Results tagged “thenewyork”

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a crime scene/hanging at East 13th St. and Shore Parkway in Brooklyn, a child mauled by a dog in the area of 91-43 Gold Rd. in Queens, and a possible escaped prisoner on Wards Island across from Manhattan.
• Asbestos removal at the Carroll St. F and G line station appears to be a non-issue. Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn received a note saying that air levels were fine and removal is not scheduled for the immediate future.
• The New York Aquarium's sharks at Coney Island are moving on up. They're upgrading their modest 90,000 cubic foot tank to a $67 million waterfront palace.
• The City is pursuing criminal charges against an 82-year-old buildings engineer for what they claim was perjury. A $.99 store whose designs he ok'd caught fire and rotten timbers allegedly resulted in the deaths of two firefighters.
• Did the Hell's Angels plan a 'Bay of Hogs' Long Island beachfront attack that ended in embarrassing failure during the 1960s? Apparently, after the Rolling Stones' concert at Altamont, some Hells Angels tried sailing to Mick Jagger's estate to kill him, but hit rough seas and fell overboard.
• The box office at Yankee Stadium opened this morning at 10 a.m., as the organization began selling tickets to games at the Bronx Bombers' final season in the House that Ruth Built, and that we mostly paid for when it was renovated.
• Bravo to Shannon O'Hanlon, the 9-year-old 4th grader from Queens who won yesterday's Fay Wray Scream-A-Like Contest at Film Forum in Manhattan. The contest was part of a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the original King Kong film.

A sonic device designed to drive off troublesome youths has been installed in one Queens building known for vandalism and drug use. It's called The Mosquito, and is produced by a British company, where more than 3,500 units of the equipment are in use. As humans age, they naturally lose some of their hearing, beginning at the higher end of the audible spectrum detectable to man.

As reported in the Times last month, the cheese is a side project of Lunetta sous chef Betsy Devine and curd cohort Rachel Mark. The duo makes the ricotta with milk supplied from Hudson Valley Fresh, a non-profit collective of upstate farmers. Salvatore Ricotta is served at Lunetta’s Manhattan and Brooklyn locations, but it can also be purchased retail at Saxelby Cheesemongers (seen here), Marlow & Sons, and Stinky Brooklyn.

In a Friday review of the 1933 original production of King Kong, The New York Sun's film critic Bruce Bennett wonders why the low-tech original continues to hold up so well after 75 years, especially in comparison to higher-tech remakes. "How, then, does a puppet made from rabbit fur, a rubber ball, and some socket joints, painstakingly animated frame-by-frame during the depths of the Great Depression, ably kick the motion-capture behemoth of Mr. Jackson's modern edition to film history's curb?"

Brooklyn Heights residents may have thought their neighborhood had earned a respite from anti-Semitic graffiti after the arrest and confession of Ivaylo Ivanov, who committed and then confessed to a string of vandalism incidents last year that left Brooklyn Heights peppered with swastikas in spray paint. But last week another wall was defaced with a symbol of hate. The incident involved a a brick apartment building at 22 Remsen St. The swastika was first spotted by Donald Brennan, who owns a nearby building. He told The New York Times "'I was sitting in my car at the curb with my family, I looked over my shoulder and I saw it there,' he said, adding that he felt 'absolutely shocked, kind of sick.'”

