Results tagged “atlanticcity”

Authorities investigating the fatal fall of a New York hedge fund executive from an Atlantic City shopping center escalator say that the incident was an "accident." NJ resident James Vellanti had been on an escalator at the Pier Shops at Caesars on Saturday when he somehow fell. The Press of Atlantic City reports, "The escalator from which Vellanti fell travels from the third to the second floor. Frank Gilbert Jr., of Galloway Township, fell from the same one in August 2008, after witnesses said he sat on the handrail."

A NJ man fell to his death from an escalator at Atlantic City's Pier at Caesars shopping center. According to the Press of Atlantic City, the victim, James Vellanti, was "chief operating officer for the hedge fund JNF Asset Management LLC in New York." The police are investigating the incident, which is the second fatal fall there in 13 months (last year, a 25-year-old man was sitting on the moving escalator's handrail and fell to his death).

Chef Wolfgang Puck opened Spago in LA back in 1982, and, to this day, it remains the prototypical Hollywood hotspot. The chef, originally from Austria, later went on to open the steakhouse Cut (replete with celebrity headshot menus for the celebrity diners), Chinois, an Asian fusion restaurant in Santa Monica, and myriad other fine dining and casual restaurants nationwide. Yet he's still largely an unknown entity to New Yorkers, unless they make a jaunt down to his American Grille in the stellar Borgata Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City.

An underage gambler has cost the Atlantic City Hilton Casino over $115,000—the second-largest fine for underage gambling in the city's 31-year history of casino gaming. (Last year Bally's Atlantic City was slapped with a record-setting $157,500 fine for letting an underage customer gamble; the legal age there is 21.) The Hilton's teenage gambler, identified only as "M.R." by the gaming commission, was granted a player's account at the Hilton in 2007 and even given a free room. He was 19 at the time, but gave fake identification indicating he was 24. During the next 16 months, "M.R." traveled repeatedly to A.C. from Brooklyn, and in February 2008, he was arrested at a different casino for underage gambling. Still, the Hilton didn't know his real age until April 2008, when the Gaming Enforcement Division found a record for "M.R." at the Hilton, and notified the casino. But the next day, the casino permitted him to gamble some more, for nearly three hours. Linda Kassekert, chairwoman of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, tells the AP, "We have a big concern about it because kids can make themselves look older, and that's problematic." Especially if they get lucky.

A jury found Staten Island resident Rafael Pichardo guilty of aggravated assault for a 2007 incident where he bit off an Atlantic City cop's left index finger. According to the Star-Ledger, the cops were called the Casbah Nightclub at the Trump Taj Mahal, because, per witnesses, "Pichardo had become unruly. Pichardo bit through the officer's leather glove after the policemen tried to handcuff him." Yowch! Also: "A bouncer put Dooley's severed finger on ice, but doctors were unable to reattach it because of the extent of the damage." Pichardo's family and friends apparently yelled after the verdict was announced. His sentencing will be in July and he faces up to 10 years in jail. Update: We belatedly remembered another Staten Islander who likes the taste of gloved finger—Staten Island Chuck!

Last Friday, Donald Trump resigned from the board of Trump Entertainment Resorts, which operates Trump's Atlantic City casinos and just happens to face bankruptcy. Trump told Bloomberg News, "I have nothing to do with it. I’m not in it, I’m not on the board." Trump, whose daughter Ivanka also quit the board, controlled 28% of the stock and said he offered to buy the flagging company, but bondholders refused. The Financial Times says the group has "$1.7bn of debt, of which about $1.2bn is bond debt." Trump also claims that the casinos' value is "worthless" to him, representing less than one per cent of his net worth. Remember, The Donald is rich—previously, Trump excoriated Rosie O'Donnell for saying he filed for personal bankruptcy.

Free chocolates and Atlantic City hotel reservations are being handed out at the corner of 48th Street and Sixth Avenue until 10 a.m. this morning, and then from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. at the Jacques Torres Hudson Store (350 Hudson). The hotel is Harrah's, and we're told they're distributing 5,000 free overnight stays to publicize the Sunday opening of a café called Temptations that will feature most of the Jacques Torres product line. (Torres has been answering NY Times readers' questions this week, and has revealed the secret to his dangerously addictive chocolate chip cookies.) In other V-Day gimmicks, three couples will be competing in the Netflix "Greatest Kiss" contest at Grand Central this morning. On sets built to resemble the movies, they'll be performing kiss-culminating scenes from Titanic, Gone With the Wind, and the incestuous mom/son kiss from Back to the Future. We're told a panel of judges will rate the "amateur kissers," and the awkwardness begins at 11:30.

                  

Earlier this year it was announced that a Hamptons for Hipsters was about to take shape in Atlantic City, courtesy of the Beatrice Inn boys Paul Sevigny and Matt Abramcyk. The two have taken their aesthetic and transferred it over to The Chelsea's 5th floor, which houses a game room, several lounges, a pool, patios and a restaurant. But you know what they say: you can't take the New Jersey out of Atlantic City.

