Results tagged “chelseapiers”

Last night a reader wrote in to tell us about an evacuation at Chelsea Piers Sky Rink Pier. She wrote, "We were just in the middle of an intense hockey game at Chelsea piers, the sky rink pier, when rink management came running out to immediately evacuate the building. Why? Because the PIER IS COLLAPSING!!!" Another person wrote on Contribute, "Chelsea Piers Sky Rink shut down due to to structural damage from a boat." A call to the Piers didn't yield many details, but they confirmed they were closed until further notice. The website also states that "the West Rink is closed for repairs," and will also be closed for all of Labor Day weekend.

         

The Food Bank for New York City held their 5th Annual Can-Do Awards Dinner and fund raiser last night at Chelsea Piers. For the past 25 years, the Food Bank has worked to end hunger by giving low-income New Yorkers access to affordable and healthy food. Last night's dinner was hosted by classy actor Stanley Tucci and attended by celebrities like Michael Stipe, Gwyneth Paltrow and Mike D; musical performances were by Angela McCluskey, Jill Hennessey, Joseph Arthur and Mike Mills.

Costumed performers and tour guides are fighting for unionization at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where they work to recreate the squalid living conditions of turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants, the very group that was integral to 20th century unionization efforts. Dozens of the tenement employees protested last night outside a fundraiser for the museum at Chelsea Piers.

New Year's resolutions probably started out as some sort of gym propaganda to up membership. Every new year, fitness centers worldwide bulk up their ad campaigns, promote "deals" and promise a better body in just months. With so many options, how does one choose a suitable establishment in which to "get physical"?

Eugenio Cidron, the man who killed bicyclist Eric Ng in 2006 after driving drunk down the West Side bike path instead of the West Side Highway following a holiday party at Chelsea Piers, was sentenced yesterday to three to 10 years in prison. Cidron had driven over a plastic pylon to enter the path from Chelsea Piers and had been driving south for a mile before hitting Ng, who was traveling north.

The Gotham Awards gala run by the Independent Feature Project (IFP) will be held in Brooklyn for the first time tonight, after 17 years spent bouncing around between Roseland, Hammerstein Ballroom and Chelsea Piers. This year the independent film awards will take place on the soundstage of Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Among the thousand-plus guests expected to attend are Javier Bardem, Sean Penn, Laura Linney, Uma Thurman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Brooklyn’s...

On December 1, 2006 around 9:30PM, 22-year-old Eric Ng was biking north on bike path by the West Side Highway. Around the same time, 27-year-old Eugene Cidron, leaving a party at Chelsea Piers in his BMW, mistook the bike path for the actual highway, drove south on the bike path and fatally struck Ng near West Street - at least a mile from Chelsea Piers. Ng was hit so hard that his bicycle and shoe...

The Writers Guild strike continued into its second day today; in L.A. Jay Leno delivered donuts to strikers on his motorcycle, while here in New York Seth Meyers joined the picket line and the giant rat outside Silvercup Studios in Long Island City (30 Rock and Gossip Girl are among the productions filmed there). The Saturday Night Live star and head writer had this to say:TV is completely changing, the way people are watching...

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a hostage situation on East 124th St. in Manhattan, a carjacking on Undercliff Ave. in the Bronx, and a home invasion robbery on East 18th St. in Brooklyn.
• For a few thousand dollars a month, one can join the LL Yacht Club at Chelsea Piers and East Hampton and enjoy access to their selection of luxury yachts to head to and from the Hamptons.
• Ball State University in Indiana will be naming its new communications building after alumnus David Letterman. The Late Show host's mother Dorothy expressed pride in her son, saying "He's a very special young man."
• Five months after the City Council symbolically banned the "n-word" in New York, complete with a burial service for the slur, Brooklyn Councilwoman Darlene Mealy is introducing similar legislation to ban the words "b--ch" and "ho" from the city.
• A collection of perspective-based artwork that only takes shape from a single vantage point.
• A Florida woman adopted 11 children in New York between 1993 and 1996, then kept them as underfed, uncared for, and abused prisoners in her Port St. Lucie, FL home, as she collected as much as $180,000 a year from the state for their care.
• Plans are underway for the construction of a 19-story luxury hotel in Harlem that will be on 5th Ave. between 125th St. and 126th. St.
• The judge in the divorce case of former NJ governor and current gay-American Jim McGreevey and his estranged wife Dina lectured the pair that they did not have the financial means to undergo a protracted and contentious divorce case.

a Statue of Liberty M&M floating by.

