Duane Reade is a New York City shop to its very foundation, founded in 1960 by brothers who opened three stores here, with a warehouse located between Duane and Reade streets. These days the chain has even branded their products as NYC-centric, with bar codes in the shape of city landmarks, trail mixes named after different neighborhoods, and Brooklyn beers on tap. So how is it that they've confused Chicago for New York City? And how upset should we actually get about this? more ›

Police mistakenly shot and killed a pit bull in the Bronx today while responding to a domestic dispute call. Lillian Martinez told the Post that she called police in the evening on Feb. 18 during a heated verbal argument with her husband, Anthony; cops had been called to the home for domestic violence at least once before. Cops were greeted at the door by their four-year-old red-nosed pit bull, Loc: “My husband heard the echo of the dog barking and clapped his hands twice. Before the dog could respond to him, there was one shot, then a second shot. My husband said he was shot in the head.” more ›

Tiger looked more like the elusive Cheshire Cat in the Wall Street Journal today when the paper's print edition edited out the golf pro from a photo accompanying an article about his big media appearance. The original photo depicts Tiger Woods jogging with some unidentified white guy, but in cropping the photo, the Wall Street Journal kept the black man down on the cutting room floor. The caption? Tiger Woods jogs Wednesday near his home in Isleworth, Fla. BatteryPark.tv, which spotted the gaffe, notes that at least the online version of the article previously featured the correct entire photo with Tiger "and this anonymous jogging companion." Oh no Tiger, not another "anonymous companion"! more ›

With the precognitive skills of Miss Cleo, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a three-quarter page Macy's ad in this morning's newspaper for a Phillies 2009 World Series Championship t-shirt. The Daily News reports, "in the ad world equivalent of the 'Dewey Defeats Truman' headline, the bungled banner in The Philadelphia Inquirer said 'Congratulations Phillies! Back-to-back Champs.'" Maybe Macy's just hired local amateur psychic Jimmy Rollins to write its copy! more ›

Last week a driver for Ferrantino Fuel made a delivery of 100 gallons of oil to a Queens home, which obviously wouldn't be noteworthy, if not for the fact that the house doesn't even have an oil tank. And it has never had an oil tank; the heating oil was just funneled through an outside pump, flooding the basement. Now homeowner John Byas's newly renovated basement is ruined, his carpet yanked up, his furniture piled outside in a heap, and wife hospitalized from the fumes. more ›

A man who was wrongly jailed on Rikers Island for 17 months has accepted a $145,000 settlement with the city because a detective misidentified his fingerprints. Dwight Gomas was residing in Atlanta in 2004 when he was suddenly arrested by U.S. marshals for an armed robbery at a Howard Beach jewelry store. Detective Eileen Barrett had matched a partial finger print from the crime scene to Gomas, whose prints were on file after his only prior arrest as an adult: driving with a suspended license in Brooklyn. Gomas maintained his innocence before a grand jury, but was indicted and couldn't make bail. Languishing on Rikers, his Legal Aid lawyer urged him to accept a plea offer of five years in prison, but he refused. Luckily, veteran detective Daniel Perruzzaa finally conducted a routine review of the fingerprints. He tells the Daily News, "When I looked at it, I said, 'You know what? This is a screwup; this is not his fingerprints." Oopsy! Gomas was released after 523 days in jail, but by then his girlfriend and their child moved in with another man. On the plus side, he pulled in $145K in less than two years on Rikers, so we're sure there's no hard feelings. more ›

People, always check your bank statements. Eighteen-year-old Lydia Alcock was checking her Visa statement online when she saw that her off-peak Metro-North ticket from Grand Central to Goldens Bridge cost $23,148,855,308,184,500. Yesterday, the NY Times' Peter Abblebome wrote about the college student's amazement:

Ms. Alcock looked. She looked again. She gasped. She laughed. She shouted to her father: “Dad, you need to come here. Right now.” And then after realizing, to her chagrin, that she owed the staggering sum, not that she was the recipient of a tidy little windfall, she typed into Google: “How to say really big numbers,” and cut and pasted $23,148,855,308,184,500. It read: “twenty-three quadrillion, one hundred forty-eight trillion, eight hundred fifty-five billion, three hundred eight million, one hundred eighty-four thousand, five hundred dollars.”

NYU sent an email to nearly 500 students this week that they should pack their bags and get ready to make their way over to Greenwich Village this fall as members of Wagner School's next graduate class. An hour later, the school sent another email telling those same students to scratch that—they were actually rejected. To add insult to injury, the erroneous admission letters were sent out on Wednesday—April Fool's Day. A university spokesman said, “We know that any application process is accompanied by anxiety and we sincerely regret any misunderstanding, false expectations, or additional disappointment this error may have caused.” One of the students taken for the roller coaster ride called it the "Worst April Fools' joke ever." The university is investigating how the error occurred in order to prevent it from reoccurring. more ›

A cautionary tale: In Franklin Park, NJ, a historic tavern was, uh, accidentally torn down. How? The Asbury Park Press reports, the building's owner "put the wrong address on the application to demolish the structure, leading to an approval by a zoning official." The building, formerly a Dutch farm, had been on the Route 27 property since the Revolutionary War, and the township explained since the address was incorrect, the historic commission didn't know about the permit approval. The building's former owner John Allegro lamented to the APP that when he needed to change anything with the building, "It took months and there were a lot of hearings...I guess the face of the town is changing and that's understandable. But I'm not happy with the way this all went down. What is the sense of having a Historic Commission? This place had Queen Anne construction, a vaulted tin ceiling and timbers that were 300 years old. It was a really cool old building." more ›

Everybody at Philadelphia's mass transit agency, "SEPTA", was so pumped for the city's upcoming Beer Week, and them some annoying blogger had to come along and point out that the pass they were about to sell to discourage drunk driving had one teensy error: It depicted the skyline of New York City. Trendspotters have been trying to position Philly as NYC's sixth borough for years, so one can understand the confusion. But the Phillyskyline blog was unsparing in its derision, and then the mainstream media picked up the story, and now the poor designer who grabbed the wrong stock photo is probably out of a job and won't be able to afford to even live in the glamorous sixth borough anymore. Don't worry, unidentified Beer Pass designer, this might actually turn out to be your big chance to move up here and live under the skyline of your dreams—NYC isn't immune to stock photo skyline oops, so you'll fit right in if you're looking for work. more ›

Someone at SubChat is spreading lies...according to the MTA. The website has a posting titled: TAs Newest $16 Million Blunder, which goes on to describe how a subway car was "reefed sometime last month, by mistake, with a sophisticated biological/radiological sensing system still hidden within the car structure." There's more about how the "prototype sensor was installed in 2005 as part of a federally funded anti-terrorism project and is housed in a waterproof–shockproof case, similar to an aircraft 'black box'" and that "retrieving the sensor is expected to be up to $16 million depending on how long it takes to locate the car" somewhere in the Atlantic, off Delaware. Wow, this sounds like the plot of what could be a great MTA-centric major motion picture blockbuster! But the buzzkills over at the MTA tell us that: "There is absolutely no truth to this internet rumor." more ›

The Brooklyn resident whose name caused him $2.1 million of trouble is still being held at Rikers, but a judge lowered his bail from $1 million to $10,000. more ›