There are some residual delays on Metro-North this morning after yesterday's East Harlem building collapse that led to the suspension of all service in and out of Grand Central. The trains' speed restrictions were lifted at 6:30 a.m. and there may be 5-10 delays. A crowd formed in Grand Central as commuters waited out the suspension or devised alternate routes to get home as the New Haven, Hudson and Harlem lines were all down. But......

Cops have recently arrested a suspect in the January knife-point rape of a 34-year-old woman in an East Harlem building's elevator. The alleged perpetrator is 21-year-old Kevin Rios, who police believe followed the victim from the subway to the building on 105th St. between 1st and 2nd Aves. Ironically, the woman held the elevator for Rios, who then put a knife to her throat and sexually assaulted her. WABC News describes a different scenario, with......

Yesterday's high of 40 and low of 28 was exactly average for Valentine's Day. Today, like all the children in Lake Wobegon, will be above average with a high temperature close to 50 degrees. The reverse will be true tomorrow. A cold front tonight will usher in a quick blast of cooler air. The high tomorrow will only be around freezing. Earlier in the week the front looked like a rainmaker, but we should......

Yesterday, the Post reported about a strange and disturbing road rage incident in Red Hook last week. A woman was ultimately repeatedly hit by the driver of a Land Rover. According to police sources, on Thursday afternoon, the woman got out of her car to speak with 63-year-old Jeffrey Klempner, who was in his SUV at Columbia Street and Atlantic Avenue, "to talk to him about an earlier collision." Klempner "denied any wrongdoing," but when......

Photograph of an East Village scaffolding collapse by Joel Horowitz Yesterday, strong winds and colder temperatures meant a freezing Sunday. The winds, up to 50MPH, knocked down scaffolding all over, as well as downed trees, causing power outages. In one instance, fallen scaffolding outside a new six-story building Brooklyn "crushed cars on both sides of the street." (a cop was also hit by flying corrugated metal). There was also snow, blowing sideways into the......

A 23-year-old animal groomer in Brooklyn is facing charges of animal cruelty and could spend up to a year in jail if convicted. The charges stem from an experience Igor Kisil and his Burmese cat Nusha had with groomer Bechir Bejaoui of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Kisil says that when he went to pick up his small cat, who weighs only three pounds, she was returned to him in a carrying case covered with blood. Kisil......

A state judge has shot down Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to rent sports fields on Randalls Island to private schools because the administration failed to follow the legally required land-use review process when it made the deal. The plan was for private schools to pay $2.6 million a year for the next two decades in exchange for use of the renovated fields during peak hours from 3pm to 6pm. The Parks Department had agreed to contribute......

Five people trapped in an apartment fire were rescued by firefighters early this morning in East Harlem. The apartment was on the third floor of a building on East 102nd St. At 4 a.m., the residence quickly filled with smoke and flames after the family's Christmas tree ignited. Firefighters believe the cause was faulty wiring on the tree's lights. When Charlene Southerland woke to the smell of smoke, she realized she and her husband were......

Yesterday, the Daily News revealed that an East Harlem high school principal told teachers to effectively pass more students. Principal Bennett Lieberman's report card stated: "If you are not passing more than 65% of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities. You are setting your students up for failure, which in turn, limits your success as a professional...most of our students ... have difficult home lives,......

The city’s food charities are dealing with dire shortages this year, exacerbated by cutbacks in federal food aid. Many places like St. Benedict the Moor Neighborhood Center in the South Bronx are almost barren; according to today’s Times, the center’s pantry used to be stacked up to the ceiling with food but now holds just “a few sacks of potatoes, some cornflakes, juice and peanut butter.” To help fill the void, City Harvest, the non-profit......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a carjacking at Tompkins and School Rds. on Staten Island, a person was killed by a 5 train at Bowling Green station in Manhattan, and an armed robbery at 51st Ave. and Northern Blvd. in Queens. Bidding closed at $2,600 for the new owner of the Seinfeld ASSMAN license plate prop on eBay. Another Mister Softee driver was busted for selling drugs out of his ice cream truck, this......

Edward Cardinal Egan, the archbishop of the New York Archdiocese, had no patience of protesters or reporters covering the protests outside a Midtown church yesterday. Some people have been upset their local churches have been closed by the Catholic Church, most notably parishioners Our Lady Queen of Angels in East Harlem, who have been protesting the February closing every weekend since February. And yesterday, outside of St. John the Baptist on West 31st Street, Our......

Plans for a water park on Randall's Island are on the verge of collapse as the developer granted a state concession to build the amusement complex missed its second deadline in seven months to secure financing. According to the Daily News, many East Harlem residents and park advocates were ecstatic at the project's possible failure. Tickets for the water park would have been priced at $37 a person and would result in a de facto......

Yesterday, East Harlem residents protested "greedy landlords" to raise concerns about gentrification. One resident, Otoniel Santiago, told amNew York that his $1,100 rent for his family's two-bedroom has zoomed up to $3,000 because of extra charges his landlord has added, "They said I had to pay or they would take legal action. I think they want us to get tired and move out, then they will bring in people who will pay $1,700 a......

After a protest in East Harlem, baseball cap manufacturer New Era has agreed to pull Yankees caps from store shelves. A number of caps seem to refer to the Bloods, Crips and Latin Kings and became a controversy during a back-to-school shopping trip. Jose Rivera liked a Yankees cap with a gold crown on it and wanted to buy it for his son, but his son explained that he could be in danger for......

