Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey, who has spent many months (if not years) hinting about his boss's presidential ambitions, is still stirring the pot of rumors. Last night on NY1's Inside City Hall, Sheekey, "promoted the idea of an Obama-Bloomberg presidential ticket." Sheekey revealed that after Bloomberg's official announcement/NY Times op-ed about not running for president, Barack Obama had a chat with the billionaire mayor:"Certainly you could joke that Obama's call was a fundraising call yesterday.......

If you've been following the Julian Schnabel-branded apartment building, Palazzo Chupi, then you might be interested to learn that the remaining two units went on the market today. What's not good enough for Bono and Madonna may just be good enough for you! So if you've had your savings earmarked for that perfectly pink West Village apartment that you can call home, The NY Times has the listing and Curbed has the floorplan; here are......

Photograph by Jake Dobkin Later today, the city will discuss whether the I.M. Pei-designed Silver Towers should be landmarked. The Observer reported that NYU announced its support today, a reversal from an earlier position over three years ago. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation pushed for landmarking the complex, located between Bleecker and Houston Streets and LaGuardia Place and Mercer Street, a few years ago, calling it "an innovative modern design by I.M.......

Photograph of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at their Democratic debate in Los Angeles last week by Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Yesterday, the Daily News and Newsday offered editorials endorsing Hillary Clinton for Tuesday's NY State Democratic Primary. While the News calls both Clinton and Barack Obama are "compelling choices," disagrees with both candidates' strategies for ending the war in Iraq and finds Obama inspirational, the News ultimately finds Clinton to be the "stronger" of......

With Mayor Bloomberg up in Albany deriding Gov. Spitzer for bilking the city out of $500 million in promised funding, it's no wonder that the perennial call for secession has arisen. Every time NY State politics gets heated, we get to rehash the economics of NYC declaring itself independent from the state. During his NYC budget speech last week, Bloomberg pointed out (again) how NYC pays more than $11 billion in state taxes it doesn't......

Today, the Republican presidential hopefuls are vying to win the Florida primary (the Democrats aren't allowing Florida delegates to count at the convention, because Florida moved its primary up). Polls close in two hours, and many believe that the state will be contested between John McCain and Mitt Romney. Our former mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has spent much time in Florida, instead of campaigning in South Carolina, Iowa or New Hampshire (though he did......

Photo of Eli Manning by AP/Bill Kostroun; Photo of Tom Brady by AP/Stephan Savoia When Super Sunday rolls around, there will be a lot of questions that will be answered. Will the Giants stop the undefeated season of the Patriots? How will Eli Manning perform in the biggest game of his career? And how Tom Brady's foot be? While there are clearly lots of other questions, one question that isn't so obvious is...who's the......

Photo via Frank Lynch's Flickr. Earlier this month we tried to look at the Triborough Bridge as the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge when Governor Spitzer brought the name change up for consideration. While RFK supporters toss around the obvious "he built bridges" metaphor, The NY Times would like to point out that he also burned them. They suggest that the city stop looking for big names to attach to their structures and streets, and......

Should a soldier who served in Afghanistan be able to join the police force? Well, not in New York City, when the soldier in question has a previous gun possession convictions The New York Times looks at a machine gun-wielding active duty soldier who can't apply to the NYPD when he returns home. Specialist Osvaldo Hernandez is a paratrooper with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, set to be honorably discharged after his 15-month tour of......

Late night television is back, with two hosts not crossing the picket line (David Letterman and Craig Ferguson), and three still getting WGA picketers outside of their studios (Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel). Only two hosts were willing to grow, and keep, their strike beards -- and we want to know whose you like best! We added a Photoshop-bearded Leno (because we wanted to know what it would look like), so your......

Governor Spitzer's revised plan to offer driver's licenses to all New York State residents - including illegal immigrants - is still not a hit with constituents. NY1 conducted a poll which found 55% of voters are opposed to the "three-tier plan" Spitzer revealed last week. Spitzer's original plan, which would have given illegal immigrants broad access to a regular driver's license, was hailed by immigrants' rights advocates and damned by county clerks and figures such......

The Associated Press and Ipsos asked Americans to pick which candidates would make the scariest Halloween costumes. Naturally, frontrunners Senator Hillary Clinton and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani won in their respective political parties (there were separate polls for the two parties). Clinton led Democrats with 37% while Giuliani had 14%, and no other candidates broke 6%, giving them resounding wins. And we found this interesting: "While a predictable two-thirds of Republicans picked [Clinton], she......

Oh, Catholic League - it isn't even Halloween and you're getting ready for Christmas already! The Sun reports that the Catholic League sent a letter to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein questioning why nativity scenes cannot be displayed in schools. Christmas trees are allowed, as are menorahs and symbols for Ramadan. But the Department of Education does not allow actual images of "religious figures or deities." The DOE e-mail to the Sun read, "Our holiday policy......

Matthew Jones of Brooklyn pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct after he was arrested in Times Square last June for blocking a sidewalk in Times Square. Now he's appealing his case all the way to the state's highest court. Jones wasn't protesting anything or lying down on the sidewalk, he was simply standing on the corner of 42nd St. and 7th Ave. with a group of friends who were talking. Pedestrian traffic......

