Last year Mayor Bloomberg announced a $3 billion plan to seize 61 acres of the Willets Point district next to the forthcoming Citi Field in Queens through eminent domain, raze it, and construct 5,500 units of housing, a hotel, convention center and over 2 million square feet of office space, restaurants and retail shops. But business owners in the target zone have been fighting it, saying their ‘hood, dubbed the Iron Triangle for its chop......

In 1993 Matthew Kenney debuted his first restaurant, Matthew’s, to enviable acclaim; before he knew it Food and Wine Magazine had declared him one of the ten best new chefs in America. A flurry of activity followed, as Kenney involved himself with a series of popular restaurants throughout Manhattan that emphasized regional Mediterranean cooking. In 2004 he switched gears, opening Pure Food and Wine, an organic raw food restaurant on Irving Place that continues to......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a police officer was struck on Richmond and Wilson Aves. on Staten Island, there was a large fight on Franklin Ave. and Empire Blvd. in Brooklyn, and a double homicide on Furman Ave. and East 237th St. in the Bronx. The US Postal Service is expecting to process one billion individual pieces of mail today, three times the daily average. The busiest day of the year is expected to......

The MTA has apparently narrowed down the list of contenders to develop the West Side Rail Yards - and may even ask them to team up together. According to Crain's New York, the MTA favors the developers who have already lined up tenants. Which means the front runners are The Related Companies with News Corporation and Goldman Sachs, Durst & Vornado with Conde Nast, and Tishman-Speyer with Morgan Stanley. But front runners may need......

Peter Braunstein really loves the New York Post. The fashion industry reporter-turned-prison inmate, after being recently convicted of the kidnapping, sex assault, armed robbery and burglary of a former co-worker on Halloween in 2005, gives his first interview since being locked up this past summer to the tabloid. He gives a number of choice quotes to the Post, who calls him "still-crazy." And how! Not only does he regret not killing his ex-girlfriend Jane......

The architect who was in the construction site trailer crushed by 14,000 pounds of steel that fell 25 stories from a crane may never walk again. Doctors believe Robert Woo was likely paralyzed; his mother said, "He might not walk again...I've been telling him he's lucky to be alive." It is amazing Woo is alive - seeing photographs of the site, it's incredible he survived - but given the amount of construction and development......

Thousands of commercial office workers, such as janitors and doormen, voted to strike on January 1 if building owners do not agree to give them raises. The workers, part of Service Employees International Union's Local 32BJ union, believe that building owners can afford to give them "significant raises" because owners have been benefiting from high rents. However, the owners says the economy is too shaky to give them raises. Members of the union marched from......

MTV network freelancers took their beef to the streets yesterday in protest of changes to their benefits plan; about two hundred of the workers spent the afternoon picketing outside the Times Square headquarters of MTV's parent company Viacom. According to Gawker, an initial chant of “What the fuck?!” was revised into the catchier “We care about our 401(k)s!” after a reportedly winsome young rabble-rouser climbed atop a garbage can and helped brainstorm new chant......

Bon Appétit , in an attempt to appeal to a broader, younger, and theoretically "hipper" audience, has recently revamped its logo. Taunting came in full force, via Grub Street, who concluded, "[t]he truth is that Bon Appétit will never be any hipper or friskier than it is, because no magazine about upscale entertaining can ever speak to people that don’t have big houses and plenty of time on their hands." Adam Roberts, the Amateur Gourmet,......

Naked Guy at Ted Leo Concert It's a tad early for year end awards, but this story is making a strong, late push for the greatest live moment of 2007. At the Ted Leo show at The Music Hall of Williamsburg Wednesday night, some dude from Jersey took off his shirt and threw it on the stage. Not satisfied with merely being topless in a crowd on that snowy night, he eventually followed the shirt......

Entertainment Weekly’s #1 “smartest” Hollywood player, Judd Apatow, says “it doesn’t look good” for an end to the writers’ strike any time soon. The well-connected catalyst behind hits like Knocked Up has told the Toronto Star that the studios and producers are prepared to dig in and crush the union’s demand for payment for Internet downloads and movie streaming, “which are expected to become a big part of the industry in the coming years.”It would......

Moving can take a real toll on the environment. Think of all the cardboard boxes, the truck(s), the frequent opening of doors to climate-controlled rooms and the products and solutions you use to clean the whole place down for the next tenants because you're an awesome person bucking for canonization. Step one on reducing your impact -- the easiest step -- is recycling. And it's not too hard to find earth-friendly cleaning products. But......

For many 1010WINS listeners, some sad news: Financial analyst Larry Wachtel who would gave financial advice on 1010WINS for 33 years died on Sunday. He died suddenly of a heart ailment on Sunday. Wachtel grew up in Brooklyn, attended Long Island University and had worked in the finance industry, retiring from Wachovia Securities in 2005. He also retired from daily commentary on 1010WINS in 2005, but remained a guest commentator. The Journal News notes how......

EVENT: This is pretty...interesting. The Sprinkle Brigade "unveils the future of Urban Beautification. Their upcoming show entitled, 'EQUIPPED' at the Riveria Gallery, focuses on the cutting edge in dog poo decoration." The brigade say the "art form" came about after spending "several years of experience wandering the streets of New York, decorating what most people consider to be the enemy." The opening is tonight and the show runs through the 23rd. Leave the pooper scooper......

Earlier this year, Mayor Bloomberg announced a major plan to transform Willets Point, the area, also known as the Iron Triangle, across from Shea Stadium, into a thriving area of new housing, business and hotels. However, some are pretty unhappy with the plans, which include replacing 250 businesses, and they've channeled their hopes - and a fair amount of money - to City Council member Melinda Katz. The Post reports Katz received $29,500 from "people......