A source tells the Post that two con men who ran a mortgage scam bilking millions out of now-failed lenders like Countrywide and Washington Mutual blew obscene amounts of money on extravagant gambling trips to Atlantic City. Garri Zhigun and Aleksander Lipkin pleaded guilty earlier this month to running a 27-member gang that borrowed money to buy properties, then faked sales at inflated prices to borrow even more before defaulting on the loans. The two swindlers—who were backed by the Russian mob—made dozens of trips to Atlantic City between '05 and '06, where they were high rollers awarded with free hotel rooms and show tickets. And all this took place while Zhigun was on parole after serving two years in prison for his participation in an insurance scam involving staged car accidents.

After passing a bill (back in April) forcing casino gaming floors in Atlantic City to go smoke-free earlier starting October 15, the Atlantic City City Council voted 5-4 to delay the ban. Why? The Press of Atlantic City reports the five members wanted "to help ease a decline in casino revenue, a move industry executives say could prevent further employee layoffs." However, one person yelled, "You gave us a death sentence!" and some union members heckled a union leader who supported the delay. And one man who worked at the Tropicana for 26 years before being laid off last year and blames his lung cancer on secondhand smoke from the job said, "It will never be a good time for (the casinos). It will come back next year and it will be the same story."

There are more answers and questions regarding the disappearance of a NJ woman from a cruise ship. The Norwegian Cruise Line company said surveillance videos show 46-year-old Mindy Jordan alone in her room and falling from her cabin's balcony, and the FBI said, "The information that we have acquired does not suggest a crime, but that is not definitive," and said it would continue with the investigation (the FBI did seize the cruise's railings).

While bad weather stopped the search for a New Jersey woman who disappeared from a Norwegian Dawn cruise ship off the coast of Atlantic City, the FBI is now investigating her disappearance.

       

Last month, word on the Boardwalk was that two former Atlantic City hotels (the Howard Johnson and Holiday Inn) would morph into a boutique hotel named the Chelsea (no relation). Further bringing a Manhattan feel to the has-been Jersey destination is the oft-celeb-drenched scene of Manhattan's Beatrice Inn; the club's operators, Paul Sevigny and Matt Abramcyk amongst them, have been charged with creating "a vibe." The collaboration had AC's Visitors Authority declaring, “The New York hipsters are coming to Atlantic City."

A Queens native who once made $500,000 as a New York City lawyer is now suing a number of Atlantic City casinos for $20 million, claiming they didn't notice her gambling addiction. Arelia Margarita Taveras owes $1 million from her gambling losses, but thinks the casinos enabled her.

You might think that today's forecast, warm with a chance of a thundershower, is a harbinger of spring. You would be wrong. Mother Nature lives up to her cruel mistress moniker by dangling spring in front of us while all the while holding another cold snap in a gloved hand behind her back. A warm front swept northward through town last night, raising the temperature to 62 degrees this morning. It may warm a degree or two more, probably not enough to reach the record of 68, before a cold front arrives in the early afternoon. Before it begins to cool there may be an occasional shower or possibly a thunderstorm. There's a big gob of rain on the radar just east of Atlantic City, that may just skirt the city.

A tour trying to turn left onto Broome Street from Bowery struck a 76-year-old woman yesterday morning. The bus, operated by Skyliner, was on its way to Atlantic City. The woman had been walking south on Bowery with her son when the bus hit her. Witnesses said the woman was hit hard by the bus, flying 15 feet. One witness told the Daily News, "I guess she wasn't paying attention." Maybe - but buses (one...

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on 126th St. in Manhattan, another shooting on Intervale Ave. and East 163rd St. in the Bronx, and a stabbing on Rockaway and Pitken Aves. in Brooklyn.
• Atlantic City's Borgata casino was in flames this morning.
• Connecticut's Governor suspended parole for inmates convicted of violent crimes after NYC cops shot a convict who drove a car stolen at knife point into the city.
• A Norwegian Cruise Line ship was held dockside in Manhattan for several hours yesterday evening until a bomb threat was determined to be false.
• The Gowanus Lounge notes a flier looking to ID witnesses to the brutality inherent in the system.
• Muslim and Jewish New Yorkers dined together last night on Manhattan's Upper West Side, as members of both religion broke fasts related to Yom Kippur and Ramadan after sunset.
• The effect of the metal bat ban on city baseball so far.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an unusual trauma at Pennsylvania and Flatlands Aves. in Brooklyn, a church robbery on West 31st St. in Manhattan, and a found DOA on Furman St. at the piers in Brooklyn.
• State officials are now thinking that the best way to reincarnate the glory days of the old Penn Station is not to build two office towers on top of the Farley Post Office building.
• They've arrested the man who allegedly beat and robbed 101-year-old Rose Morat, but cops are now searching for another man who did the same to a 79-year-old grandmother in the elevator of her apartment building in Queens.
• Since the rack rate of the average hotel room in NYC is now about $350 a night, perhaps it was inevitable that we would see the proliferation of illegal hotels.
• The Atlantic City Sands Casino will be imploded Vegas-style next month, with accompanying fireworks by Grucci and a laser light show.
• Staring down a projected $3.6 billion budget deficit, Gov. Spitzer is pledging to not increase state spending by more than 5.3% or so next year.
• Mayors Bloomberg and Giuliani are both out of New York, remotely tugging over the mantle of 9/11 as their political legacy. Perhaps our next mayor will oversee the construction of something at the site of the World Trade Center.
• The number of New Yorkers on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans rose from 45 to 64, as that group's wealth jumped 370% from last year, to $224 billion. The city still has almost two million people living below the poverty line, however, so don't let the Forbes thing go to your head.

