Miss New Jersey Amy Polumbo made a repeat appearance on the Today Show this morning to share her "racy" photographs with Matt Lauer. This is how the Today Show website describes the photographs, which are apparently the ones someone took from Polumbo's Facebook profile and mailed to pageant officials:

The photos really aren’t that bad, by contemporary standards, but they aren’t necessarily good for the 22-year-old theater major’s public image, either. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting at Stanton and Rivington Sts. in Manhattan, a homicide on Light St. in the Bronx, and a robbery at Sutter Ave. and Powell St. in Brooklyn.
• The 72nd St. exit ramp off the West Side Highway is officially closed.
• Times Square foot and vehicular traffic is held up as an example of why the city needs congestion pricing.
• Miss New Jersey, Amy Polumbo, received another package of possibly scandalous photos, along with a threatening letter.
• Brooklyn's very own dream factory: Steiner Studios. Business Week magazine looks at the film and television studio at the Navy Yard on Wallabout Bay.
• After the loss of an intimidating but diplomatic presence on 125th St. to a heart attack, a street community finds itself off balance.
• A 27-year-old man somehow fell six stories to his death yesterday afternoon on East 85th at the corner of 2nd Ave. in Manhattan.
• Bike sharing in NYC is undergoing a five day trial out of a SoHo storefront.

The New York Post is loving the NJ beauty pageant story, which includes allegations that a fellow contestant may have been behind the blackmail plot to get Miss New Jersey to relinquish her crown. Someone sent pageant winner Amy Polumbo a package of photos that were lifted from Polumbo's Facebook account and doctored to include sexually suggestive captions. The Daily News says that there is no breast-baring or drug-taking in any of the photos, but Polumbo will still have to appear before the NJ board of the Miss America competition to determine whether she can keep her crown or not. more ›

Oh, the dangers of the interwebs. Recently crowned Miss New Jersey Amy Polumbo held a press conference yesterday to announce that she was being blackmailed into stepping down after someone sent packages of photographs where she's in possibly compromising positions to her and pageant officials. The pictures had once been posted on Facebook. more ›

Quiet Stroll, by Greg Brophy. more ›