Vendors at the Hunts Point wholesale produce market, located on 125 acres of city-owned land in the South Bronx, have said they will consider leaving the site for points “north or west” because the city is not cooperating with their expansion needs. According to the AP, the market supplies 3.3 billion pounds of fruits and vegetables a year, mostly to restaurants and small grocers. Matthew D’Arrigo, co-president of the produce cooperative, is frustrated because after......

The principal of a renowned Catholic boys’ high school in the Bronx resigned recently after pornographic images were found on his office computer. Christopher Keogan, the principal of Cardinal Hayes High School, says the allegations are “absolutely, positively 100% false." Officials have confirmed that Keogan’s hard drive was storing pictures of nude men and that since there were no minors depicted, Keogan does not face any criminal charges, though of course his career is destroyed.......

Although Rev. Al Sharpton appeared with officer Christopher Ridley's family after the Mt. Vernon cop's death, advising people not to rush to judgment, questions about the shooting are turning in the direction of race and societal divisions. The Friday night shooting occurred when Ridley, off-duty police officer, tried to stop a fight and Westchester police shot at him. White Plains is less than 20 miles from the South Bronx and about five miles west of......

The city’s food charities are dealing with dire shortages this year, exacerbated by cutbacks in federal food aid. Many places like St. Benedict the Moor Neighborhood Center in the South Bronx are almost barren; according to today’s Times, the center’s pantry used to be stacked up to the ceiling with food but now holds just “a few sacks of potatoes, some cornflakes, juice and peanut butter.” To help fill the void, City Harvest, the non-profit......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a double stabbing at 14-19 31 Drive in Queens, a double shooting at 138th St. and 59th Ave. in Queens, and a commercial robbery on East 12th St. between 3rd and 4th Aves. in Manhattan. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is committing millions of dollars to residents of the South Bronx, pleasing some, rankling others, and infuriating the Mayor of Caracas, which is Venezuela's desperately poor capital. Marilyn Kaytor, who......

Plans for a water park on Randall's Island are on the verge of collapse as the developer granted a state concession to build the amusement complex missed its second deadline in seven months to secure financing. According to the Daily News, many East Harlem residents and park advocates were ecstatic at the project's possible failure. Tickets for the water park would have been priced at $37 a person and would result in a de facto......

It was reported last week that the 71 year-old Hartsdale, Westchester Carvel -- the very first outpost of the ice cream shop -- will likely be demolished at the end of next summer to make room for businesses that presumably make more money. Yes, the 68% milkfat solid, sidereal softy known as Cookie Puss is crying tiny crunchy tears as we speak; Flying Saucers are slowing down for their final approach. While the building’s current......

The summer of 1977 was host to a serial killer, a day-long blackout and a crime rate around 75% higher than today's. The NY Sun reports that "politicians, police officers, and reporters are gathering together to remember that time and celebrate." John Jay College of Criminal Justice's Eugene O'Donnell is the one holding the press conference today which will focus on the anniversary of the capture of David Berkowitz, aka the " Son of Sam."......

When Omar Freilla founded Green Worker Cooperatives, an incubator for eco-friendly worker coops, he set the initial goal of $700,000. “We weren’t even sure how we were going to raise that much,” he said in a recent telephone call. Almost four years later, the organization has raised well beyond their initial goal, thanks to RSF Social Finance and numerous local churches. Environmental justice isn’t new to Freilla. Before founding GWC, Freilla spent his days as......

Mayor Bloomberg returned from Sun Valley's media mogul conference to stump for his congestion pricing program at three churches yesterday. And today he's headed to Albany, as the congestion pricing program will be discussed by the Legislature. The Bloomberg administration has pointed out that the federal Department of Transportation is pretty willing to give $537 million in funding to NYC if the concept of congestion pricing is passed by Albany lawmakers, but the deadline for......

In response to the annual Fancy Food Show taking place July 8-10 at the Jacob Javits Center, Marlow and Sons buyer and fromager Tom Mylan, along with artisanal cheese expert Sasha Davies, will be staging the first ever New York Unfancy Food Show, to be held at the East River Bar in south Williamsburg this Sunday afternoon from 1 to 7 PM. For a $5 suggested donation, attendees will be able to sample a score......

Con Ed is laying the blame on Mame Mother Nature for the two power outages this past week. The utility issued a statement saying that the 48-minute blackout on Wednesday - the one that hit the Upper East Side and South Bronx - was caused by a "strong lightning strike." This is what the Con Ed statement said:Information obtained from real-time lightning tracking data show that detection instruments measured a lightning strike of 34,000 amperes......

We're getting reports of a blackout on the Upper East Side, from the East 60s up to Harlem, on Third Avenue (mostly about transit blackouts) and York Avenue in the 80s. Subway service is affected - the 4/5/6 line is down. A reader whose friend was at Randalls Island says a Con Ed station exploded. UPDATE: 4PM WNBC reports that the outages are all along the East Side. OEM says "transformer explosions caused at......

Some NYPD members aren't exactly burnishing the department's reputation this weekend. In separate incidents, one pair of cops was arrested for allegedly participating in a drug ring and another officer was arrested for possibly killing a man during a dispute. New Jersey cops arrested NYPD officers Hector Alvarez and Miguel Castillo as they were reportedly planning hold-ups in North Bergen and Rutherford. Initially, the cops, who work out of Brooklyn and Manhattan, claimed they were......

