Results tagged “newyorkpostonlineedition”

Many people think the tape was a way to show people he was still alive after bombings in Pakistan. He has released 35 tapes, and only one seems to have preceded an incident outside of the Middle Eat (a truce with European countries expired and seemed to lead to the London subway bombings).

Gothamist doesn't know what's sadder: The fact that the standardized tests city 7th graders are taking doesn't quite match up with their bubble sheets to fill in the answers or that this isn't the first time that it's happened. You'd think that if the state is testing kids' English with an exam, there would be answer sheets that correlate to the test, but five of the twenty-six questions offers answers as A, B, C, or D, while the sheet where the kid fills in the correct bubble only has F, G, H, and J as possible answers. What's brilliant is that the city created the answer sheets for the test, so the error would seeminly lie with the city education test administrators. The error was found first before the test, so kids were told repeatedly about the needing to use the F bubble for A answers, etc. The Department of Education says the test is still valid, but we are sure various parents and teachers' union groups will be combing over city results with a fine tooth comb.

- Does this dog sweater make my ass look big?

Mayor Bloomberg's campaign reported that it spent $77.8 million to get the man reelected. Given that the Mayor spent almost $70 million for 2001 election, is inflation over four years over 12%? Or did the Mayor just decide to use more wood pulp and roboto telephoners to bombard us with how awesome he was? The Mayor said, "It is what it is. I spent my own money. I had a big message to get out and we did get the message out." Yes, the message was "I'm rich, bitch!" Fernando Ferrer spent $19.5 million for his failed campaign, which amounts to $19 per vote (the Mayor paid $103!).

Mark your calendar for December 1. That's when the City Council will have a public hearing for commuters to complain about the insanity of weekend subway diversions (especially the ones on the L!). City Councilman John Liu, who heads the Council's Transportation Committee says, "We want the MTA to do whatever repair work is required...but the disruptions are so numerous and pervasive that there's serious lack of accountability." True, but will the NYC subway-riding public find doing repair work at night, causing even more evening disruptions, palatable? Don't get us wrong - Gothamist is very thankful for the subways, as much as we gripe. We'd just like to get from one place to another less confusion.

With just two new episodes so far this season, the NY Post wonders if Saturday Night Live is really dead. It's a good, if evergreen question. Horatio Sanz is certainly no Tina Fey during Weekend Update, though Gothamist has been impressed he's been able to hold it together this long. With Maya Rudoph's pregnancy, it seems like most sketches with a female character involve Amy Poehler (who rules, but maybe she needs a break). There are always dark periods of SNL (the years after the original cast left and before Eddie Murphy arrived; after Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, and David Spade left), but it's still TiVo worthy, if not stay-at-home on a Saturday night. There's always a chance there's a watercooler moment in a broadcast, and that's what keeps people watching. Gothamist hopes there will be a sketch with this week's host, Catherine Zeta-Jones, that either involves overeating or being married to a jowly old man.

- Oh, you better believe it: The MTA votes that open containers (to drink from) are forbidden on the subways, but they're okay on the platform; and now token clerks can refuse entry to service dogs if they seem like a threat somehow

Who knew it was illegal to have an iguana in New York? Not Gothamist. But that's what we learned while reading about a four foot iguana found stranded in Brooklyn. Animal Care & Control had to remove an iguana from a tree in Midwood - it ran up there when the police arrived (maybe it was afraid of getting a summons). The Post says the iguana was first seen on the street last week, with some residents thinking it might be an alligator. AC&C think it was someone's pet and will try to locate its owner. And, since both the Daily News and Post referenced it in their headlines, it's a good time to catch up on your Tennessee Williams and read The Night of the Iguana.

Two women are suing a fertility specialist, Dr. Khaled Zeitoun, for posing as a single man on Yahoo Personals and luring them into sexual relationships - even though he was really married with three kids. Jing Huang and Tiffany Wang have filed suits against Zeitoun for causing them emotional distress. Wang's lawsuit says, "Zeitoun claimed that 14 years prior while he was in Egypt, the devil had taken his soul...He claimed that he made a deal with the devil that he would never get married. Zeitoun claimed that he never regretted that decision until he met Wang." Hell, Gothamist would like to sue for emotional distress just for hearing that line. When reporters called him, Zeitoun laughed and said, "Is she suing someone because he romanced other women?"

