Ninety celebrities and Daily News staff writers shared their favorite spots around town for the paper to turn into a fun (and addictive) interactive map in honor of their 90th birthday. Spots go from the painfully obvious (News baseball writer Bill Madden couldn't come up with something better than Yankee Stadium?) to some shockers (Chloe Sevigny choosing somewhere above 14th Street!). There are some fun personal anecdotes mixed in, like Rosie Perez talking about her high-school track and SNL's Abby Elliot sharing the restaurant her comedian dad Chris took her to after her first failed audition. Without Ghostface being polled, poor Staten Island didn't get one locale chosen in the bunch. But at least News readers can find a few excuses to trek up to the Bronx. Remy Ma gives the lowdown on City Island, telling the paper, "Sammy's restaurant in City Island was like the Mr. Chow's of the Bronx. Growing up as a teenager that was the place you'd go to with a guy and then come back and tell everybody, "Girl, he took me to Sammy's!" It meant something." more ›

It turns out that the cover of yesterday's Daily News picturing everyone's favorite State Senators Hiram Monserrate and Pedro Espada Jr. wasn't the only spot in the paper giving some face time to the pair. Politicker NY spotted that both yesterday's News and Post featured full-paged ads celebrating the two legislators, paid for by—who else—Billionaire Floridian Tom Golisano. The ad says, "Last week, Senators Espada and Monserrate voted to put the people of The Bronx and Queens above the special interests that have controlled Albany for far too long. Senators Pedro Esapda Jr. and Hiram Monserrate are answering President Obama's call leading the charge to solve our economic challenges." Finally, has answered President Obama's call. The ad doesn't really hold a candle to the promotion Monserrate got in the Post's write-up elsewhere in the paper saying Monserrate "in his typical flip-flop fashion wore no Met gear, even though he represents Queens." more ›

A judge has refused to release the video that allegedly shows State Senator Hiram Monserrate yanking girlfriend Karla Giraldo "viciously and violently" around his Queens home. Monserrate will stand trial for assaulting Giraldo with a broken glass, an incident that required her to get twenty stitches on her face. His lawyer said of the video, "We won't even get a chance. It's adding fuel to the fire. It's totally inflammatory." The request to release the video was made by the Daily News, but the judge thinks that the powerful images would taint potential jurors. He said, "The defendant will not get a fair trial. It has the great potential for prejudice. A picture is indeed worth a thousand words...it causes the blood to boil." He also told Moserrate's lawyer, "You and your client have to make your peace with this exhibit. You'll have to cope with it...It's inevitable that it's going to come out." more ›

Barack Obama contributed on an Op-Ed for today's Daily News. Much of it reads like a standard Obama stump speech on the economy--albeit if you read it online, now it's a stump speech with classic News headlines shuffled in like "MAC: YOU'RE LYING! BAM: STOP DIVIDING!" Obama does cater parts of the piece directly to the Empire State, saying that his economic plan would mean $3.2 billion in an economic stimulus for NY and that he'd help save 64,000 jobs here alone. While the Post was one of the first daily papers in the nation to come out with an official endorsement (of John McCain), the News has not yet chosen who they will back. The paper did turn a few heads back in 2004 with their endorsement of George W. Bush over John Kerry. more ›

Musical theater star and lounge singer extraordinaire Robert Goulet died yesterday of pulmonary fibrosis while awaiting a lung transplant in an L.A. hospital; he was 73. more ›

The Michelin Guide announced selections today for its third New York Edition, which officially goes on sale Wednesday. more ›

From the way back machine, NJ.com's Always Amazin' (by way of Deadspin) points us to this classic image from 1986. Classic on so many levels. It's never really been the same for any of the people pictured. more ›

Thank you, thank you, thank you, New York Post, for reporting the memorable words of the Union Square Tree Mangler. They go a long way to explaining David Sasson's motivation for doing $25,000 worth of damage to the trees and shrubbery in the park. The only this we enjoyed more than the quote was the various monikers the editors came up with for the herbicidal maniac: more ›

- The New York Daily News gives us something to chew on for V-day -- Hotties in the Kitchen. We call Dave Lieberman. more ›

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Back in October, Mayor Bloomberg said, via a conversation he had with the Daily News (which then, of course, wrote about it), that he wanted Larry Silverstein to give up his role in rebuilding the World Trade Center. Silverstein holds the lease down there, and he's been criticized for delaying the start of construction (whereas the Port Authority has been, relatively speaking, zipping along with building their new PATH station and mall). So, today, Silverstein gets his jabs in with a an editorial in the News, which recounts him trying to explain to Mayor Bloomber why thing are going so slowly and why there needs to be millions and millions of new office square feet. Here is some of it:

