Results tagged “highspeed”

The Smart car has arrived in the States, and measuring at 8 feet and 8 inches long and 5 feet wide, the miniscule vehicle got some big attention in the Big Apple this week.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an unusual sexual assault on Broadway in Brooklyn, an unstable building on Sutphin Blvd. in Queens, and a shooting on West 142nd St. and Amsterdam Ave. in Manhattan.
• Central Park's Sheep Meadow was the first park location to upgrade its wifi Internet connection to high speed. The new 15-megabits-per-second service is five times faster than the previous connection.
• Madame Tussauds wax museum in Times Square wasted no time in dressing its likeness of Lindsay Lohan in prison stripes, after the young star was arrested for drunk driving and drug posession shortly after leaving rehab.
• Former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason is in talks to fill the morning time slot on WFAN left vacant by the abrupt departure of Don Imus.
• Williamsburg! The Musical will premiere August 11th as part of the 11th Annual Fringe Festival.
• Gridskipper has a guide to NYC record stores for vinyl enthusiasts.
• Turning Long Island City into a giant sundial, with the Citibank tower as the shadow-casting spire.
• The City Council is thinking of revising its cell phones-in-schools policy, to allow kids to bring them to school, but not use them there. Schools would be required to set up cell phone storage facilities to secure the devices during the day.

Let's paraphrase what we wrote yesterday: How is it again, with Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan riding their bikes, that NYC remains a bike-unfriendly city? Yesterday, two bicyclists died in separate incidents in Brooklyn and the Bronx. At 9AM, 18-year-old Luis Ramos was biking to his job at George's Spanish and American Restaurant when a woman opened her car door in his path on Flushing Avenue near Beaver Street. The Post describes that "Ramos slammed into the door, flew over his handlebars and fell into traffic, where a school bus ran over him." Ramos' brother Lucas had been biking about two blocks behind him and saw the police at the scene. He said, "I ran over to him to hug him. But the cops told me not to touch him." Ramos was pronounced dead at Woodhull Hospital and the police did not issue any summons.

If you ran the city, what would you do? That's basically what the Times asked a bunch of New Yorkers back in November. The Gray Lady then picked their favorite bits of advice and asked the city what could be done about them. Some of the ideas are plain silly (uhm, a high speed underground moving walkway instead of the the never-going-to-get-built 2nd Avenue Subway?) and some of them are highly controversial (hello, reserved residential parking!) but some of them are actually good ideas. These were our two favorites:

Electronic key cards are at the center of proposed rent strike and lawsuit at Peter Cooper Village. The NY Times reports that tenants are upset that MetLife, who manages the buildings, will require all residents to use electronic key cards, because "the system would make it easier to identify and remove people who illegally sublet apartments, since only those who can show they have a valid lease or are screened by security would qualify for entry." Oh, snap! While MetLife claims it's for safety purposes, the Peter Cooper tenants feel this is an invasion of privacy, since the motivationg might be to smoke out the many people who illegally sublet their apartments. MetLife has been aggressively looking for people to rent out apartments at Peter Cooper Village - and Stuyvesant Town to the south - with upgrades like new kitchens and bathrooms, plus high speed Internet wiring. The tenants' lawyer will be filing a motion to make sure no tenants are locked out, and tenants will be voting on a rent strike at the end of the month. While illegal sublets are a fact of NYC life, Gothamist wonders if it's a losing cause on the tenants' part. We can only imagine that tenants will want to sublet their apartments to people who look like them - the costume and disguise business will certainly boom.

Gothamist on the city's cell phone reception problems study. And the above image from Forgotten NY's street lamps page.

[above: Tim Burton. From Nightmare Before Christmas: "Jack in the Graveyard", mixed media on paper, 11 x 14”]

A picture of what happened during the terrible tragedy of the Staten Island Ferry ship, the Anthony J. Barberi, crashing into piling near the SI Ferry's piers is starting to emerge. The ship was approaching and missed the piers at a high speed. When the second captain was unable to gain total control of the ship, the ship slammed into a maintenance pier, and then that concrete pier sheared the side of the ship. People fell into the water, girders were torn out, boards were splintered. It's unclear how many were on the boat at the time; officials believe the 3:30 ferry was at full capacity, 1500 passenger. Mayor Bloomberg reported 10 died with many injured. While he did not give any thoughts about what might have caused the crash, he did suggest that the 45 MPH winds may have been a factor.

Tonight at 6:30PM, the Walter Reade Theater is showing Martin Scorsese's wrenching film, of The Age of Innocence. Edith Wharton's novel about society, class, and love found (what was then) a suprisingly faithful and sumptuousadaptation from Scorsese and screenwriter Jay Cocks. Gothamist likes the title credit sequence by Saul Bass and Elaine Bass that sums up the passion of the film: Flowers blooming in high speed, with lace ghosted over them. Even after ten years, we still remember it.

I don't think I am a business road warrior, someone who can jump from plane to plane and make each hotel room his/her own home. Airports make me a little crazy, since I tend to have too many bags to keep track of and going anywhere, bathroom, newsstand, becomes a funny challenge. ("Ha, that girl has a laptop, messenger bag, pull carry-on luggage, winter coat, and bottle of water - and she thinks she's going get to the back of the newsstand for Cosmo.")

Nick Denton posted this call for Gizmodo and Gawker Interns. Gothamist provides some comments: