Last week a video by rapper Papoose surfaced, showing a Bed-Stuy volunteer ambulance along with volunteer EMTs attending to a dying man on the street. The taxpayer funded B.S.V.A.C. was allocated $135K last year, and not to waste time hanging out on video sets. But it turns out the EMTs were duped into being in the video; The Daily News reports:"Ambulance" opens with a gunshot and a piercing scream, then shows two paramedics frantically working......

Rapper Papoose better not follow in the footsteps of his lady love, Remy Ma, lest he find himself behind bars along with her. The rapper is feuding with another rapper, Uncle Murder, and has visually "brought it" in a new video for his song "Ambulance." The song is about how Papoose is going to murder Uncle Murder, and if you take a look at the video you'll notice he's using a Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance in......

Last month The Brooklyn Eagle had a report on how Brooklyn has been sucking the creative lifeblood right out of Manhattan. In recent years Brooklyn has experienced a 33.2 percent increase in the number of self-employed creatives, while Manhattan’s growth during the same period was a mere 6.5 percent. On Wednesday the Center for an Urban Future held a forum addressing the impact of Brooklyn’s growing cluster of self-employed creative freelancers on the borough’s economy.......

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......

Sad use of our flag. [cropped], by S.D. at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting at 104th Ave. and Remington St. in Queens, a bank robbery on Lexington Ave. and 45th St. in Manhattan, and a gas main break on Van Siclen Ave. in Brooklyn.Midtown Lunch considers why it was left off the positive press clippings wall of the new Goodburger.New York Shitty wonders about these Bed-Stuy guard dogs - they only......

MOVIE: Every national election year reminds us of that part in The Dark Crystal where the hideous Skeksis systematically drain the Gelfling’s “essence” and drink it to increase their power. If you don’t know the scene we’re talking about, you need to go see it on the big screen tonight – a regular-sized TV monitor just doesn’t do Jim Henson’s creepy masterpiece justice. The one-night-only screening will be introduced by one of the film’s puppet......

One Bed-Stuy family is making some money by renting out rooms in their house. Not an uncommon practice, but the lady of the house recently recounted the faces that have passed through the revolving door of their cheapest room for rent: the windowless bedroom! This gem (pictured) is generally rented out to the early-20s set. Since Craigslist tends to bring out the crazies, let's take a look at a life of living with some C-list......

Over the weekend yet another production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber classic, Cats, closed. This hipster-ized version of the legendary musical used American Apparel styling for their look, and it all went down on Broadway...that's 1100 Broadway in the 11211 zip code. ArtCal points out that because the original Cats "ran parallel with corporate and municipal efforts to 'clean up Broadway' for big business," these hipster cats may be trying to make a point. Though......

A 25-year-old man was stabbed to death inside the Flatiron club Duvet early Friday morning. Shamel McKinsey stumbled outside and collapsed outside on West 21st street, "blood gushing from his wounds, just after 3:30 a.m.," according to the Daily News. McKinsey, who had an arrest record for drug possession with intent to sell, was pronounced dead at St. Vincent's Hospital. Police suspect that McKinsey may have been partying with the rapper Fabolous at Duvet,......

Matthew Houck is the man behind Phosphorescent -- and the Brooklyn-by-way-of-Athens, Georgia musician just put out his third release, Pride, to many eager ears and much fanfare. Playing every instrument on the atmospherock avant-pop album, he also recruited some friends to help along the way, such as the Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth. On the periphery you can hear Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Will Oldham -- but the modern day folkie has a sound all......

The weekend got off to a violent start last night with a number of shootings and stabbings around the city. Six young men were shot or stabbed on the streets of New York Friday night and police have made no immediate arrests, primarily because there are no apparent motives for any of the crimes. 1010WINS runs through the casualties: Jose Batista and a friend were both shot in the stomach while on West 34th around......

Yesterday afternoon, a 13-year-old was shot in the ankle as he walked home from school in Brownsville. A grocery owner told the Post the boy fell in front of his store, crying, "I got shot! I got shot!" and witnesses say that some "older youths had been running down the street - one firing at least four shots at the other." This past weekend, a 3-year-old was grazed by a bullet while in Bed-Stuy. Last......

Just a few days after a 16-year-old Flatbush resident died after being shot in the head when looking out his window, a 3-year-old girl was grazed by a bullet after buying candy with family and friends. Jayla McLean is doing okay, but it's depressing that there are photographs of her wound at all. She was at the Kingsborough Housing Projects in Bed-Stuy to visit her great-grandmother when two groups of men got into an argument......

Dave Longstreth has been recording music under the name Dirty Projectors since 2003, and currently tours with a band made up of three others. Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian and Brian Mcomber help him put on one of the more amazing live shows this city has to offer -- just check out this Take Away Show (and this one) filmed around New York earlier this year. Their sound is bi-polar...anxious and somber, muddled and crisp, a......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a home invasion robbery on 11th St. in Brooklyn, an unusual rescue on Selwyn Ave. in the Bronx, and a shooting on Rugby Rd. and Foster Ave. in Brooklyn. The 30-year-old homeless man charged with raping and torturing a Columbia student in her apartment in April was found mentally fit to stand trial. Negotiations between Thor Equities and several Coney Island boardwalk tenants are nearly settled, allowing many attractions......

