More unfortunate details about the dump truck that crashed into a parked Fung Wah bus, killing one person and injuring others: It turns out the truck was unsafe, per the Times, "three brake hoses that were severely deteriorated...inoperable brake lamps, a loose brake air reservoir, a loose brake chamber and a defective brake warning device." Great to know these vehicles are on the road.......

Yesterday morning, a dump truck speeding off the Manhattan Bridge onto Canal Street lost control and hit a Fung Wah bus waiting to pick up passengers. The bus then jumped the curb and crashed into a building. One woman died and four others were injured, and here are some new details:...

Last year movie piracy became a misdemeanor in New York, making it that much harder to watch a shaky-cam version of a summer blockbuster before it even closes out its opening weekend in theaters. Bloomberg has been cracking down on counterfeiters city-wide, and while he's brought equal attention to the fake purse racket, The NY Times focuses in on the blurry bootlegs. Shari Hyman is the director of the mayor’s office of special enforcement, and......

Photograph of Mayor Bloomberg proclaiming a counterfeit foods store closed in a raid of counterfeit good sellers by Bebeto Matthews/AP Nothing says press conference like raiding a 32 stores in what the city dubs "Counterfeit Triangle" and hauling away over a $1 million worth of brand-name products. The raid, taking down stores in the area bounded by Canal Street, Walker Street and Centre Street, occurred in the early morning, with cops using bolt-cutters to......

A 92-year-old woman was run over and dragged by a Chinatown bus yesterday afternoon. Her injuries were so bad that her legs were amputated at Bellevue. The Post reports that the woman had been walking west on Canal Street when a New Century bus hit her when it was turning onto Forsyth. . It dragged her halfway down the block before passers-by could flag down the driver. "The light was green," said the driver, who......

Rainbow cookies are quite possibly our favorite cookies. Ever. Whenever someone brings a cookie assortment from an Italian bakery we always eat all the rainbow cookies first and usually discard the rest. The best rainbow cookies money can buy are available at Isaac's Bake Shop, 1419 Avenue J in Brooklyn, NY, right across the street from Di Fara's pizza, and just a few blocks away from where we grew up. (We still think it's......

Metro has an interview with NYU professor and Department of Sanitation anthropologist-in-residence, Robin Nagle. The piece comes on the cusp of “Loaded Out: Making a Museum,” an exhibition Nagle helped curate which focuses on the DSNY's history and its vital role in shaping the city. The exhibit opens tomorrow and will run for a full month, but she mentions this is just the first step in creating a Sanitation Museum.Police and firefighters have museums. Why......

The story around the possible hate crime attack on a Q train the other night seems to be made for the season. Not only does it come while subway violence is a big topic, it also involves a group of Jewish subway riders being called "dirty Jews" and "Jew bitches" and attacked by people who cried, "Happy Hanukkah, that's when the Jews killed Jesus." And here's the kicker: The only person who stepped in......

Police are investigating an attack on a Brooklyn-bound Q train as a possible hate crime. A group of people (WNBC says they were on their way home from Hanukkah celebrations) were called anti-Semitic phrases and then beaten up by another group of ten people at Canal Street. The Post has some more details: Apparently one of the attackers "made anti-Semitic remarks about Jews killing Jesus, saying, 'This is a Christian country.'" But the father of......

We’ve been cooking a lot with bacon lately, so we’re delighted with The Bacon Cookbook by James Villas. Villas calls bacon “the greatest and most beloved food on earth,” and while we’re not sure we’d go that far, there are moments when we have to agree there’s nothing better. A few things we learned about bacon: - It’s one of the oldest meats in history; the Chinese were preserving and salting pork bellies around 1500......

No one thought congestion pricing would be easy but now some of the economic reality is sinking in. The MTA announced that it would need $767 million to upgrade service if people shift from cars to mass transit. How does that money break down? According to the NY Times, there's "$284 million in 2008 and 2009 for 367 new city and suburban buses, 46 new subway cars and many station renovations and service enhancements; $163......

We've been hearing about a plan to increase security downtown by placing security cameras and license plate readers in Lower Manhattan, "ring of steel"-style for a while, but now the NY Times has word on when it'll happen. According to police officials, more than 100 cameras will be in place by the end of the year and if it's fully financed, over 3,000 private and public cameras will be up and running. From the......

THEATER: Biography is a largely forgotten 1932 comedy by S. N. Behrman, who wrote witty and flattering plays for high society. In the Pearl Theatre’s current revival, Carolyn McCormick (Law & Order) plays Marion Froude, a free-spirited, liberated lady in her 40s who draws heat when she decides to write a tell-all about her eccentric life. One of the colorful characters from her past who dreads the exposure is a U.S. Senate hopeful; sparks fly......

When the chief suits and ties take a few symbolic jackhammer swipes on Thursday to relaunch construction on the Second Avenue Subway, they won't exactly be breaking new ground. A 3-minute video from NY Times shows the history of three previous groundbreaking ceremonies held in the 1970s. "Groundbreakings are meant to symbolize progress and things actually getting done," narrates William Neuman. "In the case of the Second Avenue Subway, that has not always been......

How badly do you want that fake purse? Just know this the next time you're perusing Chinatown for some cheap Prada or Coach gear: You may be trapped in a basement if the store gets raided. Yesterday, twelve shoppers were herded into the basement at 218 Centre Street while the police were busting the counterfeit ring - and were kept there against their will. NY1 reports that 2 hours later, the police got a call......

