Results tagged “bigbrother”

The junk food industry is going to war against the Bloomberg administration's big public health push, spending $1 million on an ad campaign asking New Yorkers, "When did the Big Apple become Big Brother?" But Bloomberg isn't sweating the industry's measly million in ads, and defended his hands-on approach to health yesterday, telling reporters, "A little impetus from the government really does improve the public health of the average person. If you want to drink sugared drinks, you're going to have a weight problem, and maybe government should tax it to keep you from doing it." And if taxes don't persuade you to put down the Big Gulp, maybe a little trip to Room 101 will do the trick.

Tender-hearted readers, be warned: You may cry (from happiness) over this. A 95-year-old man has been a "Big Brother" to a 37-year-old man for the past 30 years! In 1979, Chester Ross decided to participate in Big Brothers program in Westchester—skeptically since he was 65 with grandchildren— and met David Loughran, "a timid 7-year-old...being raised by his divorced mother." Though most Big Brother/Big Sister relationships last till the little sibling is 18, they've been friends for much longer: Ross put Loughran through college ("What else was I going to do? By then he was part of my family"), gave him career advice, and served as his best man five years ago. Ross recalled, "Be a best man when you're 90 years old? But I told him I would do it under one condition. I wanted nothing to do with the bachelor party." Loughran, who gave a son the middle name "Ross," said, "I was shy, and he helped me with my self-confidence. He encouraged me to read and get educated. He became a big part of my family, and he accepted me into his family." Awwww. Here's more information about Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

In addition to taking your money, an increasing number restaurants are also taking video of your dining experience, at least according to the Post’s trend-spotting Carla Spartos. She notes five Manhattan restaurants that use closed-circuit video cameras to record customers in their dining rooms: Boqueria, the four star Daniel, Dos Caminos, Philippe, and Momofuku Noodle Bar.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a serious trauma at East 16th St. and Moore Pl. in Brooklyn, a water search at Kosciusko Bridge in Brooklyn, and a bank robbery on Lexington Ave. in Manhattan,
• Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who popularized transcendentalism in the West with the support of The Beatles, died yesterday at an undetermined age.
• Postmodern reality at its best: Silvercup Studios, where "Gossip Girl," is filmed could actually become an educational institution.
• A Whole Foods location is opening in Gowanus, Brooklyn, after groundbreaking last spring and much consternation.
• Going against the grain of many city mayors who are declaring their municipalities a safe haven for illegal immigrants, Mayor Mark Boughton of Danbury, CT wants to align his police force with federal law enforcement to crack down on undocumented workers.
• Brooklyn's 4th Ave. has undergone a dramatic transformation over the last five years. The new-and-improved version seems equally unimpressive to some.
• Customers at the Grand Central Oyster Bar who want to order New England clam chowder will have to ask for "Giants Clam Chowder" this week.
• Big Brother is a salesman. He wants to follow you to sell you stuff.

Less than 6 hours until kickoff at Lambeau Field and it's a balmy -6° in Green Bay. With winds at 15 miles per hour, Accuweather's real feel temperatures are -18°. While temperatures will increase by game time, it's still going to be ass-cold.

Filmmaker Ethan Coen has left his big brother behind and written three short plays all by himself. Called Almost an Evening, the triptych will be produced by the Atlantic Theater Company with a terrific cast that includes Elizabeth Marvel, who was riveting in Ivo van Hove’s unforgettable revival of Hedda Gabler, and Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham. The plays “unsuccessfully tackle important questions. In Waiting, someone waits somewhere for quite some time. In Four...

Fox News Porn Robert Greenwald, the man behind the 2004 documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism which concluded that Fox News Channel is biased to the right based on memos and footage from the network, is at it again. This time around he is using clips from the channel culled from six months of broadcasts featuring women in bikinis and pixilated nudity in a YouTube video and website that mimics a porn site called...

Long time New York resident David Wain is currently on location in LA, working on his latest film, Little Big Men, starring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott. Wain's been spending a lot of time in LA due to his career, but, don't worry, he doesn't plan on moving there anytime soon. In fact, the only place the star of Stella and The State plans on moving is Brooklyn. In this Gothamist Q and A, the director of Wet Hot American Summer and The Ten talks about what it's like to film in New York and Wainy Days, his foray into intentional Internet shorts on MyDamnChannel.com .

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a water rescue off West St. at Battery Place in Manhattan, missing children on Grimsby St. on Staten Island, and a DOA floater in the Harlem River off Manhattan.
• New Yorkers may have just seen their water bill rates hiked 11.5% three months ago, but officials are now saying property owners can expect a rate increase of another 18% as early as the start of next year.
• Idle speculation at Eater about the future of the Brooklyn Inn in Boerum Hill is not appreciated by the bar's manager. [Caution: strong language]
• Mayor Bloomberg worked out a tentative new contract with the NYPD detectives union that promises a 20% pay raise over the next four years via higher salaries. A first grade detective with more than 20 years on the force will be able to earn more than $118,000 a annually.
• Fare Wars II: The Taxi Strike's Back. NYC cab drivers will have another go at striking in protest of GPS devices in their cars this Wednesday.
• Newark Mayor Cory Booker has a special vested interested in improving living conditions for young people in his city. He serves as a Big Brother to three teen-aged young men, attempting to mentor them towards the straight and narrow.
• The Daily Intelligencer locates a rather large TBS billboard that will be salt in the wounds of disappointed Mets fans.
• A man was shot to death by the man he was playing dice with outside a building on West 131st St. in Manhattan this morning.