The cops were looking for an alleged gang member in Bed-Stuy when they found something very disturbing - a 4-day-old baby in a Timberland shoe box. After arresting the 21-year-old they were looking for, police found the baby girl in an apartment that is described as filthy. Also found in the apartment was a loaded .45-caliber pistol, ammo, and a small amount of cocaine. Police arrested the 19-year-old mother for endangering the welfare of a......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: An overturned vehicle on the Triborough Bridge, which can't be good for all those getting away for the weekend; an escaped prisoner in The Bronx; and multiple pedestrians were struck Dyckman Street & Broadway. Early this morning in Bed-Stuy, a police officer sitting in a marked vehicle was shot in the arm. The officer was treated and released from Kings County Hospital but the NYPD is still searching for......

The Brooklyn Paper is reporting on a local B&B; with themed rooms in an 1860s Victorian mansion in Bed-Stuy. The Akwaaba Mansion, owned by Monique Greenwood and her husband Glenn Pogue, purchased the property in the mid 1990s and spent about $100,000 renovating it. The result is four suites decorated in African textiles and Victorian antiques. The MacDonough St. B&B; also has a library, courtyard, garden and glass-enclosed porch. It even caters to fussy "salt-free,......

A father of one of the arrested in a Staten Island 4th of July melée with cops, who were responding for a fourth time to the scene of a raucous party and illegal fireworks display, complained of the racial injustices Italian-Americans are forced to endure at the hands of the police and America's legal system. "If we were black, Al Sharpton would have been here," said the father of one suspect. "Because we're white and......

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......

Despite having been defeated in a City Council vote, where his chief of staff heckled Council Speaker Christine Quinn and threatened a black councilman with assassination, Councilman Charles Barron renamed a street in Brooklyn "Sonny Abubadika Carson Avenue" anyway, declaring that the renaming "is official whether they [presumably the city] take that sign down or not." Sonny Carson's name was struck from a list of people who would get honorary street signs earlier this spring.......

Virgin Mobile's "You Rule" campaign has been in town for a few weeks, but the confusion still runs high. Ad agency Havas McKinney developed an ambitious outdoor campaign that involves specific posters and billboards to praise residents of various New York neighborhoods, such as Chelsea, Murray Hill, Lower East Side, Upper East Side, and Bed-Stuy. But some people have been insulted by the ads (such as one Chelsea resident who called Virgin Mobile to......

We always wonder how the people fishing at various points in the city do, and now we know that there are some huge fish biting off the shores. Reader Ryan Eugene Kelley sent us this anecdote and photographs from his friend, Rodney Calhoun: Bed Stuy resident Percy, seen here riding a Queens bound G train to Bedford Nostrand, battled his giant 43 lb striped bass all morning. Wilson caught the giant fish behind a......

Yesterday in Bed-Stuy, the NYPD arrested a man accused of robbing eight cabbies in a two week period. Earl Evans, whose driver's license said he was from Nashville, is described as a "hulking country bumpkin" by the Daily News. For good reason too - his license said he's 6-foot-3 and 320 pounds. As if his size wasn't intimidating for the cab drivers he robbed, he also had a very realistic looking 9mm Glock. Evans would......

City trash inspectors have been checking out neighborhoods all around town and say that the South Shore of Staten Island has the cleanest streets. The dirtiest? Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant, where residents tell the Daily News that drivers litter the streets. A church administrator said, "It seems every time we sweep, more trash comes." How do trash inspectors rate the streets? There's a scale, and according to the News, "3.0 is the dirtiest rating and 1.0 is......

Last week, Clinton Hill Blog founder Robin Lester posted her findings of a trip taken to the Greenpoint Beer Works, a large brick industrial tucked away on Brooklyn’s Waverly Avenue between Fulton and Atlantic. She and another blog reader met up with operations director and brewer Kelly Taylor, who revealed that in addition to filling Greenpoint’s regular daily work order for Heartland Brewery, he has also been developing his own small batch beer, Kelso......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: truck vs. building near the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, stabbing at Coney Island Hospital, and a missing child in LES. Ronnell Wilson, the Staten Island man who killed two undercover cops, was formally sentenced to death today If you live in Fort Greene/Bed-Stuy, or points east, looks like the next five weekends are going to suck pretty hard: the A and C are both being shut down, and replaced......

Yesterday, the city's Health Department was looking for two people who dropped off an injured raccoon at Animal Care & Control on East 110th Street last week. They had transported the raccoon, which was wrapped in a blanket, in a pet carrier and it later tested positive for rabies. Officials became worried that the people may have been exposed - what if they were foaming at the mouth? Luckily, the people were found and tested......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: hazmat condition on Wall Street and water main breaks in Soho and Tribeca. Just great: WNBC's Jonathan Dienst reports, "The FBI said it believes a violent fugitive who kidnapped his girlfriend and threatened to use his military explosives training to blow her up in a building may be now hiding out in Queens." Love it or hate it, the new New School building on the corner of 14th and......

THEATER: The Jaded Assassin, an original “fightsical” which prompted the Times to gush, “Take that, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’!”, was a hit at last year’s Ice Factory Festival with its daring mix of martial arts and visceral storytelling. “In a mythical world, in brutal times, a curse has plagued the land ever since the chosen ones infuriated the gods. It is up to one non-pureblood to end the curse and end the misery that has......