According to the 31 Down website, until October of this year there will be some mystery theater happening underground. Not so much the mystery of when your train will arrive, but an interactive murder mystery. It's set in the Canal Street subway station, picked for its noir feel, and features Tajna Tanovic and Mike Sharpie. All you have to do to participate is call Toll Free 1-877-OR-WHAT-31 (1-877-679-4283) from any pay phone inside the......

Yesterday, Transportation Alternatives held a rally at City Hall to draw attention to the recently increasing numbers of pedestrian fatalities on city streets. Last year, 163 pedestrians died, a 4% increase over 2005, and just this past weekend, four pedestrians were killed by vehicles. Relatives and friends of victims joined TA to demand that the city to make streets safer for pedestrians and "strengthen laws against motorists who kill or injure pedestrians" (Metro). Watch......

Today the NY Times reviews a new show at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. Titled “Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X,” the exhibit explores 70 architectural magazines published in New York and elsewhere during the period. Pamphlets and building instruction manuals are included in the "little magazine" category. The most New York-centric covers described by Nicolai Ouroussoff feature an elephant attacking the Guggenheim Museum and a skyscraper made of Swiss cheese.......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: person struck by D train at 34th Street, serious moving vehicle accident on Canal Street, and a fatal fall victim at Bed, the club in Chelsea (the victim fell down an elevator shaft.) Here's an interesting map of the long closed City Hall Station. The nefarious Brooklyn footlicker, who targeted more than 70 women on the subway, has been sentenced to four months in prison and a $1000 fine.......

John Fekner was a street artist in the 1980s-- check out this gallery of his pieces, including a few from Greenpoint, near the old gas towers. [Via Wooster] Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a barge worker had a heart attack and had to be rescued at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, someone fell down an elevator shaft on East 11th Street, and a water main broke on Canal Street. Former Page Six gossipeur Jared Paul......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a car pinned someone on Delancey and Clinton late last night, a "child left in taxi" in Queens, and possible homicide suspects arrested on Lafayette and Canal Street. At PS 41, each student gets $3,200 in city funding; at PS 25, each student gets $6,300 in funding - and Mayor Bloomberg wants to fix the disparity in funds Meet Big Mama, a 4 pound red-tailed hawk living in Brownstone......

-- Late breaking news: Rudy Fleming was convicted of murder in the Nicole DuFresne case-- we'll followup tomorrow. -- If you don't work in the financial service industry, you may have missed out on the Aleksey Vayner meme, in which a kid at Yale sent a hilariously insane application video for a job at an i-bank. All hell broke lose shortly after the video was leaked to the internet. This short video, set to......

Residents of Chinatown, Lower East Side, Soho, Nolita, Little Italy, etc., get your cameras and Culture Club vinyls ready: Boy George will be cleaning your streets starting August 14. The Department of Sanitation told the Daily News that Boy George will get a "shovel, broom, plastic bags and gloves" when he starts his 5 day community service stint (required after he pleaded guilty to falsely calling in a break-in). The DoS says that the singer......

About a month ago, Leslie Price wrote in Time Out about the burgeoning scene south of Delancey, BelDel, and its additions, including Clandestino Cafe & Bar. She wrote that it would be opening in early February, so we checked it out last night (two days into March, because we admit to getting a little jaded about these things). Our timing was good -- we watched as liquors were still being stocked as we walked......

Holy shit-- remind us never to walk on Canal Street again. According to this extremely scary crash map put out by Transportation Alternatives, getting hit by a car is almost guaranteed! Transalt compiled the map from stats put our from 1995-2001, so the street may have gotten slightly safer since then (seems unlikely, given what we observe in our daily crossing going down to GothamistHQ.) They also have stats for the other five boroughs.......

Various city agencies have long been trying to crack down on counterfeit goods, from handbags on Canal Street to clothing in the Garment District. Recently, a judge ruled that landlords of buildings that house counterfeit vendors can now be held liable. Landlords will have to post signs saying these are counterfeit vendors and possibly evict the vendors as well. Hmm, Gothamist hates to be cynical, but those signs will be exactly what tourists want to......

On Sundays, Gothamist posts opinion pieces about issues relevant to life in New York City. If you'd like to write one, email us! The opinions expressed below belong only to the author. I was walking down Canal Street yesterday when I noticed this sign, taped to the shuttered gates of a store just off the corner of 6th Avenue. If you have trouble reading fine print, it says the store was shuttered for "the open......

You may have realized that for the last few weeks we've been getting pretty obsessed with videoblogging-- especially the great daily feature at Rocketboom and the clips at Vimeo. Here's another link to add to the pile: TurnHere. Produced by some of the same people behind the Inman Stories (remember Lockhart's hilarious video interview?) TurnHere focuses on neighborhoods, and they've already got a bunch of NYC clips up for your viewing pleasure: New York, NY......

ATM skimming or phishing - where people try to get your bank accounts and PIN numbers by adding secret readers to ATMS - is nothing new. But it seems like some robbers have taken it to a new level - some robbers have created fake keypads in addition to the bank card slots! Did you see the local news segments about this? They look really real! The robbers have taken $100,000 from 50 Washington Mutual......

We were walking down Canal Street yesterday when we noticed this super-cute Plasma Slug piece! It's a plasmaslug in a Warriors outfit, in front of an ad for the Warriors videogame! Talk about mind-blowing recursiveness! That's just like the time we got a tattoo of a butt on our butt, with a butt on it! Another Warriors slug, in front of Katz's Deli, after the jump. [Related: Streetsy Plasma Slug archives.]......