Results tagged “grandstreet”

That controversial Grand Street bike lane, beloved by cyclists and loathed by some business owners because it makes receiving deliveries onerous, now has a new enemy: Democratic mayoral candidate Bill Thompson. The comptroller was in Chinatown doing some pandering campaigning yesterday when he announced that, if elected, he would tear up that dedicated bike lane, which is buffered from traffic by a row of motor vehicle parking. Thompson told voters, "I'm in favor of bike lanes but you can't put bike lanes in without speaking to the community. You can't put bike lanes that are doing damage to local businesses."

It's been a while since we checked in on community dissatisfaction with the DOT's changes to Grand Street in Manhattan, and we're not surprised to see the opposition still hates the new configuration, which provides a dedicated lane for cyclists, separated from traffic by a row of parked cars and pedestrian islands at some intersections. On Monday night City Councilmember Alan Gerson held a public forum on traffic and parking problems in the neighborhood, and accused the DOT of turning "a deaf ear to community concerns. Traffic on Grand Street is worse. Pedestrian crossings are more dangerous. Critical turns for the Fire Department, ambulances and police have become difficult."

Residents and business owners who have been complaining about the new Grand Street bike lane now have a video that they say demonstrates the traffic mess caused by the lane, which provides a dedicated space for cyclists separated from traffic by a row of parked cars. Sent to us by the Soho Alliance, the video depicts a truck driver turning from West Broadway onto Grand Street and mistaking the parked cars for idling traffic.

The new bike lane on Grand Street that a local shop owner recently called the possible "demise of Little Italy" continues to draw attention with complaints that fire trucks are struggling to maneuver around the new setup of the block. Ernest Lepore, owner of Ferrara Cafe who originally talked to Villager, appears to have taken his case against the lane to the Post, telling the paper, "I saw one truck back up four or five times before being able to squeeze into the lane. The firefighter was visibly frustrated."

The new bike lane that extends along Grand Street between Varick and Chrystie Streets has been warmly received by many cyclists who like the way it's separated from traffic by a row of parked cars. Not so pleased are business owners through Soho, Little Italy and Chinatown, some of whom fear the bike lane will "hurt business and create a dangerous situation," according to The Villager.

Rainbow cookies are quite possibly our favorite cookies. Ever. Whenever someone brings a cookie assortment from an Italian bakery we always eat all the rainbow cookies first and usually discard the rest.

Bun -- Vietnamese vermicelli noodle based dishes (both cold and hot) --usually take a back seat to the more popular pho noodles in the United States. But, at Michael “Bao” Huynh’s new restaurant collaboration with Warren Cuccurello, Bun Soho, bun are the show-stoppers on a menu that also offers small plates rife with seafood dishes and plenty of pork belly. Dishes are $12 and under—even for duck hearts and tongue confit — and co-chef...

AMNY ruined elitist drinkers’ fun today by outing some “secret” watering holes around town. One of them, The Back Room, is no secret, just a pain to find for first-timers. The capacious bar is tucked away at 102 Norfolk Street two doors down from a "Lower East Side Toys" sign; pass through a gate and down some steps to a narrow alley that leads to an unmarked door. Or just look for the bouncer standing...

Three separate clashes in Brooklyn and Manhattan left three men dead and two people wounded. The first occurred late Friday night, when a 51-year-old Harlem resident was shot in his apartment building at 353 West 115th Street. Willie Woods, who the Post reports was a "parolee who served time on drug charges" but managed to stay out of trouble and work as a janitor for his building and others in he neighborhood, was shot in...

Bun: Chef Michael Bao Huynh and his wife, Thao Nguyen, who has amazing noodle preparation expertise, have opened this Vietnamese rice-noodle and small-plate spot in SoHo. Although he has gotten some financial backing from Warren Cuccurullo, formerly of Missing Persons and Duran Duran, Huynh designed the designed the 45-seat space himself. The menu is affordable, with a cap at around $12, and features four varieties of pho, among other dishes. 143 Grand Street, near Lafayette Street, 212-431-7999.

TIP: According to Paper's Mr. Mickey, Chloë Sevigny is having a tag sale on her block this Saturday. We're guessing there will be lots of vintage Balenciaga. Check out her apartment in House & Garden...pretty nice!

The Moondance Diner shut its doors at the end of June at which time it was rumored that it would live out its years at a museum in Pennsylvania. The free-standing diner has changed its path, however, and now it's headed to the small town of La Barge, Wyoming.

You may know Bob McClure as "Jed" on The Burg, but off screen he's an integral part of the family biz: McClure's Pickles. They're serious about their spicy garlic dills, which are now available in their two hometowns: Brooklyn and Detroit. We asked Bob a few questions recently about pickle flavors, what drink goes best with a dill, and more.

The new legislation reform bill that no one is very happy with has raised many questions about its effect on the city. Mayor Bloomberg said that the bill is a good first step, but called the provision where immigrants would go back to their native country "a joke," saying, "Nobody’s going to go home for a year and come back. Nobody could ever enforce that. Nobody in their right mind would ever try to do it." Today, the NY Times has an article on how immigration has shaped the city.

Two weeks ago, our friends over at Bostonist posted a very scary map plotting more than 50 Dunkin Donuts locations within a five-mile radius of their city’s Downtown Crossing. The actual number of New York Dunkin Donuts locations, parameters widened to include Port Authority based kiosks and airport locations, is likely to be more than a baker’s dozen for any given five mile radius. So yeah, sure, it seems America runs on Dunkin and all that, spokespersonality Rachael Ray is somewhere yummo-ing™ with a Vanilla Bean Coolatta®, and the donut war is over. Resistance is futile. Your donuts will herewith be stale and taste like cake mix.

