Results tagged “ban”

Some city landlords have begun prohibiting tenants from smoking inside their apartments, because of the dangers of second-hand smoke. A study recently found that secondhand smoke causes at least 35,000 deaths from heart disease and 3,000 deaths from lung cancer in nonsmokers nationwide each year—and New Yorkers are even more at risk because their dense urban environment. As one tobacco expert put it: "Smoke doesn’t know to stop at a doorway. It fills the full capacity of every indoor location in which the cigarette is smoked." So at least one major real estate company is now stepping in to stop the smoke before it starts.

Move over, NYPD 24-hour cellphone use-while-driving ticket blitzes—tomorrow, the NY State's ban on texting while driving goes into effect. But, the AP points out, "The new law, however, is considered a secondary offense, meaning the driver must have committed a primary offense -- such as speeding, disobeying a traffic signal or other violation -- in order to receive a ticket." Fines can be up to $150; the law doesn't apply to GPS or handsfree phone use.

Mayor Bloomberg signed a bill banning the sale of "most forms of flavored tobacco products" into law yesterday. City Room reports, "The new law is more extensive than the federal Food and Drug Administration’s ban on candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes, which took effect last month," as it covers "chocolate, vanilla, honey, candy, cocoa, dessert, alcoholic beverage, herb or spice flavors" and includes cigars and smokeless tobacco (the federal law bans only cigarettes). However, "tobacco, menthol, mint or wintergreen flavors" are still for sale!

Some Brooklyn Heights residents say the cacophony from helicopters using the downtown Manhattan heliport is ruining their nice little neighborhood, with eight to ten flights landing every hour at the downtown heliport, just across the East River. Resident Neil Calet tells the Post, "We can no longer sit on our balcony because even nose-to-nose conversation is impossible." (Which means they probably can't hear the tiny violin we're playing, either.) Some fear it's about to get worse, because in April the city will shift sightseeing tours from the West 30th Street heliport to the downtown heliport. You gonna take that, Brooklyn Heights?

Hey, whaddaya know—shooting 5,000 volts of electricity at somebody's chest could adversely affect the heart! Manufacturer Taser International Inc. has issued a warning about Taser chest-shots, suggesting that law enforcement officers aim their Tasers at perpetrators' backs, arms, or abdomens. In response to the warning, the NYPD brass has formally ordered officers not to shoot Tasers at suspects' chests.

It's already illegal for cab drivers to use cell phones while driving—even hands-free—but that law's even more scoffed at than the city's futile jaywalking prohibition! So now the Taxi and Limousine Commission is taking on the seemingly impossible task of separating hacks from their phones, by proposing heavy new punishments for gabby cabbies.

When the Health Department first announced a plan to ban smoking in public parks and beaches run by the city, Mayor Bloomberg seemed caught off guard, and backed away from a full ban, saying, "Our Police Department has enough to do. They can't be going around giving tickets [for smoking]."

The Health Department wants New Yorkers to reduce sugary beverage consumption, but the department's employees can still buy the controversial carbonated concoctions from vending machines in the lobby at department headquarters. The Post recently "found" the machine in the 125 Worth Street, and some of the drinks available are Gatorade, Snapple and Coca-Cola—which are being singled out in a $350K anti-soda ad campaign. Naturally, a lobbyist for the beverage industry was happy to comment: "[This] just shows you that we shouldn't allow the Department of Health bureaucrats to make decisions for us, because their decision-making process is often jaundiced." Well, at least it wasn't a cigarette vending machine.

Author Robert Sullivan, who writes provocative bicycling op-ed pieces for the Times when he's not writing about rats and the American Revolution, has a suggestion to solve the ongoing tension between cyclists and pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge walkway. He proposes that the city ban bicycles entirely from the walkway, and shift them down to the motor vehicle roadways by creating physically protected bike lanes.

Since the New York City Housing Authority implemented a ban on pit bulls, Rottweilers, and Doberman pinschers in public housing projects last April, at least 113 pets have been turned over to centers run by Animal Care and Control, and 49 have been euthanized. Tenants and animal welfare groups are outraged about the ban, which also prohibits any dog expected to weigh more than 25 pounds when grown.

The Parks Department is about to impose heavy new regulations on the pedicab operators in Central Park, but the New York City Pedicab Owners Association is begging the city to backpedal. Under the new rules, pedicabs will be forbidden from areas where taxis and carriages make pick-ups; required to operate in the right lane of traffic, not the bike lane on the left; and, weirdly, prohibited from displaying advertisements at times when other motor vehicles are barred from the park.

