Up to 50 people have been evacuated from a six story building at 410 West 23rd Street near 9Th Avenue. According to reports coming in over the wires, there are three smoking manholes outside the buildings, and carbon monoxide readings over 220 parts per million. And yes, we've seen this movie before! Update: Here's video. more ›

How much would you pay a correctional officer to squeeze an inmate's testicles so hard he loses control of his bowels? We hope you're comfortable with $300,000! Of course, on any given night in New York City, there are guys paying big bucks for this kind of deviant activity, but this particular incident at Arthur Kill Correctional Facility wasn't consensual, and taxpayers are footing the settlement. But if there's a silver lining to any of this, it's that the tabloids get to make with the puns. more ›

Maybe she'll try for a narcolepsy defense? The Rikers Island Correctional Officer who was depicted sleeping on the job in this classic, almost cliche jail photo just can't keep her eyes open. Nadja Green has been busted for napping while guarding once before, according to the Post, which is teasing this story out like a burlesque dancer's boa. Sadly, there's no instant classic photo of Green's previou sleep violation, but this does complicate things for our snoring C.O. more ›

Jim Lahey— the effervescent, no-knead dough guru and chef/owner of Sullivan Street Bakery and pizza joint Co.— has some advice for Frank Bruni following the single star Times review of Co. earlier this week. "If you want your cheese and sauce, you can get it [at Ray's]," he told the Observer’s Daily Transom. "They'll actually put extra shit on for ya!" Lahey’s working pizza philosophy at Co. (megawatt chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten is an investor) adheres to a principle that pizza should not be laden with toppings and it is best cooked in a 900 degree oven. “The driving force was to change this genre of food-making so it's not falling into the same stupid cliches,” Lahey told the Observer, “like, the thick crust on the edge and lots of tomato sauce and cheese.” Lahey conspicuously sports a “Consume Less” t-shirt on the Sullivan Street website; Bruni’s admonishment that Lahey “needs to sweat the cheese and the rest of it a little more” seems to have specifically irked the chef. The Observer article, with more expletives, is here. Expect a Diner’s Journal rebuttal to Lahey’s rebuttal, which veers sharply into self-deprecating territory, sometime today. (photo courtesy Adam Kuban/Slice) more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times bestows two stars on chef April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman (The Spotted Pig) for their new high-end seafood pub The John Dory (pictured), in the Meatpacking District: "In what is clearly a labor of not just love but also vivid (sometimes too vivid) imagination and real guts, [they] have fashioned a place that doesn’t look like any other and that doesn’t taste like any other, either...But experienced in aggregate, too many dishes are too blunt. The overall flavor spectrum is too narrow, a wallow in buttery, creamy and salty effects. I sometimes left feeling overwhelmed — maybe I should say capsized — in a way I seldom do." Still, Bloomfield's menu is full of "nervy surprises." more ›

Co.: Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery fame at last strides confidently into the pizza arena this weekend, and has been instantly hailed a colossus. The triumph has been long anticipated; his sleek new Chelsea pizzeria with the Google-defying name was at one point supposed to debut back in December 2007. It languished at the bottom of the memory hole until November '08, when the folks at Slice unveiled a tantalizing photo essay on the pies, the oven, and the dining room. Last night it finally opened for real, and if you need any further convincing after viewing their pizza porn, then you hate pizza. Slice's Adam Kuban declares the pies "amazing" and deems Lahey "a bread genius, and as the crust is the hardest part of pizza to perfect, we're already in good hands." 230 Ninth Avenue, (212) 243-1105 more ›

For quite some time now, a group of East Village residents have been pressuring the local Community Board to snuff out Death & Co., the dark and sophisticated bar on East Sixth street, just down the block from that old timer who sells and repairs bicycles. Like other turbo-gentrifying neighborhoods, the local scolds are fed up with the all the noisy drunkards staggering around their neighborhood at all hours, and they’ve focused their energy on less-established newcomers like Death & Co. more ›

A just-married couple's reception was interrupted when their reception's catering hall was filled with carbon monoxide. Many guests passed out and/or vomited, including the the groom's mother who collapsed. more ›