Results tagged “nyc”

Lawyers for a Manhattan strip club say the 22-year-old beauty pageant queen whose photo they appropriated to advertise the club is just suing them to get attention. You may recall that back in April, former Miss Oklahoma Laci Kay Scott filed a lawsuit against Ten's Gentlemen's Club after she discovered that the club had been distributing cards on the street with her image—and without her knowledge. Scott, who's been trying to get her modeling career off the ground with gigs posing in prom dress ads, says being mistakenly perceived as a stripper could disqualify her from the pagaent circuit and damage her career. But Ten's owners think this lawsuit has been just great for her.

If Paul D. Miller was an insect, he'd have extraordinarily long antennae. Miller, who makes music under the name DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, is a walking encyclopedia of music, known for a catholicity of taste that makes room for everyone from John Cage to Kool Keith. And his expansive curiosity extends beyond the cultural, to the environmental and political; his newest creation is Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica, a multimedia production that uses film and music to examine global warming.

Website Ride the City debuted in 2008, integrating Google maps with data about ideal cycling routes. The site enables users to map a bike ride along as many bike paths as possible, or take their chances with the "fastest," most direct route. Tomorrow the site will launch a new version, which will now maintain elevation data for every city and show riders how much climbing to expect from any given route. Ride the City will also allow visitors to create a user profile and save their favorite routes.

It's no Man Getting Hit By Football, but this video of a Dodge van getting smashed by a wrecking ball is probably worth ten of your seconds, depending on what you've got going on today. While there is some debate as to the origins of the video—one YouTube commenter astutely declares, "has to be fake i live in nyc and I would have heard about this shit in the news and on the front of the ny post"—we're pretty sure this looks like a filmed stunt for a movie, or maybe a viral marketing ad. If so, you're welcome Astroboy!

       

In recent years, the lefty activist group Time's Up has been widely associated with the monthly Critical Mass bicycle rides in Manhattan—a source of ongoing acrimony between police and cyclists. But the group, started by environmental activist Bill DiPaola back in 1987, has had a green finger in a wide array of progressive causes beyond cycling advocacy. Now Time's Up's wide-ranging agenda over the past two decades has been underscored by the recent acquisition of a trove of Time's Up documents by the Tamiment Library at NYU.

The 78-year-old ex-con who's been arrested some 37 times over the past three decades is in trouble again, this time for missing her final court date two weeks ago. You may recall that Katherine Kelly was famously busted in October 2008, after a pickpocket sting at the Upper West Side Fairway turned up a wallet in her bra. (An NYPD source called her a "pickpocket terrorist.") Earlier this month, Supreme Court Justice Ronald Zweibel signed an arrest warrant for Kelly, despite being informed she was stuck in a car outside court.

A legal secretary is suing a midtown law firm for allegedly cutting her loose just hours after she revealed that she had a cancerous tumor. In October 2007, Theodora Benedict sent an e-mail informing her employers at Tarnow & Juvelier that doctors had diagnosed her with a rare tumor behind her sinuses, and she would have to miss a week for surgery and a week for recovery. But instead of "get well soon" cards, Benedict, 61, says she got the boot—two hours after clicking send.

An Upper East Side sports bar popular with Wisconsin transplants was slapped with two fines totaling $20,000 for selling a popular beer that's only licensed to sell in Wisconsin. The owners of Mad River Bar & Grille were fined by the SLA earlier this month for pouring Spotted Cow, a microbrewed ale that retails in Wisconsin for about $30 a case or $1.25 a bottle.

Is there any band as old as Sonic Youth (nearly three decades!) still radiating such adventurousness and vitality? (The E-Street band, perhaps, but that's apples/oranges.) On Tuesday night the ever-fresh noise rock quintet unleashed yet another spellbinding show at The Music Hall of Williamsburg—an exhilarating return to form after seeing them swallowed up by the United Palace Theater in July. As if to emphasize their commitment to developing new material, the 90-minute performance skewed toward their most recent album, The Eternal, with highlights including a blistering "Calming the Snake," and an orgasmic "Anti-Orgasm." The night climaxed with a show-closing rendition of timeless classic "Silver Rocket," and though the improvisational segment never quite blasted into outer space, the song burned up completely, inspiring atavistic stage-diving which hilariously culminated in one husky, bespectacled man struggling to get on stage just as the show ended—and diving into the audience anyway.

