(CSV Center, 107 Suffolk St, New York, NY 10002) Five Years Of Fear! “America’s #1 Haunted House” (AOL.com) brings its famed interactive experience back to the Lower East Side. The event has been scaring record-breaking crowds of happy ghost seekers for the past four years, and this one is primed to be the best yet. Event Website

(Central Park, Rumsey Playfield, 70th St at Mid Park, New York, NY 10023) Architect Zaha Hadid together with Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld celebrate 50 years of Chanel's signature handbag. Work is on display by 20 artists who interpret the bag, inside a futuristic architectural rendering of, you guessed it, the iconic quilted Chanel handbag. (Free) Event Website

(Dionysus Theater's L'il Peach, 270 West 36th St. (at 8th Ave.), 2nd Floor, New York City, NY 10018) (Wens. Thru Sat at 8 p.m.) PEEP SHOW MALE, a new musical comedy by Dave McCracken, is set in a gay New York City go-go boy bar. The bar, “Lip Service,” is filled with a crazy collection of regulars that really let loose, derisively ripping into each other and anyone else who crosses their neon doorway. A Group of Lovable Regulars Meet Nightly To Pump Each Other Up And Tear Each Other Down Along With Any New Faces That Dare To Enter And Play. ($25.00) (646-621-5171) [email protected] Event Website

(World Financial Center Courtyard Gallery) Photographer Frank Capri turned his camera on the dance world producing stunning images of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Julie Kent, Jennifer Ringer and others. Event Website

(New York Botanical Garden, 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard, Bronx, NY 10458) The chrysanthemum, known as kiku, is perhaps the most revered of the fall-flowering plants in Japan. For centuries the secrets of its cultivation were carefully guarded. But during a five-year cultural exchange, The New York Botanical Garden learned the time-honored growing techniques and display styles to become the first garden outside of Japan to showcase the art of kiku in the Imperial style. Discover for yourself the exquisite beauty of kiku -- cascades of flowers, single plants with hundreds of flowers, and others with an enormous flower atop a single stem -- as Kiku: The Art of the Japanese Chrysanthemum, an elaborate flower show and art exhibition, returns to the Botanical Garden. Event Website

(Madison Square Park btwn Madison & 5th Aves & 23rd & 26th Sts) (Dusk to 10pm) The Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Mad. Sq. Art program presents Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse Park, an interactive light installation. Visitors’ heart rates will be monitored by two heart rate sensor sculptures, and will activate two hundred theatrical spotlights, creating a pulsating matrix of light across the central Oval Lawn of the historic park. (Free) Event Website

(TBG Theatre, 312 West 36th St, New York, NY 10018) On the morning of February 25, 2000, a young gay Mormon named Henry Stuart Matis drove to the Mormon Ward House in Los Altos, California, placed a gun to his head, and ended his life. This provocative drama is based on the actual events of his life in which he faced a tragic, false dilemma; either one is gay or one is Christian. Since he believed he was Christian, he thought he could not be gay. Trapped between his same sex attraction and the power of his LDS faith, Henry made the ultimate sacrifice, removing the chains of his mortality. ($18) Event Website

(Chelsea Market, 75 9th Ave, New York, NY 10011) Walk through the temporary gallery of Chelsea Market's resident gourd-artist, Hugh McMahon, which is located behind kicokids pop-up store. On Halloween, Hugh will be carving a giant pumpkin before your very eyes. (Free) Event Website

(By Request) This tour is based on new and unique research into the people and places Oscar Wilde visited in the NY of the gilded age. Event Website

(Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Ave, New York, NY 10128) (Fridays, 6:30 - 11pm) In celebration of the three year restoration and as a tribute to Mr. Lewis, artist Jenny Holzer created a site-specific light projection entitled For the Guggenheim for the facade of the newly restored museum. This video presents an opportunity to view an excerpt from Holzer’s transformative work, which casts large-scale texts directly onto Frank Lloyd Wright’s curving architecture. Suffused with a play of light and changing language, the building and its surroundings become an environment for looking, discussion, and gathering. Event Website

(The Imperial Theatre, 249 West 45th St, New York, NY 10036) Previews begin October 1, opens November 13. The story follows Billy’s journey after stumbling across a ballet class while on his way to a boxing lesson, realizing that his future lay not in the boxing ring but on stage. Event Website

(Broadhurst Theatre, 235 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036) Equus tells the story of a stable boy and the psychiatrist who tries to unravel the religious and sexual mystery that ensues when the troubled teenager blinds six horses. Event Website

(47th St Theater, 304 West 47th Street, New York, NY 10036) Opens October 2. Spoofs of the season include Spring Awakening, A Chorus Line, Grease: You’re the One That We Want, Legally Blonde and Frost/Nixon. Event Website

(Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 302 West 45th Street, New York, NY 10036) Previews begin August 19, Opens September 18. This is a new musical based on the Charles Dickens novel “A Tale of Two Cities.” Event Website

(All around NYC!) During the Food Bank's annual NYC Goes Orange campaign, individual New Yorkers and our partners come together to "Go Orange" -- the color of hunger awareness -- in support of the 3.1 million New Yorkers who struggle to afford food. Events include food samplings, food drives, auctions and dining events. Event Website

(WAMU Theater, 4 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10001) Wintuk is an exciting winter adventure about a boy's quest for snow. This celebration of winter weaves thrilling acrobatics, breathtaking theatrical effects and memorable songs into an extraordinairy journey to an imaginary land called Wintuk. The boy and his companions - a mysterious female shaman, a fearless young girl and a yellow-bellied man - deliver endless excitement, exhilaration and intrigue. Event Website

