Mayor Bloomberg weighed in on two big Election 2008 developments: The NY Times story about John McCain's relationship with a lobbyist and Ralph Nader's third party presidential bid. Bloomberg was unimpressed with the Times story, saying, "I think that the story alleged things either explicitly or implicitly that they had no evidence for. That's not, 'All the news that's fit to print." The media mogul also said, "If there is evidence on the record of......

Photograph of Mayor Bloomberg at a Mayors Against Guns press conference last week by Gail Burton/AP Now that there seems to be a compelling 2008 presidential race, Mayor Bloomberg's White House prospects appear diminished. And associates of the billionaire suggest to the NY Times that post-mayoral life may not be enough for Bloomberg. After being splashed on covers of magazines (New York magazine called him the "sane Perot," Time with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Newsweek as......

Everyone is abuzz about the latest art world scandal, and here's what is known about the life of the Warhol painting at the center of the controversy.1981: Andy Warhol creates a number of his "Dollar Sign" pieces, using the same theme with different colors and sizes. Medium: polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas. February 14th, 1998: One of the two "Dollar Sign" pieces measuring at 16 by 20 inches is reported stolen from the......

Photograph of Mayor Bloomberg and Lance Armstrong by Harry Cabluck/AP The day after giving his State of the City address, Mayor Bloomberg headed out of town and to capital of the Lone Star State. Sure, Bloomberg did have a press conference with Lance Armstrong and former Surgeon General Richard Carmona, but more interesting was his meeting with Ross Perot's former campaign manager! The billionaire mayor had a "private" meeting with Clay Mulford, who is......

Mayor MIchael Bloomberg's largess makes him the country's seventh biggest charitable donor. The Chronicle of Philanthropy's Top 50 Donor List (less sexy than the Forbes list, but possibly more worthy) notes he committed $205 million to various institutions last year. Bloomberg's giving has been generous ever since becoming mayor, prompting the Sun to note that "the largest jump in his contributions [occurred] last year, amid mounting speculation he will run for president." And as if......

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.......

Armed with cheesecake from Junior's, Mayor Bloomberg headed to Oklahoma for the summit of Republicans and Democrats to discuss a third party White House run. Organized by former senators David Boren and Sam Nunn at the University of Oklahoma (which Boren is the president of), the group has been working since meeting last night . Here's some of Boren's opening statement:We have come together at a crucial moment. These are not ordinary times. For the......

The most famous undeclared presidential candidate, our very own Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has weighed in about the Iowa caucus results. Okay, so Mayor Bloomberg claims he's not running for president, but when you swipe at the actual candidates, have a staff that's investigating the possibility of running a campaign, and have a billion dollars to spare... The Mayor discussed the results(he didn't mention candidates by name) during radio show on WABC (MP3). Well, sort of......

With news that Mayor Bloomberg is planning to attend a meeting about a possible third party bid for the White House, the mayor's possible presidential aspirations finally enter 2008. If he does plan on running, he's lucky he has his billions to get the hundreds of thousands of petition signatures to get onto ballots across the country. The NY Times looked at the petition quest. Naturally, the states' petition requirements (and deadlines) are all different:......

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Mayor Bloomberg would be meeting with other Republicans and Democrats to "consider the merits of a third-party bid for the White House." Which means that today, not only do we get a NY Post cover, we also get a NY Post Photoshop illustration of Bloomberg, Gary Hart and Christie Todd Whitman (two other meeting attendees) as Revolutionary musicians! Former Democratic senators David Boren and Sam Nunn are organizing the......

For the past few months, the Post has been detailing the problems of apartment mold at a new condo conversion - and how they have forced longtime New York City local news personality Kaity Tong out of her home. In September, Tong had been living in Gramercy Park Hotel for many weeks, as the floors and wall in her Chelsea home started to buckle, seemingly caused by the conversion of the O'Neill Building, on......

Mayor Bloomberg may deny any desire to run for president in 2008, but his non-NYC homework seems to suggest otherwise. According to the Huffington Post, he has regular foreign policy briefing session "on a wide variety of topics...from non-proliferation to the defense budget, with a specific focus on the war in Iraq." Who has been briefing him? Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and an adviser during the Clinton administration Nancy Soderberg: "One source......

Mayor Bloomberg is back from London, just in time to deliver an address at Cooper Union while the world's media is milling about NYC for the U.N.'s General Assembly. Bloomberg will be appearing as part of a panel near Astor Place to discuss national policy matters. According to The New York Sun, an online site is attracting a growing number of supporters to draft Mayor Bloomberg as a third party candidate in the 2008 Presidential......

