Back in 2006, an agreement signed the day construction started for the new Yankee Stadium promised the team would pay $1.2 million a year in cash and in kind to a fund benefiting Bronx residents for 40 years. It was a gesture to make up for the inconvenience during construction and loss of parkland the new stadium was costing the neighborhood. After a year and half, none of the money has been distributed - and......

Just because the 2009 elections are over 22 months away doesn't mean some interesting moves can't happen. Adolfo Carrion Jr. (pictured, on left), the Bronx Borough President, has decided to run for City Comptroller in 2009, making it a tough field and shedding light on the mayoral contest. Carrion, born in Lower Manhattan and a former city planner, Community Board district manager, and City Council member (here's his bio), was seen as a likely candidate......

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg presented PlaNYC: A Greener, Greater New York, his administration's thinking about what the city needs to do by the year 2030 in order meet sustainability goals. The plan involves 127 initiatives under the areas of Brownfield Remediation, Housing, Open Space, Transportation, Energy, the Water Network, Water Quality, Air Quality and Climate Change, but the big topic was congestion pricing. After much speculation, Mayor Bloomberg even acknowledged that congestion pricing was the......

Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr. wants Germany to apologize for an army instructor telling a trainee, "You're in the Bronx, a black van pulls up in front of you and three African-Americans get out and start really insulting your mother… act!" Carrion calls the video "inaccurate and bigoted," and says, "The Bronx and the African-American community are owed an apology." Since the video of the incident has made it to the Internet recently,......

The Drum Major Institute released a study titled "Saving Our Middle Class," which suggests that NYC's middle class continues to be under more and more strain. DMI surveyed a number of city leaders and found: It's harder to enter the middle class: 92% "agree that it is harder to enter the middle class today than it was ten years ago." - They believe middle-class income is now between $75,000 and $135,000 for families of......

The next mayoral election may be more than two years off, but it's never too soon to start courting the union vote, especially when it's the Transit Workers Union. The men and women who make sure the trains run on time have the ability to derail any politician's campaign, so Democratic hopefuls took turns addressing the rank and file at a TWU "Save Our Union" meeting yesterday. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn spoke of her......

Mamadou Somare, the Malian immigrant cab driver whose wife and four children were killed after last week's devastating Bronx fire, will be able to bury his family in Mali and return to the U.S. Soumare's status was unclear: Though an illegal immigrant, he had applied for asylum many years ago; earlier reports suggested he either missed a court date or did not file the necessary paperwork. Many politicians, including Senator Charles Schumer, Senator Hillary Clinton,......

State Comptroller Alan Hevesi pleaded guilty to charges and resigned from office today. From the AP:The plea ends an investigation by Albany County District Attorney David Soares, who had been presenting evidence against the Queens Democrat to a grand jury. Hevesi will serve no jail time, but will pay a $5,000 fine and agreed not to file any appeal. He also agreed not to take office on Jan. 1. Friday's agreement also heads off......

At Our Lady of Refuge Roman Catholic Church in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx, where for decades parishioners have rallied to denounce neighborhood drug dealers, people gathered last summer to demonstrate against an enemy that deals in digital cameras, toasters, shower curtains and thousands of other products. Where's Reverend Billy? That quote is from today's NY Times article about people trying to stop a Wal-Mart from coming to the Bronx. Nevermind that......

Did you see the crazy Post article about baseball groupies in the city? We say crazy because it gives readers tips on developing on MO to have a fling with players:This, [Melody] says, is how it works: She'll get a call or a text (sometimes from one of her players, sometimes from a go-between) to tell her that the team is in town and does she want to party? Other times, she has to......

Hundreds of thousands of revelers enjoyed the beautiful weather and celebrated during yesterday's Puerto Rican Day Parade. And this year's theme was, "Boricuas...We count, We Vote!" Though Marc Anthony was the Grand Marshal, the real attraction was his wife, Jennifer Lopez. Mayor Bloomberg, who marched with the couple, said, "In the pictures tomorrow, I will be lucky if I am noticed at all." Anthony and Lopez ultimately needed the help of Guardian Angels to......

We hope you've got your padded spandex and your cushy bike seat, because May is bike month here in New York City. Organized by the good people at Transportation Alternatives, there are over 150 great events going on all about the city. While some of the events have already happened, there are tons of events left (the month is so jam packed that there were events in April and there are some in June) including......

Warning! Nothing serious but we thought we'd give you a heads up: The way the news played out today, Extra, Extra just isn't extra happy. So steel yourself. To start with, as the search for her killer continues, Imette St. Guillen was buried in Boston. The so-called "girl-sex" lawyer was busted trying to change his room registration at the St. Marks Hotel. Oh, and FYI: The apartment he kept for his trysts with the girls......

After reading our umpteenth post dreaming about pandas in our own backyard, a reader who was at the National Zoo sent us some exciting news:Just thought you'd like to know, that when I was there, one of the pandakeepers said the Bronx Zoo had already filled out its paperwork for "borrowing" some pandas from China. So pandas might be closer to NY than you think. Of course the NY Times article on how pandas don't......

Nothing the Yankees do is without controversy. The proposed new stadium for the Bronx Bombers is coming under fire from some Bronx residents as the plan calls for the stadium to be built on two parks - the Macombs Dam Park and John Mullaly Park. The public hearing on the $800 million project had 85 speakers which the Daily News reports were chanting back and forth - "Build it now!" and "Not on the park!".......

