There has been a lot of tawk about the death, or subjugation, of NY accents— from Brooklynites defiance, to Queens residents fretting, to Long Island's Lawn Guylandness. Now, documentarian Heather Quinlan is trying to bring all those disparate voices together into one sonorous film that explores the NY accent...but she needs some help finishing it. Here's the lovely trailer (some NSFW language): more ›

Do New Yorkers have serious issues with their accents, or is it just the rest of the country who holds a grudge against us? According to a recent poll by Harris Interactive, 51 percent of adults polled think a New York accent implies that the speaker is rude. Oh, and those same people think that English accents give people an air of sophistication, and people with southern accents and midwestern accents are nice. But only seven percent of those polled say NY accents are nice. So what is so wrong with how we all tawk? more ›

Over the last year, there has been a lot of discussion about the death of accents around the city; people in Queens are fretting about it, people in Brooklyn are defiant about it, and nobody better think of trying to take it away from Lawn Guyland. But what happens when people choose to unload themselves of their unique accents with professional help? more ›

A man suspected of beating his girlfriend and assaulting a police officer escaped from a Bronx court yesterday when he pretended to be another prisoner facing lesser charges. Michael Bautista, 22, was mistakenly released after assuming the identity of man accused of driving with a suspended license and was allowed to walk out of the 44th Precinct on East 161st Street after his arraignment at around 10 am. more ›

Investigators have been able to put names to the remains of two women who were killed during the September 11 terrorist attacks, according to 1010WINS. Though the medical examiner's officer is withholding releasing the names of the victims at the families' request, the city says it used a new DNA technology developed in 2006 to determine the identity one of the victims. The city regularly retests unidentified remains, though many were "too badly compromised by heat and time" to study. There are still more than 1,100 victims whose remains have not been identified. more ›

Google has complied with a court order to identify, to the best of the company's ability, a blogger who created a website Skanks in NYC devoted to insulting a former cover girl. The model, Liskula Cohen, obtained the IP address and the email address of her accuser yesterday and was able to deduce her enemy's identity. Appearing on Good Morning America today, Cohen said the blogger is a vague acquaintance: "Thank God it was her… she's an irrelevant person in my life. She's just somebody that, whenever I would go out to a restaurant, to a party in New York City… She was just that girl that was always there." Perhaps the pot has been calling the kettle skank all along? more ›