Opponents of the Parks Department's plans to renovate Washington Square Park have filed a lawsuit to block the work. The NY Post pulled this bit, "The park's designers made plazas purposely asymmetrical according to what is known as Olmstead's naturalistic design theory, espoused by Frederick Law Olmstead." Okay, aside from spelling Olmsted wrong, what Gothamist likes is that they needed to spell out that Olmsted's naturalistic design was espoused by Frederick Law Olmsted! Gothamist still doesn't get why the fountain needs to move over to be aligned with the arch, because it really is charming for it to be random; someone at the Parks Department must have OCD or maybe someone at an apartment building to the east may have wanted to see more of the fountain. But having the park be under construction for two years is a serious bummer; it's bad enough that NYU's hot construction hand is hammering away non-stop. The city, which won approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission in May, is reviewing the lawsuit.

If it's Sunday, it must be time to contemplate little Andrew Giuliani. He could be dating Sarah Hughes, as they appeared at the premiere of The Island together. And the Daily News has two features on him (1 and 2), looking at how he's grown up as well as his burgeoning golf career. In fact, little Giuliani plays at the public golf course at Van Cortlandt Park:

"I love this city. I'd rather play here than anywhere. I take a lot of pride in Van Cortlandt and being from New York City."

Scoppetta remind us of someone!

As expected, many people took the opportunity to call the Mayor yesterday, after he bragged how he took calls from constituents at home on his listed-in-the-phonebook number. The NY Times reports that the Mayor's communications director said Bloomberg's townhouse received "more calls than we can count" while the Post was able to fix the uncountable number as "more than 100 calls." A Post reporter tried calling a few times, but only got a busy signal or Bloomberg's voicemail. However the Times found a woman who thinks she got through to the mayor but he claimed he wasn't. Toby Cohen thinks the Mayor is dodging her housing complaint, as she's even tried to hand deliver a letter. She said, "A man answered the phone and insisted he was not the mayor. But I'm quite sure it was him because I recognized his voice." Yeah, who could mistake that sorta nasal whine...that lulling monotone that's better than Ambien. Anyway, Gothamist was surprised to hear that the Mayor would answer the phone himself, because we imagine he'd be too busy swimming in his Scrooge McDuck vault of money. If he really wanted to make himself available to his people, we'd have his cellphone number!

There's this old maxim, "The customer is always right, even if the customer is crazy," but sometimes, employees just get mad. The Post says a Bronx woman is suing White Castle for $9 million after a counterwoman threw hot water on her. According to Carolyn Brennan's lawyer, Brennan tried trying to order an egg-and-cheese biscuit — without the biscuit — in 2002 at an upper Manhattan location, but the cashier, Tasha Adams, freaked out and said, "This isn't a f---in' restaurant!" See, in 2002, the Atkins diet was at its peak; that's when people thought that restaurants should have carbs totally separate from the proteins, since taking a biscuit off the egg-and-cheese might leave remnants of biscuit on it. Adams told to leave for the day, but reacted badly by allegedly saying, "I am going to hurt that woman!" and tried to throw hot water on Brennan, but another employee stopped her. However, when Brennan sat down, Adams seemed to have been able to fill another cup of hot water and threw it at her then. Brennan's lawyer is holding the chain responsible, since everyone heard Adams say she was going to "hurt" his client but did nothing to stop the second time. White Castle tells the Post that they are in the discovery phase of the case, but so far "there is no merit to her claim." Now, Gothamist is torn: This was a stupid request by the customer (let's rule out a gluten-allergy, because then she shouldn't have been there anyway) and clearly a bad reaction by the server...but Slyders are so good! Find your nearest White Castle here!

Build a Bear, the furry phenomenon from malls across the nation, is opening in New York today, and the Post reports that it will have official NYPD and FDNY bear-sized uniforms for people to outfit their stuffed animals. The City's marketing arm, NYC Marketing, which had asked various companies to offer up licensing opportunities for various NYC agencies, like the NYPD, FDNY, Department of Sanitation and more, last February, and it looks like Build-a-Bear met their RFP successfully. In fact, the bears will also get to wear transit worker and parks department uniforms. Gothamist would love to work on the window displays for Build-a-Bear's Fifth Avenue store: We'd create a mini New York Bear City tableau.