In what can only be described as a shock, Joe Torre has decided not to return to the Bronx in 2008. Torre was offered a one-year deal at a base of $5-million with an additional $1-million guaranteed for each round of the playoffs that the Yankees reached. So, he could have made $8-million for getting to the World Series. The deal also included a team option for 2009 that would have vested at $8-million......

The Supreme Court essentially upheld an Appeals Court ruling that said New York City must pay the private education of disabled students. The twist is that the students and their parents don't even need to try to see if the public school programs are adequate for them. Actually, there's another twist: The lawsuit against the city was filed by former Viacom CEO and co-founder of MTV, multimillionaire Tom Freston. Freston's son Gilbert has learning disabilities,......

The video of City Councilman James Oddo letting the f-bombs drop on a Norwegian TV comedian is getting mixed reactions - and a fair number of chuckles - from New Yorkers, but now it turns out that he wasn't meant to be a poor sap duped into answering stupid questions about whether Barack Obama is an American citizen and "Hillary Clinton's incident with a cigar." A spokesman for the Norwegian program "Rikers Rost" tells the......

Welcome to the first day of the Yankees’ offseason, buckle your seatbelts this is going to be a wild ride. While it is 99.9% certain that the Yankees are going to have a new manager for 2008, his identity remains a mystery. Joe Girardi, Don Mattingly and Tony LaRussa are the top names you hear, but remember in 1995 the Yankees shocked a lot of people when they chose Torre, so don’t be surprised if......

With the jury for the sexual harassment trial of Knicks president and coach Isiah Thomas and the rest of the Knicks organization continuing its deliberations for a third day, an interesting workplace question has been raised. Is swearing at the office okay? Former Knicks marketing vice president Anucha Browne Sanders claims, amongst other things, that Thomas swore at her frequently, including statements like "Bitch, I don't give a f--- about ticket sales" Thomas said he......

It took the Mets a little more than two weeks, but they've somehow managed to squander a seven-game lead in the National League East. Since September 12th, the lead has slowly gotten smaller and is now zero, zilch, zip, nadda, nil. With three games left in the regular season, the Mets are tied with the Phillies for first in the NL East. The last time the Mets weren't in sole possession of first place......

Back in July, the MTA said that fare hikes would be likely for subways and buses (not to mention the LIRR, Metro-North and bridges and tunnels). Now the agency has announced two proposed solutions: A standard across-the-board increase and, more intriguingly, a two-tier system that would discount fares for rides during off-peak hours. Both plans would call for the base fare to be increased to $2.25, but some Metrocard users would only pay $1.50......

Gov. Spitzer announced yesterday that illegal immigrants will be able to get valid New York State drivers licenses if they provide a valid and verifiable foreign passport. Spitzer hopes that the change, which reverses a four-year-old Pataki-era decision, will legitimize the 500,000-1 million undocumented immigrants who are driving in New York. In a repudiation of the federal government's stance, the governor said "We will not become part of what is propagated on the federal level......

The Grey Lady is paying a return visit to Peter Luger Steak House in tomorrow's dining section. This New York institution was last reviewed by Ruth Reichl, who awarded it a hefty three stars, proclaiming it "the best steak in New York City." Her description of the Luger experience is almost pornographic: You know the steak is great before you even taste it. You know it from the fine, funky, mineral aroma that wafts across......

No one has been surprised that Gristedes supermarkets have been closing steadily over the past ten years, given the influx of other grocery options and rising rents. But the NY Times has a fascinating article on why Gristedes still manages to exist, despite shrinking in size. Right now, there are 39 Gristedes locations, while there were 78 in 1997, and a supermarket consultant believes that there will be just 25 Gristedes locations in the city.......

If you're following football, you may have heard that the New England Patriots were caught cheating during Sunday's game against the Jets. They're accused of videotaping Jets coaches as they sent plays into their defense using hand signals. Maybe that's one reason the Jets got trounced, 38-14 to open the season. The use of video is against NFL league rules, and a league spokesman told ESPN, "The rule is that no video recording devices of......

Perhaps it's another sign of people moving on from 9/11, or perhaps it's something else, but WABC/Channel 7 has decided not to air the reading of 9/11 victims' names on Tuesday, the 6th anniversary of the attack. Instead, it will continue with its regular programming following the moment of silence at around 9 a.m. If the decision isn't changed, the top-rated station will become the city's first not to air the reading of the......

Here we are - day two of the taxi strike by a group of taxi drivers upset with the changes that the Taxi and Limousine Commission has enacted. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which organized the strike, claimed that 90% of all drivers were on strike yesterday, but Mayor Bloomberg contradicted that claim, saying the strike had a "limited impact, if at all." To combat the strike, the city has added buses and......

Just two weeks away, the sixth anniversary of September 11 continues to be a source of controversy. Before, it was families upset over the city and state's decision to hold the ceremony at a nearby park and not at Ground Zero (a compromise was later brokered to let families visit "the Pit"). Now, it's over Rudy Giuliani's role reading the names of victims. In the past, Giuliani has participated in the event, which no one......

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......

L.B. Jeffries would be screwed! City Council member Peter Vallone Jr. is proposing legislation to ban "non-consensual peeping with cameras to peeping with the naked eye" according to the NY Sun. The crime would be a misdemeanor, with a $500 fine and up to 90 days in jail. CityRoom has some of the legislation: b. Voyeurism in a private place. It shall be unlawful to deliberately view another person, without that person’s knowledge and......