

April 29th, 2013 by Hanna Armour


With the recent spike in temperature, Washington Square Park has been overflowing with babies playing with puppies, couples sharing cones of ice cream, and confused tourists holding subway maps upside down as they ooh and aah at the Arch. We at NYU Local documented the park’s activity for all you sleepy-heads who are still hibernating after the long, harsh winter. More photos after the jump.

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The Weirdest Movies of the Summer That Are Worth Your Time

September 5th, 2012 by Chris McEwen

To be frank, this summer felt like a bit of a letdown for movies. Sure, Moonrise Kingdom was phenomenal, The Dark Knight Rises felt like a satisfying (if sloppy end) to the series, and Magic Mike presented a shockingly nuanced and thoughtful take on the economics of 21st century America for a picture about a male stripper. (Gotta love Soderbergh.) That said, did anyone really care about Men in Black 3? While many of the big releases left us unsatisfied, there were still a ton of sleepers that really impressed us with one general constant – they were all really weird. On that note, here are the weirdest movies of the summer that are actually well worth your time.

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The Music That Defined NYU Local’s Summer

September 4th, 2012 by Zach Sokol

NYU Local’s Entertainment staff has had a busy summer, including a litany of internships, dayjobs, and even a few broken bones. The weeks unsurprisingly flew by, and it has been hard to timeline what happened when.

We might not remember all the specifics from the past few months – such as where was that one party where you puked on the stairs? – but we remember our general happiness and other emotions while floating around NYC for a few school-less months. Music helps us remember those feelings, and we want to welcome you back to NYU Local by sharing our favorite tracks that we’ll associate with summer 2k12 from now on.

I will always remember the summer of 2010 – right before freshman year – as the summer of Big Boi’s Sir Lucious Leftfoot bumping from my car stereo.  Here are some more of those precious albums. Welcome back to school! Read more…


While You’re Gone: NYU During The Summer

May 10th, 2012 by Olivia Loving

However nice it is to leave the city and get away for the weekend, winter break, or the summer, there’s often that ever-present fear that you are missing everything all the time. Though NYU does have summer events, these are mostly for high school students. The park, thankfully, will be here for you when you get back.

1. What There Won’t Be: CAS has cut its summer orientation program, so your orientation leaders will work just as cheerfully at the beginning of the year instead. Apparently, there were cost issues, but we can think of some unwise ways NYU is currently spending its money.

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NYU Local’s Summer Movie Guide

April 26th, 2012 by Chris McEwen

What are your summer plans? Do you have a job? (Hah, jokes.) A credit internship, maybe? Do you have plans to go somewhere lovely, foreign, and preferably with a beach? Or are you gonna be like us, and sit around watching some cool new movies in air conditioned theaters all day? In that case, here’s our guide to the movies coming out this summer that we’re most looking forward too.

The Avengers (May 4th)

This shouldn’t work. A movie of this scope, with this many lead (superheroic) characters shouldn’t be feasible. But they did it – they properly laid the groundwork with a series of generally strong Marvel movies, and they got the right cast, and more importantly, the right director to bring it all together. No matter what, we’ll be there to see how it turns out, and we’ll be willing to forgive Iron Man 2 if it does so well. Read more…


Who Says Summer’s Over? Part Deux: Nourish Your Denial

September 9th, 2011 by Debora Adler

So you had to wear a sweatshirt yesterday and it’s been god-awful cold and rainy ever since you cursed out the weather for being a humid piece of shit. You haven’t seen the sun since like, August, and you had to spend $14.14 on an “apt 5” umbrella at Dunae Reade ‘cuz it was raining so hard. But, hey, don’t let that get you down! Summer is not over, at least astronomically, until September 23 at 4:04 am.  Sure, meteorologically speaking you started to freeze right around the beginning of the school year. But it was probably just your heart icing over and your bones chilling in preparation for a grueling semester of Science of Happiness and Introduction to Food Photography. For those of you who have kept on wearing short shorts and flip-flops: are you on crack? May we all strive to be just as brainless and optimistic as you all are. For everyone else, here’s a list of the top five places where you can nourish your end-of-summer denial before it gets sucked out of you by a wintery dementor. Read more…


NYC Tip: A Review Of Storage Companies For The Summer

May 3rd, 2011 by Kenneth Hsu

Finals week is next week, which most likely means two things: a) you’re starting to panic about finals, and b) you have no time to panic about anything else but finals. Unfortunately, for those still in NYU housing, the end of the semester also means you have to start packing and storing your belongings somewhere in New York.

To help you avoid any summer storage drama, our staff and a few readers offered tips on where (or where not) to store your stuff. Rates were calculated for storage from May 18 – Sept. 1.

Manhattan Mini Storage (17 locations)
By far the city’s largest storage company, rates for MMS vary by location but generally fall within $70-100 per month, not including the various student discounts. The website lists closet space at the 2nd St. & 2nd Ave. location at $290 per month, but that number is probably significantly lower after you prove you’re an NYU student. However, the other random locations (Chelsea, Financial District, Harlem, etc.) might mean you need a car or cab to haul your stuff there. Call 212-Storage for more details on a student discount.

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NYU Local’s Essential Summer Posts

September 7th, 2010 by Charlie Eisenhood

Welcome back everyone. We hope you’ve had a fantastic summer. We here at NYU Local certainly did, but it wasn’t just barbecues and parties. Really, we did actual work. A little, anyway.

Here’s a collection of the site’s best posts from over the summer. Catch up quick – we’re back at full speed today. Read more…


NYC Parks To Hang Out In This Summer

April 28th, 2009 by Josh Becker

Juice download.static.flickr.com/27/49435311_94af27affc.jpg?v=0″ class=”alignleft” width=”250″ height=”160″ />It is almost summer, which means it’s time to make vague plans to visit a park and argue about who’s smuggling in the wine. But there’s a bigger question to be answered: where to? Don’t even think about going to Washington Square Park, at least until summer starts, unless your idea of “fun” is being surrounded by screaming toddlers, sexually ambiguous Hayden freshmen, frisbee-wielding transplants from UMass who came down to Manhattan to “check out the scene here,” and scary old people. Ditto Tompkins Square Park. And Central Park is nice once or twice, but who wants to go that far uptown so often? I don’t. Here are some other nice options you may not have considered after the jump.

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