Results tagged “memorialday”

A World War II veteran was finally awarded medals for his service—64 years after his duty. In a ceremony in Brooklyn, Pasquale "Pat" Caroselli was presented with six medals—"A European-African-Middle Eastern Service medal with six Bronze stars. A Good Conduct medal. An American Campaign medal. A World War II Victory medal. An Honorable Service lapel button."—and Rep. Anthony Weiner did the honors. Caroselli, who had been a machinist during the war, explained that he didn't collect the medals in 1945 because he was in a rush to get home; when he tried to apply many years later, it turned out a fire destroyed his records. His family was over the moon; his son said, "I'm really thrilled, especially on Memorial Day, to see him receive his medals, which he earned over six decades ago, it's just fantastic."

Today is Memorial Day, the federal holiday where U.S. men and women who have died in military service are remembered. Federal and state offices are closed, as well as post offices, schools, financial markets, and banks. Alternate side of the street parking rules are suspended and mass transit is running on weekend schedules (though there's additional weekend service on some lines). There are also parades in each borough—details here; at a parade in Queens on Saturday, Mayor Bloomberg said, "There's bands and lots of smiling and laughing, but we have young men and women overseas who are protecting us in harm's way. The NY Times had a Memorial Day editorial; the Post's editorial quotes Shakespeare's St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V; and the Daily News honors the NY State service people who were killed in conflict.

With many New Yorkers heading to the beach to enjoy the unofficial start to summer, the Jersey Shore has already been witness to a chaotic and tragic scene following a boating accident last night. 24-year-old Kyle Tanis of Mahwah, NJ died after being ejected from boat he was in with friends on the Manasquan River. Their 15-footer lost control leading to its collision with a larger fishing boat; two others, Gina Franzino, 22 and Jamie Franzino, 19, sisters also from Mahwah, are being treated with critical injuries at the Jersey Shore Medical Center. One witness told the Star-Ledger, "It was a loud bang. It was very clear that two boats had collided with one another. It sounded very similar to a car accident." Coast Guard officials, NJ State Troopers and even an NYPD helicopter took part in the rescue mission following the incident. An onlooker described the eerie experience of seeing "life jackets were floating in the water with no people in them." Two other passengers were treated for injuries and released from the hospital; no one from the fishing boat was hurt. There is no word yet if drugs or alcohol were involved.

If you're enjoying the gorgeous weather along the Hudson today and are wondering why the bodies you're spotting are not just floating today, it's the annual Great Hudson River Swim. Brave swimmers are making their way on a 1.3 mile shot down the Hudson that starts out at Christopher Street and finishes up at Battery Park City. Some New Yorkers naturally have their doubts—one asked the News, "It's New York City, how clean can it be?" But the News reports that it's "cleaner than you think" and anyway, what's a little Dysentery between friends? The real concerns for swimmers are actually not sanitary ones, but the potentially rough current and cool temperature of the water. NYC Swim's official site says you can expect the Hudson to be around 55 to 60 degrees. A previous participant told the paper, "It's colder than the Caribbean, but you're not going to be in that long." The city's site also warns of "chop, shipping traffic and random jetsam and flotsam in the waterways," which might explain why our arms seemed to glitter after a mid-90s dip up by the George Washington Bridge.

A real summer-like day is in the cards for today. Look for sunny skies and a high in the mid 80s. Pretty good if you're driving out of town. Humidity will build through the afternoon. Combine the humidity, heat and sun with a temperature inversion and you've got a recipe for high ozone levels. An air quality alert is in effect from 11 this morning until after midnight. Tree pollen counts, mainly from pine and oak, will be high through the weekend.

Yesterday, the city was filled with parades and events paying tribute to the members of military who have given their lives or continue to fight on our behalf.

Today is Memorial Day, the federal holiday where U.S. men and women who have died in military service are remembered. Federal and state offices are closed, as well as post offices, schools, financial markets, and banks. Alternate side of the street parking rules are suspended and mass transit is running on weekend schedules (though there's additional weekend service on some lines)

On your faces, maggots. Iraqi war vet (and former SLC punk) Jason Christopher Hartley (pictured) has collaborated with The International WOW Company to create one hell of an interactive theatrical experience. Called SURRENDER, audience members sign up as active participants in simulations of counterinsurgency operations.