(The Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10128) In 1947, a significant discovery of ancient Jewish texts was made in a cave near the Dead Sea. These and other Dead Sea Scrolls found later have shed light on the major transformations and debates that occurred in ancient worship during the first centuries BCE and CE, that contributed to the development of early Judaism and Christianity. This exhibition will present six Dead Sea Scrolls complemented by objects excavated from the site near where they were found. Three of the scrolls have never been exhibited. Event Website

(MoMA, 11 West 53 St, New York, NY 10019) This exhibit examines Van Gogh's nocturnal interiors and landscapes, which often combine with other longstanding themes of his art -- the encroachment of modernity on the rural scene. Event Website

(Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Ave, New York, NY 10128) Since the early 1990s, Catherine Opie has produced a complex body of photographic work, adopting such diverse genres as studio portraiture, landscape photography, and urban street photography to explore notions of communal, sexual, and cultural identity. From her early portraits of transgender people and performance artists to her expansive urban landscapes of cities like Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and New York, Opie has offered profound insights into the conditions in which communities form and the terms in which they are defined. Event Website

(Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Pkwy, Brooklyn, NY 11238) The Brooklyn Museum is the final venue of an international tour of the first retrospective in more than twenty years of work by the internationally acclaimed artists Gilbert & George. The exhibition comprises more than eighty pictures created since 1970, among them more than a dozen that are only in the Brooklyn presentation. The exhibition traces their stylistic and emotional evolution through their pictures and art in other media, ranging from charcoal on paper sculpture from the early 1970s to postcard pieces to ephemera dating back to the 1960s. Event Website

(Lincoln Center, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023) From clowning to capering canines and prancing horses, Big Apple Circus is simply tons of fun. Event Website

(Bronx Museum, 1040 Grand Concourse at 165th St, Bronx, NY 10456) Photography, film, installation art and more by artists including Vito Acconci, Martha Rosler and David Hammons on the subject of the street as a source of inspiration. Event Website

(Bryant Park, 25 West 40th St, New York, NY 10018) (Sun - Thurs: 8am - 10pm; Fri & Sat: 8am - 12am) The Pond at Bryant Park is Manhattan's first and only free admission ice skating rink. Back for its fourth season, The Pond is fast becoming one of NYC's most treasured winter destinations. Whether you enjoy a day of family skating, share a romantic evening spinning under the stars, celebrate the holidays at a company bash, or join us for the many special events and ice activities this season, The Pond truly offers a bit of magic for everyone. (Free) Event Website

(FIT, 27th St & 7th Ave, New York, NY 10001) Set in theatrical mise-en-scene suggesting iconic gothic settings, such as the labyrinth, the ruined castle and the laboratory, more than 75 ensembles will be on display. Although popularly identified with black-clad teenagers and rock musicians, gothic fashion is represented in this exhibition with looks by designers such as Alexander McQueen, John Galliano of Christian Dior, Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, Anne Demeulemeester, Anna Sui, Olivier Theyskens, Ricardo Tischi of Givenchy, Jun Takahashi of Undercover, and Yohji Yamamoto, as well as sub-cultural styles, such as "old-school goth," cyber-goth, and the Japanese look of Elegant Gothic Lolitas. (Free) Event Website

(Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10029) The 1920s and ‘30s witnessed a burst of creative energy in the fields of architecture, design, and fashion. Shaping new styles of buildings and furnishings, redefining fashion, and giving visual form to avant-garde performing arts, architects and designers forged a still-influential modern aesthetic. The era’s most creative figures rarely worked in isolation, preferring instead to participate in international dialogues that crossed national boundaries and linked capital cities in collaborative artistic enterprise. Between the world wars, no two cities engaged in a more fertile conversation than Paris, capital of 19th-century refinement, and New York, the upstart challenger that represented 20th-century dynamism. Event Website

(War Memorial Ice Skating Rink, 1321 Victory Blvd, Staten Island, NY 10301) (Friday: 4pm - 8pm. Saturday: 12pm - 4pm and 7pm -) ($8; $5 skate rental) (718-720-1010) Event Website

(Various Locations Five Boroughs) New York City Opera begins an exciting year of transition as the company’s home at Lincoln Center, the New York State Theater, undergoes major renovations. During the renovations, City Opera will take to the road, bringing live music and provocative cultural conversation to more than fourteen different venues in all five boroughs of New York City. Through concerts, showcases, multi-media presentations, talks, panels, and film screenings, City Opera will celebrate opera’s surprisingly central role in contemporary culture, and will provide a preview of future seasons. Event Website

(Museum of Sex, 233 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016) A male bonobo shrewdly soliciting sex in exchange for sugar cane. Two female bonobos blissfully engaging in genito-genital (G-G) rubbing. The strenuous coupling of endangered Panda bears. Encounter these creatures and others so vivid in their portrayal that they will likely feel as though they have unwittingly begun a voyeuristic journey into the wild. Event Website

(American Museum of Natural History, 175 Central Park West, New York, NY 10023) This exhibition will examine one of the most pressing scientific issues of our time -- the massive, human-induced warming of Earth, a phenomenon that could lead to drought, rising sea levels, heavy storms, and other events with potentially dire impacts on the health of society and the natural world. Explore the science, history, and impact of climate change, and find out ways in which individuals, communities and nations can reduce their carbon footprints. Event Website