Two men were seriously injured when a shopping cart fell on them at the Bronx Gateway Center. The cart was dropped from a parking garage near the Home Depot around 5 p.m. NY1 reports, "Police say a 52-year-old man is now in critical condition and a 30-year-old man who was sent to Lincoln Hospital is now in stable condition." more ›

An 80-year-old woman is suing Home Depot for age discrimination after the store fired her for buying four 6-cent screws and not actually taking them home. Ellen Strickland says she bought the 24-cents worth of merchandise in order to get cash back on her debit card, something employees did all the time to avoid being charged ATM fees. However, Home Depot accused her of messing up inventory and after a "full investigation" she was fired less than 24 hours later. more ›

Perhaps Home Depot is trying to get out of the home makeover market and into bodily makeovers. Or perhaps this courier service just got really lost. Employees at the Home Depot on Third Avenue were shocked that a box allegedly containing heart valves meant for a hospital in Chicago wound up at their store. "I think it's crazy. They should look at their packages before they deliver them," one employee told ABC 7. However, no one at Home Depot or the courier service seems to be talking, so we're just going to assume there are some weird Aztec rituals going on in the back room. more ›

Life just got a lot less convenient for stabby folks who stock up on blades at the local hardware store. After the Manhattan D.A. launched a new initiative to get knives off the streets, investigators discovered illegal switchblades and gravity knives at 41 stores, ranging from mom-and-pop stores to chain behemoths like Home Depot. Now two national chain stores and five other operations have agreed to stop selling the items. These companies, as well as the 34 others implicated in the bust, handed over their existing stock and $1.9 million—their total profits from the weapons. more ›

If you're applying for a mortgage, you're willing to give up your personal details. Unfortunately, for some first-time applicants, their mortgage manager stole their identities - and $1 million. more ›

This morning, NBC News President Steve Capus appeared on the Today show to discuss the immediate ending of radio shock jock Don Imus's MSNBC simulcast. Per TVNewser, Capus said:

There's no question that his program has had provocative conversation and interesting conversation, deep conversation with thought leaders and political leaders through the years. But it's also had the other element. At some point you have to say 'enough is enough.' This went so far over the line that it was time.

A month and a half ago, a young woman lured her ex-boyfriend to the dumpy Chelsea Inn - where her new boyfriend and another man grabbed him, tied him up and then branded an "R" onto his butt. Kristina Caban, 21, and Robert Testagrossa, 25, were arrested and charged with kidnapping, robbery and assault for the attack on Samir Sara, and now it turns out that they were trying to brand "rapist" into Sara's body with a torch and wire bought at Home Depot (!). more ›

A police arrested a man who allegedly used dead people's credit cards for purchases, and the twist is that the man is a police officer. Officer Eduardo Saillant apparently would take the credit cards investigating the elderly people's deaths. Back in May, gas and Home Depot charges appeared a dead man's Visa bill, so his sister contacted the police. The investigation led to Saillant, who didn't do anything unusual until this past week, when he charged gas on the card of an 89 year old woman whose death he and his partner had investigated. The Post reports that when Saillant's car was searched, a long-missing police radio was also found. more ›

Manahattanites, you'll have to put off getting 5 gallon containers of olive oil - but you will get your cute Isaac skirts! Target will be leasing a 130,000 square foot space at East River Plaza, a "long delayed" mall at the FDR and East 119th Street. Costco was originally thought to be the second floor tenant (there's a Home Depot on the first floor), but Target's apparently to shell out more cash. What's cute is that the East River Plaza's website still lists Costco as a retailer. more ›

-- ...and attention outer-borough residents, Gawker has a message for you: "Unless you're on the big island, you don't count for shit." Oh, don't get so mad-- they've been saying that for years. more ›

Golf has always had somewhat of an "upper crust of society" feel to it, but sometimes that feeling goes even farther than one could even imagine. Case in point: Liberty National Golf Club. Liberty National, just across the Hudson River in Jersey City, just opened last month and has some of the most ridiculous member benefits that Gothamist has ever heard of. How ritzy, you ask? When construction is finished, the waiters will deliver anything to you at any time, with a silver platter. The Post quotes the club's managing director Aurelian Anghelusiu, "If our members want a foie gras sandwich and glass of Cristal on the course at 10 a.m., we'll do it." Nothing like the fresh taste of duck liver bright and early in the morning. Other benefits include a complementary yacht-ride from Manhattan, massages at the driving range, a view of Manhattan, and caddies with GPS systems to help pinpoint the distance from your errant ball to the holes. Oh, and if that boat ride takes too long, you can jump on the club helicopter. more ›

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn showed her anti-Wal-Mart colors during a Crain's business breakfast forum. Though she may be overruled, should zoning allow the retail behemoth to move in, Quinn said:

"I don't want Wal-Mart in the City of New York unless they change their corporate behavior...It is well documented across the country that Wal-Mart frequently uses the public insurance programs of the cities they are in as their own health insurance programs. We can't put that additional strain on our Health and Hospitals Corp., which is working as hard as it can to take care of uninsured New Yorkers."

