Three people were shot inside a popular Mexican restaurant in Brooklyn ast night. The incident occurred around 9:30PM at Tacos 2004 Viva Mexico restaurant; the victims were taken to Lutheran Medical center, where one was pronounced dead (the other two are in stable condition). Apparently two groups had been "exchang[ing] angry words" when one man took out a gun and fired. The restaurant was packed, and one witness said, "There were at least five or......

Glowing eyes peering down from trees and from behind gravestones, the night creatures are disrupting the eternal sleep of the dead and driving the living to distraction. Raccoons have proliferated at the famous Green-Wood Cemetery, digging up the grass over graves, eating the flowers left by mourners, and even invading crypts to scavenge for food. The animals have always been attracted to the oasis of green in Sunset Park and were regularly trapped and removed.......

alphabet city no. 3, by nschaden at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on 120th St. and 3rd Ave. in Manhattan, a stabbing on West 31st St. in Brooklyn, and a fall victim at MoMA in Manhattan. The New York Yankees took first place in franchise spending, with a total payroll of $218.3 million last year. The World Series-winning Boston Red Sox payroll totalled $155.4 million to finish a distant second. The......

Sigh. Blocks from where a man was killed in a hit-and-run on Friday, a 65-year-old Brooklyn woman was fatally struck by a livery cab yesterday morning. The Daily News reports that Barbara Tjornhom had been headed home from church when a driver, making a right at 6th Avenue and 52nd Street in Sunset Park, hit her. Tjornhom died at Lutheran Medical Center. The driver, who stayed at the scene, was not charged, but Tjornhom's husband,......

Two hit and run drivers were arrested late this week; one through the actions of a horrified but brave bystander and the other through a successful effort by the Brooklyn Accident Investigation squad. Cops arrived at Sergey Satyr's Mill Basin home Thursday to arrest the 20-year-old for the hit-and-run death of 71-year-old Grace Smith of Sheepshead Bay. The Brooklyn Accident Investigation squad used debris from Satyr's Nissan and a partial license plate number to track......

In 1988, the Jackie Gleason Bus Depot was renamed in memory of the Brooklyn native whose most famous role was acerbic bus driver Ralph Kramden on the classic television show The Honeymooners. In fact the logo for the depot is based on the title sequence for the show. The depot takes up several blocks on 5th Avenue in Sunset Park, across 36th Street from Green-Wood Cemetery. It is one of five that serves Brooklyn......

This week in the Times, Bruni goes to Harry Cipriani in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, awards the restaurant no stars. Finds “service so confused and food so undistinguished it wouldn’t pass muster at half the cost.” Says prices at the restaurant ridiculous. The restaurant was last reviewed in 1991, when Bryan Miller gave it two stars. The one positive? “The people-watching is nonpareil." Peter Meehan visits Fifth Avenue in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, for tacos. Likes Epocas......

Drivers living on exceptionally clean streets could earn a respite from the burden of alternate-side-of-the-street parking. Residents of Red Hook, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Park Slope were granted a stay of parking execution by the Dept. of Sanitation yesterday. Because the area has consistently received scores of 90% or higher for street cleanliness over the last few months, residents will no longer have to move their cars to comply with street cleaning requirements. According......

In 2006, at age 19, musician Zach Condon and his band Beirut exploded onto the indie-rock scene with a dramatic collection of Balkan-inspired arrangements for horn, ukulele, keyboards and strings. The bloggers raved, the venues got bigger, the haters left comments. But less than a year later, the teen’s too-sudden indie-rock apotheosis landed him in the hospital for “extreme exhaustion” and forced the cancellation of a tour that included sold-out dates at Bowery Ballroom. Condon......

Cops seized 160,000 pairs of counterfeit Nike shoes from six locations in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island after conducting a multi-year investigation to disrupt pirated merchandise. The New York Sun reports that it was one of the largest busts of counterfeit goods in US history and one of four recent successful operations that targeted purveyors of fake Microsoft, Motorola, and Nike products. The haul of bogus shoes was reportedly worth $7.1 million. The Staten Island-based......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: An unstable building in Murray Hill; a "serious trauma" not far from Shea Stadium in Queens; a bank robbery at Avenue A and 4th Street; and at 777 6th Ave there was a barricaded EDP (emotionally disturbed person). Remember those chemicals found at the United Nations? It turns out that they were probably just cleaning supplies. Hopefully these aren't the same tests the organization uses for biological weapons. If......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a missing child on Church Ave. in Brooklyn, a fatal person struck by a train at Jerome Ave. and East Fordham Rd. in the Bronx, and an escaped prisoner at Church and Albany Aves. in Brooklyn. The trailer for Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert documentary "Shine a Light" has been released and can be seen here. Arts group ABC No Rio has abandoned plans for a gut renovation of......

Residents are trying to clean up after the mess of yesterday's EF2 tornado that touched down in Brooklyn. At least 40 homes, many in Bay Ridge and Sunset Park, and buildings were damaged. The tornado touched down first at 6:30AM, with winds of over 100 miles per hour, making it the first in the borough since 1889 (there was an F1 in Staten Island in 1995; a F2 in Queens in 1985). Interesting fact: While......

The National Weather Service has confirmed that an EF-2 tornado touched down in Bay Ridge this morning. That category of tornado has winds between 111 to 135 miles per hours, and roofs were blown off buildings and trees fell on top of cars and in the middle of roads. A resident told NY1, "I saw a mass of just leaves turning and it was just dark, like a dark mass. I was afraid and......

