Fire officials said that the fire on West 18th Street that took the lives of five family members was caused by a "juvenile playing with a lighter or matches." The lone survivor, a 10-year-old boy, is in "dire condition," according to the Post. Fire officials have also been urging New Yorkers to check their smoke detectors and make sure they have batteries and are working (landlords are required to install them in apartment buildings, but......

Photograph of 401 West 18th Street in Manhattan, where a fatal fire claimed five lives, by David Karp/AP Fire officials say that the smoke detector in a 6th floor Chelsea apartment that claimed five lives yesterday morning had been unplugged. The Daily News reports that the "smoke detector did not go off. The battery had been removed and the wires disconnected." A family of six had been living in the apartment: Parents with three......

Six people, including three children, were rushed to the hospital after a fire broke out just after dawn in Chelsea. WCBS is reporting that the victims have died--other sources only list them as injured at this point. The fire started on the sixth floor of a housing complex on 18th Street at 9th Avenue. There is no word yet as to what caused it. Firefighters were forced to shatter windows in the building and were......

Disturbing details have emerged about the 22-year-old man who confessed to killing Pace University student Kevin Pravia. Among his disclosures, Jeromie Cancel said he watched the horror movie "Saw" after smothering a sleeping Pravia. Apparently Pravia met Cancel, who had offered to sell drugs to him, in Union Square early Saturday morning. They went back to Pravia's apartment on West 15th Street in Chelsea. Pravia's roommate discovered her friend's body on Sunday. When Cancel was......

The police are looking into a number of calls that Kevin Pravia made Saturday morning before his death. The Pace University student's body was found, with an electrical cord around his neck and plastic stuffed in his mouth, in his West 15th Street apartment by his roommate on Sunday. The Daily News says that Pravia was described as "very drunk" when leaving a party in lower Manhattan. Evan Santoro said, "Someone helped him to a......

The Pace University community is reeling after news that a student was found strangled in his Chelsea apartment. According to the Daily News, 19-year-old Kevin Pravia was found by his roommate yesterday afternoon. Police arrived at 239 West 15th Street around 6 p.m., and Pravia was "strangled with an electrical cord that was still wrapped around his neck" and his "mouth was stuffed with plastic." A neighbor told NY1, "I was at home last night......

Four former employees of pretentious Chelsea nightclub 1OAK (the name stands for 'one of a kind') filed a lawsuit against club owners Thursday in Manhattan Federal court, the Daily News reports. Lawyers say the four minority workers – three female waitresses and one male bartender – were terminated because club owner Scott Sartiano only wanted "white girls he could f---" serving drinks, or so they were told by a manager, who allegedly elaborated, "Scott has......

Footage of a man suspected of following a Canadian tourist into a Chelsea apartment building elevator--and later sexually assaulting and robbing her--was released yesterday. The video shows a man following the victim into the Heywood, on Ninth Avenue at West 26th Street, around 4:30 a.m.; the NY Post describes the attacker as a "slim, bald man wearing a white T-shirt and jeans" carrying flowers and pushing a mountain bike. The attacker managed to choke the......

Yesterday, a Canadian tourist, staying at a friend's apartment at The Heywood on Ninth Ave. and West 26th, was followed into the building and attacked around 4 a.m. The Post reports the suspect "followed her into the apartment and choked her into unconsciousness," and the victim "awoke minutes later to find her clothes partially removed, a small amount of cash, jewelry and a cellphone missing." But the attacker was gone; police tell the Daily News......

Two years after 18-year-old New Jersey resident Jennifer Moore was raped and killed after a drunken night at Guest House, the Post checks in on the Chelsea club scene and finds it as decadent as ever. Robberies and assaults are up, and last week "the club-lined block between 10th and 11th avenues was rampant with drunken teens and twenty-somethings stumbling around, vomiting and collapsing." Also, no I.D. = no problem! "At the very club where......

The Post and Daily News have more information about yesterday morning's stabbing of an off-duty police officer who had been walking in Chelsea with his girlfriend and some other women. Apparently the women were harassed by a group of men, prompted Officer Jonathan Silvetti to say, "Hey, that's my girl. They're with me." When Silvetti said he was a cop and showed them his NYPD shield, one said, "So what? I got one of those,"......

An off-duty police officer was stabbed in Chelsea early this morning. The 25-year-old victim had left the nightclub Guest House with his girlfriend and had been walking with her and a few other women when a group of men (who apparently had followed them) started to harass them. WNBC reports the off-duty cop identified himself as a police officer. WABC 7 says the cop "apparently [asked] them to stop, and words were exchanged," before he......

Could the Roxy rise from the ashes of a troubled night club scene? Last year the famed club shut down to the disappointment of many, all echoing the "end of an era" sentiment. They originally opened as a roller skating rink and roller disco in the 70s, later transforming into a popular gay dance club. To make matters worse, the word on the street was that a developer would be turning the space, at 515......

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......

The police charged a man, who found his girlfriend stabbed to death in a Chelsea apartment, with criminal mischief after he threw a chair out of a police station window. Robert Camarano, 60, was being questioned about Michele Hyams' death, and the Post reports that he is an "ex-con with a lengthy rap sheet." He also reportedly "started trying to change his story and requested a lawyer." Camarano had told police he came home late......

A 60-year-old woman was found stabbed to death in her apartment last night. The Post reports the 60-year-old woman's boyfriend found her in the Eighth Avenue near 15th Street building around 11:15 p.m. The boyfriend, who tried to revive her and called 911, told police he arrived home late and made the grisly discovery--the victim had been stabbed multiple times. According to the Daily News, 10th Precinct police officers were on the scene and the......

