A cyclist is seriously injured today after colliding with a barrier on Varick Street near the Holland Tunnel. DNAinfo reports that the unidentified man was headed south on Varick Street around 2:30 p.m. when he tried to make a right turn onto Dominick Street. But there was a divider in the middle of the street that the cyclist either didn't see or underestimated, and he went down hard on the pavement. more ›

Well, that explains it. Two suspects (yesterday reports said there were three) arrested for attempting to mow down a Port Authority cop were carrying heroin at the time, and were fleeing a drugstore robbery. Police stopped driver Jahaad Sanders, 19, and passenger Lorenzo Dease, 24, after they crossed five lanes of traffic to approach the tunnel. Sanders's foster mother said, "He's always had problems. He just came home from Rikers last year for holding up a drugstore in Manhattan." more ›

If you were stuck in your car for hours while trying to get into the city through the Holland Tunnel yesterday, here's why. A rogue driver reportedly tried to mow down a Port Authority cop outside the tunnel yesterday, leading the cop to chase the Jeep all the way to the New York side of the tunnel and shoot at the driver. more ›

About 15 minutes ago, NotifyNYC sent this message, "Due to a motor vehicle accident, the North (New Jersey-bound) tube of the Lincoln Tunnel is closed. Expect heavy traffic delays." We're hearing it's a three-car accident. Commuters, channel your serenity now, especially given the construction near the Holland Tunnel. more ›

A NJ man claims that a NYPD traffic cop's terrible directions caused him injuries and his car damage! The Post reports, "In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Diogenes Tavarez, 61, says he was driving his car near the entrance of the Holland Tunnel last November 'when his vehicle was violently struck" by another car which had been 'directed to proceed' by the not so-eagle-eyed traffic cop." Tavarez, whose 2004 Honda had $15,000 in damages, says the cop was "negligent, careless and reckless" and was "directing traffic in said area with a total disregard for the health, safety and welfare of others." Not only is he suing the NYPD and the cop, he's also suing the city and the other driver for a grand total of $5 million. more ›

Thanks to some quick thinking from a kidnapped woman, Port Authority police were able to rescue her from a jealous boyfriend who locked her in a car and attempted to take her to New Jersey. NJ.com reports that Queens native Freddy Pulla was arrested yesterday and charged with kidnapping, aggravated assault, criminal restraint, and domestic violence. more ›

It's a lot cuter to see a coyote skidding across the ice in Central Park and dodging New Yorkers on something closer to its natural home turf... but the recent coyote sightings on the streets of Manhattan are just, well, depressing. more ›

Last Friday afternoon-into-evening, commuters leaving NYC through the Lincoln Tunnel were treated to hours of delays, because a suspicious package was left on I-495 West. It turned out to be two bottles filled with an ultimately harmless liquid, but the damage was done: Traffic was diverted to local roads in NJ, commuter bus passengers were hating their devotion to mass transit, and there were still hours of residual delays. more ›

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Like the GWB and the Holland Tunnel, the Brooklyn Bridge will have LED lights installed next year, but how exactly do the bulbs get replaced? The NY Times says it only takes one man to screw in these bulbs. Okay, maybe he has some help. Ben Cipriano, the leader of a crew of electricians who maintain the four major East River Bridges for the city’s Department of Transportation, and his colleagues make about a dozen trips a year up the cables of those bridges.

The mercury vapor lamps that are currently in use on the bridge, he said, are supposed to last about 24,000 hours. At eight hours a night (the lights are turned off at 1 a.m.), that means each bulb should last more than eight years. It gets tricky, though, because workers replace the bulbs before they burn out completely, to minimize noticeable variations between them.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a possible abduction at the Mobil gas station off the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, a suspicious death on Cornelia St. in Queens, and a pedestrian struck at Buffalo St. and Hylan Blvd. on Staten Island.
• The Dept. of Buildings declined to revoke permits for Donald Trump's planned 46-story Trump SoHo "hotel" on Spring St. near the Holland Tunnel.
• A State Bridge Task Force completed its inspection of New York's 49 steel deck-truss bridges and found them all to be structurally sound. Still, a bill before the Senate to boost federal spending on bridge maintenance would direct 10% of a $1 billion increase, or $100 million, to New York State.
• A Coast Guard vessel conducting a routine homeland security patrol came upon a 27-year-old man treading water without a life jacket about 400 yards southeast of Staten Island's South Beach.
• Gridskipper has a guide to establishments that brew, distill, and ferment all kinds of potent potables right here in NYC.
• The Gowanus Lounge reports that an F train express line could arrive as early as next year. Or maybe around 2012 or early 2013.
• The New York Times describes the run of the vintage six-car 'A' train yesterday on the line's 75th anniversary.
• IvyGate reports that bars surrounding Columbia University will all be getting ID scanners to keep out underage patrons, and Columbia itself will be picking up the tab for the devices.