On November 23, 1990 a bouncer outside of the Palladium nightclub (now an NYU dorm on 14th St.) was shot and killed when a fistfight escalated to gunplay. A year later, David Lemus and Olmedo Hidalgo were convicted of the killing and sent to prison, despite their defense that they were not even at the Palladium that night. Hidalgo's conviction was later overturned and Lemus was released from prison after 14 years, only to face......

The U.N. invited Pope Benedict XVI to NYC earlier this year and the pontiff just accepted. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon extended the invite recently and the pope agreed to an as-yet-unscheduled visit. The previous pope, John Paul II, visited New York twice, in 1979 and again in 1995. His first visit was frenetic in a manner that belied the man's later physical frailty: He headed first to the United Nations, where he met......

Last night at the Waldorf Astoria, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - the first hip-hop act to receive the honor! The South Bronx group pioneered the genre, being the first to incorporate deejaying and emceeing. Melle Mel told AllHipHop.com: “We are going in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to represent exactly who we are and what we did. Nas saying that......

The city's Franchise and Concession Review Committee is scheduled to vote this coming week on whether or not to approve a proposal to have twenty Manhattan private schools pay for part of the renovation of Randall's Island athletic fields in return for exclusive use of a majority of the fields. The plan, which is separate from the controversial water park, calls for schools such as Dalton and Spence to pay the city $52 million dollars......

Yesterday, the Mayor unveiled the South Bronx Greenway Plan, which is part of the Hunts Point plan that " improve access to the waterfront, provide much-needed recreational opportunities, improve transportation safety and greatly enhance the network of bike and pedestrian paths on the South Bronx peninsula." The city will start four projects that will bring a waterfront park (with floating dock for boaters and kayakers) and paths for joggers and bicyclists. Construction will begin......

A recent NYU study found that children in the South Bronx suffer from astronomical asthma rates: in one Hunt’s Point elementary school, one in four children showed symptoms of the respiratory disease. The study attributed the frequency of asthma to the maze of highways and truck routes that traverse the area. Another likely culprit not mentioned in the study's press release: the seven MTA and privately owned bus depots in the Harlem/South Bronx area.......

Even without the sleep-busting noise and window-covering grime that come from the passing traffic, living near a highway comes with other hazards. The Times reports today about a recent NYU study that found that children who live in the Bronx suffer from higher asthma rates thanks to the number of busy roads that tread so close to where they work and play. The study, which involved asthma-stricken schoolchildren wearing detectors that analyzed the air around......

The year 2030 is in the MTA's sights, as it starts to work on solutions as the city will grow and change. AMNY was at the briefing panel, where director of planning William Wheeler said, "I've never seen a more exciting time in terms of growth in the region." Exciting, yes, but it's also scary when we think about what the MTA will need to do to accomodate for the expected 1.5 million increase......

Chubby in Staten Island We posted a little while back about how hot Staten Island is. And now we'd like to add how fat it is. According to the City Health Department, its our fattest borough - or is at least made up of people who think they're fat (almost 27% responded to a survey admitting to be obese). 1 out of 3 men on the Island and just under 1 out of 4 women......

-- Queens Democratic bigwig Thomas Manton died over the weekend; Bloomberg called him a ""classy guy". -- Our Town has a good backgrounder piece about Gothamist, complete with quotes from Craig Newmark and Adam Kuban. -- South Bronx residents miss their vacant lots; but it may take awhile to fill all 1300 of them. -- Speaking of total destruction, Gowanus Lounge went up to Astoria and took some pix. -- Did you know Fabio......

- Some Greenwich Village residents are worried that plans for 36-40 Gansevoort Street will mean sleepless nights. Fashion brand Theory (Angelina Jolie wears it!) is converting a five-story building into offices, complete with a rooftop garden, which conjured up Hotel Gansevoort nightmares for people living on Horatio Street. Theory has met with residents and Theory's president Andrew Rosen told the Times, "We're not a bar. We're a day business. Our only objective is to be......

As World Cup fever slowly infects its way across the five boroughs (we can't be the only ones who've found ourselves standing for hours in bodegas staring at soccer matches when we've already bought the beer we came for) the city has announced its own new competition, and we're pretty pumped for it, too! Using one of the few remaining large vacant properties in the city's portfolio, the Bloomberg administration and an architects' group......

Even though that strange maple syrup scent that pervaded the air a few months back has left, our fair city’s less-than-fair air may be making our kids dumber. A new Columbia University study, which tracked 183 3-year-olds from Harlem, Washington Heights, and the South Bronx, finds that kiddies exposed to high levels of air pollution in the womb have higher rates of mental deficiencies. Women in the study were asked to wear air pollution monitors......

This past February Mayor Bloomberg announced an expansion of the city's five-year housing plan to a ten-year plan that will create and preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing by the end of 2013. The two lead agencies in the housing initiative are the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). Recently, Gothamist had the opportunity to take a walking tour of the neighborhood around Marcus Garvey Park led by......

Could it be true? The New York Post is reporting that the DoT has approved a plan to build a 3.5 mile, $12.8 billion, seven lane tunnel under the Brooklyn waterfront, and then demolish the existing Gowanus Expressway. If funded, the project could be complete in about 15 years. Since Robert Moses approved construction of the expressway over a disused elevated rail in 1939, the highway has been a huge headache for the city.......

Ooooh! The mashup geniuses at Faneuil Media have put together an elaborate map of New York murders to accompany this New York Times article. The data spans the last three years. Some people have reported the mashup is loading a little bit slow, so if its not working for you, check out this static map that the Times through in for good measure: The bottom line: murders are concentrated in poor neighborhoods, especially in......