Police sources say that the woman found dead in her West 22nd Street apartment was killed by her boyfriend after she broke up with him. The Post reports that 26-year-old Margaux Powers (pictured, with her father) had "canceled plans to attend a family gathering Thursday" so she could break up with Jonathan Smith, 34. Powers and Smith, a chef who had been recently laid off, lived together in the Chelsea apartment. Police believe Smith slit......

A 26-year-old woman was found murdered in her Chelsea apartment by her sister last night, and the murder victim's boyfriend--and the murder suspect, according to police-- killed himself a few hours after the discovery. Margaux Powers's family had been worried they didn't hear from her for a few days, so her sister Dana went to Margaux's apartment at 235 West 22nd Street on Friday night. Doorman Constantine Ionescu accompanied Dana to the apartment, and......

Photograph of the Cheyenne's exterior at night by Goggla on Flickr Beloved Chelsea standby, the Cheynne Diner, closed two weeks ago so the site's owner could begin work on a 9-story building that will bring in rental income. But now, regulars can look forward to visiting the diner across the East River in Red Hook! AMNY's Urbanite spoke to preservationist Michael Perlman, who said, "I am elated to report that a contract has been......

For nearly a year now the Hotel Chelsea residents have been living under the new management of BD Hotels -- and not one has been happy about it. Last summer we checked in with long time manager Stanley Bard (who BD ousted from his position) as well as some of those who call the hotel home...and spirits were low all around. While the hotel doesn't yet look like our imagined rendering (pictured), changes have taken......

You'll only be getting babes, not booze, when you go to Scores West: The State Liquor Authority has taken away the strip club's liquor license after police found prostitution at the Chelsea joint (the Upper East Side location is not affected). An SLA administrative judge wrote that prostitution was "open and notorious such that the licensee knew or should have known of its occurrence." Back in 2007, a manager told police they could receive sexual......

Costumed performers and tour guides are fighting for unionization at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where they work to recreate the squalid living conditions of turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants, the very group that was integral to 20th century unionization efforts. Dozens of the tenement employees protested last night outside a fundraiser for the museum at Chelsea Piers. Most of the guides work part time for an average $17 per hour, with no regular pay increases,......

MOVIE: After Marion Cotillard took home the gold for best actress in La Vie en Rose last Sunday, French cinema is sure to be all the rage. Today the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2008 series kicks off with a screening of Roman de gare (pictured). Buy tickets and get the schedule here. Friday// 6:30 and 9pm // Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts [70 Lincoln Center Plaza] // $12 (stand......

Alycia Lane, the Philadelphia newswoman who punched a female NYPD police officer, was relieved after appearing at Manhattan Criminal Court today. The Manhattan DA's office basically dismissed her case, for an "adjournment in contemplation of dismissal." Prosecutors said the female cop's injuries "were not serious enough" to support the felony assault charge, so charges were reduced to obstruction of governmental administration and harassment. Lane, who allegedly called the cop a "dyke bitch" during a run-in......

halle berry, by dietrich at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: missing juveniles on Shore Front Parkway in Queens, a taxi cab vs. store front in the area of 63rd St. and Madison Ave. in Manhattan, and a suspicious death on Ralph Ave. and Prospect Pl. in Brooklyn. Investigators believe that the five-year-old boy who died in a home fire after being left alone by his older brother may have inadvertently started the fire himself.......

Cartoons just got a little more real with The Three Thug Mice, an online series set in New York City. The 35 animated shorts follow the tales (and tails!) of three rodent crooks named Vic, Tik and Brik. Described as an "ongoing ghetto saga" set in some of the seedier sectors of the concrete jungle, the trio's home turf is light years away from Disney World. (Though that is the Hotel Chelsea in the......

Photo: Banksy Banksy, the cheeky street artist/prankster turned multimillionaire art star, was in town last week, presumably for the Damien Hirst-coordinated auction at Sotheby’s to benefit the (Project) RED campaign, which works with corporations like the Gap to raise money for the treatment of A.I.D.S. patients in Africa. The $48 million raised at the event – through the sale of works by Hirst, Banksy, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning and others – will......

About a year ago, Village Voice restaurant critic Robert Sietsema attended a taping of Iron Chef America at the Food Network's Chelsea studios. Thanks to a friend's invite, the Food Network had no idea he was watching and waiting to blow the cover off the whole phony operation once the episode finally aired. Now Sietsema is here to report that the series is “more bogus than even I had imagined.” How bogus is it? Well,......

tre dici STEAK: The second floor of Chelsea’s Italian restaurant tre dici has been transformed into an intimate, 50 seat dining room (pictured) designed in the style of a sexy New Orleans speakeasy, circa 1920. Heavy fabrics covering the windows evoke a feeling of timelessness in the candlelit room, which is lined with luxuriant claret leathers and sensual artwork under an antique silver tin ceiling. The food arrives via dumbwaiter from chef Giuseppe Fanelli’s kitchen......

ART: Come help open up the new Chelsea gallery, Honey Space, tonight. Check out their inaugural exhibition whilst you nosh on fondue. The space is unique in that it will present "regular programming of site-specific installations and special events...and during normal daytime hours, the space will be open to the public, and unmonitored." Suggested attire for the evening is red (well that's not very creative!). 6pm to midnight // Honey Space [148 11th Ave]......