Between 2008 and the end of 2010, six New York City bridges will turn 100 years old, and the newly formed New York City Bridge Centennial Commission will be making sure they're adequately feted. The six centennial spans are the Madison Avenue, Manhattan, Borden Avenue, Pelham Bay, University Heights and Queensboro bridges. The celebrations were announced this morning by Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler and other officials at Tramway Park the base of the Queensboro Bridge.......

Okay people, time for your morning update on The Ledge – come on, you know you want it. Even Daniel Day Lewis says there’s nothing else to talk about. (Scroll down.) Sorry we’re late, but there are a lot of new developments this morning. First and foremost, Heath Ledger is, sadly, still dead. Second! Before calling 911, Diana Wolozin, the unlicensed massage therapist who found Ledger’s body, used Ledger’s phone to speed dial Mary-Kate Olsen......

A Brookings Institution study reveals that New York is a great place for walking, with 21 out of 21 walkable urban places. But Washington D.C. is the most walkable on a per capita basis while New York is ranked 10th, because New York is measured as the NYC metro area, including NJ, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The study's author, Christopher B. Leinberger, admits there are issues with the methodology, namely that walkable places are weighted the......

"Broadway Joe" Namath (who's now hitting AARP-age) will be larger than life when his life story hits sacks the big screen. Starring as the Hall of Fame quarterback (and ladies man) will be none other than Jake Gyllenhaal, who will likely only have to do a touch of bulking up for the role.While other quarterbacks racked up bigger lifetime stats, Namath became the first football player to achieve rock-star status. The pic will tell the......

The driver who ran over cab driver Mohamed Elwaleed after an early Tuesday morning argument was arrested in Pennsylvania yesterday. Luis Flores, 24, told authorities he didn't mean to kill the cab driver, and authorities believe him. Flores, while driving his cousin's Nissan Altima, had apparently gotten into an accident with Elwaleed, a 44-year-old Sudanese immigrant. Elwaleed followed Flores for a few blocks, in hopes of trading insurance information. At Madison Avenue and East 65th......

The police are still looking for the driver who drove a Nissan Altima into 44-year-old taxi driver Mohamed Elwaleed yesterday. Elwaleed was pinned under the car and died, and the driver and his female passenger fled the intersection at Madison Avenue and East 65th Street on the Upper East Side. A witness who was walking his dog at the time told the Post that the cab and Nissan got into an accident near Central Park,......

Police have arrested a former employee in the death of an Upper East Side jewelry store's bookkeeper. Police discovered Sandra Rodriguez's slashed body at the Michael Dawkins store on East 65th Street off Madison Avenue early yesterday morning. Rodriguez's family became worried when she didn't return home from work on Thursday night, so they filed a missing person's report with the police at the 19th Precinct. The police went to the store around 11PM on......

The police found a 52-year-old stabbed to death inside a jewelry store on East 65th Street off Madison Avenue this morning. The woman's family had reported her missing. They found the woman stabbed in the torso at the Michael Dawkins store around 4AM. She was pronounced dead at the scene. The police have no suspects at this time. According to WABC 7, the store sells jewelry and also has antique home furnishings and mirrors inside.......

The Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a modern design for a townhouse to be built at 34 East 62nd Street. The lot, just east of Madison Avenue, has been empty ever since Dr. Nicholas Bartha blew up his home, which seemed like an effort to keep his ex-wife from taking the home as part of their acrimonious divorce settlement. The new design (rendering on right), by Preston T. Phillips, is a departure from the original......

If you've ever struggled to figure out which direction you're facing when you step out of a subway station (and there are no landmarks or sun to guide you), you won't have those problems at four subway stations in Midtown anymore. That's because the Department of Transportation and the Grand Central Partnership are placing temporary directional compass decals outside them. DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan explained, "Not a single person, native New Yorker or visitor, can......

We got mixed reviews in our poll about the Sex and the City movie that's coming out more than three years after the show ended its HBO series. Whether we wanted it or not, the movie is going to happen -- and film crews and cast have already arrived. Where are they filming? The Daily News reports that, toting around a bag only Carrie Bradshaw could pull off (one shaped like the Eiffel Tower), Sarah......

There were a number of deaths and injuries from incidents all over the city early Sunday morning. The first was a collision between a Toyota and BMW on Hylan Boulevard in Staten Island. The Toyota's driver, 29-year-old Paul Vinin, died while the BMW's driver Jolyn SIlva, was critically injured. Silva's passenger, 17-year-old Paulina Vivirito, had minor injuries. The Staten Island Advance, which said that Toyota "t-boned the BMW", reports that both Vinin and Silva had......

The Daily News has FDNY audio and transcripts from the 7-alarm fire at the Deutsche Bank building. The tapes are harrowing: One firefighter yells, "Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Engine 24 standing by! I'm lost. I'm trying to make it on the charged hose line. Running out of air!" came a frantic call." Another says, "All the staircases, all the landings are plywooded up. ... It would take us a week to get through and check each......

If you've passed the the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union Square lately, you may have wondered, "What is a Meow Mix Acatemy?" Well, it's simple: Meow Mix is giving cat owners an opportunity to understand their cats better by offering classes about cat behavior! The Meow Mix Acatemy has all sorts of interactive courses to simulate different aspects of cat behavior. For instance, there's Catnapping, Cat-isthenics (rock climbing walls and human-sized scratching areas), Cat......

