Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a person under a train at East Fordham Rd. and Jerome Ave. in the Bronx, a shooting on Henry and West 9th Sts. in Brooklyn, and a homicide on Roosevelt Ave. in Queens. New Yorkers found guilty of repeated incidents of ignoring recycling laws may be required to throw out their trash in see-through bags for easy inspection. Ads soliciting the perfect ass might not make it onto city......

Approximately 85 undocumented workers are being fired from the high-end grocery delivery company Fresh Direct on the on the eve of the holiday season because their status as U.S. residents is disputed. Dozens of workers filed out of the company's Queens warehouse. Fresh Direct blamed a federal probe for the axing of almost a hundred workers. According to the Daily News, "management insisted it carried out the purge under pressure from federal authorities to crack......

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......

State Supreme Court Justice Helen Freedman has ruled that the Broadway production of How the Grinch Stole Christmas can and will proceed, despite the theater owner’s attempt to lock out the stagehands. “Grinch” producers dragged Jucamcyn, the third largest owner of Broadway theaters, into court yesterday seeking an injunction to let the show go on. Local One, the stagehands’ union, is on strike until a contract is agreed upon with the producers’ league, of which......

D is for drunk and disorderly, not boobs and breasts. At least according to New Jersey State Senator Richard Codey. The Times first reported yesterday on the halftime events at Gate D at Giants Stadium during Jets games. Hundreds of fans gather on the exit ramp, chanting at women and encouraging them to expose their breasts. If they don't lift their shirts, the women are met with boos and sometimes are spit at or have......

You know a story is going to be good (as in crazy) when it starts "It's a story as old as the drinking laws: A teenage girl convinces a man to buy her a bottle of alcohol." And that's how an article in the Staten Island Advance starts - and it keeps getting better. The leader of a S.I. civic association! Her 21-year-old son! A drunk 14-year-old - and the girl's angry mother! Frank Ammirato,......

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in Seattle yesterday to give a keynote at the United States Conference of Mayors. The Mayor, aka Mr. "I'm not running for president in 2008" Bloomberg, discussed NYC's efforts to be more sustainable and how governments need to invest and innovate to encourage energy efficiency. And one of the innovations would be to introduce pollution pricing. He said: we have to stop ignoring the laws of economics. As long as......

A few days ago The Apiary suspected that someone was out to get Rififi after reading some new comments on an old post about the multi-purpose venue, and hearing their liquor license was about to expire. One of the managers, Karin Stanley, quickly responded -- confirming the site's suspicions:Unfortunately you are correct, there is a smear campaign being perpetrated against Rififi by some of the tenants in the surrounding buildings. They are intent on ousting......

City Comptroller William Thompson Jr. stated in an audit released Thursday that the New York had wasted almost $6 million attempting to develop a Scottish links-style golf course in the Bronx. That's not how much the city spent; that's just how much Thompson thinks the city wasted. Developer Ferry Point Partners has been working on the project for the better part of the last decade (since 2000), and in 2002 requested additional funds for environmental......

FR.OG and P*Ong, two perfectly good Manhattan restaurants that opened earlier this year, have names that independently invoke two classic arcade video games, Frogger and Pong. Now, as the fall openings season draws to a close and the votes for worst new restaurant name have been cast, we’d like to draw your attention to the most incredibly iconic new restaurant name in New York: It's that of Roclantic Eatery, a soul food and oil drum......

Rensselaer County Clerk Frank J. Merola is unhappy with Gov. Spitzer's plan to issue drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. As an employee of the State, he has no legal discretion over whether he can ignore the plan once it's enacted, so he's filed a lawsuit to block the initiative in state Supreme Court in Albany. In a statement explaining his lawsuit. County Clerk Frank Merola alluded to a recent public opinion poll that showed......

More than a year and a half after the death of Nixzmary Brown, the Administration for Children's Services has hired 20 retired NYPD detectives to work as trained investigators consulting with ACS caseworkers. The ACS plans on eventually fielding 120 such investigators. The need for a bolder approach to protecting children being monitored by the ACS follows the beating death of Brown in January 2006 and a number of other deaths of children under ACS......

Last night, a memorial bike ride was held in memory of Craig Murphey. Murphey, a 26-year-old who worked at the West Harlem Action Network Against Poverty, was biking when he was hit by an oil truck at Union Avenue and Ten Eyck Street in Williamsburg. The truck driver was not charged, and an earlier report had stated that Murphey was biking in the "wrong direction" (opposite of street traffic). However his friend Elizabeth Weinberg told......

A young man died when he fell from the roof of a C train last night. The 21-year-old had been riding on top of the southbound train car, "subway surfing" when he fell just north of the West 155th Street stop. A track worker told WNBC 4 that the victim "was holding on and he came to a wall that was long and it whacked him." Another witness said that the station was flooded with......

Showing that there are no bounds to lawsuit insanity, a Queens resident is suing Apple for marking down the price of the iPhone - and she wants $1 million. Why? Because now she can't sell them for a profit on eBay! Damn you, Steve Jobs, and your possibly faltering precious product! Dongmei Li claims that Apple "violated price discrimination laws" when the prices of the 8GB iPhone were slashed from $599 to $399 and the......

