Results tagged “boroughpark”

The city's health department announced there is a mumps outbreak in Brooklyn, with at least 57 "confirmed or probable cases." How? Well, the Daily News reports, "The outbreak was traced to a child who went to Britain - where the illness is more common because of lower levels of vaccination - and then attended a summer camp upstate, apparently infecting dozens of kids."

Not only will pickle purveyor Guss' Pickles be moving from its longtime Lower East Side home to Brooklyn, but it'll be losing its name, too! Co-owner Pat Fairhurst has revealed that according to the terms of a prior lawsuit settlement, she's required to relinquish the name if she does pickle business anywhere else. It's a little complicated, but in 2006 Fairhurst got into a legal fight over the Guss' name with Steve and Andrew Leibowitz, a father-son team who run United Pickle in the Bronx and tried to open up a pickle shop named Guss' on Long Island. Lawsuits and counter-lawsuits ensued, with both parties asserting their right to the Guss' legacy—which stretches back to Isidor Guss, a Polish immigrant who sold pushcart pickles and later opened up the LES shop. But Fairhurst, who has owned Guss' since 2004, doesn't seem worried about dropping the historic name; she tells the Daily News, "It doesn't matter what our name is. People are going to know where I'm going. I'll put whatever I want on the sign, and they'll still come because it's our pickles they want."

This year's New York City International Pickle Day Festival, taking place on October 4, will be a lot more brinier than usual, supplemented with free flowing half-sour tears. The reason? Earlier today, news broke that Lower East Side tenement-era survivors Guss' Pickles will pack up their barrels four months from now and move to Borough Park.

As the dust still settles from the massive FBI sting operation that brought down three New Jersey mayors, rabbis from Brooklyn and saw a total of 44 suspects arrested, more details are emerging about the one charge among the fray that really turned heads this week—organ trafficking.

A 25-year-old photographer was killed by a mini-school bus in Borough Park earlier today. 1010WINS reports, "[Police] say he was attempting to cross the street in Brooklyn just before 10 a.m. Tuesday. He was about 100 feet from the crosswalk when he was struck." The Daily News, which identifies the man as Matthew Smolovich, reports that he was taking pictures on 44th Street near 14th Avenue with a "Canon 5D with a 16X35 lens" and "was looking down when he crossed the street near 14th Ave.," according to sources. The bus driver stayed at the scene and was not issued a summons; none of the children aboard the bus were injured.

A few hours ago, F train service was suspended between Avenue X and Church Avenue due to falling debris at an elevated subway station. WABC 7 reports, "The problem started around 5 a.m. this morning when a 4x8 piece of the platform became loose and collapsed down below at the 18th Avenue Station." The transit authority "took out the remainder of the loose concrete, while engineers examined the structural integrity of the platform." Manhattan-bound service resumed, but Coney Island-ound service is skipping 18th Avenue.

It was a weiner war when Orthodox Jewish customers of Cheskel's Shawarma King discovered that the Borough Park restaurant was serving non-Kosher food! The Post reports that a fracas broke out on Monday night, "when a longtime patron noticed the unusually plump wiener he bought ...didn't fit into a challah roll as usual."

If you think that someone nearby has no concern for you because they are talking loudly on their cell phone, you might want to consider just how deeply that lack of interest in your well-being might run. Thursday in Borough Park, a woman tried to take a stand against an overly vocal mobile user and ended up on the receiving end of a beating. After being told to pipe down while talking loudly on her phone by the woman while inside a bodega, 21-year-old Berta Rakhamimov chased the chastiser down, shoved her in the chest, threw hot coffee in her face and began biting her on the finger and kicking her thigh with her high heels. Rakhamimov then fled, but police were able to catch up with and charge the woman with assault, menacing and criminal possession for the attack that left the victim bruised and burned.

WCBS 2 reports that "10 people have been injured—one seriously—in an accident involving a New York City bus in Brooklyn." The accident occurred at 49th Street and 14th Avenue before 7 a.m.; it's unclear what caused the incident. The injured, most of whom had cuts and bruises, were taken to the hospital for evaluation. In other bus news, a private bus on its way to D.C. for the inauguration broke down on a highway in Mamaroneck around 1 a.m.; the passengers were stranded there for six hours as the driver tried unsuccessfully to fix it.

