Results tagged “grayline”

A New York bus tour turned grisly yesterday morning as a Gray Line double-decker bus struck a woman outside of the United Nations. Lolaa Alrashied was crossing 42nd St and was struck by the bus and pinned underneath. She is currently listed in serious condition, with leg fractures and trauma, at Bellevue Hospital.

The reviews are in! And the word on the street is that the Staten Island bus tour is, well, perhaps off to a slow start. When the NY Times visited, the bus had five passengers (Gray Line said "it often takes up to five years before a new tour catches on"). Most passengers aren't even leaving the bus during stops to explore; one said she only wanted to take the ferry over because she saw Carrie do it in Sex and the City. Le sigh. So, what are people safely tucked aboard the bus seeing? Where Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach" video was filmed, Wagner College (Joan Baez's father taught there!) and Mandolin Brothers guitar shop, "which has been visited by the likes of Jimmy Buffett, George Harrison and Suzanne Vega." And if her tune "Song for Sharon" is to be believed, Joni Mitchell once bought a mandolin there. Meanwhile, the Staten Island Advance is painting a different picture, with photos of filled seats.

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: Hostages(!) on Geranium and Kissena Blvds. in Queens, a pedestrian struck at Stillwell and Mermaid Aves. in Brooklyn, and a bank robbery on Columbus Ave. and 72nd St. in Manhattan. Knicks coach Isiah Thomas says that the stress of lawsuits are no distraction. He can keep doing what he's doing regardless of legal problems. A boat full of gadget-minded men. There was a stop-off at Liberty Island; and slide...

In Harlem, the guide explained that black people’s hair was different and that they all went to church in their good clothes, whereas everyone else in the city was too busy to be religious, especially the Jews. Back in midtown, she pointed out two famous “Jewish delicatessens,” the Carnegie and the Stage. “Lots of remarks about Jews and blacks,” Willard observed, “yet we haven’t even mentioned Pearl Harbor.”Sadly, there were no bloodhounds on the scene, so he could not suggest that they wear a Sherlock Holmes hat and smoke a pipe. And now Gothamist must watch Best in Show tonight.

We were walking downtown to the office today when one of those big red tourist buses nearly ran us over (as usual!) Just as we were about to begin screaming obscenities, it hit us: the Gray Line has tons of buses, and they are running all over the city right now! For instance, their classic tour costs $50 for two days of hop-on hop-off privileges, and the buses complete a three-hour loop around the city. Might be a realistic option for those of you who live conveniently near a major tourist attraction. Bonus: you'll get to meet some nice people from outside New York!

-Rachel Donadio has a fun essay in the Book Review on how the information age will effect future biographers and historians (the moral: make sure your Boswell backs up your hard drive).

Mayor Bloomberg apologized to the five Sikh men visiting from Britain who who were handcuffed, forced to kneel, and basically put on display when a Gray Line tour bus employee called the NYPD because she thought they were suspicious.

"It turned out that these...people did not present any threat whatsoever. It's a shame, and I certainly apologize on behalf of the City of New York. We love tourists and we want them to keep coming here and feel that they ... can go around and enjoy the city."

Well, New Yorkers definitely said something after they saw something: There were two scares in Midtown Manhattan yesterday, and luckily, they were false alarms. First, a Bronx man claimed to have a bomb in his belongings at Penn Station, leading other people to alert authorities. While Raul Claudio did not have actually have a bomb, there is some speculation his anger over the Amtrak ticket representative's failure to find his reservation (he was heading upstate to a drug treatment center) could have fueled some suspicion. That and going up to the counter and saying he had a bomb. Claudio is being held on $15,000 bail; his lawyer claims only in this paranoid time would his client be jailed for saying something like that, but Gothamist doesn't really think about bombs as bragging rights. No one really wants to question whether or not a bank robber has a gun in a hold up, so if someone said he had a bomb, we'd definitely try to get the hell away and tell a police officer about the person.

According to the Times today, the Gray Line tourbus company will be running a route around the borough of Brooklyn. The tour will run two hours, covering the area from Downtown to the Brooklyn Museum of Art and Brooklyn Botanic Gardens in Prospect Heights. The tickets cost $35, and are available from their website.