There appears to be another license plate problem for New York, but unlike the problem of people and groups getting official license plates without being eligible, this situation wasn't created by the DMV. A Missouri-based charity that provides bicycle helmets to children and sells old license plates as a fund-raiser, the American Children’s Safety Network (ASCN), is selling what appears to be a new design of a New York optional license plate in both car......

You may recall that Reverend Billy Talen was arrested in June for reciting the First Amendment in Union Square during a Critical Mass night protesting the proposed photography laws. We posted video of the arrest at the time, and Talen spent 20 hours in the Tombs charged with two counts of second-degree harassment. Yesterday the Rev faced the judge and The NY Times reports that in court "the prosecutor told Judge Tanya Kennedy that Mr.......

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke today, giving a speech and sort of answers some of questions posed by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and School of International and Public Affairs Dean John Coatsworth. We're sure video and transcripts will come shortly, but in the meant time, The Bwog, New York, and City Room have been liveblogging the speech. Here's a sample of questions posed, via the City Room:In response to a question about the treatment......

Governor Spitzer can rest a bit easier now: The Albany County DA found that the governor's aides broke no laws when they tried to use the state police to discredit a rival, State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. DA David Soares will release a report today, but in the meantime, his spokeswoman's statement said, "This office found no illegal conduct. To the contrary, we found that the governor, his staff, and the New York State......

This week's NY Times Weddings & Celebrations announcements include: Forty-five weddings and one same sex civil union, plus the Vows column Twenty-four photographs of couples and one photograph of a bride-only The youngest bride is 24, the oldest bride is 62 The youngest groom is 25, the oldest groom is 65 The artist Fred Wilson unwittingly drew the couple in the Vows column together One bride is the program coordinator for the Kings County DA's......

New York City zoning laws are confusing. But there are questions about whether a condo seller and her real estate brokerage misled a couple into thinking they were getting a three-bedroom home, when the apartment technically only has one bedroom. The dispute: The Post reports that Valery and Revital Joseph bought a 3,000 square foot apartment at 354 Broadway from fashion designer Cynthia Rowley. The home cost $2.3 million and was advertised a three-bedroom by......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

Two weeks ago today, a 7-alarm fire at 130 Liberty Street, at the under-demolition Deutsche Bank building, claimed the lives of two firefighters, Robert Beddia, a 24-year FDNY veteran, and Joseph Graffagnino, an 8-year vet. In the wake of the tragedy, investigations revealed that though smoking by construction workers probably caused the fire, there were a series of failures on the part of the contractor and FDNY, as well as state and city agencies.......

Yesterday, East Harlem residents protested "greedy landlords" to raise concerns about gentrification. One resident, Otoniel Santiago, told amNew York that his $1,100 rent for his family's two-bedroom has zoomed up to $3,000 because of extra charges his landlord has added, "They said I had to pay or they would take legal action. I think they want us to get tired and move out, then they will bring in people who will pay $1,700 a......

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked......

"Islamic terrorists are at war with us," Rudy Giuliani told about 300 people at a synagogue in Rockville, Md., one evening in July. He likes to say it that way — that they are at war with us, not the other way around. "They want to kill us," he warned a group in New Hampshire the same month. "They hate you," he told a woman in Atlanta. That's the first paragraph of the new Time......

The Post and Daily News have a number of editorials and columns about the Deutsche Bank building fire response and fallout. The Post continues to demand FDNY Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta's resignation and faulted Mayor Bloomberg for standing by Scoppetta. The Daily News' Juan Gonzalez wonders why Bloomberg and Scoppetta have gone into "virtual hiding" and blasts Bloomberg for sending lobbyists to kill "legislation that would force tougher enforcement of safety laws by the city......

MUSIC: Ever wonder what former Weezer bassist Matt Sharp has been up to? Well, he's back fronting his other old band, The Rentals. With a long list of former members, amongst them Maya Rudolph and Petra Haden, the group is now six-strong, and playing Nokia Theater tonight in support of their new EP, The Last Little Life. 8pm // Nokia Theatre [1515 Broadway] // $22.50 Over at Sound Fix Camera Obscura will be serving a......

New York Knick Stephon Marbury spoke to Albany's Capital 9 News and expressed his support for his fellow embattled athlete, Michael Vick, who agreed to plead guilty to dogfighting charges earlier this week. Marbury said:"I think it's tough. I think, you know, we don't say anything about people who shoot deer or shoot other animals. You know, from what I hear, dog fighting is a sport. It's just behind closed doors. I think it's tough......

SHOP: We don't normally talk about shopping here, but today marks the beginning of that Barney's Warehouse Sale we always hear so much about. Get your comfy heels on and get ready to fight for your fashion! Through September 3rd, 8amto 9pm // 255 W 17th St Meanwhile, shoes we adore but can never afford are also on sale at Hollywould. Expect dresses, bags and omg the most cutest ballerina flats ever! All from $65......