As we know, Con Edison and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection have confirmed that asbestos was found in debris after the steam pipe explosion at 41st Street and Lexington, but that there is no airborne asbestos. If you were in the area of the explosion and have contaminated clothing, Con Ed is actually accepting clothes and will dispose of them:Anyone who was in that area around 6 p.m. who has dust or......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: 2007 ESPY Awards (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., ESPN) Jimmy Kimmel co-hosts with basketballer LeBron James this sports awards show which only exists to give ESPN some programming and some overpaid athletes another trophy. Victoria Beckham: Coming to America (Monday, 8:00 p.m., WNBC 4) Thankfully this is a one shot deal since the 6 episode fakeality show deal fell through. The show itself chronicles the Victoria Beckham's move to......

The 29th Annual Museum Mile Festival is tomorrow, with more creativity than you can imagine concentrated in a festival on 5th Avenue (from 82nd Street to 105th Street). From the Met to El Museo del Barrio you'll be able to find waived museum admissions. Museo del Barrio director Julian Zugazagoitia tells NY1, “It's the greatest day because all of Fifth Avenue is closed, so that all of the museums can be visited free of charge,......

The NY Sun reports that members of Community Board 6 have spoken, and they want the late Kurt Vonnegut to have a street named after him. The Manhattan block where he spent most of his writing career (East 48th Street and Second Avenue) may be named "Kurt Vonnegut Way." A decision should be made by October. Why that block (which, incidentally, he shared with another famous writer, E.B. White)?: "Vonnegut, who for 40 years lived......

It's been 33 years since the last Second Avenue Subway groundbreaking, so it's high time for new generations of straphangers to revel in the hope of a new subway line. We also expect the public -- especially the Upper East Side-residing public -- to become jaded with construction delays, traffic issues, and noise. Here's the press release from the MTA:Tomorrow morning's historic groundbreaking ceremony for the Second Avenue Subway can be seen by all......

The Manhattan office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) served Starbucks a steaming hot cup of charges of anti-labor practices Friday. The move by the NLRB followed complaints by International Industrial Workers of the World organizers that the company was suppresing their union-forming efforts. According to its official website the website of its service industry branch, the IWW is "The anarchosyndicalist trade union, workers' confederation and section of the Anarchist International." driven by solidarity......

March 29: Best Cellars University at Pair of 8's Pair of 8's owner Ron Didner and new Chef Matthew Hamilton (formerly of Prune, Uovo, and Zuni Cafe, pictured at right) pair up with Best Cellars to host the first of this monthly series starting with Wine 101. Wine will be paired with five courses. $70 for a single class and $65 for two or more classes, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. Call 212-362-8730 to register. 568......

Yesterday afternoon, demonstrators protested the Queens grand jury indictments of three police officers in the November 2006 shooting of Sean Bell. Marchers, who walked from Union Square to 1 Police Plaza, were upset that only three of the five officers who shot at Bell and his two friends, all of them unarmed, were indicted. And there's a little dissonance between the coverage in the Daily News and Post about Detective Michael Oliver, who fired 31......

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March 3 - 5: Hop Heaven NYC New York City's annual salute to the hop, features hop-heavy beers on tap at Hop Devil Grill. Taste Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA, Bell's Hop Slam and Rogue I2PA, or one of 20 others offered on tap starting Saturday at 12:00 PM and ending this Monday morning at 12:00 AM in the morning. 129 St. Marks Place, 212-533-4468. March 4: Food Bank's Time Out for Hunger Over 90......

After an Upper East Side antiques dealer decided to sue four homeless people camping outside his store for $1 million, a Pennsylvania family realized that one of the people was a long lost brother. Last week, the Post reported that the family of Roger Greenlee wanted to visit him, and yesterday, the Post was on hand to witness a reunion of brothers who haven't seen each other in 30 years. Apparently an argument with his......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: person struck by train at 57th and 6th, an armed robbery on 11th and 7th, and a bank robbery in Park Slope. The Madison Avenue antiques store suing the homeless for $1m may have made a major miscalculation: one of the bums has some very rich friends. Related: a Post writer decided to pretend to be homeless on the Upper East Side. Total day's take: $18.55! That's just slightly......

Business must be rough for Karl Kemp Antiques if Karl Kemp is suing four homeless people for $1 million. Kemp claims that "John Smith," "John Doe," "Bob Doe," and "Jane Doe" are sullying his stretch of Madison Avenue (his store is 833 Madison Avenue, at 69th) and scaring off customers." His lawsuit claims the group has been "consuming alcoholic beverages from open bottles, performing various bodily functions such as urinating or spitting on the sidewalk,......

The Landmarks Preservation Commission yesterday stalled Aby Rosen and Norman Foster’s proposed glass tower above the 1949 Parke-Bernet building at 980 Madison Avenue. While the commission didn’t formally reject the plan, it did not approve the addition or support a zoning waiver, two requirements for the project to proceed. All but one commissioner said during the public meeting at the Surrogate’s Court building that they could not support the building because of its scale, massing,......

Some of Gothamist's favorite stories in the city were about the animals of New York City. Here's how animals ruled the Big Apple in 2006: - A whippet went missing at JFK Airport after appearing at the Westminster Dog Show; a loyal group people have still been looking for Vivi since February. - A star was born when Fred the cat helped nabbed a bogus vet. He was made a (honorary) detective by Brooklyn......

Now that the big tree is lit, Rockefeller Center draws tourists like moths to a flame. You may even find yourself under its sway. The tree is pretty impressive after all—more than 65 feet tall and adorned with more than 30,000 lights. But when the crowds swarm and the cold bites, remember relief is not far away. Just duck into La Maison du Chocolat, around the corner on 49th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues,......