Results tagged “laws”

We all know that pedestrians are crazy about jaywalking, and bikers are outspoken about every single thing they can possibly be outspoken about, but what about drivers? Well, they're just rude. You knew that, but now Streetfilms has a scaremongering video, complete with subtle eerie soundtrack music, that assures the viewer they probably encountered death multiple times today.

Because there were, miraculously, no injuries, that professionally-shot video of a street fight between a pedicab driver and a cabbie was an instant classic—especially that part where the pedicab driver rides off on the sidewalk after throwing a trashcan at his adversary (and missing). But Mayor Bloomberg was not amused, and told reporters yesterday that the traffic-stopping fisticuffs were "totally inappropriate."

The war between photographers and police wages on, with the latest battleground being Coney Island. The Village Voice reports that Simon Lund, a Manhattan commercial photographer with a habit of hitting Coney 10 to 20 times each summer for personal photographic expeditions, was busted by the NYPD. The thing is, he didn't do anything illegal.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a person under a train at East Fordham Rd. and Jerome Ave. in the Bronx, a shooting on Henry and West 9th Sts. in Brooklyn, and a homicide on Roosevelt Ave. in Queens.
• New Yorkers found guilty of repeated incidents of ignoring recycling laws may be required to throw out their trash in see-through bags for easy inspection.
• Ads soliciting the perfect ass might not make it onto city buses, but the company that sells Georgi vodka will put its bikini ads on city taxis.
• A high-end steakhouse and retailers of luxury goods are on slate for Adams St. near the Brooklyn Bridge.
• That's not Che Guevara in Times Square; it's Rambo. John Rambo. A marketing exec at Lionsgate says "You have to scream loud when you're screaming."
• Scaffolding outside the offices of The Observer was dislodged by high winds. A block of Broadway was temporarily closed this afternoon.
• The Daily Show with John Stewart may return to the air as early as January 7, whether the writers guild strike is settled or not.
• Curbed surveys how "hip" Williamsburg, Brooklyn is in the eyes of a PR Newswire release. Its findings: Williamsburg is very very very hip.

Approximately 85 undocumented workers are being fired from the high-end grocery delivery company Fresh Direct on the on the eve of the holiday season because their status as U.S. residents is disputed. Dozens of workers filed out of the company's Queens warehouse. Fresh Direct blamed a federal probe for the axing of almost a hundred workers. According to the Daily News, "management insisted it carried out the purge under pressure from federal authorities to crack...

Who knew thousands, if not millions, of New Yorkers would agree with presidential hopeful Fred Thompson on something? In this case, the former Senator and former Law & Order District Attorney was talking about Rudy Giuliani's reliance on touting his New York City credentials during a campaign stop in New Hampshire today. Thompson told a crowd at a gun store, Giuliani "relates everything to New York City. Well, New York City is not emblematic of...

State Supreme Court Justice Helen Freedman has ruled that the Broadway production of How the Grinch Stole Christmas can and will proceed, despite the theater owner’s attempt to lock out the stagehands. “Grinch” producers dragged Jucamcyn, the third largest owner of Broadway theaters, into court yesterday seeking an injunction to let the show go on. Local One, the stagehands’ union, is on strike until a contract is agreed upon with the producers’ league, of which...

D is for drunk and disorderly, not boobs and breasts. At least according to New Jersey State Senator Richard Codey. The Times first reported yesterday on the halftime events at Gate D at Giants Stadium during Jets games. Hundreds of fans gather on the exit ramp, chanting at women and encouraging them to expose their breasts. If they don't lift their shirts, the women are met with boos and sometimes are spit at or have...