Today's new and narrow NY Times Metro section features a battle over pizza propriety. The Times reports Papa John's Pizza is opening right next door to Johnny's Pizza, a 39-year-old Sunset Park institution. John Miniaci Jr. whose father started the pizza parlor in 1968 is none too happy about this development and not just because Papa John's is a blight upon the very word pizza: Miniaci's father died just a month ago. In fact John......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an abduction on Dorchester Rd. in Brooklyn, an armed robbery with shots fired on Richmond Ave. on Staten Island, and a bank robbery on Broadway and 68th St. in Manhattan. If one has been ordained by an online ministry, it's good to make sure the state you marry people in will recognize your performance at the altar. A possible problem is that even state officials in charge of issuing......

That big empty cement pool in Greenpoint has become a landmark. The recently rejuvinated (but still dry) McCarren Park Pool was designated such by the Landmarks Preservation Commission yesterday morning. McCarren was the 8th of 11 huge pools built by the Works Progress Administration, it was opened in 1936 with a dedication ceremony on July 31st of that year (making it the ripe old age of 71 in a few days). With an original capacity......

Brooklyn’s sprawling Chinatown, concentrated on 8th Avenue from 62nd to 42nd Streets, has an array of bakeries, dim sum houses, noodle take-out shops. Mixed into the neighborhood are some Malaysian restaurants, Vietnamese sandwich shops, and even a branch of the chain Hong Kong Supermarket. Lower Sunset Park rents and smaller, rentable square footage make it ideal for a crop of modest, decent restaurants. Because it’s less touristy than Manhattan’s Chinatown, it is also a great......

If you've never seen what an exploding manhole looks like, WABC 7 has footage of a Friday afternoon incident in Sunset Park. It looks spooky, with flame shooting from manhole and puffs of black smoke. And the smoke is dangerous, because it contains carbon monoxide. WABC 7 reported that firefighters found two people in a basement who were "overcome" by the carbon monoxide. The FDNY also evacuated residents from 55th Street between 7th and 8th......

Looks like Rick's Ramps have made it into the Union Square Greenmarket, the frenzy commences...now. We raised some of our own in few EV community gardens, are hoping to harvest in a bit and use as an herb as opposed to the pile of it recently consumed as a veg accompaniment on the Duck dish at Telepan. Nina Lalli goes on a Sunset Park taco tour. Great photos here, we especially love the race track......

An elderly couple was hit by a car in Sunset Park last night. Reports said that the couple was dropped off outside their senior citizen residence on 9th Avenue at 53rd Street when a golden four-door sedan struck them. Seventy-three-year-old Raiza Burman was pronounced dead while her husband is in critical condition with head injuries and a broken leg. A neighbor said, "They were always together. They're beautiful people. I'm hurting." Police are looking for......

Bruni goes to Varietal, calls it "an epicurean Advanced Placement exam" and awards the restaurant one star. He says, "Varietal can become so entraced with the unusual ingredients it's deploying, the unconventional ideas it's hatching and the uncommon pose it's striking that it seems not to ponder the off-kilter or underwhelming results." He does love the wine selection, and, when combined with the best dishes, says eating there can be an exciting experience. Just order......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: manhole fire with victims in Sunset Park, large crowd in Chelsea, and four people stabbed in Harlem. A Long Island Miracle: "A cab hit some ice on the Long Island Expressway Saturday morning, flew over a guardrail, flipped over, dropped 30 feet to the highway below -- and landed upright. The driver and the passenger weren't seriously hurt." The 239-foot Airbus super jet - Lufthansa Flight 8940 from Frankfurt......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a slashing in Queens, building collapse in the Bronx, and a 10-75 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Twenty students from the New School and Pace got arrested yesterday after they occupied a US Army Recruitment Center on Chambers Street. Some good protest pix are also available. Our pal Tricia Romano devotes a full five pages to explaining the mysterious and seductive phenomenon that is Ultragrrrrl. Don't try to fight her......

After seeing trash and recyclables get tossed in together, Stay Free! Daily wondered if NYC recycling was an urban myth. An informal poll by Stay Free! Daily was inconclusive, revealing that both residential and office garbage and recyclables were jumbled because either recycling wasn't available or that a contractor would separate it. The "recycling isn't available" excuse is interesting - it is the law, according to the city's website but businesses have to take......

In a town whose worst pork chop might come with a $75 price tag and a perfunctory heirloom vegetable, but whose best tamale might come from a guy in Sunset Park with an Igloo cooler tied to his BMX, it may also come as no surprise that food purveyors like to have as much control over their raw materials as possible. Long suffering menu copy words like fresh and house-made actually still mean something......

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,......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: pedestrian struck in Williamsburg, a bank robbery in Park Slope, and a homicide in the Bronx. Obama on his first apartment in New York: it was "was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn't work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the......

The sad story about 6 year old Andry Perez being killed by a truck driver on Third Avenue at 46th Street in Sunset Park has been very upsetting. With witnesses saying that Andry had the light to walk (even if he may have walked ahead of his sitter) and reports that the driver told the police he was trying to beat a red light, it's galling to hear that the driver wasn't charged with anything.......

Yesterday afternoon, a 6 year old boy was fatally hit by a truck in Sunset Park. The boy, Andy Vega, apparently ran ahead of his babysitter when crossing Third Avenue and 46th Street, and a truck carrying empty coffins from Milso Industries struck him. The driver stayed at the scene. Another pedestrian, Randolph Charles, who was crossing the street at the same time told the Post, "The boy was on the other side of the......