After reports of a raid, it turns out that employees at the Mondo Kim's on St. Mark's were arrested for making illegal CDs and DVDs in a back room. The police took "hundreds" of illegally made discs during the afternoon raid, and charging five workers with trademark counterfeiting. The NY Post says that some "record-industry executives joined cops outside the store and helped point out what police said were the 'mixes of a variety of hip-hop songs and compilations the employees were selling.'" Hear that? If you're a record store employee, do not make any mix tapes...especially not at work. And Gothamist thought we were being "bad" by buying DVDs and CDs before their official release date at Kim's.

Good ol' P.S.1 has been showing works from NY area artists in its Greater New York 2005 show. However, one artist, Mike Bouchet, causing been making a stink. Literally: His work, "Celebrity Hot Tub for Kofi Annan," has been making visitors ill, according to the NY Post. (For your NY Post conspiracy theorists, Rupert hates modern art!) How does Bouchet achieve this powerful audience reaction? The sculpture has a "rotting sausage stewing in a [Jacuzzi] of noxious water." One staffer told the Post, "Sure, it's terrible, everyone complains, someone vomited. It got real bad, we didn't know you had to clean it out. The guards are really mad about this." And other artists in the exhibit aren't that happy either. The best part about this is that Bouchet went back to his new home in Germany when the exhibit opened, and didn't leave instructions on how to maintain the work; the water and sausage were replaced, but the smell was back soon. This is totally like Gothamist's third grade science project, the one we made up the morning it was due - "What will happen to ice when it's left out of the freezer?" Clearly, sausage in a Jacuzzi in a museum would rot. But while Gothamist would like ot claim this is the grossest thing in a public museum/area we can think of, it's not. In San Francisco, there was an exhibit of corpses, which started to leak...and then the Conservatory of Flowers has the world's stinkiest flower.

Wow, it may take a year and a half, but sometimes those publicity-magnetizing City Council proposed bills actually can get passed. A year and a half ago, Gothamist was intrigued by a proposed plan to make sure new construction and renovations as places like bars, theaters and stadiums would have more women's bathrooms. And now, it seems that the City Council and Mayor's office have agreed on a potty parity bill. Now, new buildings and renovated ones that are meant to accomodate more than 150 people will need to have twice as many bathroom stalls for women than men; the NY Post points out that the "number of urinals in a men's room has no effect on the situation in the ladies' room." Interesting facts from the Post's coverage: (1) The bill took so long (heh!) because the Bloomberg administration asked from exemptions at schools and hospitals; and (2) the Buildings Commissioner can grant exemptions if a building can't "physically comply with the law" and if the rule would produce a "negligible additional benefit." Hmm, Gothamist can sense that some new buildings' contractors will be making a beeline to the Builidings Commissioners for exemptions, but this is great news - we can't wait to see if this actually happens.

Even though the four main Democratic mayoral hopefuls debated yesterday, the election big news is how Mayor Bloomberg has spent $10 million so far in his re-election campaign. A 10-day ad blitz will begin midweek, and the NY Times reports that the ads will "stress 9/11 and leadership." However, the "mindboggling" thing is millions have been spent to get demographic and psychographic information from a polling firm to delve into the pysches of New Yorkers. The Mayor's opponents had various comments about the Mayor being able to spend like a maniac since he's not privy to campaign finance laws, such as how he's buying the election, he must not be confident if he has to spend so much, that he's totally out of touch with the constituency; the Democratic hopefuls have, at most, raised $500,000 in the past two months while the Mayor put over $6 million into his campaign in the same period. Giving his positive approval numbers these days, we expect the Mayor to attempt to say the course as the frontrunner, with his staff emphasizing though the Mayor is rich, he still rides the subway!

Earlier this week, an unknown slasher attacked two people uptown. Yesterday, when a teenager matching the attacker's description was seen at West 189th Street, the NY Post reports that a mob of 50-100 grabbed Jeffrey Jimenez, bringing him to one of the victim's, Yely Valerio, who then positively ID'd him. Then the mob dragged him to the police, in a show of community solidarity. However, they beat him "viciously." While Gothamist likes citizen patrolling, the beating is going a little too far.