Results tagged “nycdepartment”

Last night the first of two meetings to discuss the future plans of (the recently landmarked) McCarren Park Pool took place. The NYC Department of Parks & Recreation and architects Rogers & Marvel unveiled their plans and how they will spend Mayor Bloomberg’s $50 million. The initial press release listed: renovating McCarren Park Pool for swimming, creating a year-round recreation center, and preserving and restoring the historic bathhouse building and entry arch, as top priorities (based on a survey).

A 17-year-old student at Massapequa High School died of bacterial meningitis yesterday. Michael Gruber had gone to bed with flu-like symptoms on Wednesday and on Thursday morning his parents were unable to wake him up. He died at New Island Hospital.

On the front page of the NY Times section A, there was a photograph of some workers in Haoro, India and an article titled "New York Manhole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India." And in fact, the workers are barefoot, bare-chested, bare-handed, and bare-headed as they work in an iron foundry, making manhole covers for Con Ed and other cities. The Times explains that a photographer, J. Adam Huggins, who works with the newspaper brought...

The Nor'easter that drenched - and flooded - the Northeast with inches of rain has headed out. Many homes in the area were flooded and pummeled by winds; the NY Times adds that though the storm is gone, rivers are "still rising, swollen by the runoff of record rains." Residents in some suburbs were evacuated and thousands of people are without power: NY Governor Spitzer noted the devastation, while acting NJ Governor Richard Codey said that NJ "continues to operate under a state of emergency." Damages are expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

When David Clarke of Queens received information from a bank about a $180,000 second mortgage on his Rosedale house - a mortgage he never applied for - he decided to contact the police. And Queens authorities found a Brooklyn couple who had been using Clarke's identity to buy a home in Long Island. Yesterday, the Queens D.A.'s office charged Emerick and Donna Martin with identity theft, second-degree grand larceny, first-degree scheme to defraud and much more for scams that totaled $1 million. Here are the crazy details from the Queens D.A.'s press release:

District Attorney Brown said that, according to the charges, the defendants took out two mortgages, totaling $1,123,000, on a residence located at 266 Pine Acres Boulevard in Dix Hills, Long Island, using the name and social security number of the victim, David Clarke. Thereafter, on December 19, 2006, it is charged, the defendants, posing as David Clarke and Donna Clarke, and a third unapprehended individual, went to a Westbury, Long Island, mortgage broker and requested a second mortgage of $180,000 on the real Mr. Clarke’s Rosedale property. At the mortgage closing on January 11, 2007, the defendants allegedly presented a forged driver’s license in the name of David Clarke and completed the paperwork by supplying the actual loan number, job information, telephone number and addresses of the real Mr. Clarke.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: Intoxicated students at a Queens high school, a water rescue near East 14th in the East River, and a body was found in Van Cortlandt Park
• Subway Stickman, or how to turn gum on the ground into floor art
• Because of the Minuteman Brawl, the College Republicans at Columbia will get a refund from the university
• The NYPD has decided to have an outside firm examine its stop-and-frisk procedures, after outrage from the community and politicians
• Mayor Bloomberg says to boycott the Chinese restaurant accused of charging different prices to Chinese and others
• Do you love or hate what will replace some Eberhard Faber Pencil complex buildings in Greenpoint?
• A judge ruled that Madison Square Garden needs to turn over internal documents related to a harassment lawsuit. And details from another employee's complaints about Knicks coach Isaiah Thomas' alleged harassment must be disclosed, too.
• There are rats in restaurants all over the city! Maybe the Rats of Greenwich Village will start a national wide crackdown on restaurant inspection procedures!
Continue reading "Extra, Extra"

In week 2 of the NYC Department of Education's busted school bus route changes, parents are still complaining and the media is loving it. There's 5 year old Michelle Baum in the Post today, waiting outside in the freezing weather for her bus. And the hotline the DOE has been directing parents to seems to be just as bad: In yesterday's Daily News, there was 11 year old Eleanor Shanahan whose family was told a bus would return to take her to school earlier, versus dropping her off 45 minutes late - only for her dad to find out from the school bus hotline that she would be "unrouted."

over the past two years. And not only is he suing them for $1 million, Kemp wants the four to stay at least 100 feet away from his store.

If you drive into the city from Queens or Long Island, it might be worth your while to stop by Shea Stadium today between 10AM and 2PM. Why? Because the NYC Department of Transportation is trying to relieve holiday gridlock by giving 350 $4 Metrocards to commuters who park at Shea and will use mass transit today, next Wednesday (December 27) and January 3. This is supposed to be part of the DOT's holiday traffic mitigation plan, but the one flaw we see is that commuters would probably be at their Midtown work while the Metrocards are being given away. And why not offer some promotion with other mass transit systems, like the LIRR or NJ Transit? But who is anyone to complain, as the cards were donated by the International Gemological Institute.

As you celebrate Thanksgiving with your friends and family, Gothamist Health wants you to feel reassured that your government is concerned for your well-being. We saw this strange poster at the Manhattan Veterans Hospital earlier this week encouraging our vets to go ahead and get tested for HIV. This is all well and good as we know our vets pick up more than just horrible memories and mistrust of our leaders while overseas. But what we were perplexed by was the cartoon figure urging patients to get the test. As you can see from the vandalism, some vet's already doodled in whom he thinks the character eerily resembles.