A state regulator says that a steam valve was not working prior to the July 18 steam pipe explosion in Midtown. The Daily News reports that in 2006, a "steam trap" type of valve was installed, but some recent post-explosion tests showed it wasn't working. The valve is "supposed to drain water out of the steampipe to prevent a catastrophic condition called 'water hammer,' which causes water to slam into itself with incredible pressure."......

Last August, Viola Goodman found her son Robert dead on the bathroom floor of his apartment, which was stiflingly hot. Despite the August heat, the heating system in the building was blasting. Robert Goodman had called his mother earlier to report the blasting radiators and flooding. As his mother waited downstairs in the building's basement waiting for the fire department to arrive and find a steam shut-off valve, her son was upstairs frantically trying to......

We've had half a day to absorb the news, but it's still kind of crazy that Mayor Michael Bloomberg decided to drop his 6-years-old Republican coat for an unaffiliated one. Here's his official statement:“I have filed papers with the New York City Board of Elections to change my status as a voter and register as unaffiliated with any political party. Although my plans for the future haven’t changed, I believe this brings my affiliation......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on Hillside Ave. in Queens, commercial robbery on 16th St. in Brooklyn, and a bomb threat on 70th St. and 2nd Ave. in Manhattan. We hope some Brooklynites' leases are ironclad, because getting tatooed with an image of your building is the new fashion. Mayor Bloomberg conjures the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Party by suggesting the likeliehood of a third party candidacy......

Staten Island socialite Toni Grossi Abrams was brutally murdered far from home this week before her body was uncermoniously dumped on a soccer field in Panama. Police say Mrs. Grossi Abrams -- who would have turned 59 yesterday -- was beaten to death, then partially dismembered and stuffed in a suitcase before she was brought to the field about three miles away and set on fire. According to an article in the Staten Island Advance,......

NASCAR just wrapped up its Champions Week festivities in New York, but a company that owns several NASCAR racetracks has decided to pull the plug on its attempt to bring stock car racing to Staten Island. The International Speedway Corporation originally planned to build a 3/4 mile oval for 82,500 spectators, but has cancelled their plans citing several reasons. From their press release: - The inability to secure the critical local political support that......

Can we just never hear about O.J. Simpson again? The whole idea the book and planned TV special from O.J. Simpson who explains how he would have killed his wife if he did it is just so disgusting and exploitive, we can't believe it was ever allowed. But we're naive and such is life, and the story has been getting crazier, with the book's publisher Judith Regan issued a statement saying she published the book......

If it's October and it's a midterm election year and it's your second (and final) mayoral term and you're very rich and may be considering higher office, what do you do? Well, if you're Mayor Bloomberg, you stump for other candidates! The NY Sun notes that Hizzoner has "intensified" his very helpful fund-raising, even appearing in TV commercials. Who would have thought three years ago that Bloomberg would be helping out Connecticut Representative Christopher Shays,......

Now this was a primary. Ned Lamont defeated Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman in yesterday's Senate primary, 51% to 48%. Lieberman still plans to run in November's Senate race as a third party "petitioning candidate." A petitioning candidate with better website security, we imagine, after his campaign accused Lamont's of crashing their server, leading them to put up a statement:"For the past 24 hours the Friends for Joe Lieberman's website and email has been totally......

Holy, holy shar. When we first heard about a stock trader's alleged murder of his girlfriend's Shetland collie, the news only mentioned animal brutality: Thomas Fong, a UPenn graduate, was charged for beating the 14 year-old dog to death. Then there was a burglary charge for entering the girlfriend's apartment. Christine Zorbas found the dog in a pool of blood and urine last week, and brought charges against Fong, based on his alleged admission of......

- You're not surprised and neither is Gothamist about news that the city's estimate of what the convention could bring revenue wise is much higher than a third party's estimate, because it seems that was the only way to really sell in the idea of a convention here. The Beacon Hill Institute says the convention will reap $160 million (not counting $19 million in security costs), versus the city's estimate of $250 million. While that......

Apparently, General Wesley Clark did not do enough jumping jacks for votes in New Hampshire. John Kerry's double digit win over Howard Dean in Dean's neck of the woods spells some doom for Dean. John Edwards is excited, but at this point, Gothamist will just wait to see what happens after the convention, weigh our options, and probably vote third party again. Check out Aaron's fantasy of having the Democratic National Convention here in......

While Candace Bushnell gets a lot of play for having written the column that the TV show Sex and the City is based on, Gothamist argues that the charm and appeal are due to the efforts of the writers. One writer (and she's an executive producer as well) is Cindy Chupack who has just written a book of essays, The Between Boyfriends Book. She talks to the Post about it, "I wrote about the......