- Protests today over the World Trade Center Memorial more ›

Ooh, beware the dangerous intersection of PR, home decor and your crappy NYC apartment! A publicist was sentenced to jail for duping the Home Depot and other companies out of goods that he used to improve his West 76th Street apartment. David Chass had asked the Home Depot if they would renovate his apartment as part of a publicity move, and even though the HD said no, Chass still billed them for $363,000. Too bad for the Home Depot, they paid. And apparently Chass also promised other home decor companies that he'd get them mentioned on the Weekend Today show, if they would give him free bedding and lighting. The gig was up when the stores contacted the Weekend Today show asking when the segments would air - and then the producers contacted the Manhattan DA's office. more ›

- And it must suck to be the homeowner whose home renovations became a Home Depot for a mobster more ›

more ›

Landlords for a Bronx apartment building have agreed to pay $800,000 to the family of a little girl who was bitten by a rat in their apartment. Now, steel yourself for how the rat attacked then three year-old Camille Fernandez in 2001: It crawled through a broken tile, as Camille was waiting for her mother to get a towel. When mother Christina Fernandez turned back, Camille was unconscious in the tub, because she tried to shake the rat off her body, but fell and hit her head on the bathtub faucet. Ai!! Run to the Home Depot to get some grout to fix your tiles! According to Fernandez's lawyer, Camille has a "seizure disorder, rat-phobia, panic disorder, and post-traumatic stress," plus "marks on her lower back [from the rat bites], and development and psychological problems." The family had sued the Rosenberg Diamond Development, which manages the building, for millions; interesting, RDD's lawyer approached the family with the $800,000 settlement during jury deliberations. We wonder what the jury would have awarded the family - even jurors with the coldest heart would find this story disgusting and terrible. We're sure the rat was as big as the little girl! more ›

It's the backdoor retailing maneuver! Wal-Mart is trying to make its NYC inroads by getting a store approved in Staten Island, and one of the reasons it may actually succeed is because the borough is more Republican than the others. But the most telling thing in this NY Times article is that many residents, in spite of loving Wal-Mart's low prices and even traveling to NJ for them, is that they don't want Wal-Mart in their backyard, proving that NJ was made for turnpike jokes, big hair and big box stores. The article also reproduced one of Wal-Mart's borough-specific ads, and it's pretty underwhelming. And Gothamist laughs at Wal-Mart saying that it's getting a raw deal, since there have been other big box stores approved in the city (K-Mart, Home Depot, Target), because, as one of Staten Island's state senators, Diane Savino, says, "Wal-Mart would mean a lot of low-end entry-level jobs, and New York City isn't suffering from a lack of entry-level jobs. We're suffering from a lack of middle-income jobs and high-end jobs. In addition, Wal-Mart has a reputation as being not just vehemently antiunion but of violating every labor law in the book." Not to mention encouraging movie studios and record labels to sanitize their movies or records to their liking. And, besides, there's something depressingly real about being in a KMart and something something aspirational but not really feasible (because how much are we really going to invest in a rental) about visiting the Home Depot. more ›

After the city has decided to revoke the permit for the launch party of his new graffiti video game, designer Marc Ecko is doing the next best thing: Suing the city. And the NYCLU is getting involved, joining Ecko in a press conference yesterday asking the mayor to reinstate the permit. Animal Magazine publisher and graffiti enthusiast Bucky Turco was at the press conference gave us his report, with including Ecko's invitation for the Mayor:

His lawyer, Daniel M. Perez stated, "Mark Ecko will be filing a lawsuit in NY Federal Court." They have enlisted the help of the NYCLU who wrote and sent a letter to the Mayor today. Arthur Eisenberg, the legal director, cites a Supreme Court Case, Brandenburg v. Ohio, that set a precedent to protect the exhibit Ecko is hosting. The Ecko people have also determined that If they can't get the permit they plan on canceling the event. Mark Ecko mentioned "I don't condone illegal graffiti, but I don't condone censorship either." more ›

more ›

Forget online dating or even meeting cute on the subway - the next wave of hookups could be coming from the aisles of Home Depot. The NY Post suggests that the city's Home Depots are perfect places for people of both sexes to be totally confused and overwhelmed, making them bait for others or giving them more reason to seek out cute customer service reps. A writer says:

"I spied a very cute actress-model-student-with-a-day-job helping out someone in the shelving areas. I tried to think of a shelving question on the spot, but couldn't. You can commiserate together about being confused. You can wander the countless shelves of dongles and doohickies, having no idea what you're doing."

Tonight is the last episode of NYPD Blue. Once upon a time, NYPD Blue was known as the "other cop show" against fellow newbie (it had been one season) Law & Order, but quickly, NYPD Blue emerged as a sadder, more complicated, and even more intimate companion to creator Steven Bochco's Hill Street Blues. Gothamist had watched NYPD Blue in the early days, from David Caruso's naked butt to Jimmy Smits (always Victor Sifuentes in our hearts, but a great Bobby Simone), from Rick Schroeder to Zack Attack. But, as most people can acknowledge, the messy heart of the show was Dennis Franz, possibly the best casting for a city detective this side of Jerry Orbach, who endured Job-like situations. Gothamist had wondered about NYPD Blue's endurance, because we stopped watching a couple years ago; the Daily News' David Bianculli make a very good point that other "groundbreaking" shows started to emerge in 1998, like The Sopranos and Oz. Gothamist could never get over NYPD Blue filming in L.A. (the streets on the show were way too clean), but we did enjoy it very much. Tonight's finale airs at 10PM, but there's a special tribute show at 9PM hosted by Jimmy Smits. more ›

A report from the City Comptroller revealed that NYC's first quarter growth looked good.
more ›

This story of a mint plant thwarting construction, if only temporarily, makes Gothamist think this should be a new millennial and green (versus piratey) version of The Goonies. more ›

Gothamist wonders what would be left to put in that shopping complex. A Lowe's? While we would love a Costco (the idea of five gallon containers of olive oil is pretty tantalizing - we would redistribute it to our friends), Gothamist doesn't really want a Sam's Club. more ›

, you wouldn't have to trek over to the grocery store for a tiny bunch of overpriced herbs? Gothamist certainly thinks so. April is a good month for starting seeds, and, after a few anxious moments during these gray days, Gothamist's seeds are finally in effect! (Squint your eyes. They're at Armando the cow's ten o'clock.) more ›