Well before New Yorkers headed to the polls on Tuesday, city Democrats were wondering who would be able to take back City Hall in 2009. The Daily News and NY Times talk to Democrats about the situation. It seems that newly reelected City Comptroller William Thompson, Bronx Borough President Aldolfo Carrion (also just reelected), and Congressman Anthony "Runner Up" Weiner are the ones who might have what it takes; plus, they each admitted that......

After yesterday's sub-scintillating mayoral debate, the first to include both Mayor Michael "I got money" Bloomberg and former Bronx Borough President Fernando "Bloomberg's got too much money" Ferrer," the poltiical analysts weigh in. The NY Times called it Ferrer's best day of the race ever in that he was able to position himself simply as "an alternative to the Bloomberg juggernaut." However, the Daily News thinks that Ferrer's debate effort was "too little, too late"......

It's deja vu all over again! In the recent Democratic mayoral primaries, runoffs were threatened and this year's was no exception as campaigns squirmed in too-close-to-call limbo. While former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer has essentially 40% of the vote needed to avoid a runoff, he's about 0.04-0.05% short of a perfect, unequivocal 40%, which translates to a handful of votes. And Congressman Anthony Weiner, who has 29%, will be demanding that every vote......

Okay, so it's crunch time for the Democratic mayoral candidates, with just hours until the polls open tomorrow and New Yorkers (hopefully) go and vote for a Democratic candidate. Former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer received an endorsement from Reverend Al Sharpton yesterday, which helps his frontrunner status, but many polls show the Congressman Anthony Weiner is right at Ferrer's heels - and that Ferrer still might not be able to avoid a runoff. While......

It was the Democratic mayoral hopefuls' second-to-last-debate-gasp to get in some good punches, but it was actually kind of boring because the answers were 25 seconds. Former Bronx Borough President and frontrunner Fernando Ferrer, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Congressman Anthony Weiner mainly tried to attack the Mayor whose popularity with Democrats is confounding their campaigns. And with Hurricane Katrina very much the top story of the news,......

- Bob Denver passed away at age 70; Gothamist spent so many hours of our youth watching Gilligan's Island on Channel 5 that we really feel like we've lost a bumbling friend who looked great in the color red - The police have arrested a man in connection with the shooting death of a 10 year-old bystander in the Bronx - Lance Arthur explains why San Francisco is superior to New York City at The......

On what was surely one of the most beautiful "last day of the summer" in recent memory, millions of people celebrated in Brooklyn at the 38th West Indian American Day Carnival and Parade. While people with roots in the Caribbean were the main participants, they weren't the only ones: The NY Times reported that "four rabbinical students donned do-rags with the colors of the Jamaican flag." And Gothamist's favorite quote comes from Newsday, where......

Today's NY Times Democratic mayoral hopeful profile of Congressman Anthony Weiner (the last one in the set of four) portrays him as "scrappy," "stumbling," and a possible "dark horse." It also mentions Weiner's "rough and tumble" Park Slope youth (we suppose it was rough and tumble thirty some years ago, versus the Starbucks and Barnes and Noble Babyville it is now... still, Gothamist would prefer to say "down at the heels"), not getting into Stuyvesant,......

Yesterday morning saw the second debate of the Democratic mayoral hopefuls and as it was hoped, this debate featured more zesty repartee. The debate was on a CBS 2 News set, with all the candidates sitting next to each other, which was a more intimate setting and perhaps made some of the candidates feel more comfortable to jostle with each other more. Congressman Anthony "Stickball" Weiner was in pitbull mode, with City Council Speaker......

The first official Democratic candidate mayoral debate took place last night with all four candidates, including Congressman Anthony Weiner who had been passed a kidney stone earlier in the day. After that, we can only imagine the debate was a walk in the park! The NY Times has a transcript of the debate, but there's nothing like seeing City Council Speaker Gifford Miller get all pissy when asked if he would send his kids......

Democratic front runner and former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer will start his advertising campaign tomorrow, according to the NY Times. This would make Ferrer the first of the Democratic hopefuls to compete with TV and radio, with what his campaign calls a "substantial" ad buy while his rivals' campaigns say the ad buy is "modest" (tens of thousands of dollars). Well, everything is modest compared to what Mayor Bloomberg is spending! But the Daily......

Last night, Gothamist headed to the mayoral forum held by Parks 1, the non-profit that is working to make NYC's parks the number one in the nation by trying to get the city goverment to commit 1% of the city's budget to the parks. (You can sign the pledge here.) Four of the potential candidates appeared: Former Bronx Borough President Ferando Ferrer, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, and former......

The hits keep coming for former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer: City Councilman Charles Barrons says Ferrer should get out of the mayoral race and support Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia's Field mayoral bid. Barron says Ferrer is "free-falling and it's not going to stop." For his part, Ferrer says he has a right to run. And, Gothamist would imagine, a right to lose. But things aren't that cheery for Ferrer, not to mention the......

The debate with the Democratic mayoral hopfuls was broadcast yesterday, showing how very different their styles are. Basically, the young pups, Representative Anthony Weiner and City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, were more combustible; the NY Times noted that Weiner was the only candidate to stand when answering questions, and that Miller stood after realizing this. Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields and former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer stayed seated and were much calmer, perhaps......

Former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer's campaign suffered a blow as two top aides resigned yesterday, due to "strategic differences." That sounds like a death knell of a campaign to Gothamist! Earlier this week, a Marist poll revealed that Ferrer had slipped significantly, with Mayor Bloomberg now leading; plus, his lead over Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields was also much smaller. The two aides were the director of commucations and a senior media adviser,......