Riders of fixed-gear bikes are as diverse as bike riders in general. Messengers are big fixie aficionados, but more and more fixed-gear bikes are being ridden by nonmessengers, most conspicuously the kind of younger people to whom the term “hipster” applies and who emanate from certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn. You see these riders weaving in and out of traffic without stopping, balancing on the pedals at a stoplight and in the process infuriating pedestrians and drivers alike.

Hungry for some good gluten, Gothamist booked it to the three-month-old Kate’s Brooklyn Joint in Williamsburg, an outpost of the East Village mainstay.

If you want holiday brews, Barcade's got it. They've got well over a dozen seasonal beers on tap, including HeBrew Monumental Jewbelation 2006, Anchor Christmas 2003, and Pyramid Snow Cap. 6pm, 388 Union Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-388-4347.

We love this time of year, when the Straphangers Campaign hands out the Pokey Awards for the city's slowest buses. Usurping last year's winner M34 from the slowest spot this year was the M14A, which goes between 11th Avenue and Avenue A, and then down to Grand Street, and travels at an average of 3.9 MPH, which is what a healthy New Yorker speedwalking can do easily (average pedestrian walking speed is 3 MPH). Ah, the combination of traffic and pedestrians around 14th Street, especially near Union Square . The M34's sped up from 3.4 MPH to a blazing 4.2 MPH - check out the the 2005 and 2006 speeds here (PDF). And the other borough's slow poke buses are:

Chinatown wakes up in the morning much the same as any other New York neighborhood—with a jolt of caffeine. Every block seems to have its own bakery where throngs perch at tiny tables to slurp hot tea or coffee before starting the day. But these are no Dunkin Donuts. The pastries everyone nibbles alongside their steaming cups are anything but ordinary—though some look familiar on the surface. What appears to be a custard doughnut is actually filled with sticky red bean paste. Don’t mistake that one for a cheese danish; what’s inside is chicken minced with scallions and spiked with hot Sichuan pepper. And is that a hot dog sticking out of that sweet bun? Why, yes, it is. (This may in fact represent your only chance to eat a wiener for breakfast respectably.)

Fusion cuisines are all the rage, but the idea of mixing flavors across boundaries is hardly new. On Grand Street, Nyonya sits among the remnants of today's Little Italy; the restaurant's name refers to "the ladies" -- the women of Chinese-Malay marriages. Also known as Straits Chinese food or Lauk Embok Embok, the flavors of Nyonya mix Chinese and Malay components, deriving from grandmothers' recipes and the influence of Indonesian and Thai cuisine. Coconut milk figures heavily in dishes, adding sweet, rich flavors pared with kaffir leaves, ginger flower, coriander and cumin. Thai flavors reign in hot chilies, black prawn paste, and sensations of sourness, resulting in ingredient-heavy complex flavors throughout.

will be covered over tonight. Commercial poster people that "own" the spot came by and made threats, called the cops to bust us & we still came back + finished. But they'll definitely replace this with advertising tonight,

Julia Levy was on the scene for yesterday's Art Parade and filed this report:

If you're going to be in Soho this afternoon - or you're interested in some public spectacle - go to West Broadway at Houston and see the Deitch Art Parade at 4PM. Expect wild and fun floats and performers. The parade will go from Houston to Grand Street, all along West Broadway.

THEATER: The two most dreaded words in theater, "staged reading", get a shot at redemption with tonight's free reading of Stuff Happens. The show has cut and run from the Public Theater, so this is your last chance to catch David Hare's satire about the ramp-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. In an interview with NPR, Hare described it as "a play about how a supposedly stupid man, George W. Bush, gets everything he wants..." Laugh the pain away. - John Del Signore

In another life, Gothamist may have been a mouse. That's how much we love cheese. It makes us really, really happy (sometimes to the degree that we could swear it gives us a high). We were thrilled to see that some people agree with us--in a recent Chowhound discussion on fromageries a contributor said, "I just took a piece of perfectly ripened Torta del Casar and ate it in my hands around the corner and it was like sex!"

MOVIES: DUMBO's weekly evening film event, Movies with a View, begins tonight with The Wizard of Oz. Bring your iPod and play "Dark Side of the Moon" while the movie plays, it'll, like, totally synch up if you press play during the 3rd lion roar.

PARTY: Disorient & Kostume Kult invite you to The Black & Light Ball; a Black-Lit Burner Formal. It's like a rave, in your dorm room...but in a gallery, with a lot more blacklighting than you could afford in college. With lighting art on display and blacklight flooding the space - we think it's okay if, just this once, you wear your sunglasses at night. Much more art, craziness and music (er, of the "techno" and "house" variety) will be a backdrop to the ball, a summer fundraiser. There will also be a blacklight sensitive fashion show by PHil's PHads and Caitlin Stolley at 10 pm.

Aurora--with an open, airy dining room, exposed brick walls, wooden tables, and a large, plant-filled garden--is named after one of owner and Roman native Gaspare Villa's favorites places in Italy. "Rustic" is the best word to describe both the food and atmosphere--like an urban farmhouse where chef Riccardo Buitoni makes sure you are both cozy and well-fed. Pastas, breads, and desserts are all made on premises with a special emphasis on seasonal ingredients, reflected on the menu. Though on our visit, weak coffee proved a poor initiation, shortly afterwards baked eggs with salmon, avocado, and goat cheese arrived literally bubbling hot, eggs crisping in a trace of oil with a lightly buttered slice of toasted country bread on the side. Eggs Norwegian, served atop lusciously rich pan-toasted brioche, adds salmon and spinach to the traditional eggs benedict. Taste aside--which was excellent--presentation made the mouth water even before the first bite.