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to.

This is something we all learned while watching the first season of The Real World (but probably forgot sometime around Big Brother, The Bachelor and every other "reality show" that quickly sprouted up). NYMag has a review from the premiere, where apparently "covetable gift bags" were handed out (we hear they contained iPods...but not iPhones).

A look at some noteworthy television this week:

Gail Donoghue, special counsel for the city’s Law Department, began the hearing by telling Judge Haight that he overstepped his judicial powers in February when he essentially made his own court the enforcer for police guidelines that govern the investigation of political activity. Ms. Donoghue said that by making the court the final arbiter of police surveillance issues, the judge had in fact begun to “oversee operations of the Intelligence Division of the Police Department.”

Continue reading "In The Eyes of The Patroller"

After its story about how the NYPD spied on organizations for at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, the NY Times reports that the city wants to keep NYPD records sealed, in fear that the media will "fixate upon and sensationalize them." Well, that's probably too late.

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost.

Tom Shillue performs at clubs all over New York City, has a Comedy Central Presents half hour special, has appeared in commercials for Audi, Heineken, Ameritrade, Snickers, and provided voiceovers for Verizon, for Amex, and Met Life. He'll be headling at http://comixny.com/event.aspx?eid=69&sid=221on the 14th.

Guess what? The MTA is unhappy with Siemens, who promised them real-time information boards, because the company has failed to fix its software! The Post reports that the MTA already paid Siemens $45 million out of the $160 million contract, but the agency is now looking for another contractor to finish the job. This is very good to know - you don't actually have to finish a job in order to get paid by the MTA. And Siemens claims they can fix the software, but this is apparently on deaf MTA ears (Siemens must have majorly screwed up if the MTA isn't having any of this!).

New York City is trying really hard to make sure underage teens (and 20 year olds - can't forget them) are not going to clubs and getting way drunk, lest they get into trouble. Reader Jane sent us photographs of one traffic-rerouting display sign that have been repurposed into a warning for anyone with a fake ID.

Mid song, about two and a half in after I got to the Knitting Factory last night during Owen's quiet solo set, someone by the bar shouted out "Emo Sucks!" and the place went quiet. Yikes. I'm not sure anyone knew how to react. Well, yea, it does? But, no, this guy's good...But is this really emo? Perhaps, in the most basic and grounded sense of the word, but...is this EMOSUKS! emo? Or does emo that sucks involve hysteric teenage girls and eyeliner? This was more Elliott Smith or Bright Eyes emo, which most people seem to agree doesn't suck at all. Wait, was that guy actually even serious? It was really quite the loaded statement, uttered by someone who was either a paying attendee of the show or a guest of the band. The idea even crossed my mind that this was part of the song. Mike Kinsella (aka Owen) stopped and attempted to address the guy, but was mostly drowned out by the even more curious calls from the audience that the heckler was a terrorist and hated our freedom. Yeah, this was weird. And we hadn't even gotten to Joan of Arc yet.

DNA wise, fur color is meaningless. How do you know this cat’s genetic lineage is not one and the same with the African cats held sacred by once powerful upper and lower Nile River kingdoms?

Ooh: A little over three weeks after the Police Commissioner announced that hundreds of surveillance cameras would be installed, all in the name of fighting crime and terrorism, to watch our every move, they are here. Three cameras were installed in Brooklyn along Knickerbocker Avenue last week, and the reaction (well, according to the people the Post spoke to) is positive, with some people eagerly enjoying safety over their privacy. The NYPD's camera project will cost about $9 million for 500 cameras, and the city would like to get federal money to install hundreds more in downtown Manhattan. What's interesting about the cameras to Gothamist is that they are so conspicuous - we suppose that if Big Brother is watching us, then it's nice to know where he's watching us, but if they are trying to do any covert surveillance, the NYPD paint job isn't the way to do it. Twenty bucks says kids dressed in baggy, nondescript clothing have already tried to egg the cameras.

We knew that the Department of Transportation had a lot of traffic cameras up around the city but until today we'd just never thought about the idea that those cameras might be available for public consumption. But oh, they so totally are. Apparently this has been around for a while but it is new to us. We just spent the past twenty minutes feeling like Big Brother as we watched traffic move around the five boroughs. Since the feeds come from the DOT the pictures are grainy (and if the wind is strong they can go out for a bit) and only cover the major roadways. So to recap, traffic cameras = surprisingly entertaining. In fact, excuse us, we're going to go watch traffic at Columbus Circle while we eat our lunch.

The Taxi and Limousine Commission wants to roll out some more hi-tech accoutrements in city taxis, including news on the backseat screens (again!), credit card payment, and a wireless tracking system for lost belongings, not to mention monitors for drivers that could update them about traffic. However, many drivers aren't sure if they want the equipment, which the TLC is requiring for all 12,787 hacks, because it'll cost thousands of dollars. The coordinator for the NY Taxi Workers Alliance says the equipment is "Big Brother-esque," because there would be GPS tracking; the TLC says that the monitors will help drivers navigate the city better and offer better service to customers. And at today's hearing about the matter, Newsday reports that one 30-year taxi driving veteran, Kevin Fitzpatrick, was escorted out after exceeding his time to speak (he suggested the TLC would "spy on Muslim hacks").