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Mayor Bloomberg has been very busy since winning reelection last week. He visited a number of places of worship around town to thank voters for their support. He complained about the free-meter parking on Sunday rule that went into effect yesterday. And he wrote an editorial in the Daily News to tell New Yorkers how he wants to change the way judges get elected, saying the current process "bears more of a resemblance to voting in the Soviet Union than in the United States of America." Ooh, Red Russia - that's scary, but the Mayor has something even more formidable to deal with tomorrow: What cowboy hat to wear. Watch out for the Mayor tomorrow night on CBS, as the Country Music Association Awards are being handed out at Madison Square Garden - we can only hope the CMA will dress him up like the graying cowpoke he might be. more ›

The Daily News has facts and figures from the NYPD's "war against graffiti". There's been a 93% jump in graffiti busts versus last year; might it be because police coordinators received digital cameras to document new tags? And did you know there's a computer program called "Graffitistat," much like Compstat which records major crimes? There's a quote from City Councilman Peter Vallone, the biggest graffiti hater in City Hall (this side of Mayor Bloomberg), and most of the apprehended seem to be young. One professional graffiti artist, Ki Soung, tells the Daily News, "They don't know how to get permission and they don't care. They do it overnight and they disappear. It's not right." more ›

We had kicked back to watch TV the other evening - live, not TiVo'd - when we started to see an "I ♥ NY" logo on screen. Awesome, we though, as the logo got bigger. But then the NY was replaced by...a freaking Honda Accord! Honda paid NY State $45,000 to use the logo in their ad which is appearing in the NY-area, and to us, that's getting peanuts. No wonder NY State has so much debt and such a terrible credit rating! Bobby Zarem who promoted the slogan, created to kick NY State out of its 1970s slump, is disgusted by the ad while Milton Glaser, who created the logo, is flattered. Feh, we rather car companies co-opt our neighborhood names, not claim that we love them. more ›

Mayor Bloomberg wasn't kidding about wanting a bigger role in the redevelopment of Ground Zero: He made sure the Daily News could tell World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein that Bloomberg wanted him to "Butt out, Larry". Gotta love the tabs and how they cut to the chase. Bloomberg told the Daily News Editorial Board, "It would be in the city's interest to get Silverstein out, [but] nobody can figure out how to do it yet. And can you imagine the stink if you gave him half a billion dollars or a billion dollars in profit to get him out?" Not if it's your own money, Bloomberg! more ›

Not that Gothamist was expecting Mayor Bloomberg's reelection juggernaut (money=jugger) to really falter, but this week has really crapped out on his rival, Fernando Ferrer. The NY Times wonders if Ferrer can avoid death by a thousand cuts, and the Politicker ends its thoughts that Ferrer can win with a sad report of Ferrer's visit to Chelsea: "And He's passing out these blue photocopied half-pieces of paper, no real lit, and to top it off, the blue paper wasn't even cut with a cutter, it was hand-cut with scissors. Brutal." Death by a thousand paper cuts? Anyway, Ferrer claims that he doesn't feel like he's on the defensive, so we can only imagine his team is working some sort of offense. more ›

With his mug plastered on the Daily News, there's speculation that the caught-on-cameraphone pervert is a raw-food restaurant owner. The joke nearly writes itself. The Daily News says that many people have contacted them and the NYPD to say they think it could be Dan Hoyt, the co-owner of Quintessence. Hoyt has been contacted for questioning, but his ex-wife and Quintessnce co-owner says nothing's been proven yet and "There should be a support center to support these men to find what is the cause of their action instead of ...putting them in jail." What does suck is if you happen to have similar features to the subway onanist. more ›

Excellent! Apparently it's normal to be in a foul mood over this descpicably humid weather! The NY Times calls it the "Grumpy Factor" - New Yorkers have been acting like wittle babies because it's so hot and sticky. A doctor tells the Daily News it's a "thermo inversion": "With little breeze, the polluted air sits stagnant, irritating eyes and making air passages more sensitive to pollen." Hmm, is that enough of a reason to call in sick and spend the day at a rather empty movie theater - movie marathon, perhaps? The temperature is going to hit around 90 degrees today, but the dew point means the heat index is 100 degrees - drink your water! Gothamist hopes that one day the news will include temperatures in the subway, because we're sure the Times Square stop will be around 115 degrees and stinky. Please, Mother Nature, a little rain! more ›

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 would have a line for the husband being a sick bastard, but he'd also say something along the lines of "Damned if you do, damned if you don't." Castillo-Thomas tried to escape with a knife, but when Thomas stopped her, she says, "All of a sudden, the knife got short." Thomas died from the stabbing, and prosecutors had claimed that since the knife "penetrated 6 inches deep in a downward motion," the killing was not an accident.
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Mayor Bloomberg lambasted the state's PACB decision to reject a plan to finance the West Side Stadium, telling New Yorkers, "We have let down America." Yes, Mayor Bloomberg was swimming in hyperbole, saying:

"We've lost a little bit of our spirit to go ahead and our can-do attitude. If you adopt this kind of policy, we never would have built Carnegie Hall, we never would have built Radio City Music Hall, we never would have built the airports, or the Triborough Bridge or Central Park. One of the great dangers is that developers are going to get disheartened and say, 'I can't build anything in New York City because the politics always get in the way.'"