The family of Vada Vasquez, the 15-year-old Bronx girl who took a stray bullet to the skull last Monday, declined their usual Thanksgiving feast this year, postponing it until the teen can eat again. But the five young men accused of involvement in the shooting were given a seemingly generous Thanksgiving meal in jail yesterday. Dinner included turkey with dressing, yams, steamed greens and carrot cake!

On Wednesday afternoon, DOT officials had met with the pastor at Our Lady Queen of Peace church on Staten Island to discuss the problem of reckless drivers on the street that runs by the church and its school. Rev. Pancrose Kalist warned city officials about the dangerous situation on New Dorp Lane, where crossing guards routinely witness drivers blasting by them and running the red light. Six hours after his meeting, an elderly married couple was killed by a hit-and-run driver with numerous traffic violations who sped through a red light.

Graphic photos have surfaced from the recent murder on the D train. Photography student Paola Nuñez Solorio was on her way home with fellow students when Gerardo Sanchez allegedly stabbed Dwight Johnson because he wouldn't move his bag from an unoccupied seat to make room on the half-empty train. The two men did not know each other. Solorio took 120 photos during the murder, and today the Times has published four of them online. The images are very disturbing, as is Solorio's first-hand account of the murder:

City Island residents have finally gotten rid of the NYPD firing range on nearby Rodman's Neck in the Bronx, which has been disturbing their peace since the Kennedy administration. Last week the City Council approved the site of a 40-acre Police Academy in College Point, Queens, where the NYPD will relocate training to an enclosed firing range. But some residents say their aural nightmare endures!

The family of the 15-year-old girl who took a stray bullet to the skull last Monday has something incredible to be thankful for today: doctors expect the teen to make a full recovery. After performing brain surgery to remove the bullet from Vada Vasquez's skull, doctors put her in medically-induced coma and cautioned relatives that she would most likely suffer some degree of brain damage. But now surgeon Narayan Sundaresan believes that although the bullet damaged her left temporal lobe, the area of the brain responsible for speech, she still "can make a full recovery."

       

Click on the film stills for more reviews and details on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include The Road, Me and Orson Welles, Old Dogs, Ninja Assassin, The Princess and the Frog , The Big Lebowski, and Brazil.

The holidays must be a lucrative time for drivers who lure passengers into their unlicensed taxis at airports, but the Port Authority is making it tough for them this year. Yesterday Queens DA Richard Brown announced [pdf] that a crackdown on unlicensed taxi drivers has resulted in 18 arrests at JFK and LaGuardia. The arrests come a month after Governor Paterson signed a bill increasing penalties for unlawfully soliciting ground transportation at an airport, making it a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail and/or a fine of up to $1,250.

This week Sam Sifton at the Times files a two star review of A Voce Columbus. This slick Italian-influenced restaurant is the Time Warner Center incarnation of the Flatiron district A Voce, which was made successful by chef Andrew Carmellini (now at Locanda Verde). Chef Missy Robbins (Chicago's Spiaggia) is running the kitchen now, and Sifton agrees she's "an excellent chef. She didn’t come here to mess around. But make no mistake. A Voce is a corporate enterprise, part of a master plan, and feels like it. Save for swiveling yourself around in the Eames-y leather chairs that appoint both restaurants, there is very little room for improvisation. Service is clinical, almost silent, beyond language... This restaurant could yield more A Voces in other cities, in other malls, all over this land."

A press release with this thrilling title landed in the inbox this morning: "CONTROVERSIAL 100 PROOF VODKA INFUSED HOLIDAY TURKEY IS BEING UNVEILED FOR THE HOLIDAY'S BY LOCAL NYC TAVERN. NO ONE UNDER 21 ALLOWED TO EAT AND INCLUDES A TAXI RIDE HOME." To which we would only add BARF. Earlier today Paul Hurley at O'Casey's Tavern on East 41st Street began injecting an unspecified number of 20-pound birds with 8 ounces of 100 proof flavored Georgi vodka: peach, raspberry, cherry and apple. Most of the vodka will evaporate out of the turkeys during cooking, but O'Casey's chef has planned for that, and he's preparing a vodka-infused gravy, served with a straw.

Two men who allegedly operated a Florida-to-New York gun trafficking ring were indicted today after selling more than 40 guns to undercover cops, worth more than $40,000. The 105-count indictment charges Watson Joachin, 27, and Ryan Woodard, 22, with selling weapons including 28 semi-automatic pistols, six revolvers, three assault rifles, four sawed-off shotguns, and five rifles. Most of the guns were purchased at pawn shops and gun shows in Florida, then sold fully loaded in Brooklyn. "We'll accept oranges from the sunshine state but not guns," Commissioner Kelly told reporters today.

