Results tagged “coke”

Narcotics investigators seized more than $800,000 and 61 pounds of cocaine worth nearly $1 million in a Williamsburg apartment yesterday. The drugs were hidden under the seat of a portable sauna, and officials say—wait, portable sauna?! Is that really a thing? Turns out yes, it is! It's also one of the last places anyone would want to "chill" while ripping rails, so the suspects probably figured nobody would ever think to look in there for cocaine. Oh well.

Hey, people who have complained that 12-ounce cans of Coke are too ungainly—today's your day! The soft drink bottler has announced it's bringing mini 7.5-ounce Coke cans to NYC and Washington DC this December. Coca-Cola's North America Sparkling Beverages President Hendrik Steckhan said, "The Coca-Cola mini can is a great option for smaller thirst occasions and for calorie-conscious consumer. Our new sleek mini can supports the idea of moderation and offers people yet another way to enjoy their favorite Coca-Cola beverage."

This is the funnest thing to happen to boring old milk since the crazy straw! The Coca-Cola Company just launched a new carbonated milk drink called Vio "Vibrancy Drink," and New Yorkers are the first consumers in the world to pour the product into their discerning mouth holes! Developed in their Atlanta laboratory, the beverage requires no refrigeration and comes in four "natural" flavors: peach mango, berry, citrus, and tropical colada. According to the Post, it's being sold in delis around NYC for about $2.50 per 8oz aluminium bottle, and each bottle has 26 grams of sugar. The company promises that Vio is "a refreshing sensory experience" that contains just "a hint of rBGH-free skim milk" and tastes "like a birthday party for a polar bear." And a reviewer for BevNET.com, a drink industry research site, says the Peach Mango Vio is "slightly reminiscent of a lassi drink. However, what starts out seeming not so sweet turns almost overwhelming by the time you are half way through the bottle." Which makes sense, because polar bear birthday parties can get a little overwhelming. Have you tried this exciting new carbonated milk product yet, and if so, how refreshing was your sensory experience?

It's been 23 days since the coup that upturned the State Senate and where are we? Oh, yeah, nothing's happening, except the Democrats and Republicans are still fighting. The Democrats still claim that State Senator Frank Padavan's saunter through the chambers means he should be counted towards a quorum during their (Democrats-only) session, while the Queens Republican insists, "My only motive was to get in the lounge and get a Coke or cup of coffee. I was not in there when the session began. To say otherwise is totally untrue." Padavan told Newsday that he had "a Coke, a V-8 and a tuna fish sandwich." Hilariously, Padavan's affidavit states that he was looking for a coffee, but the Post says, "He later told reporters he'd actually gone to get a Coke, but didn't want to say that because he would be seen to be endorsing a product." Yeah, isn't Pepsi in Purchase?

The Albany soap opera continues: This morning, due to a judge's ruling that the State Senate Democrats and Republicans must meet (and, uh, do their jobs), both sides did just that. But then they adjourned soon after! The Daily Politics says the two sides were "fighting - albeit calmly - over who is supposed to be presiding over the chamber."

After testing positive for cocaine use nine times while out on bail, former preschool director Andy Lewis has finally exhausted the patience of a Federal judge. Lewis, whose Brooklyn Children's Academy was shut down last year after parents discovered exposed wires, unpainted walls and noxious fumes in the building, is charged with stealing more than $500,000 in government funding intended for free meals for poor youths at his Better Brooklyn Community Center. But where, pray tell, could all that money have gone?! According to court papers from April obtained by the Daily News, Lewis blamed the test results on a cocaine-laced cigarette someone gave him. But Judge Kiyo Matsumoto wouldn't be fooled again, and said she felt "ridiculous" for giving Lewis so many chances. (His lawyer unsuccessfully argued that his client should remain free because he had passed nearly twice as many tests as he had failed.) When Judge Matsumoto told Lewis he would be incarcerated, the defendent reportedly cried, "Oh, my God, I can't go to jail! I beg of you! God Almighty! Please, your honor, reconsider!"

The past couple months have seen no shortage of cocaine and food combos; there was the Bronx pizza parlor busted for offering blow on the menu, and at the beginning of March, Queens produce shoppers found bags of cocaine inside peppers purchased at an Ozone Park shop. Now it's come to light that at the same time that coke was found in the peppers, yet another Queens market was selling produce with white powder inside. An NYPD spokesman has not yet confirmed that it was cocaine, but on March 7th and 8th, police received several calls about little bags of powder found inside bitter melons purchased at a Richmond Hill grocery. Two dozen cops raided the produce store, Banana Country on Liberty Avenue, and cut open the melons, but nothing unusual was found inside. Owner Tae Hyun Kil assures the Times, "No problems with bitter melons since then." But when informed about the incident, one shopper seemed inspired: "Hey, that’s a good way to smuggle!"