The New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s historic concert in North Korea concluded hours ago, marking the first performance by an American orchestra in the impoverished, totalitarian nation. The event also marked a first for much of the press, who are routinely denied access to North Korea and, once inside, usually find their movements tightly controlled. The Times has a stunning slideshow of photos snapped en route from the airport to the center of Pyongyang, something the photographer says is never permitted.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on Amboy Rd. in Staten Island, another bank robbery on 5th Ave. in Manhattan, and a scaffolding collapse on Grand Concourse and 149th St. in the Bronx.
• A building slated for destruction on Governors Island will become a lab for the FDNY to examine the dynamics of high-rise fires and how best to defeat them. Fire crews from cities around the country will be on hand to observe.
• Someone crunched the numbers and found that The New York Times Fashion Magazine is almost as white as the arctic in February, pre-global warming. The 55% of New Yorkers who aren't white are probably not the targeted demographic the Times Fashion Mag is looking for anyway.
• A New York Presbyterian Hospital official in charge of the Women, Infants, and Children program--which was designed to provide food for impoverished women and children--is accused of siphoning off a few hundred thousand dollars for vacations and comfortable living.
• City Councilman Eric Gioia is running a "carbon neutral" campaign for public advocate, that involves the use of more emails than flyers, the purchase of carbon offsets, and the use of hybrid vehicles.
• The International House of Pancakes downtown Brooklyn location is doing so well that plans are in the works for locations in Bed-Stuy, East New York, and Williamsburg.
• The family of a 25-year-old, who allegedly had his jaw broken by an EMT, is suing the city for $2 million. They accuse the EMT of punching the young man in the face after the patient accidentally drooled on him as he was giving him oxygen.
• Summertime probably seems far off today, but the organizers of the Movies With a View program are looking for submissions of short films to be shown before features in July and August amidst the moonlit shadows of the Brooklyn Bridge.

An effort to get more fresh fruit and vegetables into the hands of poorer and allegedly under-served communities is being fought today by bodega and supermarket owners, who feel that a proposed 1,500 new street vendor licenses will cut into their business. Backers of the new licenses include City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Bloomberg, who cooperated in introducing the "Green Cart" plan, which will issue licenses to vendors who commit to serving fresh fruit and vegetables in poorer communities.

In Mark Kurlansky's 2005 book about New York City and oysters, The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, the author suggested that given the improved environmental conditions of New York Bay, perhaps the time is ripe to start replanting the oyster fields that used to carpet the underwater surface. The City and environmentalists are now undertaking a project to replant oyster beds in the bay, not for harvesting, but as natural, or soft, anti-pollution filters.

The only way to save Harlem for the benefit of its longtime residents is to economically cripple the neighborhood. So says Dr. James Manning of the ATLAH World Ministry church. He's proposing an economic boycott of the area in Manhattan between 110th St. and 155th St., from the Harlem River to the Hudson River. The plan is that once interloper businesses have been driven out via bankruptcy, Harlem will become a less desirable place to live for people like whites, rising rents will decline, and Harlem will have been purged of the problems that have been driving people out of their homes.

Less than two weeks after Gov. Spitzer publicly reaffirmed his commitment to going forward with plans to construct Moynihan Station despite a $1 billion funding shortfall, it looks like the matter may be out of his hands. The New York Times is reporting that the whole $14 billion project, which would involve building Moynihan Station at The Farley Post Office building and constructing a new Madison Square Garden on the site, is on the brink of total failure.

The NY Times' article about presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain's superclose relationship with a young, attractive female lobbyist (more about her here) has drawn a lot of criticism, especially from McCain himself. His campaign seized the moment to raise money for his campaign.

The headline for the above-the-fold NY Times story about presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk, doesn't quite prepare readers for the juicy insinuations waiting for them in the second paragraph. The first sentence notes that during McCain's 2000 presidential campaign advisers were worried because...

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: shots fired and a large crowd at 98th St. and Rockaway Blvd. in Queens, a carjacking on Ave. Y and Nostrand Ave. in Brooklyn, and an overturned auto on 28th St. and 7th Ave. in Manhattan.
• The New York Post continues to discover the brave new world of "twisted sex play," commonly known as BDSM.
• The gentrification of Harlem is colorblind, to the consternation and frustration of many newcomers and long-time residents.
• A Bronx man and his son, who were bound, robbed, and shot in the alley next to their home, may have been followed all the way from Brooklyn by their assailant.
• QueensCrap notes some less-than-professional tree pruning after the Parks Dept. improperly issued permits to a notorious company. There's a difference between pruning and just lopping off most of the tops of trees.
• Ironic Sans was included in a new book titled Ultimate Blogs; masterworks from the wild web. Congratulations!
• The persistence of gay bathhouses in what only seems like the post-AIDS era.
• TreeHugger wonders about the carbon footprint of a bloated Gmail account.

