Results tagged “ghetto”

The NY Times has an article this weekend that focuses on the overused and so over H word. Hipsters! They're still here, in all their b&w print glory. This time they're settling down in Staten Island to make babies.

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. Cut to the present, where Nightmare has since folded her XXX business and is a member of Gotham Girls Roller Derby, teaches sex ed to teenagers in East Harlem, and runs the smarty-pants sex site Sexerati, where she conducts interviews, explores Dating 2.0, and explains terms like "the pink ghetto." (Warning: many of the links in this interview are NSFW.) Currently, the "non porn star" is working on a book proposal about her time in the alt porn trenches.

It was inevitable that indie rock and Playboy merge, we suppose. Next week at SXSW, the two will come together for one big party, and we want to get you in on the action.

The NY Times has a good article about the second trial of Steven Johnson, who unleashed his anger by shooting people and taking others hostage in an East Village bar almost five years ago. Johnson, who has AIDS, was unemployed at the time and was allegedly looking for "happy people" to "avenge the oppression of black people like himself," according the Times.

The Observer has an article that, upon reading it, appears to have been written two years ago. "Blog Ghetto" scratches the surface of a scene that's been around for quite a while, and uncovers things such as: bloggers sometimes hang out with each other...and drink...at The Magician (and other "Hell Square" watering holes). The profile on the scene makes it seem very 90210-esque, even calling The Magician "Blogger High's Peach Pit" and picking out a Dylan McKay-esque resident stud (apparently A.J. Daulerio).

The Daily Reel introduces us to "Bodega".

What an embrace of Long Island City! The city announced that it will buy waterfront property in Long Island City to build up to 5,000 units of affordable housing for families. The city is paying the Port Authority a total of $146 million for the 24 acres - $100 million for the property and $46 million for "remaining obligations" to the site. From the press relase:

Mayor Bloomberg: "Middle-income families are facing housing affordability challenges as a result of New York's success, and we have to make strategic, long-term investments to ensure that New Yorkers of all incomes can work and live in our City. This development will build on New York's grand tradition of major middle-income communities, but updated for the 21st century. We will work quickly to turn this into homes for thousands of teachers, police officers, firefighters, nurses and other moderate- and middle-income New Yorkers. I want to thank the Port Authority for its continued collaboration and support."

Continue reading "LIC: From Olympic Village to Affordable City Housing"

Here we go: Rapper Fabolous now says that he had nothing to do with the unlicensed guns (or car, for that matter) in the car that took him to the hospital. Fabolous had been shot in the leg after an evening at Justin's, and three friends drove him to Bellevue, only to run a red light and have the police stop them, search the car, and find two unlicensed guns in a secret compartment. So the police arrested Fabolous and friends - though Fabolous was able to get treatment for his wound. The rapper's lawyer Alberto Ebanks explained, “If any car had pulled up and offered him a ride to a local emergency room, he would have jumped in. He was in the back seat bleeding profusely.” However, the NY Times reports that the 2005 Dodge Magnum he did jump into was registered to Fabolous's production company - Ghetto Fabolous, Inc.

Call it a ghetto latte, call it bootleg latte - the real question is whether or not ordering a cheaper Starbucks item and then jazzing it up at the condiment station is right. The topic has been debated on Starbucks Gossip, after a reader noted that a customer managed to turn her iced grande and venti Americanos with shots into an "Iced Quad Venti Breve Latte and an Iced Triple Grande Breve Latte," saving almost $5! Now, people have most certainly encountered empty milk and cream carafes - now we know what's afoot!

MUSIC: Tonight head down to the Pier 17 for another Seaport Music Festival show.

Before the City Council approved a $52.9 billion budget yesterday, they got their desert, aka Schedule C. Also known as the Fiscal Year 2007 Adopted Expense Budget Adjustments Summary[PDF], Schedule C is the list of all the Council's pet items that successfully were restored or added to the budget. And what a crazy list of pet items got through! It's going to take a bit of time to find the goodies in the 70-odd pages of the summary (if you find anything of interest, use the comments!), but Times newsroom juggernaut Sewell Chan has already started to charge through it:

The roster is encyclopedic, from the Afikim Foundation, which provides Jewish online learning ($35,000), to the Zeta Zeta Zeta Lambda chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, a national African-American fraternity ($10,000). It includes the Filial Piety Society of Sunnyside, Queens ($3,500); the Ghetto Film School ($28,500); the Russian American Voters League ($7,500); and the Sister Power Organization ($10,000).

Shelley Winters, the actress who typically played blowsy and loud women, died today in California. She suffered heart failure while at a nursing center. Her career started in New York theater, had a long run as the sexpot in film, then later drunken shrew, and the later part of her career, comedians would make fun of her weight. The NY Times obituary included this quote of hers that "[described her life as a] rocky road out of the Brooklyn ghetto to one New York apartment, two Oscars, three California houses, four hit plays, five Impressionist paintings, six mink coats and 99 films." Winters was actually born in East St. Louis, but grew up in Brooklyn - and her father even served time at Sing Sing.