Officer Jon Goldin, an NYPD helicopter pilot who was dismissed for failing a drug test in 2006, has lost his recent appeal, in which he maintained that the cocaine found in his system was the result of "passive ingestion." In other words, the hair sample they tested was coked up because of all the sweaty sex with his druggie girlfriend! (Kind of reminds us of that Seinfeld poppy seed muffin episode!) But when the all snickering subsides, the explanation actually starts to seem somewhat plausible; Goldin, a 15-year veteran of the NYPD who's been straight-edge for years, had 70 friends testify about his relentless sobriety, which even extends to caffeine.

After a ten-month investigation, NYPD narcotics officers busted John's Pizza & Heros on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx on Tuesday, charging six people with participating in cocaine trafficking at the restaurant. According to prosecutors, manager Benigno Burgos and his associates moved hundreds of thousands of dollars of drugs through the joint, with customers coming from as far as Connecticut to pick up their take-out orders, which were actually pizza boxes stuffed with up to $40,000 of cocaine at a time. The place also delivered. Of course, this story calls for some fun wisecracks, which DEA Special Agent-In-Charge John Gilbride has clearly been polishing. He tells the Post, ahem, "This gives a new meaning to the phrase 'slice and a Coke.' " On Tuesday cops also raided four nearby drug supply houses, finding nine kilos of cocaine, four handguns and approximately $20,000 in cash. They discovered the coke stash at Burgos's house hidden under a child's mattress, where no one was ever supposed to find it!

After telling various tabloids about a tape that supposedly shows Vice President Joe Biden's 27-year-old daughter Ashley snorting cocaine, the attorney has quit representing the tape's seller. RadarOnline reports that D.C. lawyer Tom Dunlap "said he did not want to be involved due to circumstances surrounding the publicity of the matter." Good thinking, since the publicity has broken out after he showed RadarOnline, the NY Post and the National Enquirer snippets of the tape! It's unclear whether the woman who looks like Biden on the tape was aware she was being filmed. The seller had hoped to get $2 million, but will apparently settle for $400,000. The VP and his wife haven't commented about their daughter, but the Post did get one from a Tulane classmate who bailed her out of jail for a 1999 pot arrest (she was not convicted): Ashley Biden "was a hot freshman that every guy wanted to be with... Everybody at Tulane knew that she was a party girl. She wore some pretty short shorts -- a lot."

Representatives for Radar Online, the National Enquirer and the NY Post have seen a video of a woman who, per Radar, "clearly resembles Ashley Biden, 27"—daughter of Vice President Joe Biden—"snorting several lines of cocaine.On the tape a man cuts up five lines of what is said to be cocaine. The woman who the seller says is Ashley then jokes with the man that the lines aren’t big enough." The video was shown by a lawyer representing a man who wishes to sell the tape, allegedly shot last year; the Post says it was shown "about 90 seconds of 43-minute tape" and told "it was legally obtained and that Biden was aware she was being filmed" (the lawyer referred to how Biden acknowledges the filmmaker). However, Radar reports that Biden was filmed without her knowledge. The filmmaker had wanted $2 million for the tape, but then, based on much lower offers, is willing to sell the tape for $400,000. The NY tab points out that Biden's dad coined the term "Drug Czar" in his crusade against drugs but adds, "The Post refused to pay for the video."

Passover may be more than two weeks away, but for those of you who love your soda with pure sugar (or just love your sugar), you can get Passover Coke now. The special Coke, which isn't made with the forboden corn syrup, is only available in two liter bottles for a limited time and is distinguished by its yellow caps with the symbols "OU-P" on them. Calls to stores around the city found that some aren't carrying the product yet (deliveries could be there as soon as Friday/Saturday), but some stores already have the product is on their shelves — the Upper West Side Harlem Fairways. A call to Coca Cola revealed that Passover Coke is already available in many markets, like Albany. Other establishments that Coke's corporate communications department recommended in our area include Key Foods, Associated and A&P. If your local grocery store isn't carrying it, you can even ask them to order it. Of course, the rest of the year, you can buy Passover Coke as "Mexican Coke."

