The artificial turf being used to replace natural grass in NYC parks has been pointed out as a source of unhealthful emissions, but it's also just plain hot. The Daily News dispatched reporters with thermometers to five City parks with artificial grass and found that urban athletes had more to fear than ill-fitting footwear when it comes to blistered feet.Over two mildly warm days last month, The News took surface temperature readings at five synthetic......

The NYC Medical Examiner's office says six residents died from the heat wave which saw temperatures soar to record-breaking levels in high humidity. The victims all died of hyperthermia (aka heat stroke)-- 57-year-old man, 74-year-old woman, and 84-year-old man in Brooklyn; a 70-year-old woman, an 84-year-old woman, and an 89-year-old man in Queens--and five of them died on Tuesday, the hottest day, in their homes. (Back in 2006, there were 20-23 heat wave-related deaths.) The......

The heat is on all across the Eastern Seaboard, and temperatures in New York City reached 96 degrees yesterday (just missing a record)--and it felt like even more with its densely-packed buildings and people. There were scattered power outages: Outages for 1,400 customers were reported by Con Ed, 788 by Long Island Power Authority (which had thousands on Monday), and 75,700 by PSE&G in NJ's Essex County. ...

Photograph of last night's summer lightning in Brooklyn by dietrich on Flickr Today is supposed to be the hottest day of the this week's heat wave. Temperatures are expected to go over the 100-degree mark (though there are some predictions of of 97-degrees), and with the humidity, it may feel like it's 105 degrees. The heat advisory is in effect until 7 p.m. tonight and city cooling centers are open in all five boroughs......

Bruins 4, Rangers 3 (SO): Sometimes teams are happy with a single point, but the Rangers won't be in this one. They blew a lead in the third period -- after rallying from a 2-1 deficit -- and then saw things go against them in the shootout. A sluggish January for continues for New York. Scott Gomez had two assists and a goal, but it didn't help the Rangers avoid dropping to 2-4-1 in the......

Kimya Mania In a matter of weeks, Kimya Dawson has gone from nice, unassuming local anti-folk artist to a bona fide national breakout star, thanks to the success of the movie Juno and her contributions to the soundtrack. This week the soundtrack hit #3 on the Billboard album chart, and Kimya's been busy basking in the much deserved success. Aside from speaking with us earlier this week, the former Moldy Peach played a handful of......

After a turbulent couple of months at Gawker, the New York Times Style section is checking the media website’s pulse and wondering, with equal parts hope and desperation, if Gawker has finally jumped the “snark”. The Times’s uptick in Gawker stalking mirrors their aggressive game of catch-up with “teh internets” by increasingly emphasizing blogs on their website, and the article finds the Gray Lady digging a nice, cozy grave for Gawker owner and editor Nick......

Nets 107, Heat 103: Udonnis Haslem forced overtime with an off-balance shot at the end of regulation, but the Nets shook it off. The overtime wasn't pretty, but it's the results that count. Richard Jefferson and Vince Carter had their moments in the son, but Malik Allen had 18 points (on 9-of-11 shooting) and tormented the team with which he started his NBA career. At last place in the NBA's Eastern Conference, Miami isn't the......

New Jersey police have arrested a number of members of the Lucchese crime family. In the process of breaking up a multi-billion dollar betting organization, cops discovered that the old school mafia family had also teamed up with the more street-level gang the Bloods. The two groups were working together to smuggle things like iPods, cell phones, and drugs into the East Jersey State Prison. The betting ring was fairly sophisticated, utilizing Internet sites, an......

Two bills are facing off in the City Council these days, pitting the rights of landlords against the rights of tenants. Both seek to end legal harassment of one group against the other. In one corner, we have the bill introduced by Council members Daniel Garodnick and Melissa Mark-Viverito. It seeks to curb harassment of tenants by landlords who withhold services (e.g. heat, disrepair) by allowing them to file restraining orders against their landlords. The......

Devils 6, Flyers 2: After three failed bids to get Martin Brodeur his 500th career win, the Devils finally provided him some margin of error. They played stingy defense and lit the lamp six times en route to an easy milestone win. Brodeur joins Patrick Roy as the only netminders with 500 wins. Dainius Zubrus got the party started and added an assist. As happy as the Devils are for Brodeur, they're probably happiest that......

Miami 75 Knicks 72: April 13th was the last time the Miami Heat won a game. From that date they lost their final two regular season games, got swept out of the playoffs, lost every exhibition game they played this preseason and opened the 2007-08 campaign 0-5. All it took to wipe out nearly seven months of losing was a game with the Knicks. Sure, New York didn’t have Zach Randolph, but they didn’t need......

Beard on Food: The Best Recipes and Kitchen Wisdom from the Dean of American Cooking was first published in 1974. This collection of Beard's favorite newspaper columns has been reissued to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the James Beard Foundation, the culinary haven and educational institution created in his honor. The short columns are a pleasure to read, combining culinary education and history with easygoing recipes, travel stories and are brimming with his love......

We were poking around on Lupa's website and noticed their stunningly beautiful photo gallery for the first time. Michael Piazza's visuals are simply gorgous, and several are downright mouthwatering. The Epi-Log compiles ten food books that they think every chef should own, including some of our favorites, like Heat, Tender at the Bone, the Omnivore's Dilemma, and The Art of Eating. Bruni ponders how best to navigate the annoying social ballet of splitting the bill......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes. It would seem to be nothing less than dereliction of duty for an Italian-American food writer to have never been to the Italian food mecca that is Arthur Avenue, but it does on occasion happen. This oversight is even more glaring given that said food writer is half Calabrese and had never set foot in......