Like an elementary school kid who sees his teacher at a movie theater or in the grocery store, and is shocked that he or she doesn't sleep in the school's gym at night and requires food to survive, the media occasionally will note that librarians are not uniformly dour spinsters intent on shushing you and collecting late fines. The New York Sun ran an article Thursday regarding the growing number of librarians who live and socialize in Williamsburg. A group called the Desk Set––made up of librarians, archivists, publishers, illustrators, and the like––was formed by area residents in an attempt to improve the image of librarians beyond the typical stereotypes. They hosted a dance party on Memorial Day weekend, where young professionals gathered and drank cocktails with Dewey Decimal designations that alluded to their identities.

Even though a Sunni insurgent group claimed yesterday that two captured U.S. soldiers had been killed, one of the soldiers' mothers hoping that her son is still alive. Maria Rosario Duran spoke to reporters outside her Corona, Queens home. She said, "I can't even imagine that he's not going to return alive, that I will never see him again."

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

Mayor Bloomberg spent Memorial Day at a number of different events in Queens and spoke about a number of issues:

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a carjacking on 130th St. and 15th Ave. in Queens, an overturned auto on Spring St. and West Broadway in Manhattan, and a stabbing on Caton Ave. in Brooklyn.
• Remember when Paris Hilton forgot that she'd left her Tinkerbell with her grandma and papered her neighborhood with Lost Dog flyers? New Yorkers hire private detectives and publicists to get the job done right. A tiny dauchsund is missing.
• New York Magazine re-examines the "conceptual-Marxist street-art supervillain" daubed "The Splasher."
• We're no "law-talking guy", but find the Times' account of a police officer posing as a legitimate news outlet's reporter to lure a protester to an arrest fairly alarming.
• Roller skaters continue to boogie down in Central Park just north of the Sheep Meadow every weekend, and have been doing so since 1977. If you have never seen this in person, you must.
• A bolt out of the Jet Blue struck a plane flying into JFK yesterday and the passenger jet carrying 140 people made an emergency landing. There was no fire or injuries, but the passenger cabin was filled with the smell of ozone.
• The Daily News continues its report on Building Boondoggles, setting its sight today on disasters in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
• On Memorial Day, The New York Times examines the efforts of praiseworthy volunteers to identify and re-mark more than a thousand graves of New Yorkers who were killed during the Civil War and are now buried in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetary.

With Memorial Day weekend coming to a close, there's a long, hot summer ahead of us. For those who enjoy spending the season fishing, The NY Times has some tips for catching a big one at Prospect Park Lake:

Why is Memorial Day often referred to as the "unofficial start of summer"? As far as we know there is no official start of summer. Astronomically, there's the summer solstice, and for bookkeeping reasons climatological summer is considered June, July and August, the three warmest months, but there's no official start to summer.

Today is Memorial Day, the federal holiday where U.S. men and women who have died in military service are remembered. Federal and state offices are closed, as well as post offices, schools, financial markets, and banks. The subways and buses are running on a Sunday schedule; Metro-North is on a Sunday schedule while the LIRR is on a holiday schedule; and the PATH is on weekend schedule.

This Memorial Day weekend offers the most 2007 weddings so far in the NY Times' Weddings & Celebrations section: A whopping 43 weddings! But, of all the announcements, our favorite is the one of Thea Spyer and Edith Windsor. Spyer, a 75-year-old psychologist in Manhattan, and Windsor, a 77-year-old retired computer systems analyst for IBM, were married in Toronto earlier this week, but actually met decades ago.

Dr. Spyer and Ms. Windsor met in 1965 in New York at Portofino, a restaurant in the West Village.

Continue reading "Times Weddings Highlights: 42 Years in the Making"

That's the abbreviated version of WABC's recommendations. We suggest reading the whole list, because if you try calling in sick the Tuesday after Memorial Day, your boss probably isn't going to buy it.

All across the Ist-A-Verse (or at least the American parts thereof), writers and editors are in the midst of enjoying their three-day weekend. But after the week we've all had, we feel like the break is not only needed, but deserved. Just look at everything we've been doing!

Major Klatt took Vincent Laforet, a photographer for The New York Times, up in an Extra-300L aerobatic plane on Thursday.

(No matter what your mode of conveyance, we hope your Memorial Day Weekend is an excellent one and that you ride or drive safely. We will be here, offering fresh content throughout the weekend.)