NYC Sunset: streaks in the sky, by Sidewalk Story. Tag yours "gothamist" on Flickr if you want us to use them.

There's information about a memorial ride for Eric Ng, the 22 year old bicyclist who was killed by a drunk driver driving on the Hudson River bike path. Ng, a recent NYU graduate, lived in Brooklyn and was in the NYC Teaching Fellows program. Here's an excerpt from a sad post by Eliot at Visual Resistance:

I’ve been making ghost bikes for strangers for a year and a half. Eric’s is not the first that made me cry, but it’s the first that made me hurt. A big group of Eric’s friends spent the weekend mourning, talking, and, finally, making. We made a ghost bike for him on Saturday and sunflowers on Sunday. Eric’s memorial plaque reads “Love & Rage” — no resting in peace for this rock star.

Continue reading "Memorial Ride for Eric Ng This Saturday"

Police have charged Eugenio Cidron with vehicular manslaughter after driving the West Side Highway bike path for at least a mile and fatally hitting bicyclist Eric Ng on Friday night. Cidron, who had been drinking at a company party at Chelsea Piers, was also charged with drunk driving and reckless endangerment. Cidron's brother told the Post, "This is the first time I ever heard of him drinking and driving. He was saddened by what happened, he was distraught, he couldn't believe what happened."

Last night, an NYU graduate bicycling on the West Side Highway's bike path was killed by a drunk driver. Police say that 27 year old Eugenio Cidron turned onto the bike path after attending a party at Chelsea Piers after 9:30PM. According to the Daily News, Cidron's white BMW hit 22 year old Eric Ng so hard that his "bicycle and one of his black Converse All Stars flew onto the adjacent West Side Highway." The accident was near Clarkson Street; if Cidron was initially parked near Chelsea Piers, that means he was on the bike path for more than a mile!

No it wasn't your imagination, that was a parade of police horses you saw parading down lower Manhattan yesterday. The horses, which hail from more than 12 states, are in town for the police equestrian competition in New Jersey this weekend. Since they were around anyway, the crime fighters and their riders took the opportunity to check out the NYPD's Mounted Unit headquarters near the Chelsea Piers before it moves and then went to pay their respects at a memorial service at Ground Zero.

Interesting - the Post has a sorta followup to yesterday's Daily News story about Fashion Week being at Bryant Park next February. Though yesterday's Daily News article had Vogue editor Anna Wintour saying that Mayor Bloomberg would support fashion - and tents in Bryant Park - in spite of the park's desire to keep the ice rink up, the Post says Diane Von Furstenberg couldn't convince Bloomberg to keep the tents there. Von Furstenberg, designer and president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, made a "personal appeal" to ask Mayor B to prevent the tents' eviction, but "instead he'll work toward finding another suitable location," according to a CFDA executive that told the Post. So, the locations that may see the Spring shows next February: Javits Center, Lincoln Center, and Chelsea Piers.

The Daily News revealed the top ten ideas in the running for the redevelopment of Governor's Island. Only 25 proposals were submitted, and while the other ideas may still be considered, these the ones the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation is "concentrating" on:

Nickelodeon Recreation/Miller Global Properties: Development of a Nickelodeon Family Suites themed resort complex. The company presently runs a similar operation in Orlando, near Disney World.

Continue reading "From Dora the Explorer to Fitness Facility Ideas for Governors Island"

MeFi yesterday pointed us towards one of those great 9/11 stories that was already slipping from our minds: In 1931, as the George Washington Bridge and the Empire State Building were being completed, the FDNY christened its fastest, bestest water-pumping fireboat, the John J. Harvey. Able to pump nearly 20,000 gallons per minute, the JJH was the definition of the modern fireboat ("Her output is equal to about 26 [or five alarm's worth] of land fire engines."). Sadly, as the piers around Manhattan were shuttered or repurposed, the JJH fell into disrepair. Removed from regular service in '95 and sold as surplus property in '99 she was luckily lovingly restored by her new owners.