First they came for the smokers in bars and restaurants, and we said nothing—we simply enjoyed breathing air without carcinogens. Now the Mayor is coming for the smokers on park benches and beach towels, and we're still saying nothing! As part of an ambitious new public health initiative, city health commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley announced that the Bloomberg administration would seek to ban smoking in all city parks and beaches. Public health advocates like Dr. David A. Kessler are elated; he tells City Room, "The issues with secondhand smoke are very real and the majority of the population today doesn’t want to be breathing in tobacco smoke, whether indoors or outdoors." Farley says the proposal to proscribe cigs may require the approval of the City Council, and health department spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti tells Bloomberg News that officials haven’t yet devised "a specific strategy for reducing smoking in parks." But if cops can be as militant about busting smokers as they are ticketing people for public drinking, we're sure this'll be a big cash crop for the city.

Around the start of monsoon season summer, we heard from a couple Brooklyn moms who were outraged about Mr. Softee's mission to turn perfectly healthy children into sugar-addicted diabetic amputees. The ice cream truck backlash has only intensified since then, with anti-ice cream moms demanding death to Mr. Softee nationwide. In Chicago, ice cream trucks have been banned entirely from the 18th Ward, and here the group Asthma Free School Zone is urging principals to shoo the trucks away from schools. And then there's Vicki Sell, mother of 3-year-old Katherine and co-owner of the fish and chips mini-chain Chipshop, which doesn't exactly offer the healthiest cuisine in the world. She tells the Times, "I fall into the camp of parents who are irate...I want Katherine to have the full childhood experience and all. But it’s really predatory for them — two of them — to be right inside the playground like this." The "two of them" are the unlicensed pushcart frozen ice vendors who stalk the playground to seduce precious Katherine over to the sweet side. So now Sell calls 311 to defend her child from the peddlers. But still they come, and they've been driving Katherine to an "inconsolable meltdown."

In the wake of the fatal collision between a small fixed-wing airplane and a sightseeing helicopter, officials gathered today at the 30th Street Heliport on the west side to demand that the F.A.A. and the city ban tourism helicopter flights over the densest parts of Manhattan. Meanwhile, outside an East Harlem elementary school, Mayor Bloomberg said he was leaving the decision up to the F.A.A., telling reporters, "They don’t need me weighing in. They know certainly well what goes on there. They are professionals. I assume they’re going to wait until the National Transportation Safety Board to make its report and then they’ll make their decisions."

Check it out, the State Senate did something! Look at them go up there in Albany, passing bills and not locking each other out of the Senate chambers: Just yesterday they voted 57-1, all by themselves, to pass a bill prohibiting drivers from text messaging or using any electronic devices—including iPods—while their cars are in motion. The bill's been a long time coming (a similar version was passed by the Assembly a while ago) and it will become law in November once Governor Paterson lowers his head to paper and signs it. Drivers caught violating the law will be hit with a $150 fine, but it could only be imposed as a secondary offense, when a driver gets pulled over for another violation. Still, some motorists approve; Dave St. Bernard tells the Post, "Sometimes I text and drive. I'm sure it is dangerous, but you get complacent sometimes as a driver. You think you can handle anything on the roads that comes your way." Lawmakers were motivated to pass the bill in part by a horrible accident in 2007, when an SUV driven by a texting teen collided with a tractor trailer in Ontario County. But when will government do something about texting while walking?

While aggravated Brooklyn residents near McCarren Park have launched an organized campaign against the insipid jingles incessantly blaring from parked ice cream trucks, parents in other parts of the borough are taking aim at Mister Softee not for how he sounds but for what he sells to their children. Well, two parents anyway; a Bensonhurst mom tells the Daily News she takes her 7-year-old daugher to Seth Low Park for exercise, but an ice cream truck parked there is tearing her family apart: "I’ve had fights with my daughter in the past about it. You kind of feel like it’s pushed on you. It’s one thing if they’re just in the neighborhood, but to be here by contract [with the city], they might as well be selling drugs." (They've been known to do that too!)

