Aside from the music, this evening's Bon Jovi concert on Central Park's Great Lawn will be different from the regular Metropolitan Opera or NY Philharmonic concert-- primarily because of the things one won't be able to bring into the park. While security is generally laissez-faire towards alcohol and food at the classical music events, today's free show is another story. Ticket holders will not be allowed to bring strollers, umbrellas, alcohol, cameras, backpacks, large bags,......

Macondo: Named after the fictional Colombian village in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, this new Lower East Side restaurant gives Latin street food a gourmet twist. We stopped in for dinner Thursday night, and though they're still working out the kinks (the frozen drinks took forever, and some of the staff had no idea what they were setting down on the table) it's worth a trip for the cod fish Arepa alone.......

The expected new home of Major League Baseball's television network is being chopped down in size because of financial concerns. Vornado Realty Trust is having trouble securing the financing to erect a high-rise tower on 125th St. and Park Ave., and is currently renegotiating with MLB about its lease. The tower may only rise 14 stories, down from 21 stories--apparently lack of interest from other potential tenants is also hamstringing the initial architectural plans. It's......

The Department of Transportation announced a plan to test charging higher parking meter rates at high-demand times--the parking meter version of congestion pricing, as it were--in Manhattan and Brooklyn this fall. According to the NY Times, the goal is to "increase turnover in curbside parking spaces in the test areas...so that drivers will spend less time cruising in search of an open space," which in turn would decrease pollution, searching for a spot, double parking,......

The former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, George Marlin, is urging federal investigators to look into WTC rebuilding delays, since seven years after the WTC attacks, Ground Zero is mostly still a giant hole. Marlin is recommending that the feds look into the delays as beyond a matter of bureaucratic wrangling and incompetence, but an issue of criminal wrongdoing that could include waste, fraud, abuse, and the the......

The no-cover daytime jazz club EZ's Woodshed in Harlem is closing after two and a half years. Its owner, Gordon Palotnick, took a quixotic stab at sustaining the music that is identified with Harlem. Instead of a smoky late-night club, Palotnick opened a weekdays-only, daytime juke joint that only served soft drinks; and he didn't charge a hefty cover charge either. Despite his best efforts--immersing himself in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and......

Somehow, in spite of the faltering economy, brokerage firms say second quarter apartment sale prices were about the same or maybe even slightly higher than in the first quarter--though sales were down 22% versus 2007's second quarter. The NY Times noticed, "Strong luxury sales and faltering studio sales had the perverse effect of catapulting the median price — the price of the apartment exactly in the middle of all sale prices — to a record.......

Photograph of a shrine dedicated to Korshunova outside her apartment building submitted by reader Michael Yesterday, Ruslana Korshunova's mother arrived from Kazhakstan to identify her daughter's body at the medical examiner's office. Officials ruled that the 20-year-old model had jumped to her death from her Water Street apartment on Saturday, but with the world ahead of her, many people are wondering what drove to her to suicide. The Post suggests Korshunova was in a......

Ah, Spring. A time when some men woo women with flowers and fancy dinners, while others simply rappel off their roofs and through their windows. The Post has an exclusive on a lovesick construction worker who became so enamored with an unidentified Upper West Side woman that he decided to take his courtship to a repellent level (ha!) by swinging into her apartment through her bathroom window. The suspect, 29-year-old Flavio Quito, became smitten with......

The original Chocolate Bar was priced out of the West Village back in April, but that hasn’t taken the wind out of owner Alison Nelson’s sails as she expands across the chocolate seas as far away as Qatar. Closer to home, the Chocolate Bar East Village location opens today, with counter service for eight and all the quality product chocoholics rely on to keep it together. According to Strong Buzz, there’s a "Meet the Neighbors"......

Yesterday morning around 5:30 a.m., someone called 911 about a shooting outside 24-hour diner Cozy Soup 'N' Burger on Broadway, near Astor Place, in Manhattan. Apparently an argument broke out between two groups of people, but by the time the police arrived, the Daily News reports "the crowd dispersed and there was no evidence that anyone had been hit." However, a woman went to Kings County Hospital, claiming she was "standing outside the diner with......

Police believe that a 20-year-old woman committed suicide by jumping out of her Water Street apartment's balcony around 2:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon. The woman was identified as Kazhakstan model Ruslana Korshunova. Newsday reported, "It appeared she fell from the balcony of her ninth-floor apartment, police said, where a large hole was visible in construction netting hanging on the front of the 12-story building." A Con Ed worker, who had been talking to a cop......

When we spoke with Florent Morellet on Monday, he assured us that his 23-year-old Meatpacking District bistro – scheduled to close this Sunday at 10 p.m. – would not be occupied by a Bank of America or some similar abomination. But the Parisian restaurateur stopped short of divulging the space’s fate – the landlord had been seeking $35,000 in monthly rent and it was naturally assumed that only the most crass retailers could manage a......

Here we go again with another Restaurant Week, which actually occurs over two weeks (minus weekends): July 21st through the 25th and July 28th through August 1st. Over 200 restaurants around Manhattan – many of them fancy places like Bar Boulud and Anthos – will be offering prix-fixe lunch specials for $24.07 and prix-fixe dinners for $35.00. Food snobs will tell you you’re a chump for signing up for this because chefs just dump their......

Chef Marco Canora is having a good morning; Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni says “there may not be any dish I’ve enjoyed more in recent months than the pork blade steak” at Terroir (pictured). His column this week looks at how chefs at wine bars like Terroir and Gottino have transcended the “glorified snacks” that used to be de rigueur, to “exemplify a wine-bar evolution so thorough that nomenclature can’t keep up.” Less criticism than......

