What a strange way for Community Board 5 to decide whether to name 53rd Street at 8th Avenue after Jerry Orbach. Last night, the board's notoriously difficult committee approved 3-2 in favor of naming the street after the great late actor. And then the full board voted in favor - 18-17 - as well. But, as the NY Times explains, "that slim margin was not enough to qualify as an approval because the votes......

There's Joey Ramone Place and Peter Jennings Way. But getting a street named after the city's arguably most famous TV detective who was also a Broadway legend is no easy task. The NY Times has the full story about the quest for Jerry Orbach's name to grace a street corner. Specifically the corner of West 53rd and 8th Avenue, where he and his wife Elaine Orbach lived. It turns out that Community Board 5,......

It's not the same as an invisible Snuffleupagus, but there is something very exciting happening with Sesame Street. On August 14, a segment called "Law and Order Special Letters Unit" will premiere, starting with "The Missing M." Hal Boedeker at the Orlando Sentinel reports that the actual cast voices will be used, and Dick Wolf himself said, "I feel like a tobacco company executive, because hopefully we will hook 4- and 5- and 6-year-olds......

A Brooklyn judge found that there wasn't enough evidence to convict a woman who killed her abusive husband. Judy Castillo-Thomas had apparently been in a two-year long abusive relationship with Jason Thomas, and after three weeks of marriage. The Daily News reports that he beat her in May of 2003 as he taunted her "that she was 'too skinny' and her buttocks were 'too skinny.'" If this were a Law & Order episode, Lennie Briscoe......

You'd think that being a tourist from Baltimore, you'd be able to get away from shootings, but on Saturday, a woman visiting from Charm City was shot during a botched robbery. A group of men were trying to steal DVDs and CDs from a vendor at 1204 Broadway, around 29th Street, a building full of vendors; Newsday reported that two men argued with the vendor about the movie selection, in order to distract him......

Yesterday, people from TV, film, and Broadway, as well as the public, gathered to pay tribute to the dearly missed Jerry Orbach. The attendees included Angela Lansbury, Al Pacino, Benjamin Bratt, Chris Noth, Jill Hennessy, Jane Alexander, Karen Ziemba, and Dick Wolf, plus many regular New Yorkers who cherished Orbach's contribution as an actor. Former Mayor David Dinkins was there, and Mayor Bloomberg spoke to the crowd, saying, "Briscoe exuded the life of the city......

Oh, Jerry. The Screen Actors Guild has given you a nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series, a now-posthumous tribute to your work as Detective Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order. Though you face some tough (James Gandolfini in the Sopranos, Kiefer "Job/Sisyhpus" Sutherland in 24) competition, Gothamist feels your work ruled, because you created a character whose interior life we could imagine with just a wiggle of your eyebrow.......

It's unfortunate that we have to read all these wonderful stories about Jerry Orbach in the many obituaries today, but Gothamist is heartened by the fact that many people, from fans to critics, as well as his peers, found him to be a great actor and a wonderful person. Gothamist thinks that was part of why we love Jerry so much, whether he was Detective Lennie Briscoe or Lumiere or Harry McGraw: He was wise......

Gothamist is utterly sad to report that Jerry Orbach, the versatile actor of stage, screen, and tube who epitomized the seen-it-all cynical NYPD detective on Law & Order for twelve years, is dead at age 69. Earlier this month, Orbach's manager had confirmed to the Daily News that Orbach had been suffering from prostate cancer but was recovering, but now it seems that he succumbed. Radio station 1010 WINS was first to report Orbach's......

News that our favorite Law & Order detective portrayer, Jerry Orbach, has prostate cancer is upsetting, but we're glad that he has been responding well to treatment and we'll send him our prayers. That said, Gothamist never wants to think about Jerry Orbach's prostate again; we rather think of pithy one-liners that Lennie Briscoe would say. But if Jerry even needs some cheering up, Gothamist would be happy to gather up a crew of people......

Roger Ebert captured this photograph of New York Times chief film critic A.O. Scott in his Cannes Photo Album. The caption reads: New York Times film critic A.O. Scott awoke to find a thief had filched his money, passport and computer. "The hotel loaned me a laptop," he said, "but it has a French keyboard, with the keys in different places."Poor, poor, Tony. The Encyclopedia Brown/Lennie Briscoe in us suspects not some Riviera thief looking......

