The Phi store on Greene Street is a vast cool, dark space of dizzying height, an effect accentuated by smooth free-standing obsidian walls and willowy black Corinthian pillars that seem to be in a midadolescent growth spurt.

Perfect jelly is of appetizing flavor; beautifully colored and translucent; tender enough to cut easily with a spoon, yet firm enough to hold its shape when turned from the glass.

Marketed as the first five-star gay hotel in Latin America (but also heterofriendly), the new Axel Hotel Buenos Aires (www.axelhotels.com) confirmed what many gay travelers already knew: the Argentine capital is becoming South America's next party capital.

A fuzzy fog-dweller with a face like a teddy bear, the olinguito (pictured) is the first carnivore discovered in the Western Hemisphere in more than three decades, a new study says.