You know a story is going to be good (as in crazy) when it starts "It's a story as old as the drinking laws: A teenage girl convinces a man to buy her a bottle of alcohol." And that's how an article in the Staten Island Advance starts - and it keeps getting better. The leader of a S.I. civic association! Her 21-year-old son! A drunk 14-year-old - and the girl's angry mother! Frank Ammirato,...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in Seattle yesterday to give a keynote at the United States Conference of Mayors. The Mayor, aka Mr. "I'm not running for president in 2008" Bloomberg, discussed NYC's efforts to be more sustainable and how governments need to invest and innovate to encourage energy efficiency. And one of the innovations would be to introduce pollution pricing. He said:

we have to stop ignoring the laws of economics. As long as greenhouse gas pollution is free, it will be abundant. If we want to reduce it, there has to be a cost for producing it. The voluntary targets suggested by President Bush would be like voluntary speed limits - doomed to fail. If we're serious about climate change, the question is not whether we should put a value on greenhouse gas pollution, but how we should do it.

A few days ago The Apiary suspected that someone was out to get Rififi after reading some new comments on an old post about the multi-purpose venue, and hearing their liquor license was about to expire. One of the managers, Karin Stanley, quickly responded -- confirming the site's suspicions:

Unfortunately you are correct, there is a smear campaign being perpetrated against Rififi by some of the tenants in the surrounding buildings. They are intent on ousting Rififi during this period of license renewal, soliciting surrounding tenants to make complaints, abusing the SLA complaint webpage, and invoking archaic and racist cabaret laws (please refer to this site for a history of the cabaret laws in New York City). Many of these people seem to believe it is illegal for people to eat, drink and make merry.

Continue reading "Will Rififi Be the Next Venue Casualty? "

City Comptroller William Thompson Jr. stated in an audit released Thursday that the New York had wasted almost $6 million attempting to develop a Scottish links-style golf course in the Bronx. That's not how much the city spent; that's just how much Thompson thinks the city wasted. Developer Ferry Point Partners has been working on the project for the better part of the last decade (since 2000), and in 2002 requested additional funds for environmental remediation. Of the $7.2 million the Parks Dept. paid Ferry Point Partners since then, an audit released by Thompson's office determined that $5.8 million did not go towards environmental remediation.

FR.OG and P*Ong, two perfectly good Manhattan restaurants that opened earlier this year, have names that independently invoke two classic arcade video games, Frogger and Pong. Now, as the fall openings season draws to a close and the votes for worst new restaurant name have been cast, we’d like to draw your attention to the most incredibly iconic new restaurant name in New York: It's that of Roclantic Eatery, a soul food and oil drum “Bar-B-Que” place that opened just two weeks ago on the corner of Atlantic and Rockaway Avenue in East New York, coincidentally enough. Kind of rolls off the tongue. With a purple-painted exterior and booming, shadowed, all-caps signage, Roclantic’s owners have come up with a restaurant name so unique that as of right now, it doesn’t even return a single Google hit.

Rensselaer County Clerk Frank J. Merola is unhappy with Gov. Spitzer's plan to issue drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. As an employee of the State, he has no legal discretion over whether he can ignore the plan once it's enacted, so he's filed a lawsuit to block the initiative in state Supreme Court in Albany. In a statement explaining his lawsuit. County Clerk Frank Merola alluded to a recent public opinion poll that showed widespread opposition to Spitzer's plan licensing plan.

“New York residents have stated loudly and clearly that we are not in favor of giving license to illegal aliens and all we get from the Governor are lectures on how we are wrong, and that if we were as smart as he was, we would understand and support this policy. Well, 72% of New York residents, including myself and a vast majority of County Clerks are not as smart as the Governor and I am filing suit to prevent this travesty of a policy from being implemented.”

More than a year and a half after the death of Nixzmary Brown, the Administration for Children's Services has hired 20 retired NYPD detectives to work as trained investigators consulting with ACS caseworkers. The ACS plans on eventually fielding 120 such investigators.

Last night, a memorial bike ride was held in memory of Craig Murphey. Murphey, a 26-year-old who worked at the West Harlem Action Network Against Poverty, was biking when he was hit by an oil truck at Union Avenue and Ten Eyck Street in Williamsburg.

A young man died when he fell from the roof of a C train last night. The 21-year-old had been riding on top of the southbound train car, "subway surfing" when he fell just north of the West 155th Street stop.

Showing that there are no bounds to lawsuit insanity, a Queens resident is suing Apple for marking down the price of the iPhone - and she wants $1 million. Why? Because now she can't sell them for a profit on eBay! Damn you, Steve Jobs, and your possibly faltering precious product!