The Brooklyn man who last spring struck a 73-year-old man in an altercation that would eventually prove fatal has gotten off merely with a sentence forcing him to go to anger management counseling. 29-year-old Ernest Cappello was only charged with misdemeanor assault for taking down Maris Veyberman after Cappello's girlfriend claimed that the Russian immigrant had groped her. Authorities believed Cappello's remorseful story that he had no intention of hurting the old man, but Veyberman's family is enraged due to some accounts of the incident. One neighbor told the News, "He punched two to three times. We were all screaming at him, 'Call the cops, call the cops.' The old man, he never expected anything. After the guy went down he gave him a kick with his foot and said, 'Piece of shit' and took off in his car." Cappello's lawyer said, "This is the worst thing that ever happened to him."

The two carriage horses who ran amok through Bay Ridge Sunday are recovering nicely on a Connecticut farm, the Daily News reports. Stormy and Elvis, snow-colored, 2,000-pound Percherons who work pulling buggies for Valentine Carriage, survived with just scratched-up legs. However, driver Richie Valentine Jacobson fractured five ribs after being thrown from the carriage onto a town car's windshield. The buggy was about to pick up bride-to-be Nunzie Lumberto when a pole snapped, spooking the horses, who took off. In spite of his injuries, Jacobson (in Renaissance costume) caught up, grabbed the reins, and steered the carriage into a light pole, totaling it. He's not saying he's a hero, but he puts it this way, "I jeopardized my own life to make sure no one else would be in harm's way."

A horse-drawn buggy was totaled yesterday during a wild stampede through Borough Park in Brooklyn that left one car with a shattered windshield, the Post reports. The white buggy was a block away from picking up bride-to-be Nunzie Lumberto, who was waiting to be escorted to her wedding at Regina Hall of St. Rosalie's in Dyker Heights. But before she could get in, a wooden bar under the buggy snapped, striking one of the horses in the rear. Then it was off to the races!

The police believe a recent sexual assault on a young girl is connected to another assault from last Year. A few week ago, a 14-year-old was walking on 41st Street and 12th Avenue when, according to NY1, "the suspect came up from behind her and forced her into the vehicle," drove her to a location where he assaulted her. She was able to fight him off and was left at Fort Hamilton Parkway and 36th Street. The 2007 attack occurred when a man took a 4-year-old girl off her stoop, assaulted her, and then dropped her off. Assemblyman Dov Hikind is offering a $20,000 reward; the suspect is described as a white male, in his early 20s, with a thin build and short, spiky black hair, who drives a black or dark colored four-door sedan with tinted windows and a beige interior.

His record is pretty impressive, he's organized 70 "real dates," 19 of which turned into relationships that lasted over a year. The numbers could be higher but Ibrahim is selective on who he sets up.

He listens to their conversations, asks them a few questions and then, if he thinks they are suitable, explains his matchmaking services and asks for their number and e-mail.

Continue reading "Cupid Cabbie Cures NYC's Lonely Hearts"

Looks like someone took that pirate trend a little too far. The NY Times is reporting on Brian Markey and Owen Cahillane, who are sailing the high seas in their floating abode. Okay, no sailing is involved, but the two roommates, recently transplanted from New Orleans and channeling the spirit of Davy Crockett, live day in and day out on a houseboat in the Bronx.

After City Council member Simcha Felder announced he would propose legislation to ban feeding pigeons, bird lovers joined forces and, yesterday, held a rally at City Hall. Armed with posters like "Save Our Right to Feed Wildlife," "Have U Known Anybody Killed by a Pigeon?", "Pigeons are Beautiful Birds," and "Felder's Pigeon Bill is Poop!", the pro-pigeon protesters spoke out for their feathered friends. One demonstrator told City Room, "We are voices for the...

Gotham Gazette has an excellent look at the effects of "a housing bust" by Queens College demographer Andrew Beveridge. This map shows how much income goes towards mortgages; Beveridge notes:

The median income of those paying less than 30 percent of their income on housing is $120,900. For those paying between 30 and 50 percent of their income, though, the median is $74,390, and for those paying over 50 percent the median income is $39,900.

Continue reading "Map of the Day: How Much Income is Going To Mortgages"

An argument escalated into arson and then a murder-suicide, all in front of a small child, in Borough Park early yesterday morning. After setting their apartment on fire, police say that Christopher Flynn shot his girlfriend Christina Scarabaggio and then turned the gun on himself. Scarabaggio's 4-year-old daughter Bianca Perez was found crying over her mother's body outside.