You'll recall that last week Transportation Alternatives held their Biking Rules PSA Festival at BAM, featuring 40 PSAs created to promote bike safety and responsible cycling (i.e., not pedaling fiendishly down the sidewalk and running over pedestrians, etc.). The videos competed in two main categories, "Why Biking Rules" and "Street Code." Here's one of the winners in the shorter "Street Code" category, which will be broadcast on local TV, at outdoor summer films, and at cultural venues like BAM. Winners Aldo Arias and Pam Tietze also got a cool two grand, which will buy a lot of magical bike lights.

During the first nine months of the year, LaGuardia, Newark, and JFK have maintained the worst record for on-time arrivals among the 31 major U.S. air hubs, according to the FAA. And because so many flights pass through these hubs, nearly three-quarters of all delays in the U.S. could be traced to a problem in New York. The line of planes waiting to land at LaGuardia Airport can sometimes stretch unbroken in the sky for 40 miles, according to one air traffic controller, who tells the AP, "All we can do is take them and space them out as close as FAA rules allow. It's not like you can put more aircraft in there. That's it. We're just maxed out."

The hand and foot model who's suing her co-op for treating her like a pariah for marrying the doorman has a history of romancing the help. Before she fell for bareheaded former doorman Angel Rotger, Christina Ambers had previously cavorted with another doorman at the Upper East Side building, a married Romanian immigrant named John Bradatan. But is it so crazy for a woman whose hands are her livelihood to fall for men who professionally open doors?

In July 2008, the Vice Enforcement Squad raided Big Daddy Lou's Hot Lap Dance Club on West 38th Street, which was ranked as the best of all strip clubs in the world by AskMen.com. Prosecutors say it was so beloved because the club offered much more than erotic dancing to its upscale clientele, including on-site cocaine sales, and private rooms with beds for $250 an hour (plus whatever customers gave "dancers" behind closed doors). During the raid, police arrested some dancers, including porn star Alexia Moore, on alleged prostitution charges, as well as staff members and club owner Louis Posner, a lawyer who started a voter reform advocacy group after the 2000 election.

The mother of the 16-year-old Bronx boy accused of shooting a rival gang member and an innocent young bystander gave her first interview with the press yesterday. In a teary sit-down with the Post, Zelita Mighty explained that she tried to keep her son, Carvett Gentles, away from the gang culture that grips the area around East 169th Street and Boston Road—where her own father was shot nine times in the back when she was a teen. But at some point over the summer, she claims "Zico" [Carvett's nickname] went from being an engaged student who would "proudly bring home attendance and science awards" to a distant young man mixing with his older cousins and uncle—members of the Gorilla Stone Blood gang.

Student activists have released two more videos to complement last week's footage of an NYPD officer violently arresting a protester during a march in solidarity with student protesters at the University of California. Both videos depict some of the activities leading up to the arrest of two individuals—neither of whom are actually enrolled at the New School, according to university spokeswoman Deborah Kirschner.

Reclining her hospital bed yesterday, the 66-year-old Harlem woman who took a stray bullet in the leg in Harlem Wednesday sent a strong message to Mayor Bloomberg about what Harlem needs: "Bloomberg's getting in there and making the place look fancy and all of that, but it's not safe and people won't want to come here," Virginia Valree told the Daily News.

You might remember back in May when the Taxi & Limousine Commission threatened the public with three new pilot programs that would reduce congestion by packing more fares into fewer cars. Well, unlike most pilot programs, it appears this one is actually happening, and as soon as next month. TLC announced Thursday that they will be setting up three locations where two or more riders and/or strangers can hop into a single cab for a discounted fare—and possibly a missed connection.

       

From the team behind the tiny and exclusive club The Eldridge and Upstairs, CV is the latest reboot of a space in The Hotel on Rivington [i.e., THOR] that has previously done business as 105 Riv. Hilarious interview subject Matt Levine brought in nightlife poobah Steve Lewis to redesign it, and Lewis says he's made the place "a warm, comfy space to hang with a 'Meatpacking' aesthetic." (The name, by the way, is the address in Roman numerals; so now you have a dope pick-up line when you go there.)

The NYPD's stop and frisk policy shows no signs of abating. The latest data on the controversial program shows that the NYPD is on track to stop a record number of New Yorkers this year.

              

Click on the images above for more details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans, Broken Embraces, Fix, The Blind Side, Missing Person, Mammoth, Planet 51, Staten Island, Defamation, New Moon, Psycho, Jabberwocky, Red Cliff, and Rene'.