Last night's season finale of Law & Order featured the final appearance of Jerry Orbach as eternally wisecracking Detective Lennie Briscoe. In a divergence from the usual L&O practice of not dwelling on the police-or-law characters, attention was drawn to how Briscoe was leaving the precinct, Green's reaction, opening the door for working with the D.A.'s office, and Briscoe packing up his desk. As a result, Gothamist feels the cases were a little rushed......

It's official: Dennis Farina will be joining the cast of Law & Order in the role of the older, wiser, been-around-the-block detective, as announced at NBC's unveiling of their new fall schedule. Law & Order producer Dick Wolf says, "I've known Dennis for 20 years, and he's a terrific actor, a consummate professional and a truly nice guy." The new line-up also includes a boxing reality show (zzzz), a show starring Melissa Etheridge's wife, the......

Gothamist can only call it fate. We decided to go for a run in Riverside Park this morning when we noticed some film equipment near the Boat Basin, which is somewhat odd since it's Saturday. A police officer said that Law & Order was filming. Hello! Then we noticed our friend, Bill Klayer, who let us know that Jerry Orbach was filming his last scenes on the show - in fact, this was the......

The big mystery today is not what cry-for-help notes come from the Tyco trial but is Jerry Orbach leaving Law & Order. There was some word of this in September, but today a Reuters report says that Orbach, and his alter-ego, Lennie Briscoe, will leave the 27th Precinct after this season, perhaps to help launch Dick Wolf's next Law & Order spin-off, Law & Order: Trial by Jury. Now, while this is certainly unsettling news......

In the world of television, there is one television program that has been entertaining people for fourteen seasons and has attracted a wide following, hooked on the self-contained stories, doses of New York cynicism, and fight for justice in this crazy world, with some fans veering on the obssessive. This is a story about two of obsessive fans who got to visit the set of Law & Order. Gothamist, wearing our love for Dick......

Our friend and fellow Law & Order fan, Brandon Bird, alerted us to this painting, Night Away, he did of Lennie Briscoe and Jack McCoy. Brandon put together the Law & Order Artistic Intent show in California last year, with artwork inspired by the best cop and lawyer show ever. The painting was a commission, which says something about the L&O fanbase. Yes - "CRAZY" is it. (Gothamist loves the painting, but we're alarmed at......

No, it wasn't Hanukkah, Christmas, or even Festivus, but it sure felt like a hundred of them, when Gothamist visited the set of Law & Order. A more in-depth post will come later, but enjoy some photos at Bluejake for now. The Law & Order t-shirt we want, an Evening of Law & Order, the Law & Order coloring book, and our thoughts about a spin-off with just Lennie Briscoe.......

Gothamist is still trying to get to the bottom of the Law & Order episode that Mayor Bloomberg will be appearing in. Reader Matthew tried to help us out by noting a key paragraph in a Wall Street Journal article about that Martha Stewart thing: Just blocks from the courthouse, yellow police tape blocked off the crime scene of an armored-car robbery, a dead body and swarming investigators -- all part of the set......

It's a shame that Comedy Central programmed Chappelle's Show on Wednesday at 10:30PM against Law & Order, but luckily Comedy Central repeats their shows every five hours, so we're able to catch Dave Chappelle even if we miss it for some Lennie Briscoe. The Times has a feature about Chappelle and calls attention to how both blacks and whites might be uncomfortable by skits like a spoof of a 50s sitcom where a white family's......

A month ago in Slate, Jack Swansburg brilliantly dissected the connection between TD Waterhouse, the Law & Order stars featured in its ads, and our nation's economy. Steven Hill, aka Executive District Attorney Adam Schiff, reminded investors that TD Waterhouse was trustworthy in uncertain economic times. Recently, Sam Waterston, Assistant Executive D.A. Jack McCoy, took over for Hill in TV and print spots during this slow crawl to better economic times. Swansburg also mentioned ads......

Though it seems too obvious to even try, apparently many people impersonate the NYPD by wearing NYPD hats or shirts. Newsday looks at the problem of selling NYPD-logo emblazoned clothing, as the NYPD recently shot an armed man in NYPD gear in the Bronx. The conundrum is that the NYPD is trying to beat cheap imitations of NYPD clothing, which has been popular post-September 11, but the clothing also becomes must-haves for "criminals who commit......

Hyperbolic, Miramax bandying, egotistical and frankly hysterical gossip columnist Roger Friedman reports that Jerry Orbach may be moving over to a potential fourth Law and Order spin-off, which would be about juries. A fourth L&O comes as no surprise, but Gothamist wonders what Detective Lennie Briscoe would be doing with juries all the time - is he constantly on the stand, trying to convince juries that even though he didn't have a warrant, the search's......