THEATER: Breedingground Theater Company continues their three week Spring Fever Festival of work by self-producing artists. (We suggest perusing the full lineup on the company’s website, though we caution that it's quite an eyesore.) Nevertheless, one that happily caught our eye is Chess’d, about a ninja and a man in a white tux playing a game of life-sized chess. The game escalates into a no-holds-barred life-or-death struggle, which reviewer Daniel Kelly declares “hilarious from start to finish.” Another possibility is the heady Simulacra: a modern myth, which concerns “an amnesiac TV junky running a freakish temperature and channel surfing a crumbling reality on a quest to recover her identity.” (We’ve been there!) According to reviewer Mark DeFrancis, the show “takes everything from MySpace to the Greek gods and somehow manages to fuse them into a sleek, frenetic production about self-identity, materialism, and mass media.” - John Del Signore

Ick. The National Weather Service has issued an Air Stagnation Advisory for the city and points northward. The advisory, which is in effect from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., is in response to high ozone levels. Ozone in the stratosphere is great for blocking skin-damaging ultraviolet radiation, but it can damage lungs and get into our bloodstream when close to the ground.

A Bourne, a Cloon and a pirate, oh my...with the Memorial Day holiday this weekend, we're entering the prime summer movie season and it's time to get psyched. Psyched! Here's just some Hollywood flicks we're awaiting between now and Labor Day. With all of these things to see, it's probably time to spring for the econo tub of popcorn and a bucket of soda to get through it all.

The Navy's ship has come in - as well as the ships for the Marine Corps and other military aircraft - today is the start of Fleet Week! It's a great time of the year, when people get to visit various ships and aircraft AND admire men and women in uniform. Ships are docked at Pier 90 in Manhattan and at Stapleton Pier in Staten Island and are open to the public. Here's a Fleet Week Schedule of Events (PDF) and some highlights:

It is hard for Gothamist to imagine a nicer weather day than today. Mostly sunny skies, a slight breeze and a high around 74. With winds out of the south coastal areas will be a few degrees cooler. A big high pressure system is dominating the weather scene over the eastern half of the country. There will be fewer clouds tomorrow and the high will reach into the low-80s. Warmer still on Friday. Friday's high will be close to 90 degrees, making it the warmest day since last August 3rd. The atmosphere may let off a bit of steam with a shower or thunderstorm Friday afternoon.

On the night Lily Allen played her first post-bloghype show in New York, the ad wizards at Live Nation decided to officially rename the place The Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza and drop some fake pseudo-hippie nostalgia to an already otherwise storied venue. It's an embarrassing and senseless stunt thought up by past their prime marketers in an attempt to make a consistent nationwide brand under the Live Nation umbrella. Irving Plaza is, and has been for a while, often the first step for a band that has grown out of its grassroots support and has begun its assault on the mainstream. So while the name change is really just that, it's another clear-cut sign that the homogenization of the New York rock scene in full effect. Any band playing at this new Fillmore now holds an even greater disconnect from the local scene that likely helped get them where they are in the first place. We hope the larger VIP section is worth it.

When Snack Dragon, Josephine Jansen's taco shack on Avenue B between 2nd & 3rd doled out its final taco this past Memorial Day, late-night devotees and locals alike mourned the loss of the cheap eats joint with tasty, always fresh tacos. Officials claimed the shack was built without a permit and Jansen, the taco-loving East Village veteran, had no choice but to leave.

With all this global climate chaos, it almost seemed weird that summer arrived perfectly on schedule this year. The first truly hot, sticky, muggy days of the year came over Memorial Day weekend the way the lord intended when He created barbeques, day games, and ice cream trucks. And while summer means boiling apartments and gushing fire hydrants in the more densely populated parts of New York, it means sun tan lotion, body surfing, and the 101 Deli in the best corner of Queens.

Who to believe? WCBS 2 reported last night that police are downplaying attacks in Prospect Park, after yesterday's Post story that "wolf packs" of teenagers were responsible for muggings in recent weeks. WCBS 2 did mention that parkgoers are aware of the attacks, but gets a statement from Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne: “Robberies in Prospect Park year to date remain flat,. Eight this year compared to eight in the same period last year." Hmm, weren't there nine robberies listed?