Results tagged “johno”

The city continued clean-up at the site of Wednesday's Midtown steam pipe explosion at East 41st and Lexington Avenue. Vanderbilt Avenue has been reopened, and Third Avenue was scheduled to be reopened today. Clean up of 42nd Street between Third and Park should be done by Monday, while clean up of Lexington between 42nd and 43rd should be done by the end of the weekend. Here's what the city said about the asbestos samples:

The Department of Environmental Protection tests of 12 air samples showed none of them testing positive for asbestos. The steam, humidity, and rainfall probably helped the situation because it prevented asbestos particles from becoming airborne.

Continue reading "Frozen Zone Shrinks As Clean Up Work Continues at Steam Pipe Explosion Site"

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a double shooting at Willoughby and Throop Aves. in Brooklyn, a bank robbery on Queens Blvd. in Queens, and a water rescue off the North Channel Bridge in Queens.
• A Bronx man taking his 5-year-old nephew to the bathroom in an East Harlem park was gunned down in front of the child when accosted by thieves.
• A new safety group formed after 9/11 is proposing that skyscrapers include a third set of stairwells. Architects complain it is an excessive demand.
• Walking tours are an incredibly fun way to learn more about your city.
• On a crowded street, a man was either stabbed in the neck or had his throat slashed on East 4th between 1st and 2nd Aves. in Manhattan Friday evening.
• TimeOut NY features the final results of its Ultimate NY Book Bracket. John O'Hara's novel "Butterfield 8" and Joseph Mitchell's essay collection "Up In The Old Hotel" are completely excluded from the tournament, but Haruki Murakami's "Kafka On The Shore" made it to the Sweet 16 from the group designated "Books in Translation." We're not sure what the exercise has to do with New York City.
• Manhattan parishioners are fighting to keep their Catholic churches open.
• A born New Yorker: four MTA Bridge & Tunnel workers assisted a 24-year-old woman give birth to a baby girl at the entrance of the Queens-Manhattan tunnel this morning. Once she was born, cops waived the $4 toll as the family was sent through to Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital.

So, ABC has already started filming its mini-series based on the 9/11 Commssion Report. The producers had a press conference during the TV critic's press tour, and it seems that the movie will focus on the days leading up to September 11, with 180 characters, including Harvey Keitel as FBI agent-turned-World Trade Center security head John O'Neill. What Gothamist found extremely strange about this project is that it's being shot mostly in Toronto, with some filming in New York and Morocco. Producer Marc Platt said, "That was simply because of production logistics and costs. There was nothing about us not wanting to be [filming] in New York City." Logistics and cost our ass! So what if parts of Washington is shut down? Lower Manhattan isn't completely shut down, as he claims, because if Law & Order can shoot down there, why can't a TV movie? You can totally cheat locations. The way we look at it, if you film a movie about what America went through on September 11 in Toronto, you're letting the terorrists win. The mini-series will air sometime in 2006; NBC is no longer pursuing their September 11 movie.

Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes sure does have a lot of enemies. One of his rivals is pointing out many of his top assistant DA's don't live in Kings County, which might violate their "duty as public servants to live in the city where they work," as the Post puts it. John O'Hara filed a complaint with the Conflict of Interest Board; the Post notes that O'Hara has been "prosecuted three times for the felony crime of voting from an address that wasn't his primary residence," so it's a tit-for-tat deal. O'Hara hopes that many defense lawyers will try to get non-Brooklyn-residing assistant DA's recused from cases. As for the other boroughs, both Bronx and Staten Island ADA's live in their boroughs while Queens and Manhattan ADA's can live outside the city. Manhattan DA's were given an exception to the rule that says "at face value...assistants should be living in the five boroughs," according to the Staten Island DA's office. Interestingly, there was an interview with Annie Parisse about playing new assistant D.A. Alexandra Borgia on Law & Order. Parisse's backstory for Borgia is that she's "...unmarried...I live by myself in Brooklyn. I have a cat. I think my family is maybe a little hoity-toity and that I didn't want anything to do with that. A loner, who's maybe even socially defensive and not trusting." No word on if she's a lesbian; we'll probably find out on her last episode. Anyway, who knew that top ADA's made over $100,000? We always thought Jack McCoy made less than that for some reason.