Hey surfers and swimmers, this just in from the newswire: POSSIBLE SHARK SIGHTING*| ROCKAWAY BEACH| CLOSING SWIM AREAS AFTER REPORT FROM FISHERMAN FOR A SHARK SIGHTING. You've been warned, Queens. Though most sharks in the area turn out to be tiny, in 2005 Rockaway got a slightly larger creature. For those keeping track, the unofficial start to shark season this year was in July, when a 5-footer was spotted at Jones Beach. If this new......

After searching for hours, emergency crews were unable to find a 16-year-old missing in the waters off Rockaway Beach. Witnesses say a "big wave" knocked down two teens in the water around 3:30 p.m.; rescuers were able to rescue 16-year-old Carla Armaza, but could not find 16-year-old Tiara Coaxum. The search was suspended around 6:45 p.m., because police and Coast Guard dive teams, per the Post, "were losing light, but planned to resume the search......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a train derailment at 86th St. and 20th Ave. in Brooklyn, an overturned crane at 100th St. and Rockaway Beach Blvd. in Queens, and an amputation on Hylan Blvd. on Staten Island. A guy who jumps off buildings for fun says that security guards caused him "severe emotional distress" when they prevented him from leaping off the Empire State Building, so he's suing the ESB's owners for $30 million.......

This summer, when Jeremy Blake walked into the Rockaway Beach surf, he left many with a lot of questions...and he left his life's work behind. His films, C-prints, drawings and paintings are now hanging in homage at his memorial exhibit at Kinz, Tillou, & Feigen. Opening last week and running through January 5th, the show will even include the incomplete piece he was still working on at the time of his death:His sixth solo exhibition......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a child was found at 115th St. and Nicholas Ave. in Manhattan, an unusual incident at Columbus Circle in Manhattan with a man atop the globe in front of the Trump International, and a double shooting on Hegeman Ave. in Brooklyn. A worker fired from her job at the substance-abuse outreach organization Odyssey House said that her former supervisor would talk of his sexual exploits constantly. One of the......

Cue up John Williams famous two-note motif! Following Saturday's shark sighting in Rockaway, another shark reached the shores of New York in Coney Island. The summer went out with a bite, not a bang, as city lifeguard Marius Mironescu rescued a 2-foot sand shark from frenzied beach-goers yesterday. And as he swam the shark out to safety...the little guy gave him a bite. "They were holding on to it and some people were actually......

What a wild weekend for area beaches! On Saturday, a shark washed up at Rockaway Beach. Yesterday, a bunch of medical waste and trash was swept in onto the Jersey shore, causing beach closures. The beaches were reopened this morning, but would you really want to go back after "syringes, tampon applicators, gauze and other debris" were found? NJ environmental officials aren't sure where the junk came from, but they are investigating. The NRDC recently......

That shark that washed up on Rockaway Beach yesterday and briefly caused lifeguards to close the beach was not much of a threat. The shark, which seems to have beached itself, was pushed back into the water by a beachgoer and was seen swimming offshore for about an hour afterwards. WCBS reports that, according to an Animal Department Supervisor at the New York Aquarium, the shark was a thresher shark, not known for attacking......

Late last month, after the death of his girlfriend Theresa Duncan, witnesses saw Jeremy Blake walk in to the water around Beach 102nd Street. The 35-year old East Village artist left a suicide note (along with clothes and a wallet) under the boardwalk at Rockaway Beach. His body was found on July 22nd off of Sea Girt, NJ, five days after he was last seen. Yesterday the body was identified as Blake's. Police spokesman Paul......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a water rescue at 23rd St. and the East River off Manhattan, a stabbing at 23rd St. and 4th Ave. in Brooklyn, and a shooting on Springfield Blvd. in Queens. The drunk off-duty cop, who plowed into an aspiring photographer taking pictures in a closed lane of the 59th St. Bridge, was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter. Authorities believe they may have found......

It's the longest day of the year, so you should be able to fit Shepard Fairey's exhibit and at least one of the following events in. READING: Tommy Trantino was convicted and sentenced to death in 1964 for the murder of two New Jersey police officers. While doing time, he wrote to Leonard Weinglass, the lawyer who defended the Chicago Seven. From the letters came a book deal, and his stories (along with poetry, drawings......