Barack may have Oprah, but the stagehands' and writers' union have John Edwards! The former senator, currently in third place after Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the hunt for the Democratic presidential nomination, voiced his support of Local One, the Broadway stagehands union that has been on strike since November 9 over a new contract. Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf said, "To interfere with the power of the Broadway community is not......

The Gotham Awards gala run by the Independent Feature Project (IFP) will be held in Brooklyn for the first time tonight, after 17 years spent bouncing around between Roseland, Hammerstein Ballroom and Chelsea Piers. This year the independent film awards will take place on the soundstage of Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Among the thousand-plus guests expected to attend are Javier Bardem, Sean Penn, Laura Linney, Uma Thurman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Brooklyn’s......

On the front page of the NY Times section A, there was a photograph of some workers in Haoro, India and an article titled "New York Manhole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India." And in fact, the workers are barefoot, bare-chested, bare-handed, and bare-headed as they work in an iron foundry, making manhole covers for Con Ed and other cities. The Times explains that a photographer, J. Adam Huggins, who works with the newspaper brought......

Who knew thousands, if not millions, of New Yorkers would agree with presidential hopeful Fred Thompson on something? In this case, the former Senator and former Law & Order District Attorney was talking about Rudy Giuliani's reliance on touting his New York City credentials during a campaign stop in New Hampshire today. Thompson told a crowd at a gun store, Giuliani "relates everything to New York City. Well, New York City is not emblematic of......

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released data showing Manhattan as the country's highest paid place. Thanks to financial executives' salaries, the average weekly salary for a Manhattanite is $2,821. The next highest weekly salary in the country is Fairfield, Connecticut - $1,979. The figure reflect the heady first quarter of 2007. The rest of New York City residents make more modest amounts. Queens residents make an average of $831/week, followed by $788 made in......

Elizabeth Currid's new book, The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art, and Music Drive New York City, posits that the city's culture is the key our fiscal well-being. With insights culled from many of New York's leading players in the worlds of art, fashion and music, she draws a detailed blueprint of how these creative processes become big-money industries. Currid's thesis is that the conditions that have made New York one of the cultural capitals of......

Realizing that air traffic congestion is terrible and will be even worse next week during Thanksgiving holiday, President Bush announced that the FAA is working on new ideas, plus military airspace will be opened up for five days to civilian planes. If using military airspace (the "Thanksgiving Express Lane") works well this time around, it may reopened for the Christmas holidays. The other measures the President announced were: FAA will focus on preventing delays......

In 1656, Peter Stuyvesant proposed the creation of a public market for the city. As New York has changed, several marketplaces have existed, each creating a community hub as well as access to fresh food. Establishing a permanent home for a new market with breads, handmade cheeses, locally grown produce, fish, and meat is the goal of Robert LaValva and Jill Slater, the founders of New Amsterdam Public. LaValva and Slater seek to revitalize a......

It's hard to say what enigmatic actor Crispin Glover is best known for: Back to the Future's George McFly? His role in Charlie's Angels? Almost kicking David Letterman in the head? If Glover has his way, he'll ultimately make his mark with his trilogy of films exploring the ways in which the monolithic American movie industry systematically excises various taboos from cinema. The first film in the series, the surreal non-narrative What Is It?, employed......

As GOP crank-yanker Roger Stone recently learned, most Broadway theaters are dark on Monday, so day three of the stagehands’ strike will have the least impact on the city’s economy. The Times has a funny photo in today’s article about stymied Broadway theatergoers; it depicts disappointed Spamalot ticket-holder Cecelia Pan taking her family to a slightly different show: St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Because, you know, with Broadway shuttered there’s simply no other family theater worth seeing......

Mayor Bloomberg has made a big deal out of municipal belt tightening--stressing that the flush budgetary times funded by Wall St. bonuses and record real estate transaction fees can not last forever. Earlier this year, the mayor sent out a memo to the heads of city agencies that emphasized that flush times should not be taken for granted:As you are aware, the City's economy depends in no small measure on the profitability and success of......

One of the economic incentives that Mayor Bloomberg supports for students that perform well in city schools could include free cellphones and airtime. Previously, incentives included cash rewards for students passed AP exams. Any plan to encourage cellphone use by student may come as a surprise to those familiar with the Mayor's strong aversion to allowing students bringing their phones to school. A small cottage industry has even sprouted at bodegas nearby public schools who......

Former Ramones manager and most recently a real estate agent "to the stars," Linda Stein, was found murdered yesterday. The character who shows Charlie Sheen apartments in the movie Wall Street was reportedly based on her, and Michael Gross published a profile on her in NY Mag in the early '90s. Mrs. Stein was also the ex-wife of music industry mogul Seymour Stein. The NY Sun reports her body, which had "blunt impact injuries," was......

Morrissey x5 It was only a few years ago when Morrissey's run of 5 shows at the Apollo Theatre was the hottest ticket in town, and it's a bit sad to see Mozzer basically begging for people to buy tickets for his run at Hammerstein Ballroom this week. The $65 ticket appeared to be a bit too rich for the average fan's blood, despite these shows being his first in NYC since 2004. The ticket......

For the past few years, the officials have been warning that NYC's Off-Track Betting, or OTB, has been on the verge of going broke, whether it's former State Comptroller Alan Hevesi or City Comptroller William Thompson. OTB doesn't give the city any revenues and recently pinned its hopes on attracting more customers by making over OTB parlors and allowing bets to be placed online and by cell phone or Blackberry. Yesterday, the Post revealed that......