The NYPD's Mounted Unit will be ensconced near the NYPD's Tow Pound as part of a move from its current Chelsea location. The Mounted Unit was stationed at Pier 63, right at West 23rd Street near Chelsea Piers, where they had a temporary lease on a space with an indoor riding trak and stables. But the Hudson River Park Trust wanted to take the land back for further renovations, leading some to worry the police wouldn't find adequate space for the equines. The new space at Pier 76 is near West 34th Street, right by the NYC Tow Pound. Gothamist expects to hear more about police horses dealing with tourists and rambunctious sports fans around Madsion Square Garden and Penn Station.

Way back in 2004, the city announced its super duper special NYC Tax Credit Program for film and TV producers (as well as commercial, music video, etc.) in order to motivate productions to happen here, versus Los Angeles or (gasp) Toronto. And it worked really well: Lindsay Lohan made a movie, Martin Scorsese shot a set-in-Boston movie mostly here, CBS brought us Love Monkey (then cancelled it), there's another Dick Wolf TV, plus countless others. But now it turns out that the film credits were maybe too much of a good thing: The NY Times reports that the film credit program will be revised because the $50 million allocated for the program over four years has been sapped away in just 13 months! Who knew, a city program that was too good to be true?

Could it be that the city would really attempt to bring the Olympics to NYC for 2016? Gothamist supposes that means the city has about 2 years to find another site to put a huge stadium on, so politicians, community groups, and everyday Joes and Janes can complain about it. We suggest somewhere slightly more innocuous but still controversial - like Inwood or something. Roland Betts, who had a hand in the city's bid (and he's owner of Chelsea Piers, told the Yale Daily News (college papers get such good scoops!), "We are still giving serious thought to bidding for the games in 2016 for New York, so it's important to keep touching the IOC [International Olympic Committee] bases," as he heads to Turin for the 2006 Winter Olympics. Hmm, this might be news to Mayor Bloomberg - and the city of Chicago. And pundits doubt a city would be able to win after the bad showing NYC made last year, before the announcement of London as the Olympic city.

- It's the first day of school for NYC public school students, teachers and parents

Brilliant: The pretend New York's Finest at Law & Order are in trouble with the law. It seems that the crew was using "unlicensed walkie talkies" that actually disrupted NYPD transmissions, and a police officer ended up going to the soundstages at Chelsea Piers where Law & Order films. The FCC is fining producers $10,000 for the infraction. Gothamist wonders if Representative Tom Delay has anything to do with this, as he's been crying like a little baby about how the show used his name. Universal Television, which produces the show, tells the NY Post that they disagree with the outcome, but they are cooperating.

Just a couple blocks south of the much-coveted MTA railyards, two other rich dudes are fighting over the right to develop Pier 57. The Daily News calls it the "heavyweight real estate duel of the season" (we guess the DN thinks the Hudson Yards is the duel of the year), and gives some good background of the two developers, Roland Betts of Chelsea Piers (and Dubya crony) and Stephen Witkoff, a real estate developer, as well as which politicians they're tight with. The main difference between the two bids is the Betts would be expanding Chelsea Piers, while Witkoff's plan, "The Leonardo at Pier 57" would be putting in a ton of banquet space (hello, corporate holiday party; hello, bar mitzvah) as well as galleries and stores featuring Italian artists and retailers. The Italian theme goes further with accusations from the Betts team that the caterer Witkoff proposes has mob ties, which makes Gothamist eager to see what other mud will be slung/slinged.

A fun fact from the article: The space was going to be used for a "Thirteenth Avenue" back in 1837. And read more about Hudson River Park from the Hudson River Park.

- Riverbank Skating Rink (at 145th Street and Riverside): $4.50 for adults

Ben McGrath, The New Yorker

As most of you may have read, today is the launch of Gothamist Sports. We are going to cover some of the local sports news as well as some other events in the sporting world outside the New York Area. We also hope to provide some information on recreational sports activities in New York. The site has been in beta for two weeks and Kyle has already gathered some information about summer leagues at Chelsea Piers.

Please click through for more information and registration forms.