At an East New York construction site, a neighboring building's wall partially collapsed, killin one of the workers yesterday morning. The construction site was for a commercial building at 791 Glenmore Avenue, the neighboring building was a residence at 795 Glenmore. The workers had been digging a foundation at 791, when 795's wall became compromised. Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster said there was "evidence of shoddy work conditions" and that the wall should have been shored......

The area of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue that stretches through the East New York/Stuyvesant Heights area isn’t exactly a culinary destination, but what it does have is the Carolina Country Store, a one of a kind grocery that has been covered here before. The tiny storefront is also favored by chefs like Zak Pelaccio, primarily because it specializes in southern style ham and cured meats that are hard to find elsewhere in the five boroughs. Salty,......

Museum Guard, by Atomische at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on Amboy Rd. in Staten Island, another bank robbery on 5th Ave. in Manhattan, and a scaffolding collapse on Grand Concourse and 149th St. in the Bronx. A building slated for destruction on Governors Island will become a lab for the FDNY to examine the dynamics of high-rise fires and how best to defeat them. Fire crews from cities around the......

According to new NYPD statistics, graffiti complaints in Brooklyn rose 96% last year, with arrests in the borough increasing by 33%. Citywide, complaints almost doubled from 4,886 in 2006 to 8,866 in 2007, and total arrests rose from 2,962 to 3,786. Williamsburg leads the tagging trend with a total of 186 complaints. “It's so expensive here, yet it looks like a dump,” long-time Williamsburg resident Mel Costello, 63, declared to the Daily News. “It's......

Police officials announced that the man killed by plainclothes narcotics officers in Brooklyn Sunday night had been on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Darin Richardson had shot and wounded a Cobb County, Georgia police officer in 2005 and had been on the run the past two-plus years. Richardson was being followed by police after they suspected he had a concealed weapon (he had been "fiddling with his waistband") as he left a bodega in East......

Last night, the police announced that plainclothes police officers had shot and killed a man in East New York. The Brooklyn North officerswere conducting a "buy-and-bust" drug sweep at the time. The man apparently pulled out a gun while police were questioning him outside 970 Belmont Avenue. It's unclear whether the man fired at police, but his .38-caliber pistol was recovered from the scene. The man also had a "pocket full of bullets," according to......

Separate incidents on Christmas Eve leading into Christmas Day across the city have resulted in five murders and six injuries. Early Monday morning at 1AM, a man was fatally shot in the back outside of a Sweet 16 party in the Bronx another 17-year-old man was also injured in the shooting. In the evening, another killing occurred in the Bronx, with a man being shot in his car after pulling into a neighbor's driveway. Around......

The intersection of Liberty Avenue and Crescent Street in Brooklyn was the scene of two separate incidents of pedestrians being hit by vehicles. According ot the Daily News, the first incident occurred by 12:30PM, when an elderly woman was hit at the East New York intersection. Then at around 2PM, a girl was hit by a cement truck. What are the odds of two people being hit at the same place within 90 minutes? A......

The police shot and killed a mentally ill man accused of slashing his roommate's throat yesterday morning in the East New York section of Brooklyn. This comes six days after the police fatally shot a mentally ill Brooklyn teen. Michael Angel Torres told police that his roommate David Kostovski slashed him with a knife while he was sleeping. The police found Kostovski a few blocks from his Autumn Avenue apartment and saw him holding a......

While the police don't recommend that store owners lash out at armed robbers, but that didn't stop one East New York bodega owner. WABC 7 reports that when a robber with a gun entered a bodega on Sutter Avenue last night, the workers beat him with a baseball bat. The robber was trapped because the owner closed the gate. Even though one shot was fired, the only injured person was the robber, who was "badly......

Coming up next Monday is a benefit event celebrating East New York Farms, an organization that seeks to remedy the dearth of good nutritional choices in the Brooklyn neighborhood by growing and distributing its own food, along the way inviting a wealth of community participation. “Our first season was one gardener out on the sidewalk with a table,” says Sarita Daftary, Project Director of East New York Farms! (the exclamation mark goes with the......

Yay! It's that time of year when the Straphangers Campaign announces the winner of the annual Pokey Award for the slowest city bus service. And this year, there's a new award: The Schleppie, for least reliable service. The 2007 Pokey Award goes to the M23: "The M23 had the slowest bus speed at 4.0 miles per hour as clocked at 12 noon on a weekday. This is not much faster than the 3.0 mph maintained......

FR.OG and P*Ong, two perfectly good Manhattan restaurants that opened earlier this year, have names that independently invoke two classic arcade video games, Frogger and Pong. Now, as the fall openings season draws to a close and the votes for worst new restaurant name have been cast, we’d like to draw your attention to the most incredibly iconic new restaurant name in New York: It's that of Roclantic Eatery, a soul food and oil drum......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a double stabbing at 14-19 31 Drive in Queens, a double shooting at 138th St. and 59th Ave. in Queens, and a commercial robbery on East 12th St. between 3rd and 4th Aves. in Manhattan. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is committing millions of dollars to residents of the South Bronx, pleasing some, rankling others, and infuriating the Mayor of Caracas, which is Venezuela's desperately poor capital. Marilyn Kaytor, who......

Gotham Gazette has an excellent look at the effects of "a housing bust" by Queens College demographer Andrew Beveridge. This map shows how much income goes towards mortgages; Beveridge notes:The median income of those paying less than 30 percent of their income on housing is $120,900. For those paying between 30 and 50 percent of their income, though, the median is $74,390, and for those paying over 50 percent the median income is $39,900.......

