Photograph of someone determined to get around in the snow by Charley Lhasa on Flickr After January hype - which resulted in rain - and a brief moment of snow last week, a winter snow storm finally made an appearance this year. Two weather disturbances resulted in many inches of snow falling in the region: By 2PM, more than 6 inches fell in the city, which is the biggest snowfall in two years and......

Photograph of sledders, inside Prospect Park on the long meadow Convince your boss to let you take an extra long lunch today: The Parks Department just sent out this press release: Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe invites New Yorkers to come out to a neighborhood park for some winter fun. White-capped hills around the city are open for sledding, snowman-making and more. Parks & Recreation will provide sleds and hot chocolate at selected......

Tonight striking writers and friends will take the stage again for a 2nd Strike Night! Joining John Oliver (The Daily Show), Liz Cackowski (Saturday Night Live), Andy Secunda (Conan) and Maggie Carey, Joe Grossman (Letterman) is John Mulaney -- possibly one of our favorite young comedians today. Mulaney helped host one of our Movable Hype shows last year and currently can be seen on stages around town and on screen at Best Week Ever. Buy......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an unusual rescue on 68th St. and Central Park West in Manhattan, a confined space rescue at Lorimer and Meserole Sts. in Brooklyn, and a shooting on Carpenter Ave. and 221st St. in the Bronx. Columbia University is a-brimming with protests, against things like torture and apathy. A young man and his family are recovering from a freak accident involving a fallen tree branch in Riverside Park that put......

September 8: Hudson River Riverside Oyster Festival Oysters, Guiness, Irish music -- what more do you need, really. Head to Riverside Park for this free festival -- oysters and Guiness available for purchase. Hudson Beach Cafe, 103rd St, at Riverside Park, 4-9:30 PM, call (917) 370-3448 for more information. September 9: Slow Cooker Demo Rosh Hashannah is right around the corner -- time to get your brisket on, and a slow cooker is just the......

A helicopter operated by Liberty helicopters, a tour company, was forced to make a precautionary landing in Riverside Park yesterday morning at 10AM. No one was on the ground when the chopper touched down at a baseball field near West 79th Street, and no one on the helicopter was injured. The culprit turned out to be smoke from a broken light bulb, according to the Daily News and Newsday, but the NY Times describes it......

What do kids like more than Harry Potter? Alex Rodriguez, of course. Okay, maybe not, but there was a block-long line Friday for the a signing of A-Rod's new children's book, Out of the Ballpark. The AP reports that the book features "a green-eyed youngster named Alex lets a grounder get between his legs at second base and loses a popup in playoff games attended by friends and family." Sounds a little like a certain......

We are sad to hear that Pier I Cafe at Riverside Park South (around 70th Street, underneath the West Side Highway) was closed by the Department of Health. A reader visited the cafe on Sunday, only to find "a note saying they're probably closed for the season because the city said the bathrooms they had weren't good enough." The cafe had an open kitchen and bar, and the bathrooms were built in a temporary......

Given the suspected terrorist activity across the Atlantic in Britain and Scotland, New York City has been on the look out for suspicious activity. Yesterday, there were two incidents that brought increased police attention - as well as a partial evacuation of JFK and closing down part of Riverside Park. Now it turns out the strange package and abandoned vehicles were harmless. A lone package left outside Terminal 9 around 10:20AM at Kennedy turned......

With Britain at its top terror alert level after a flaming SUV crashed into Scotland's Glasgow Airport yesterday, New York City has stepped up security at area airports. Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman (the PA oversees JFK, LaGuardia and Newark airpots) said, there were "increased security measures" in place. Notably, many more police officers from the NYPD and Port Authority PD, as well as National Guard, were stationed in and near the airports. It......

Today is Memorial Day, the federal holiday where U.S. men and women who have died in military service are remembered. Federal and state offices are closed, as well as post offices, schools, financial markets, and banks. The subways and buses are running on a Sunday schedule; Metro-North is on a Sunday schedule while the LIRR is on a holiday schedule; and the PATH is on weekend schedule. Mayor Bloomberg marched in two parades in......

The weather this weekend will be pleasant, so we recommend going to the Science Barge from New York Sun Works. The barge produces vegetables using "recirculating hydroponics" and is powered by solar panels, wind turbines and a bio-fueled generator. Or, as the website explains, "We grow food in the city with no carbon emissions, no water use, and no waste stream." The Sun Works' managing director Emily Waff told Metro, “We’ve done the calculations: There’s......

The simplicity of the name of the site Old Pictures belies the breadth and depth of the historical content it provides. Inside, there is a collection of more than 80,000 images dating from 1850 to 1940. The site's database is searchable, but designed for easy and lengthy browsing. Groups of photographs are also assembled in collections based on themes and defining moments, ranging from photos of the U.S. Civil War (warning: contains graphic photos......

Yesterday, two people were killed in different incidents where their cars crashed over guardrails and plunged 26-40 feet below the roadways. Near midnight on Saturday, Joseph Harris's car rammed one driven by Gretchen Patterson on the Henry Hudson Parkway near West 74th. As the Post reports, Patterson's car went "banging into a wall, flipping over it and then plunging down into Riverside Park." The 48-year-old Brooklyn woman was pronounced dead at St. Luke's Hospital, while......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a building collapse on West 193rd St. in Manhattan, a car in the water at Ocean Ave. and Lincoln Rd. in Brooklyn, and multiple manhole fires on 45th St. in Queens. The NYTimes takes a stroll down one-time Indian trail now known as Jamaica Ave. in Brooklyn. Neighbors on Mulberry St. are so fed up with the Feast of San Gennaro that Community Board 2 recommended against approving organizers'......