In our head, we can see a Venn diagram with two circles: subway nerds and sneaker nerds. In the center, there's a very small intersection of subway sneaker nerds. Finally, a pair of shoes has come along celebrating this rare species of hipster. These custom AirForceOnes are made by AirWearNYC, and come in half-sizes from 7 to 13. We know Tien is going to be ordering some! Bonus-- the AirWear guys also do custom airbrushed T-Shirts:

- That he smokes a lot of pot - "I smoke weed morning till night, like everyone in the ghetto. I'm Jamaican. We don't use those other fancy drugs."Reverend Al Sharpton went to pay his respects to officer Stewart at Brooklyn's 70th Precinct, the very station where Abner Louima was abused. Police say that Cameron went to his girlfriend's apartment after the shooting and took a nap. The NYPD posthumously made Stewart a detective, which means a "$21,200 bump in the late officer's salary and ensures that his widow...will receive an estimated $80,000 annual pension." And NY and Philadelphia authorities are continuing to look at why Cameron was even free.

Almost two years ago, Mark Fisher's body was found on Argyle Road, "wrapped in a blanket, shot five times in the torso and dumped near the curb," after an evening of partying. It was a mysterious incident, a white college student from the NJ suburbs and a Connecticut college found murdered in Brooklyn, but now a trial has begun and it seems that Fisher was killed for a number of reasons: Sitting on someone's table (a sign of disrespect), to "bolster" a fledling street gang's credibility and/or $20 from an ATM. Antonio Russo and John Guica are accused of murdering Fisher, with Guica the "so-called Tony Soprano" of the "Ghetto Mafia" (it was his table that Fisher sat on while drunk). Apparently Fisher had met up with an old friend who eventually introduced him to Guica; a group of people went to Guica's house to stay over because some had missed a train. (The Times had the drama of the prosecutor's description of the moment: "That's when the worlds very slowly began to collide, and fate began to play its unfortunate hand.") Russo and Guica also allegedly said they didn't like the "preppy college kid"; none of the articles expressly describe any class or race differences, but that seems to be the subtext.

Lindsey Caldwell, Hustler/DJ

Al Sharpton's website.

And fresh from the spin machine, director Jay Roach tells USA Today, "Dustin and Barbra should have been a comedy team. They have great comic timing. They could have done vaudeville or I Love Lucy or even Tracy-Hepburn stuff." Right. Gothamist is sure practically the same was said of Turner & Hooch and Sylvester Stallone & Estelle Getty in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Defamer noted how Hoffman and Streisand's road to Fockerness had some bumps. If you want some great Barbra Streisand comedy, see What's Up Doc, which is preposterously good.

Marci Hom, Lifelong Bay Ridger

Wendy Mitchell, indieWIRE

Candice Holmes, Recent Grad

Gothamist was there for the Death of the Q Diamond Party, celebrating the elimination of the Q Diamond from the NYC subway map. As the last train pulled into the station, it was mayhem at the back of the Union Square platform. Positioning ourselves in back of an attractive photographer from the New York Times, we managed to squeeze into the last car of the train before the doors closed. For the next thirty or forty minutes, we partied like it was 1982. Everyone was smoking weed or drinking 40s or painting on the back the of the subway posters. One guy was peeing between the train cars. There were drums and little ghetto blasters for music, and a number of people were reciting poetry and speeches related to the Q's retirement. By the time the train pulled in to Brighton Beach, the temperature in the car reached about 105 degrees.

Black clergy in Philadelphia, upset over a new board game called Ghettopoly, had threatened retailer Urban Outfitters with a boycott if it continued to carry the game. And as of Thursday evening, Urban Outfitter is no longer selling the game.

The evening is over, while Gothamist will be following up with extensive commentary about the actual Oscar telecast, here are the winners and some post-game analysis:

Not that it's new news, but I'm obviously crazy because I arranged to have my new wall unit delivered this weekend - the very weekend I'll be recovering from wisdom teeth extraction. Tonight, I decided I had to move my old Ikea wall unit out of the living room so I wouldn't have to worry about it. This involved disconnecting the various entertainment peripherals, moving the 27" TV out, moving the wall unit, and re-connecting everything so I can watch TV later. I did this by myself, which is either good or a case of bad idea jeans. I seem to wear bad idea jeans often, though.

The New York Times implies that Daniel Liebeskind's personality will need to drive the project to achieve the emotional connection initially proposed. This recognizes that there has not been a forceful personality in the city's ultimate plan since loved-and-hated but undeniably powerful Robert Moses, whose vision shaped the city for better and worse in the 5-s and 60s. Robert Caro's book about Moses, Power Broker. Among his infamous decisions, shepherding Lincoln Center, legacy of traffic congestion, battling Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi over a playground in Central Park, and further driving the wedge between the minority working class and middle class. The question, then, is how will Daniel Liebeskind gain power - a continuation of his public relations effort to get him the WTC assignment that radiates into reaching every man and woman in the city?