It's really happening: Workers are getting ready to transform Broadway traffic lanes into a pedestrian oasis as part of the DOT's plan to ban cars from part of the city's main stem. Mayor Bloomberg and other officials announced the radical move back in February; it involves rerouting vehicular traffic from part of Broadway to Seventh Avenue, a move that they say will improve traffic flow because Broadway itself creates congestion as it cuts southeast across the avenues. Pedestrian plazas with tables and chairs, similar to the new "Broadway Boulevard," will entirely replace motor vehicles on Broadway between 42nd and 47th streets and from 32nd to 35th streets. According to 1010 WINS, work will begin Memorial day weekend, and the transformation will include bike lanes in both sections. According to the DOT, the changes, which include widening Seventh Avenue with another traffic lane, are an "experiment" that will last through the end of the year but may become permanent.

The NYC Housing Authority has prohibited pit bulls from all the housing projects it administers, and placed a new weight restriction on all pets, requiring them to weigh no more than 25 pounds. (Previously, and according to the NYCHA website, the limit was 40 pounds. Here's a pdf outlining the new rules.) 24 other breeds, including Rottweilers and Doberman pinschers are also banned, but residents who already own any of the proscribed pets can keep them as long as they register the animal before Friday. Queens Councilman Peter Vallone praised the ban, telling the Daily News, "Finally someone is realizing that these potentially dangerous animals have no place in a confined urban space." Of course not everyone is pleased; Anthony Nieves, who was walking his 1-year-old pit bull, Storm, near his home at the Wald Houses, says, "It all depends on how you teach a dog. My dog is like a puppy." And the ASPCA's advocacy rep explains that the group opposes both the breed-specific ban and the weight restriction because "so many breeds are over 25 pounds. You can get an overweight beagle that weighs more than 25 pounds."

Some members of the Park Slope Food Coop are pushing for a ban on products bought from Israel; the proposal, which will be put to a vote soon, is being floated in response to Israel's most recent military action in Gaza. "Hima B.," the sponsor of the proposal, tells the Jewish Daily Forward, "Economic sanctions worked in South Africa. Why shouldn’t we ask for an end to practices that are violating human rights?" Because, member Rabbi Andy Bachman says, it's "an irrelevant gesture to 5 million Israelis and 2 million Palestinians, but it will make someone in Park Slope feel really good about themselves. That’s what this is about; it’s about the political purity, which is part of Park Slope’s unique self-absorption." Bachman's synagogue happens to host the Co-op's monthly meetings, and he says that should the proposal pass, he'll kindly ask them to have their little gatherings elsewhere. And last year Co-op members voted to ban bottled water, sending a tough message to Aquaman.

Yesterday over 500 people came together at City Hall to discuss the banning of carriage horses in New York, during the first public hearing on Tony Avella's proposed bill. Unsurprisingly, the passionate debate lasted over four hours, pitting animal rights activists against the drivers who want to keep their jobs. The NY Post reports that one pleaded, "At this time of economic hardship, it's your time to give an industry a chance for survival. It will let me feed my family, my wife and my three children. Please, help me keep my job." He was up against Avella and his supporters, including actress Rue McClanahan, who was there to speak out in favor of the bill. WCBS notes that there are alternatives being offered to the drivers, including training them to be pedicab drivers. One man from the Teamsters Local 553 asked, "They're gonna teach these guys to ride tricycles through New York?"

The evildoers of the MillerCoors corporation announced today that they will "remove caffeine and three other ingredients from Sparks alcoholic energy drink" after some people thought it was targeting youthful imbibers. "A coalition of state attorneys general had complained the stimulants reduced drinkers' sense of intoxication and were marketed to young drinkers." The other ingredients being removed are taurine [i.e. bile], guarana and ginseng. NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said this measure "will ensure that from here on out, these drinks are kept off New York shelves and away from New York consumers." The remaining Sparks will be sold (stock up!) and the company will cease production by January 10th, when a new, less-stimulating formula is dispensed. So feared is the old Sparks that one temperance crusader at the Center for Science in the Public Interest even declared it "a devil's brew." Sinners! Pour out your Satanic Sparks and open your mouths to the cleansing waters of non-energizing drinks. Or just clean the bathtub and start concocting a homemade recipe to get you through.