The two NY Daily News sponsored NYC spelling bee contestants didn't advance in yesterday's fourth round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Alexander Martin, a Dwight School eighth-grader, misspelled "dissilient" (it means "springing apart, specifically bursting open"; Martin spelled it "desilient") and seventh grader Rajdeep Chahal at MS 137 was stumped with "feuilleton" ("the part of a European newspaper devoted to light fiction, reviews, and articles of general entertainment"; Chahal spelled it "fuolyurtone"). Even though these kids are headed back home early, Gothamist would like to congratulate them, because Martin and Chahal could easily whup our ass in spelling... in fact, if either one could master Movable Type, we'd love them to check our spelling. more ›

The Health Department is so worried that the Asian bird flu will hit New York that officials meet every two weeks to figure out a strategy on how to save the city. Basically, the fear is that the avian flu is "one crucial mutation away from turning into a monster malady," hyperbole courtesy the Daily News, and the dilemma is whether or not to stockpile the city with Tamiflu, the "only known treatment against bird flu." Well, if the city isn't going to stockpile the city full of Tamiflu, Gothamist will be contriving reasons why our doctors will have to prescribe it to us, since we visit the doctor for our severe hypochondria. And we're going to buy stock in Roche. more ›

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An organizations representing taxi drivers is asking the Taxi and Limousine Commission to create a Manhattan-JFK $45 flat rate. Much like the JFK-to-Manhattan flat rate, cabbies are looking to make sure they get airport business, with the main concern being that livery drivers tend to rip off tourists at big hotels. Plus, the group argues that many people heading to JFK are confused, as they think there is an existing $45 rate already. more ›

It's that time of year again: Landlords are tryin to increase the rents for stabilized apartments, of which there are about 1 million in the city. Tonight, the Rent Guidelines Board is set to hear the landlords' arguments, who claim that oil costs necessitate increases of 6.5% for one-year leases and 10.5% for two-year leases; to put that in perspective, last year the hikes were 3.5% and 6.5% for one- and two-year leases respectively. Gothamist looked at the Rent Guideline Board's most recent study of landlord operating costs, and that study says costs have increased 5.8% (driven by a 20% increase in oil costs). We don't like rent increases, but this does make a 6.5% seem reasonable, though a 10.5% a little out of control. more ›

Wow. If Natasha Lyonne were to write a book, it would have to include how to become a B-list starlet (maybe B+-list in the indie world) and a regular in the gossip pages (easy when you date Eddie Furlong and get into fights with others), rent an apartment from Michael Rapaport, trash it, get thrown in jail, and have your landlord write an article about you in Jane magazine. The Daily News has details on Rapaport's article: Rapaport owns a building on East 18th Street and let Lyonne rent an apartment in it. All was okay, until 2003 when other tenants complained about Lyonne's habits:

"People were going in and out of the apartment, [one of the tenants] was telling me about the late-night parties, and 'random dudes sprawled out on her sofa at all times. [Another tenant] had a little dinner party. Natasha was screaming up at them throughout the party."

Ooohh... In 1905, when the original Police Headquarters was being built at 240 Centre Street, the NYPD may have buried a time capsule under a cornerstone, in hopes of it being opened on May 6, 2005. However, the posh co-op which now occupies 240 Centre Street is against, well, busting through some granite for what could be a wild goose chase. The president of the co-op board, Arthur Emil, says, "My answer is, 'No.' There are legends galore about the building. I've heard about the time capsule but paid no attention because there's no concrete proof. If it was a simple operation, like unsealing a Ziploc, to see if it was there, I'd have no problem." Oh, Mr. Emil, that's so silly - they didn't have Ziploc back in 1905! While the Police Building's architects during its 1988 renovation don't remember any sort of time capsule-like vessels, the Daily News reports that historians are pretty sure there is a time capsule, and that police records say contents include a "gold engraved revolver, a police badge, a letter from then-President Theodore Roosevelt and a police roster are said to be among the items in the capsule." Even the NY Times back in the day reported that the time capsule was "over a recess which contained coins, newspapers of the day and police rules and records." more ›