Yesterday Merv Griffin lost his battle to prostate cancer at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles at the age of 82. He received his first treatment for this in 1996 and in late July of this year it was publicized that the cancer had come back. In a statement on Merv.com his son Tony said: "My father was a visionary. He loved business and continued his many projects and holdings even while hospitalized. We take solace in knowing that until the end he had his two favorites by his side--his family and his work. His legacy will be honored through the continuing operations of The Griffin Group under its current leadership and by the millions of lives he continues to affect through entertainment."

As many people wonder about the state of the bridges in the New York City region, in the wake of I-35 collapsing in Minneapolis, the city's Department of Transportation is trying to reassure residents that our bridges are safe. Though many bridges meet the definition of "deficient" - 19% of bridges are in "fair" or "poor" condition, 15% meet the federal definition of "structurally deficient" - a DOT first deputy commissioner Lori Ardito says, "In New York, we do not have any bridges that are structurally deficient."

We've got a stack of tickets over here for you, and all you have to do is email us telling us which pair you want, and answer a little question.

Traffic through the Holland tunnel was stalled this morning after two buses collided, with many passengers winding up in the hospital. The Daily News reports that an Atlantic Express bus slammed on its brakes after a car veered into its lane (drivers are not allowed to change lines while in the Holland Tunnel) and a following bus crashed into it. The second bus was from BTC Transportation and headed from Atlantic City to Chinatown.

Likely scenario: you're sitting in your office or at home and check your inbox. Someone's sent you a message. Subject: You Gotta See This. Body: This movie is ridiculous. A guy falls in love with a girl and she's in a wheelchair and they make it all about how they're from totally different worlds and I think at the end he ends up in a wheelchair. You just gotta see it. It's called Wheels . Black 20 is the company behind Wheels and many of the viral videos being passed around on the web. Gothamist sat down with J. Crowley, co-founder of Black20, to find out just what it takes to make it in the world of Internet comedy.

It's nice and exciting when your friends announce their engagements, but it seems like it's also a cue for you to start saving up. Forget buying them some congratulatory drinks and a wedding gift, as well as a shower gift - the real bank breakers are the bachelor/bachelorette parties and destination weddings.

An SUV carrying New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine crashed on the Garden State Parkway in Galloway Township. After undergoing extensive surgery, Corzine has a broken leg, twelve broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and a broken breastbone; he also has numerous facial lacerations. He is in stable condition and remains in the ICU, but faces many months of rehabilitation. State Senate President Richard Codey, who took over for NJ Governor James McGreevey when he stepped down, will be acting governor indefinitely.

Fox News Channel blowhard Bill O'Reilly and fellow Foxie Geraldo Rivera were in a heated argument on last night's edition of The O'Reilly Factor. The tiff was about a drunk driving illegal alien in Virginia killing someone and devolved into yelling and actual finger pointing with Geraldo starting out by pointing out to Bill that he was wrong. Since we usually avoid cable "news" like the plague, we were tipped to this morning, saw a bit on Fox 5 Midday, and was given a YouTube link. We can only imagine what MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who is a foe of O'Reilly, is going to say on his show tonight.

One of the nice things about being a music fan in New York City is that you rarely have to wait very long to see a band you're recently missed. The Black Lips famously played about 6,000 shows at SXSW this year, yet despite our interest in checking them out, we managed to catch them exactly zero times (with our final chance being cut short by that whole collapsing balcony thing.) So we were stoked to discover they were going to play last Monday back home at Bowery Ballroom. The show lived up to our ever inflated expectations and managed to bring the house down with their drunken-fried punk. While their "wild boyz" antics may seem a bit forced at this stage in their careers, the music more than holds up on its own. It's not easy to play such sloppy rock and roll so precisely. (Pic via Sandwich!)

We were just introduced to The Forms music recently, and once we were we immediately booked them for our show in Austin last week. Singer Alex Tween kept a log of his trip for us, which you can read below.

Borscht Belts were so last year! On an otherwise quiet President's Day, Governor Spitzer announced that he was authorizing the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe to build a casino in the Catskills. The tribe has been planning a casino in Monticello in Sullivan County for many years and the Mohawks agreed to "comply with applicable tax, labor, and health laws (so, things like cigarettes, alcohol and gasoline would be taxed). The deal would give NY State up to 25% of the casino's revenue from 3,500 slot machines, which the NY Times puts at "more than $100 million a year." The Post spins a bigger number: revenue of $4 billion over 25 years.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A truck vs. building in Staten Island, a hazmat situation in Queens and a child was stuck in an elevator in Times Square
• The 50 day protest over the Sean Bell shooting ends today - his family and friends held a daily rally, one day for each bullet fired by the police
• copyranter dares you to put some sizzle on your wrist with a bacon wristband