James Maietta probably wishes that he lived in an elevator building; especially after firefighters accidentally dropped him down a flight of stairs in November 2006. The 15-foot fall left Maietta crippled and confined to a Yonkers nursing home for a year. Now the man is suing the FDNY.

What would Norman Mailer make of a boxer cavorting in high heels, fishnet stockings, and a fur-trimmed tutu? "I respect most boxers because they're violent people who learned to discipline themselves," opined the late writer. Mailer may be dead, but it's doubtable whether the embarrassment that Oscar De La Hoya faces will ever die. The New York Times framed the situation ably, noting the media alert notifying the press that De La Hoya would be in court to confront his former mistress over racy lingerie photos. Unfortunately for the boxer, it was he wearing the lingerie.

School teacher and aspiring novelist Matthew Thomas won the jackpot in the New York apartment lottery when he scored his Upper East Side studio apartment, around the corner from Elaine’s, for just $14,000. Literally; the man won the right to buy the apartment in a lottery that makes available a minuscule number of apartments to people with incomes under $49,625. The units are part of 24 Mitchell-Lama co-op buildings in Manhattan and most applicants wait a decade for a shot at one.

It may have looked like simple joyriding on a Friday afternoon, but the Parks Dept. employee careening around Battery Park near Whitehall St. yesterday afternoon was actually a man on a mission, i.e. to kill as many birds in the park as possible. Martin Hightower has been a Parks Dept. employee since 2005, but was arrested after 911 started receiving calls about a man driving recklessly on a golf cart at the southern tip of Manhattan.

A piece in The New York Times today shows that that the residents of 475 Kent are not prepared to go quietly after their recent eviction due to fire safety violations. Even the landlord of the owner of the nearly block-long building near the Navy Yard in Brooklyn wants his tenants back in and is cooperating with them to that end.

As we mentioned yesterday, the writers' strike may be coming to an end. Michael Eisner leaked that we'd be hearing news of it this weekend, and the former Disney CEO was right. Today Variety reports that "the WGA has finalized its tentative agreement with the majors and will present details of the pact to members today in meetings in Los Angeles and New York."

Mayor Bloomberg's un-campaign for President is losing momentum even before it could officially get started. Bloomberg's position on a run has always been that he is not running at any particular point at that time, even as his Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey aggressively pursues advance work for the campaign that is not happening. Political consultant Doug Schoen confirmed that Sheekey has a formal plan in place already that merely needs the Mayor's go-ahead to begin.

Move over Crazy Cat Ladies of New York, a West End Avenue tenant may just have you beat. The Post reports that court papers have been filed by a building owner against 71-year-old tenant Jacqueline Bartone, calling her apartment a "zoo" and listing the pets that reside with her -- including three dogs, several reptiles and cats, "and as many as a dozen birds, including an African Grey parrot and a macaw parrot."

Has the Super-real estate market finally encountered economic kryptonite? Manhattan's housing market has seemed utterly impervious to any hint of real estate meltdown, even as other boroughs have suffered mortgage foreclosures at four times the national average. But one can't pass a Chase bank branch or a Duane Reade before coming across yet another building going up or being retro-fitted as luxury condos. The New York Times has an article today indicating that the gilded age of upper-crust real estate may be losing its luster.

Rudy Giuliani's poor showing in the presidential campaign has plenty of people giving their opinions on why it all went wrong.

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.

to clean up the mess. The New York training staff has been giving the players every type of preventative medicine they can come up with to ward off the flu and hopefully having all the players together on a plane will not have an adverse affect.

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.

On Friday night, the Westchester police shot at a Mount Vernon police officer brandishing a gun in front of a county social services building. The policeman killed was Christopher Ridley, who was off-duty at the time; now it turns out he had been trying to break up a brawl.