As a reader reported earlier, a tornado may have touched down in Bay Ridge. Funnel clouds were spotted early this morning and a tornado warning was posted for Brooklyn, Queens and parts of Nassau County. We won't know if the damage was caused by a tornado, microburst, or straight line winds until the National Weather Service sends out a forensics team to investigate. Now that the rain is gone, 2.5 inches in Central Park......

The lead sentence on this morning's National Weather Service forecast: Showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm before 4pm, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 4pm. is so precisely worded as to make Gothamist wish we had taken a class on deconstructing literature rather than all those dumb meteorology courses. From what is stacking up to be a busy weather day we parse the NWS as saying that widespread, lighter showers will be the......

If the Weather Service forecast is right, today will be the hottest day of the year. There's been three days, including yesterday, where the high has reached 92 degrees. The NWS is forecasting a high of 94 in the city today. The Weather Channel and AccuWeather don't see us getting that warm. Then again, AccuWeather said yesterday's high would be 85. The combination of heat and humidity are going to fall a bit short of......

The Knicks have a bad history of getting robbed when it comes to the Windy City and Eddy Curry (forget all their history with the Jordan-era Bulls). First, the Knicks traded for Eddy Curry in a deal that also gave the Bulls the 9th pick in the 2007 draft (they picked Joakim Noah) and early Saturday morning Curry was robbed at gunpoint in his suburban Chicago home. Three masked intruders tied up Curry, his wife......

The highest temperature ever recorded in Central Park happened 71 years ago today. On July 9th, 1936 the thermometer maxed out at 106 degrees. That record is safe but it will be plenty hot today and tomorrow. There's a bit of uncertainty to today's high temperature. AccuWeather is calling for a max of 92 degrees, while the Weather Service and Weather Channel both say it'll be around 96 or 97. Gothamist is leaning toward believing......

Here's a fascinating fact for impressing your friends this evening. At 8 p.m. the earth will be at its furthest distance from the sun for the year. The planet's revolution around the sun is slightly elliptical. Today we're about 94.5 million miles from the sun. Early next January we'll be only 91.5 million miles away (as demonstrated by this awesome graphic). The date of the aphelion has only a slight affect on seasonal temperatures, which......

As tankengine's picture above attests, today's air quality is not so good. Heat, humidity, stagnant air and lots of sun have combined to raise our ozone and particulate counts high enough to warrant an Air Quality Alert. The hot and humid air are going to fall just shy of the mark needed to declare a heat advisory, but it will still be plenty miserable outside. Gothamist mentioned tips to beat the heat yesterday. The......

Over the past few days the storm off the coast has been the Fugazi of weather systems. It's been doing its own thing, shooting spokes of clouds and rain over New York and New England, completely independent of the world of weather circulating around it. Over the next day or two, however, it appears that the low will get ambushed and be incorporated into the mainstream atmospheric circulation. Today's cooler weather is one sign......

It really seems like Robert De Niro and Al Pacino have co-starred in a lot of movies together, but they haven't. Sure, they had a couple of scenes together in "Heat", and both starred in "The Godfather 2" (though they never shared screen time) - but that's about it as far as collaborating has gone for these two legends in their own time. The good news for fans of the actors is that it's......

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores. We hadn’t been to Pathmark in a while, so we were suprised to see two great deals pop up. Shrimp for $4.99 first caught our eye, but spinach was also a deal at under a dollar a pound. So when the shrimp were a no show at the store, we had to move on to the leafy green. And......

Today is beautiful, almost to the point of being annoyed that your office and/or apartment is stuffy and hot. (Heat season, as in when your landlord/building owner is required to heat your building, is in effect until May 31.) But if you were thinking of getting in some alfresco dining this week, you might want to make those plans for tonight. The week's weather will turn cooler and rainy starting tomorrow. Here are outdoor dining......

Devils 3 Carolina 2: Local fans of all affiliations cheered on the Devils tonight as they came up with two goals in the third period to beat the Hurricanes. Martin Brodeur had another stellar game with 38 saves. Carolina’s loss leaves them with 78 points, tied with the Islanders and two ahead of the Rangers in the very tight Eastern Conference. The Devils moved to within two of Buffalo for the conference lead. Ottawa 5......

- If you're still buying baseball cards, you may have noticed that there are a couple of mistakes on the latest Derek Jeter card from Topps (full card pictured at left). The baseball card pictures President Bush waiving in the stands and Mickey Mantle in the dugout. Problem is that Bush wasn't at the game that day. Plus, everyone knows Bush is a Rangers fan and he would be flanked by tons of Secret......

Kings 88, Nets 87: Despite leading by 20, the Nets couldn't snap their losing streak at Sacramento's Arco Arena. The injury bug has struck again; Richard Jefferson is out six weeks after arhtroscopic on his ankle. Already without Nenad Krsitc for the rest of the season, the Nets -- winless at Arco since 1997 -- will try to tread water until he returns. Blowing games like this one isn't going to help their cause, though.......

Nets 91, Heat 81: Teams that score 21 straight points don't lose that often. The Nets used such a run in the third quarter to take down the Heat, who were playing without Dwyane Wade (wrist) and Shaquille O'Neal (knee). Jason Kidd, who described winning as "the best deodorant," had 17 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists as he helped his squad snap a four-game losing skid. New Jersey scored on 10 of 11......