THEATER: With his zany imagination and distinctive bass-baritone voice, Joseph Keckler (myspace) has been generating buzz throughout the gooey honeycomb of the downtown performance art cabaret scene. Tonight he sprinkles his particular blend of whimsical catnip at Dixon Place with Cat Lady, in which a man re-enacts an ordinary day with his mother, who runs a community theater with cat actors out of her home. “Past lives are recalled, songs are sung, and finally a......

Yesterday, a police officer testified that her police captain boyfriend viciously beat her. Sharon Gandarilla, who was married to another man at the time of the affair, had filed a sexual-harassment suit earlier this month, alleging that 17-year NYPD veteran Alberto Sanchez had assaulted her multiple times during they three-year affair. She also claimed that Sanchez forced her to have sex at their East Harlem precinct house and at the Police Academy, where he was......

That big empty cement pool in Greenpoint has become a landmark. The recently rejuvinated (but still dry) McCarren Park Pool was designated such by the Landmarks Preservation Commission yesterday morning. McCarren was the 8th of 11 huge pools built by the Works Progress Administration, it was opened in 1936 with a dedication ceremony on July 31st of that year (making it the ripe old age of 71 in a few days). With an original capacity......

We're getting reports of a blackout on the Upper East Side, from the East 60s up to Harlem, on Third Avenue (mostly about transit blackouts) and York Avenue in the 80s. Subway service is affected - the 4/5/6 line is down. A reader whose friend was at Randalls Island says a Con Ed station exploded. UPDATE: 4PM WNBC reports that the outages are all along the East Side. OEM says "transformer explosions caused at......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a double shooting at Willoughby and Throop Aves. in Brooklyn, a bank robbery on Queens Blvd. in Queens, and a water rescue off the North Channel Bridge in Queens. A Bronx man taking his 5-year-old nephew to the bathroom in an East Harlem park was gunned down in front of the child when accosted by thieves. A new safety group formed after 9/11 is proposing that skyscrapers include a......

Cops may or may not have shot a gunman who was involved in a shootout in East Harlem yesterday. NYPD officers rolled up on a shootout in progress between two men who were arguing outside of a fast food restaurant soon after midnight this morning. Gunfire was being exchanged between the two men at 110th St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan when police arrived. Although one of the men was eventually fatally shot by the......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on 101st Ave. in Queens, a boat in distress at the Gateway Marina off Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn, and an "unusual occurrence" on Wall St. in Manhattan. Brownstoner notes the arduous bureaucratic effort to get DUMBO landmarked, and developers' rush to build before that can happen. The NYPD is initiating TOMS––Total Order Maintenance Sweeps––aboard Metro-North and LIRR trains to deter terrorists commuting from the suburbs, after......

In two separate shooting incidents in Harlem and Staten Island, the teenagers were the victims. In Staten Island's Stapleton section, a 17-year-old Wayne Kennedy was fatally shot at an apartment building yesterday morning. According to the police and family members, Kennedy was invited to a party, but it seemed to be a set-up for robbery. Kennedy had been out with his relatives, and his 30-year-old uncle got a call from a woman who invited them......

Yesterday, activists attempted to block the construction crews from razing a community garden in Harlem. The city has been planning to remove the Nueva Esperanza Garden at 110th and Fifth Avenue and replace it with a new building for the Museum of African Art. But critics question whether it's really a museum or a guise for new condominiums. There are supposed to be 115 luxury units in the building, and Times Up writes the......

The Daily News has an exclusive story in today's paper about '31-Shot Cop' Michael Oliver that spared no manpower digging into the indicted detective's past and present. Six(!) staff writers contributed to a story that paints an unflattering portrait of its subject, including details of a then-rookie Oliver assaulting a black cab driver, insinuations that he parties too much, and the possibility that he may be in violation of a state-residency rule for NYPD cops.......

The city is embarking on a new pilot program to offer cash to poor families to motivate them to "break the cycle of intergenerational poverty." The public-private plan which has raised $42 million in private funds so far is called Opportunity NYC, and Mayor Bloomberg said, "If you’re serious about tackling poverty, an entrenched problem that has proven resistant to conventional government programs, you have to be serious about trying new things, taking a new......

The pseudonymous Lux Nightmare burst onto the alt porn scene as a college student at Columbia where she launched the naked-guy-and-girl site That Strange Girl, featuring stills and video of herself and numerous other models who looked like they could be her fellow classmates. At a time when Suicide Girls and Burning Angel were coming to prominence, That Strange Girl (who, full disclosure, this interviewer posed for) was a homegrown, indie entry in the genre.......

What's worse than having the NYPD wrongfully arrest you? We think having your 3-year-old daughter taken into protective custody for three days because you were falsely arrested ranks pretty high. Margarita Santiago filed a notice of claim again the the city and city agencies, the step before a lawsuit, over an outrageous December 2006 incident. Santiago, visiting NYC from Pennsylvania, was in a friend's car in East Harlem when the cops pulled them over on......

We knew the Catholic Church was sneaky, but we never thought that a cardinal would stoop this low! Cardinal Egan had a meeting with the priest at Our Lady of Vilnius Church yesterday, only to take the opportunity to lock the church while the priest was gone! The Post reports that security guards were dispatched to lock the doors, leaving parishioners to cry when they found a closed church and no mass. Parishioners held......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A carbon monoxide incident in Queens, a fatal jumper down in Manhattan, and number of stabbings in the Bronx Congratulations to the same-sex couples who are planning civil unions right after midnight tonight in NJ. Gowanus Lounge calls Ikea's public attitude about the destruction of historical records from the Todd Shipyard in Red Hook "nothing short of disdain and matter-of-fact dismissal" Another look at the White Castle's special Valentine's......