QueensCrap points us to a good interview with the Adrian Benepe, the City Parks commissioner. In it, he discussed the city's goal of putting a park within a 10 minute walk for every New Yorker:That’s totally plausible. Already, three-quarters of New Yorkers live within a 10- minute walk of a park. We are continuing to build new parks. The problem is what to do about those neighborhoods that are relatively park-less but also suffer......

This story has it all: Wild turkeys, bottle rockets and a 59-year-old man with connections to the Columbo crime family. Franklin Picone was arrested yesterday for allegedly setting off bottle rockets to disturb wild turkeys that roost in his Dongan Hills neighborhood. But Picone claims it wasn't him, even though he does admit to hating the turkeys and calling up the city to complain about them - there are about 40-50 that wander around. Picone's......

Quoth Tracy Morgan, on the occasion of his second conviction for drunk driving: "Drinking and driving is not cool." Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: unusual trauma in Riverside Park (A CHILD IN A PARK THAT HAS A PIECE OF WOOD IMPALED INTO THE KNEECAP --BNN), aircraft emergency at Laguardia, and 10-75 on lower Broadway. The Morning News offers some well-considered advice for city living-- example: "it is a law of physics that no two......

Robert Moses’ legacy may be getting tweaked if organizers of three upcoming exhibitions have their way. The NY Times’ Robin Pogrebin is reporting that the Museum of the City of New York, the Queens Museum of Art and Columbia’s Wallach Art Gallery will unveil a three-parter over the next month on the master builder. Columbia University architectural historian Hilary Ballon says that Moses’ achievements have been overlooked. From the Times: Living in New York,......

To correspond with its 50th anniversary celebration reading tonight, the 92nd Street Y Blog created this map of Beat Generation spots. The map is based on a Post article from Saturday that mentions addresses and events in the history of "all those crazy hepcats who turned postwar America on its head." It's a very cool map, but it's missing one thing (perhaps because the article didn't have it): A marker for where Lucien Carr......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an all-hands high rise fire on 54th and 5th, a jumper down on 54th and 3rd, and an "armed assault in transit" on the J in Brooklyn. Aw, Ranger the NYPD dog who was injured in the line of duty, is > http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/488369p-411223c.html">going home to Staten Island - he's wearing a splint on his leg and his handler says Ranger is on a "high-protein" diet because they want him......

This is a report we'd love to get our hands on: The Post reveals details from a 44-page City Council report about crimes in the city's biggest parks. And it turns out that Riverside Park leads all parks, with 36 major crimes reported during the spring and summer; Flushing Meadows Park had 35 crimes, and Prospect Park was number three, with 25 major crimes. Central Park was not included "because it is its own......

Clearly it's Thanksgiving when a wild turkey tries to hightail it out of the city by way of the Triborough Bridge. A 10 pound female bird was loose around the toll plaza on the Manhattan side, and six MTA workers chased her! After fifteen minutes, a construction worker helped catch the bird. The Triborough's General Operations Manager Ray Bush said, "Watching it unfold on our cameras, it seemed the only thing missing was someone playing......

With free kayaking, many public events, a bustling boat basin, and runners, bikers and pedestrians on the move, Riverside Park is a vibrant destination - up to a point. The NY Times has an article about how the Frederick Olmsted-designed park seem much dingier, dirtier, and more dangerous above around 125th Street: The park’s southern tier, which stretches some 266 acres along the river from 59th Street to 125th Street, has among its highlights......

COMEDY: If you missed Paul Scheer, Rob Huebel and Aziz Ansari at Summerstage last night - you can catch them all together tonight as Human Giant takes over UCB tonight. What to expect?: "Each week they present a collection of sketches, short films, and presentations that have all been pre-approved by the other "human giant" - Michael Clarke Duncan. In addition, if anyone leaves the show unsatisfied, Mr. Duncan has agreed to go to......

Have you ever been on a plane and felt like something brush your feet, but you just convinced yourself it was the AC or someone else's bag? Well, it might have been something more. Seventeen mice were found on an American Airlines plane that regularly flies between NY and Los Angeles, spurring the debate, which town has some pests? And while mice are tiny and cute, they had been chewing through wires and were building......

Monitoring the city's job postings can pay off! Luckily, Streetsblog has been doing just that and pieces together how the city is serious about developing "comprehensive transportation and land use strategy for New York City."The first signal came at the beginning of Mayor Bloomberg's second term when DOT Commissioner Iris Weinhall was knocked one rung down the Administration's org chart. She is now reporting directly to Doctoroff. Next, DOT's creative, competent Lower Manhattan Borough Commissioner,......

We heard that a person had been injured in some sort of attack at the 110th and Broadway subway station around 3:30AM, but little did we know it involved power saws. amNew York reports that a man grabbed "two electric saws from constructions workers...and took off swinging". Yes, electric saws! Then he chased passengers down the platform. One man ended up stabbed in the chest, and he yelled, "He's drilling into me! He's drilling me!"......

The body of a 39 year old black woman was found on the shore of Riverside Park yesterday morning. A passer-by called 911 after seeing the body near Marginal Street and the West Side Highway. The Post says the woman lived on 143rd Street, with two children. A purse filled with cash was also found at the scene, but police did not see any "immediate signs of criminality," according to Newsday; the ME's office will......

It's Memorial Day in the city, and there are many events, from parades to concerts - a commemoration at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monuments in Riverside Park at 10:30AM, a parade on City Island at 2PM, a concert with Frank Sinatra Jr. at 3PM in Little Italy, and a free concert from the Philharmonic at St. John the Divine at 8PM. For more info, check out NYC Visit and go to their calendar of......