THEATER: Gertrude Stein is regarded as an avant-garde intellectual whose adventurous prose has long overshadowed her plays – despite her Broadway hit Four Saints in Three Acts. (Who could forget?) A crack team of downtown experimental theater types are now hoisting six of Stein’s one-acts out of obscurity with a production in the East Village. The evening, irresistibly dubbed Steinese Takeout, boldly embraces Stein’s radicalism and runs with it. How radical are these plays? “How......

THEATER: A revival of Patrick Hamilton’s thriller Gaslight has just begun at Irish Rep; some may remember the award-winning 1944 film version starring Ingrid Bergman and Angela Lansbury. The chilling study in domestic domination to the max concerns a diabolical husband who, not satisfied in exploiting his wife’s savings to buy their house, plots her murder. But while he’s out the police inspector comes in to warn the poor bride that her husband is suspected......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: falling debris this afternoon on West 46th St. and 8th Ave. in Manhattan, an unstable building on Troutman St. in Brooklyn, and a dead body in the water off Manhattan's Battery. Reasoning it's not far and not hard to reach by water, Mayor Bloomberg thinks commuters will be happy to hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach on a ferry service from downtown Manhattan. A report from the Times Square......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a stabbing on East 17th Street, a pedestrian struck by auto in Borough Park, and a police-involved shooting in East Flatbush. A "greedy fisherman" faces up to four years in the clink for lifting "872 pounds of striped bass, 32 pounds of fluke and numerous crabs" out of the heavily contaminated waters off the coast of Rockaway Beach in Queens. Attention local gourmands: an upscale French bistro has opened......

A lot of yellow cabbies are driving around blind with rage. The stresses of driving in the city and dealing with New Yorkers are clearly too much to handle. Occasionally, I find myself slipping down into that vortex of sin and degradation. So I go to my happy place. Rockaway Beach is that place. I lived there in a bungalow less than a block from the boardwalk for 365 halcyon days, and life had......

It's hot, humid, and I want to go to the beach. What are my options? Well, Gateway National Recreation Area is right in our neck of the woods, extending in three New York City boroughs and into northern New Jersey. It is a good place to start your quest for the perfect patch of sand and cooling waters. Queens: Jacob Riis Park 2 to Flatbush Ave., Q35 Bus to Riis Beach Staten Island: Great Kills......

With all this global climate chaos, it almost seemed weird that summer arrived perfectly on schedule this year. The first truly hot, sticky, muggy days of the year came over Memorial Day weekend the way the lord intended when He created barbeques, day games, and ice cream trucks. And while summer means boiling apartments and gushing fire hydrants in the more densely populated parts of New York, it means sun tan lotion, body surfing, and......

New York City as Ohio? The NY Times says it's so, as film productions take advantage of the city's new tax breaks to encourage production money come to the Big Apple. Freelance location scout Mark Bodnar ran down how the city can be transformed into almost anywhere:For the rural South? "I'd head to Rockaway Beach and all those great abandoned Army barracks there." For farmland? Floyd Bennett Field, in Brooklyn. For the desert? A......

WNBC 4 has these pictures of a shark that washed up on Rockaway Beach. The picture of the shark is weird, because we can't tell if he's smoking a cigar or if his tongue is bloated or if it's a big sock monkey. And Gothamist likes how there's a huge crowd around the shark - we imagine lots of cameraphoning! However, we hope there aren't any more sharks in the area, because we don't......

- Coney Island and Red Hook are are safer! - High NY taxes - Will the MTA go for for corporate sponsorships of stations and subways? - Democration Convention thoughts: 1, 2, 3 - The Subway bandit is nabbed! - The plight of the Greek coffee shop - A little about Rockaway Beach - GOPizza arrives - pizza fun for Republicans visiting NYC for the first time as well as NYers who need serious pizza......

While the city doesn't seem like an oasis for surfers, Rockaway Beach in Queens is just a subway ride away for some waves. Reader Jade sent us this great photo (above) of someone doing just that, and we did a little research for any readers interested in going to the Rockaways. The NYC chapter of Surfrider has information about the surfing scene there, and NY magazine once featured Rockaway Beach as an urban vacation. Rockaway......