City Councilman Bill de Blasio, whose Brooklyn district covers Borough Park, Carroll Gardens, is asking the Department of Buildings to stop all of architect Robert Scarano's current projects. According to the Sun, DeBlasio says Scarano, who has hundreds of projects in various stages of progress, "should not be allowed to build while under investigation by the State Education Department for professional misconduct."

The five men who identified themselves as police before bursting into a Cypress Hills, Brooklyn home demanding to know "Where are the drugs?" were actually just thieves. WABC's Eyewitness News is reporting that the five men were dressed in police-type clothing, with one actually wearing a bulletproof vest and wielding a gun. They tied up two female residents and pistol whipped a man as they ransacked the home. An infant lying in a crib was not disturbed by the intruders.

While 11-year-old Xochil Garcia is still being praised for her quick thinking and bravery after escaping and helping nab a man who tried to abduct her, some adults are upset at the law. Her parents, as well as City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., are angry that the suspected kidnapper, Bernard Mutterperl, was set free on $25,000 bail.

Yesterday, NBC News revealed that Virginia Tech shooting gunman Cho Seung-Hiu sent them a package of photographs, writings, and video - a "multimedia manifesto." The network turned over the materials to the authorities but also shared the package's contents during the evening news last night and on its website.

Apparently, putting a wall in the middle of your home because you hate your spouse so much isn't enough to convince a jury you should be granted a divorce. A jury told Chana and Simon Taub, a Borough Park couple who were squabbling over a separation and divorce to the point where Simon Taub, who refused to move out of their plush home, built a wall in the middle in the December, they couldn't separate.

Remember last year's crazy Borough Park riot when police arrested a 75 year old Hasidic man for talking on a cellphone while driving? The police tried to arrested Arthur Schick, who resisted, and other Hasids got involved, started a protest and fires and trapped a cop in a car? Many Hasids were arrested, two cops were injured, and there were claims that police used racial epithets ("This is how we treat niggers" and "Get the f---ing Jews out of here") during the incident. Well, now one of the Hasidic men arrested is suing the NYPD for $11 million.

City real estate is a tough market to navigate, so tough that some couples who are splitting up decide to live together until they can find their own places. And then there are the Taubs of Borough Park. Earlier this year, as the couple separated, Simon Taub said that he was going to put a wall down the middle of their home because he didn't want to move and be further from his kids and doctor. And yesterday, the Daily News witnessed the insanity of the "Off-the-wall divorce":

On Wednesday, the city Buildings Department issued Taub a permit for the Sheetrock wall, which slices through two floors of the three-story house on 49th St. the couple shared for 18 years.

Continue reading "If King Solomon Had to Rule About Houses..."

A 62 year old man was shot and killed by the police after he threatened them with an ax. The NY Times says that neighbors called 911 about a "man armed with an ax in the courtyard." When the police got to the Bronx apartment Anatoly Dmitriev, they heard him threaten his 41 year old son's life. So the cops broke down the door, but Dmitriev went out the fire escape. The police shot him when he refused to drop the ax.

Dusk, by Paulo C.

Wednesday evening, a man asked two young girls to help him look for his lost puppy, but he lured them into an alley on Ross Street in Williamsburg and fondled a 7 year old girl. The girl's friend ran to get her father, who chased the man. The man left in an SUV, and the father may have damaged the door. The incident has left the Hasidic community shaken, but community leader Isaac Abraham told NY1, “We live the old tradition of kids go out at night, babysitting, helping their parents. It's a very normal, active life. If you deprived them that, or you pull back from that, then you're basically an in-house prisoner." Abraham also said to WABC 7, "He was very lucky he wasn't apprehended on the streets, there would have been street justice."

The police have charged one of three men involved in a Borough Park home invasion robbery. A pair of robbers had entered Wolf and Sarah Sicherman's home through a back window on Monday night. They cut the electricity, tied the couple up (threatening them with boxcutters), and made Wolf Sicherman open up his safe. The safe had not only jewelry but cash, because Sicherman was going to buy an apartment building the next day, and the robbers got away with over $200,000. But not before thanking Sarah Sicherman for being so nice during the robbery. Were they trying to be the "Thank You" robbers?

-- Sad: a sanitation worker who made headlines last year catching a four year old who jumped out of a burning building was shot and killed last night.