Back in 1985, when the meatpacking district nightlife was all about gay clubs like the Manhole and, as John Waters puts it, not getting mugged after a night of “watching men pay good money to get pissed on,” Frenchman Florent Morellet opened a bistro in an old greasy spoon called the R&L.; Open 24/7, the place soon became a magnet for all sorts of soulful misfits drawn by the open-minded spirit cultivated by Florent himself.......

The Daily News scored an exclusive account of life inside the Economakis building on East 3rd Street-- their intern Barry Paddock happens to be one of the tenants getting evicted: "In eviction papers, they laid out a plan to combine our cramped but beloved rent-stabilized apartments into a suburban-style mansion. Apartments on my floor would be demolished and replaced by a hanging walkway overlooking their new two-story living room." Bonus fact: the Economakis family paid......

Approximately 100 people marched from the under-deconstruction Deutsche Bank building yesterday to City Hall Park, demanding stricter safety standards at construction sites. Some of the leaders of the march were Joseph Graffagnino Sr. and his wife, the parents of one of two firefighters (Graffagnino Jr. and Robert Beddia) who died when the Deutsche Bank building caught fire, and because of a lack of adherence to fire and building safety codes they ran out of oxygen......

Although no one was actually killed, Friday was a tough day for Manhattan pedestrians. Three separate cars careened onto sidewalks; and so many people were hit that it's unclear how many were run down. The mayhem began in Chinatown shortly after noon. A driver reportedly was attempting to back into a parking space when he accidentally jumped the curb and six hit people sitting on a park bench and passing by. The victims were hit......

The Department of Buildings confirmed to the Daily News that it found cracks in a crane at a construction site in lower Manhattan. The crane happens to be a Kodiak tower crane owned by New York Crane & Equipment Co.--the same model and firm involved last month's fatal crane collapse at East 91st Street and First Avenue. Cracks were found in the crane's turntable; the crane in the May collapse also suffered from cracking (it......

Meet Arlene Harrison: The self-described “Mayor of Gramercy Park.” She’s the one to talk to if undesirables are spotted infiltrating the private oasis, which requires a key for entry and exit, as two women recently discovered when a maintenance worker ejected them from the park during their Saturday picnic. How did he know they weren't quite the right material? They were probably breaking the rules by enjoying the park....

Today the Times’s Frank Bruni relates his multiple visits to West Village Asian barbecue restaurant Bar Q, and by the sounds of it you’d never guess print media is in any kind of financial trouble – an initial trip with one group of ungrateful friends prompted so much "grumbling" he had to "unruffle their feathers" by being “especially profligate with the wine” on his paper’s expense account. The hangers-on who shared his second visit tasted......

Police are searching for a man in his 30's who broke into a West Village apartment wielding a knife, only to be driven off by the occupant's furious response. The Post spoke to the resident, Jennifer LaPierre, a 41-year-old writer who lives in a basement apartment on West 11th Street. The article makes clear that when she's not pounding the keyboard, she likes to pump iron and work out at a nearby gym. LaPierre woke......

Shalizar: Bangladesh native Parvez Eliaas and his Iranian partner Kaz Bayati have just opened their second Persian restaurant on the Upper East Side, not far from their original venture, Persepolis. According to Thrillist, the new bistro is distinguished by exposed brick and a spacious bar, where old world wines, pomegranate cocktails and wild berry-infused vodkas can be savored. The Middle Eastern menu includes delicacies like baby lamb stew and salmon kebab. 1420 Third Avenue near......

Some former lovers just can't help but leave an indelible impression on a guy, no matter how many years they've been broken up. A judge thought that 23-year-old Kristina Caban definitely should not have, when she kidnapped her ex- and marked him on his abdomen with a homemade branding iron at the Chelsea Inn. She was sentenced to five years in prison for the crime. In October 2006, Caban arranged to meet Samir Sara for......

As DUMBO NYC pointed out today, it’s that time of year when the city is crawling with ice cream trucks. The only problem is – other than the maddening repetition of hit jingles like “Pop Goes the Weasel” – these Kool Man and Mister Softee purveyors don’t sell ice cream; it’s all synthetic soft serve or pre-packaged frozen products that ought to be shut down by Children's Services. Even the aesthetically appealing retro Good Humor man is peddling sub par processed treats. What’s an ice cream snob to do?...

Every New Yorker realizes that 'moving day' can be a pain in the butt, so you'd think only two moves in over two centuries might not be that big of a deal. It is when one is moving the entire house for the second time. Hamilton Grange was the country home of Alexander Hamilton, who only got to live there a short time before that scurrilous character Aaron Burr shot him in a duel. The......

An insurance company executive, whose client owned the crane had once been repaired before collapsing on East 91st Street last Friday, said the Department of Buildings knew the crane's history. NationalBuilders Insurance Services executive vice president Kevin Cunningham said, "The DOB inspector certified that it was OK to go back to work." While the insurance company says the 24-year-old tower crane's turntable crack was "minor," investigators suspect the re-welded crack might have given way and......

According to its press release, the mood and décor at Yerba Buena, which opens tonight, “takes its inspiration from old-time Havana.” There’s nothing over-the-top about it; the place thankfully does not look like a movie set. A small, bright white neon sign is planted in the restaurant’s window, and the room is breezy and dark. Diners can check in on the kitchen, which is separated from the dining room with a large glass window. Yerba......

Photograph of the collapsed crane being assembled in April by seth_holladay on Flickr The offices of New York Crane and Equipment, which owns the cranes in last Friday's as well as March's fatal crane collapses, were searched and documents were seized, according the NY Times. Currently, there are investigations from the Manhattan DA's office, the Department of Investigation, and OSHA into the collapse. An insurance company confirmed that the crane's turntable used at 331......