Seems like no matter where you look in New York City these days, you can't find a hooker being carted off by the NYPD's Pimp Squad. Heck, is there even a Pimp Squad arm of the Finest anymore? The AP reports that New York City's edge-factor is disappearing, noting the deaths of CBGBs, Coney Island's Shoot the Freak, and Off-Track Betting as some of the big losses. Are we doomed to become a metropolis filled with Starbucks and big box stores? The once seedy Times Square has now literally become Disney-fied, and the AP notes: "the weird, unexpected, edgy, grimy New York—the town that so many looked to for so long as a relief from cookie-cutter America—has evolved into something else entirely: tamed, prepackaged, even predictable."
Has New York City Lost Its Edge?
Illegal Gym Owner Tackles Post Photographer!
Almost two weeks after the story was broken by Miss Heather, the NY Post says they have learned that there's a scam artist running an illegal gym in Williamsburg. They spoke with the muscleman proprietor, John Suarez, who told them, "I can't own another gym, but I've got to make a living. I had a mistake six years ago. I'm trying to start a new life. It's not like I was scamming anybody." The problem is that he did scam 1,000 people out of membership fees for a gym that never opened in 2004, and then made a deal with state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that he'd never operate a health club in the state again! To make matters worse for himself, when a Post photographer snooped around his new gym on South 3rd Street in Williamsburg, Suarez tackled him and damaged his camera—which of course brought on charges of assault, menacing and harassment. Following the incident he told the paper, "Things happen. I did what I had to do. And he did what he had to do."
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