There appears to be another license plate problem for New York, but unlike the problem of people and groups getting official license plates without being eligible, this situation wasn't created by the DMV. A Missouri-based charity that provides bicycle helmets to children and sells old license plates as a fund-raiser, the American Children’s Safety Network (ASCN), is selling what appears to be a new design of a New York optional license plate in both car and motorcycle sizes.

You may recall that Reverend Billy Talen was arrested in June for reciting the First Amendment in Union Square during a Critical Mass night protesting the proposed photography laws. We posted video of the arrest at the time, and Talen spent 20 hours in the Tombs charged with two counts of second-degree harassment.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke today, giving a speech and sort of answers some of questions posed by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and School of International and Public Affairs Dean John Coatsworth. We're sure video and transcripts will come shortly, but in the meant time, The Bwog, New York, and City Room have been liveblogging the speech. Here's a sample of questions posed, via the City Room:

In response to a question about the treatment of homosexuals in Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad was initially evasive, instead talking about the death penalty, which, he pointed out, exists in the United States: “People who violate the laws by using guns, creating insecurity selling guns, distributing guns at a high level are sentenced to execution in Iran. Very few of these punishments are carried out in the public eye.”

Continue reading "Ahmadinejad Speaks, People Listen, Applaud, Boo, Hiss"

Governor Spitzer can rest a bit easier now: The Albany County DA found that the governor's aides broke no laws when they tried to use the state police to discredit a rival, State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. DA David Soares will release a report today, but in the meantime, his spokeswoman's statement said, "This office found no illegal conduct. To the contrary, we found that the governor, his staff, and the New York State Police were acting within their authority in compiling and releasing documents to the media concerning the use of state aircraft."

New York City zoning laws are confusing. But there are questions about whether a condo seller and her real estate brokerage misled a couple into thinking they were getting a three-bedroom home, when the apartment technically only has one bedroom.

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse.

Two weeks ago today, a 7-alarm fire at 130 Liberty Street, at the under-demolition Deutsche Bank building, claimed the lives of two firefighters, Robert Beddia, a 24-year FDNY veteran, and Joseph Graffagnino, an 8-year vet. In the wake of the tragedy, investigations revealed that though smoking by construction workers probably caused the fire, there were a series of failures on the part of the contractor and FDNY, as well as state and city agencies. Graffagnino's widow Linda angrily lashed out at the city in comments to the Post and Daily News:

With the city, it's really all about money; it's not about human life. Now who is paying the price? Me, my in-laws and my children. The firefighters, they're the good guys, and it's the city's responsibility to protect them...

Continue reading "Firefighter's Widow Speaks Out Against City"

Yesterday, East Harlem residents protested "greedy landlords" to raise concerns about gentrification. One resident, Otoniel Santiago, told amNew York that his $1,100 rent for his family's two-bedroom has zoomed up to $3,000 because of extra charges his landlord has added, "They said I had to pay or they would take legal action. I think they want us to get tired and move out, then they will bring in people who will pay $1,700 a month."

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to.

That's the first paragraph of the new Time magazine's investigation into Giuliani's record. While pollster Frank Luntz says, "You cannot underestimate the impact of having seen him on television hour after hour dealing with the tragedy. That gives him a level of credibility that nobody else has," to explain how Giuliani's September 11, 2001 demeanor can shape his 2008 presidential bid, that doesn't mean his NYC record is sacred.

The Post and Daily News have a number of editorials and columns about the Deutsche Bank building fire response and fallout. The Post continues to demand FDNY Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta's resignation and faulted Mayor Bloomberg for standing by Scoppetta. The Daily News' Juan Gonzalez wonders why Bloomberg and Scoppetta have gone into "virtual hiding" and blasts Bloomberg for sending lobbyists to kill "legislation that would force tougher enforcement of safety laws by the city Buildings Department." The News also has an editorial saying that Spitzer must take charge (he "has the muscle to crack heads among the contractors and federal, state and city agencies that have made a perilous hash of the job").