A compromise may be in sight between those who would rid Prospect Park of cars and community groups who say such a change would clog their streets. The Brooklyn Paper reports that at a Community Board 7 meeting in Brooklyn last night, Transportation Alternatives revised its call for an immediate ban, instead proposing narrowing the park to one car lane. About 600 motorists pass through every hour, and the thought of a full ban had board member Cynthia Gonzalez asking, "They want us to redirect 1,200 cars [each morning and evening] onto our streets, for how many bike riders?" Wiley Norvell at Transportation Alternatives tells us, "Our single-biggest issue with cars in Prospect Park is the danger they pose to park users. Speeding and reckless driving are rampant, and a 'road diet' would go a long way to improving the situation, without bumping up against the traffic concerns that have been raised south of the park."

City Councilmen Eric Gioia of Queens and Simcha Felder of Brooklyn will introduce a bill next week that would prohibit the city from buying bottled water and water coolers for workers at city agencies, the Daily News reports. At a press conference yesterday, the two councilmen said taxpayers could save $2 million a year by having municipal offices switch to systems that filter tap water. Felder himself installed a $400 heating and cooling water filter in his office this year, and he told reporters, "It is hypocritical for the city to buy bottled water while urging New Yorkers to drink tap." In addition to saving money, the bill would lessen the city's carbon footprint and waste, without sacrificing taste. Over the summer, NYC placed second in a regional tap-water tasting contest, bested only by Bethpage on Long Island.

Councilwoman Diana Reyna of Brooklyn is considering a bill to ban the sale of machetes, The NY Times reports. For those familiar with the recent gang activity in Brooklyn, the Williamsburg area especially, Reyna's desire to ban the weapon should come as no surprise. This year there have been a number of machete attacks, allegedly all gang-related.

Windsor Terrace residents were joined by Park Slope Assemblyman Jim Brennan and local community board members at a rally to decry a proposal that would completely bar cars from Prospect Park for three months next summer to study the traffic impact. Last month Transportation Alternatives delivered a petition to Mayor Bloomberg signed by 10,000 people who want the park to be totally car-free.

Since Mayor Bloomberg and the DOT have been showing an interest in making the city's streets more inviting to pedestrians and cyclists, advocacy group Transportation Alternatives has decided it's a perfect time to increase pressure on City Hall to make Brooklyn's Prospect Park completely car-free. As it stands now, the hours when drivers are permitted in the park have been whittled down to two hours in the morning and two hours at night on weekdays, during rush hour.

On Tuesday the L.A. city council passed a bill that would prevent new fast food restaurants from opening in certain parts of the city for at least one year. Not to be outdone, New York City Council member Eric Gioia is proposing the same thing here. He tells the Sun, "People are literally being poisoned by their diets – LA's idea deserves serious consideration as we look for holistic solutions to a serious problem." Suprisingly, the council's minority leader, Republican James Oddo of Staten Island, is all for it: "I drive around my district and I see people engaging in incredibly unhealthy lifestyles that I know I pay for, to some degree. If there's a way to make them have a healthier lifestyle so I don't pay for it, I would be open to it."

After routinely stopping ticket holders from bringing their sunblock into Yankee Stadium, the sunburnt fans’ outrage boiled over yesterday into the New York Post, who verified that security guards have been forcing people to throw away any sunscreen containers larger than three ounces. Of course, fans always had the option of buying 1-ounce bottles of Arizona Sun SPF 15 for $5 inside the stadium. But an hour after a reporter called the stadium to confirm the sunscreen ban, a spokesman announced a change in policy: sunscreen is now allowed! Now if only the Post would publicize their absurd bicycle helmet ban – after all, the stadium isn’t selling those inside, as far as we know.

Recovering drug addicts can look forward to climbing even further up the walls starting tomorrow, when all drug treatment centers in New York State implement a smoking ban. Bryan Lapsker, a 21-year-old PCP addict, tells amNY he’s been dreading the change: "Nicotine helps (addicts) get through the day. Now you take the nicotine away from us, it's almost impossible to get through the day. Addiction is addiction, I understand that, but nicotine is a legal substance." The state will now spend $8 million training health care workers how to treat nicotine dependence, and if the regulation’s a hit, maybe they’ll finally take away addicts’ caffeine, chocolate and soda pop, too.

It’s been a long time coming, but today’s the day the city’s ban on trans fat expands from spreads and frying oils to everything served in a restaurant, with the exception of foods served in the manufacturer's original packaging, such as crackers. The city’s anti-trans fat website has plenty of trans facts for restaurateurs and diners, and Sal Picinich of Carlo's Bakery in Hoboken tells the Post that “anyone who needs their trans-fats fix should know we're only a short drive or PATH ride away.”