The New York Times's City Section this past Sunday had a special focus on seventeen-year-old New Yorkers. According to the paper, more children were born in 1990 than at any point since the Baby Boom. Now they're on the cusp of adulthood and the Times has a series of oral histories that one can read or listen to online. It's an interesting project; here are a few of the teens:Neil Allicock lives in East New......

Cellphone records won out in court over the testimony of an eyewitness to murder and charges. The New York Times reports that prosecutors dismissed murder charges against 36-year-old Eric Wright in large part because his cellphone indicated he was nowhere near the killing and conceded that there was reasonable doubt he was not guilty. When Tyrell Pope was killed in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn in July 2006, it didn't take long for......

In just a few hours, there were five separate shootings all over Brooklyn last night and early this morning. The violence began at 10:20PM in Ditmas Park, when three people were shot at East 21st and Dorchester Road when a gunman opened fire on a man. The 25-year-old known as "Indian" died while a 23-year-old and a 50-year-old, who was shot inside his/her home, were both in stable condition. The second shooting, according to WCBS......

As we mentioned, City Councilman Charles Barron held his press conference yesterday to announce his candidacy for the 2009 Brooklyn Borough Presidency. He told the crowds that his platform included affordable housing, health care accessibility, more jobs, standing up to developers who use eminent domain, ending mayor control of schools and more would help everyone. "Am I going to be a borough president for all the people? Absolutely. But I'm letting y'all know now, I'm......

WNBC’s investigative reporter Jonathan Dienst is a native of the tri-state area, originally from Teaneck, New Jersey and is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has worked behind the scenes at Newsday, and got his start in television at WSAV-TV in Savannah, Georgia where he worked for about half a year. He then had the opportunity to return to the city as NY1 was starting up and eventually moved to......

Oh, Foxy! We think that Brooklyn rapper Foxy Brown is simply a magnet to trouble. After her various scrapes with the law (most recently throwing a bottle of hair glue at a Florida beauty salon) and going to anger management counseling, you'd think she'd want to keep a low profile. But now the Daily News reports that the petite performer was attacked by her ex-boyfriends' gal-pals, after Brown dumped the guy when she found out......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A partial collapse at a building on 39th and 9th Avenue in Manhattan, a pedestrian struck at West Moshulu Parkway South and Jerome in the Bronx, and a boat in distress under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge Philanthropists, including former Citibank head Sandy Weill, donated $400 million to Weill Cornell Medical College to go towards new research programs, new facilities, support for students and education and more; Weill's overall contributions......

The East New York apartment fire that left a baby dead may have been started by one of her siblings. Relatives tell the Daily News that 3-year-old Shamel Webb had been playing with a cigarette lighter that ignited his little sister's stroller blanket. Five-year-old sister Aalayah tried to get 1-year-old Melanie out of her stroller, but couldn't, so she ran for help. The children's mother Althea Webb had gone out to get them Chinese food;......

Last night, a fire broke out in a second-floor East New York apartment where three children seemed to be left alone. A first-floor neighbor, Tommy Campbell, managed to rescue a 2-year-old and 5-year-old, but couldn't get to 10-month-old Melanie Webb, who died of smoke inhalation. Campbell told the Post that the 5-year-old had knocked on his door for help. Campbell said he tried twice to get the baby, "I probably was no more than 10......

Late last night and early this morning, shootings in Brooklyn and Manhattan have left five people dead. The shooting in Brooklyn occurred near midnight: Three men, ages 18, 21 and 36, were shot multiple times on Lott Avenue, in the Brownsville section. Police are still looking for the shooter. And in Harlem, a 17-year-old and 27-year-old were shot dead outside 404 East 105th Street around 4:30AM. Three men were reportedly seen fleeing the scene. In......

The city is embarking on a new pilot program to offer cash to poor families to motivate them to "break the cycle of intergenerational poverty." The public-private plan which has raised $42 million in private funds so far is called Opportunity NYC, and Mayor Bloomberg said, "If you’re serious about tackling poverty, an entrenched problem that has proven resistant to conventional government programs, you have to be serious about trying new things, taking a new......

Yesterday, three pedestrians were killed in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan:- At around 12 a.m, Mario Sagastume was hit by a Nissan Maxima when crossed Ashford Street near Liberty Avenue in East New York. The Maxima did not stop, though people were chasing the car. Residents mentioned that there are frequent accidents and that there should be a light at the intersection. - At 4 a.m., a 25-year-old man was killed when a van hit......

The country's largest federally subsidized housing development was sold today for $1.3 billion. Berkshire LLC bought Starrett City, and Starrett City Associates say the money would be deposited today. Residents of the complex, which has over 5800 apartments over 140 acres, and community leaders recently had meetings to protest the sale, the fear being the new owners will eliminate the low- and middle-income housing. And even though there's potential for new development (new luxury......

As the City Council continues to look at police-supplied data showing blacks are stopped 55% of the time during stop-and-frisk searches, the community has startled to rumble. The Reverend Al Sharpton said that he would start collecting names to file a class action lawsuit against the city. He asid, "It's an outrage. It's enough. No matter how productive you are, to be cast as a suspect rather than a citizen is intolerable in this country.........

The Department of Education ended up cutting less school bus routes than expected, but the changes are still causing some big problems with only one week of notice. For instance, what if you were the kid who had previously been picked up at 7:05AM, but now have to get a bus at 5:28AM? That's what's happening to a child who lives in East New York, if he want to take his school bus to PS......