At least three shoppers discovered an unexpected surprise inside peppers purchased at a Queens store last night: bags of cocaine! It's a helluva drug, but instead of firing up the hot tub and talking about their unfinished screenplays until dawn, the unnamed individuals notified the NYPD, who went through the Ozone Park shop with K-9 units. A police source tells the Post that the store owners didn't know they were pushing peppers with a party inside, and it's believed they were imported from South America. The strange incident brings back memories of the infamous cold cuts and coke ring the NYPD busted in 2007; of course in that scenario buyers were knowingly purchasing cocaine with their deli meats at bodegas around town.

This month there was a strong reaction against the new Coke ads running on the subway windows. The MTA has now spoken up and the organization's Jeremy Soffin tells us that it's merely "a month-long pilot designed to test the effectiveness of this material in discouraging scratchiti. We are evaluating both whether to test this further to fight scratchiti and whether it is a potential source of advertising revenue, although the focus is on the scratchiti at this point."

The father of one of the two FIT students busted for dealing cocaine says that she's getting a bum rap. Mickenzie Dippenworth's father Charles tells the Post, "OK, yes, she did something wrong. Does that merit what has taken place? That's what my taxpayer dollars are going to? I really don't understand. There's a hell of a lot more problems." Dippenworth stands by his daughter who "has sworn to him ten times" that she only dealt to the undercover cop who led to her arrest and not to anyone else. His daughter had previously been on probation after police in her Maryland hometown responded to the fourth noise complaint made by neighbors and discovered a party with around 50 juveniles and young adults drinking while Dippenworth's parents were upstairs sleeping.

The FIT students who were giggly after being busted for running a coke ring in their dorm room were serious after appearing in court. The NY Post reports that Christine Scafa and Mickenzie DIppenworth "sulked out" of the courthouse. The DA's office said after initially selling coke to an undercover cop at the W. 27th Street club Home, the students (along with alleged dealer Raymond Alameda) "hawk[ed] 'zips,' or ounces, and 'eight balls,' or one-eighth ounces, of blow for up to $400" out of the women's dorm room, until "Scafa became suspicious of a new buyer, actually an undercover cop, and refused to give him the product, even though he forked over $100." A fellow student told the Daily News, "It's sad to hear people are selling coke here. I've had too many friends who've gone down because of it with ruined lives and squandered potential." Flashback: NYU's Pot Princess, who did eventually release a single.

In case you weren't feeling confined enough while riding through the underground tunnels of New York, the MTA has taken a step to ensure everyone gets that cozy feeling of claustrophobia during their commutes. As shown in the above photo, the organization is now allowing full window ads. These aren't the kind that you can see clearly out of either, as one disgruntled straphanger noted: "outward visibility is significantly reduced in outdoor lighting, and severely reduced to totally eliminated at night or in low lighting." Someone bail the MTA out before we all become walking billboards.

During these times of economic downturn, and with cocaine prices on the rise, what's a drug dealer to do? The NY Post reports that NYC dealers have boosted their profits as they're "increasingly turning to crystal meth to peddle in its place." A DEA special agents tells the paper, "[Dealers] are trying to create a market. [We're] afraid of an epidemic similar to the crack epidemic of the '80s." The department has already taken in 14 kilos of meth this year, as compared to the 4 kilos confiscated during all of 2007.

Just weeks into the first semester, students narced out an unidentified NYU freshman for allegedly selling coke from her dorm room, prompting her expulsion from the residence. That a student at an obscenely expensive university was supplementing her allowance by slinging a little yey is hardly a shocker. But what's raising eyebrows over at the campus paper is that her room was never searched, no evidence was collected, she wasn't formally charged with a crime, and the accusations were never passed along to campus cops or the NYPD.

Former TV producer Julie Horner Lankamp was found dead in her Gold Street apartment Tuesday with "her crying young daughter clutching her legs," as the Daily News sensationally puts it. Relatives say they hadn't spoken with Lankamp since Sunday and police don't know how long the two-year-old had been stranded with her mother's body, which had begun to decompose. Lankamp had a broken jaw, bruises, and dried blood pooled near her nose and mouth, but the city medical examiner doesn't believe Lankamp's injuries were caused by a beating. An empty glassine envelope with cocaine residue was found near her corpse, and investigators say her injuries may have been caused by a fall after a drug overdose. Results of a toxicology report are pending, but in the meantime police are looking to interview her ex-husband, who was arrested at the end of last year "for attacking her with a chair while using their child as a human shield," a source tells the News.

Actress Tatum O'Neal hasn't kept her battles with addiction a secret, but just when things in her life seem to be on the straight and narrow, the NY Post is reporting she got busted buying crack and cocaine on the Lower East Side. Seems the neighborhood still has its drug roots, the addicts just have Oscars on their mantles now.