Traffic through the Holland tunnel was stalled this morning after two buses collided, with many passengers winding up in the hospital. The Daily News reports that an Atlantic Express bus slammed on its brakes after a car veered into its lane (drivers are not allowed to change lines while in the Holland Tunnel) and a following bus crashed into it. The second bus was from BTC Transportation and headed from Atlantic City to Chinatown. more ›

We've seen Port Authority workers measure the heights of trucks to make sure they will fit in either the Holland or Lincoln Tunnel. But yesterday one driver refused to stop and proceeded to drive his 13' 6" truck through the Lincoln Tunnel's 13' high center tube. And what does a truck look like after doing that? Well, check out the photograph from the NY Times, which describes its roof as being peeled back "as if it were a tin can." We'd like to add "A tin can whose sides are also falling down." more ›

After the Sun mentioned the Mayor's upcoming Earth Day PlaNYC speech may include mention of a congestion tax, even more details about what the speech will include have come out. The NY Times says the Mayor is "expected to advocate more than 100 proposals," from cleaning up polluted sites to making buildings more energy efficient. more ›

We knew the Catholic Church was sneaky, but we never thought that a cardinal would stoop this low! Cardinal Egan had a meeting with the priest at Our Lady of Vilnius Church yesterday, only to take the opportunity to lock the church while the priest was gone! The Post reports that security guards were dispatched to lock the doors, leaving parishioners to cry when they found a closed church and no mass. more ›

The controversial proposal to turn the UPS lot on Spring Street and West Street into a place for 106 Sanitation trucks may align Donald Trump with critics of his planned Trump Soho Hotel. The Donald takes a break from blabbing about ladies of The View and tells the Post, "I don't like trucks, the fumes, the traffic from the standpoint of the community... If the community wanted help, I would certainly help." more ›

Try to Burn This One, by Melon Bee. more ›

This is just the way you want to end your work week before Christmas holiday: Hearing from the NY Times that the PATH tunnels are "seen as fragile" in a bomb attack. Even a small ("a significant but not necessarily very large") bomb would cause a PATH tunnel to flood in 6 minutes. more ›

It was another unusually mild, late November morning when we visited 304 Spring at Renwick, just east of Greenwich Street. more ›

1. Uh-oh, missing City Council members, if you miss a meeting, you need a note from your doctor (or other documentation)
2. Curbed's monitoring of Gehry's IAC Building pays off: The windows are properly lined up.
3. Park Slopers are scared of raccoons, possibly to the point of not crossing the street for a non-fat latte
4. The Goya stolen as it was being transported from Ohio to NYC was recovered in NJ! No word if it's going to continue its journey to the Guggenheim
5. Julian Casablancas, Mets fan! On the post-season: "Can I just ask you: as a Mets fan, do you think leaving Heilman in there for the 9th inning was the right move?"
6. The FDNY rescued a 73 year old man from the 50-degree Hudson River water - he was "found in old pilings" near a Holland Tunnel ventilator tower
7. Kottke picks out his favorite of Chris Ware's four Thanksgiving-themed New Yorker covers (we like this one)
8. The probe into State Comptroller Alan Hevesi's actions is getting more power, but it's still unlikely a decision will be made before Pataki leaves office

A couple of years ago, while leaving a show at Irving Plaza, one of the many people handing out cd's - handed us a cd. It wasn't in any fancy packaging, wasn't eye catching for any reason, and we held on to it and listened later that night. The band was called The Epochs, and we had a new rule about listening to cd's handed to us on the street. more ›

On the anniversary of the London subway bombings, US and city officials made a big show out of confirming that three men had been arrested for plotting to bomb various tunnels leading into Manhattan. But the tunnels they were looking at were PATH tunnels to the World Trade Center and Christopher Street - not the Holland Tunnel or even the Lincoln Tunnel as previously mentioned by the Daily News and Senator Schumer respectively. Interesting. The NY Times has an interesting quote from an anonymous counterterrorism source:

"These are bad guys in Canada and a bad guy in Lebanon talking, but it never advanced beyond that." more ›

Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Kelly, and representatives from the Port Authority and FBI gave a press conference about the tunnel terror plot a few hours ago. This morning, the Daily News revealed that officials had "foiled" a plot to flood the city Katrina-style (no matter how technically unfeasible it would be), sending people into a tailspin, both the "crap, no" and the "the government is making this too big a deal" kinds. From the NY Times:

Mark J. Mershon, the agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York office, said at a news conference this afternoon that Lebanese officials had taken the plot's "mastermind" into custody in Beirut and that he had confessed. Mr. Mershon said that the Lebanese officials had identified the suspect as Assem Hammoud, a 31-year-old Lebanese native, and reported that Mr. Hammoud had sworn allegiance to Al Qaeda.Mr. Mershon said two of the other eight people he described as "principal players" in the plot had been taken into custody in other countries, although none had yet been charged with any crimes. He said that an investigation was continuing, involving six countries on three continents. more ›

As London remembers the first anniversary of its deadly subway attacks, the Daily News reveals that jihadists were plotting to blow up the Holland Tunnel in order to flood lower Manhattan. The plot was apparently in the works months ago, with a "pledge" of support from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, with hopes, as the News puts it, "to drown the Financial District as New Orleans was by Hurricane Katrina." Well, given government response to floods, it's not surprising that terrorists would want to emulate disasters from nature. more ›

Real estate disputes are, almost by definition, never pretty and no matter what somebody is going to come out of them looking bad. In the case of the landmarked Starrett-Lehigh Building on 26th street and 11th Avenue the bad looking people would be the buildings owners, 601 West Associates, and one famous tenant whose name starts with "M" and ends with "artha Stewart". more ›

- Turns out Mayor Bloomberg and NJ Governor Corzine teamed up to convince Pataki to rework any sort of Ground Zero proposal to Larry Silverstein. And re: the NY Times' mention of past NY-NJ spats, we wish we remembered how Mayor Koch "once symbolically boarded up the entrance to the Holland Tunnel over the loss of jobs to New Jersey." more ›

- Lawyers for Paramount and Columbia Pictures are suing a 63-year-old teacher's aide for allegedly downloading a copy of "The Longest Yard." Yes, the Adam Sandler movie. more ›

- And the AP interviews the blogging taxi driver, Melissa Plaut, who is awesome more ›