Spinners at SGoralnick's Most Well Documented Party Ever.

Bedbugs are horrible and gross and nothing that anyone should have to deal with. That said, it's probably not a great idea to douse your mattress with gasoline in order to repel the critters. The FDNY has found a number of Queens residents who have taken to soaking their mattresses with gasoline - even children's mattresses - as a foolproof way of getting rid of bedbugs. Or even wiping it on themselves. Battalion Chief Robert Turner tells the Post, "Gasoline is very explosive - even static electricity from a rug can ignite it." Point taken, but we understand the desperation to get rid of the bugs.

Recent SVA graduate and filmmaker, Derek Lake, was the bicyclist killed by a truck at Houston Street and Laguardia yesterday. And while initial witness accounts pointed to Lake trying to squeeze between a truck and construction site, Transportation Alternatives says that a metal construction plate, a familiar site along gutted Houston Street, may have had something to do with the accident. From their press statement (PDF):

The metal street plate is in violation of the City DOT’s “Highway Rules” governing the specifications for construction plating in the street.

Continue reading "Did a Metal Construction Plate Cause Houston Street Bike Death?"

Awesome - that sound some British company developed to repel teenagers from hanging outside convenience stores is now a cellphone ring tone that teens are using at school. Since many schools frown on cells in the classroom, this seems tp be a way for kids to get away with being connected. But the NY Times offered this lesson:

Recently, in classes at Trinity and elsewhere, some students have begun testing the boundaries of their new technology. One place was Michelle Musorofiti's freshman honors math class at Roslyn High School on Long Island.

Continue reading "If You're Old, You Can't Hear My Cellphone"

Even though that strange maple syrup scent that pervaded the air a few months back has left, our fair city’s less-than-fair air may be making our kids dumber. A new Columbia University study, which tracked 183 3-year-olds from Harlem, Washington Heights, and the South Bronx, finds that kiddies exposed to high levels of air pollution in the womb have higher rates of mental deficiencies. Women in the study were asked to wear air pollution monitors while pregnant and levels of exposure were correlated with their kids’ performance on cognitive tests. Not surprisingly, kids who were exposed to the highest level of pollution (mostly caused by vehicle exhaust) did worse than their counterparts who were exposed to less. This is worrisome as these deficiencies may translate into later difficulties in reading and math when the tots finally get to school.

The city's new health curriculum will require teachers to start to explain what HIV is to their students starting on Monday. Even kindergarteners will be learning that HIV is a "germ" and "not easy to get," per the Daily News. If the city has figured out a way to make children understand that HIV is not necessarily a death sentence and may just be another illness that people can live with, way to go - there are a ton of other places that learning needs to go. Some teachers are concerned that younger students won't understand (one tells the Daily News, "You can tell a second-grader there are different illnesses, colds and viruses, and they'll understand. But they don't understand the difference between cancer and HIV.") but perhaps the city is taking cues from Sesame Street, which created an HIV positive muppet, Kami, for the South African version of the show, Takalani Sesame, in 2002. Parents can let their children opt out of the projects and discussions - it should be interesting to see how this goes.

Someone marked this pretty panoramic picture on Delicious, and the title of the page says "newyork/building/1900_sky.jpg". We're guessing that means it's a skyline shot of NYC taken in 1900, but for the life of us, we can't figure out exactly where it was taken, or identify the buildings in the shot. Can you? [Related: for beautiful historic NYC photos, we recommend the NYC Department of Records site-- lots of the photos can be ordered as prints!]

- Food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or serviceAccording to the records, Time Out closed, but Gothamist thought we saw it open in the past few months, so we assume they tried to bring themselves up to code. The NY Times says about 4,000 restaurants fail each year, with only 500 closing (there are 24,000 restaurants in city overall, with 100 inspectors).

The Port Authority is adding bomb shields to the George Washington Bridge. And we say "All right!" because when the bombs hit, we'll be fleeing to NJ and expect the tunnels to be flooded. The Daily News says that these are "first such bulwarks to appear on a New York-area bridge" - they will be shields around parts of the bridge's cables. The NYC Department of Transportation and MTA have made plans to reinforce other suspension bridges, but Gothamist wonders what is happening with the Brooklyn Bridge's security - as it was the focus of an Al Qaeda plot at one point.

- Does this dog sweater make my ass look big?

If you are thinking about clearing out some of your stuff, there's no better resource for disposal and recycling questions than the NYC Department of Sanitation's "How do I Dispose of..." page. We've literally spent hours clicking around-- they tell you how to get rid of pretty much anything you might have in your house. For instance, just the "S's":

Every now and then, even Gothamist has to stay home and nurse that fever, runny nose, and cough that comes with the perennial flu. And with the Chiron Corporation (Emeryville, CA), the major global producer of the flu vaccine, announcing that it might not meet its expected output this year, getting your annual shot may prove tough to find. Though more doses will be manufactured this year than in 2004, demand will likely again exceed supply in 2005.

"The smoking rate for Chinese men in New York City is as high as 36%, substantially higher than overall smoking rates for men in New York City," said Nhu L.Tran, MD, Director of Smoking Cessation Services at Gouverneur Healthcare Services. Their goal is a smoke-free Chinatown, but I think most Chinese looking at the billboard above will be more frightened of ghosts than of the danger of cigarettes. That baby does not look happy, but neither would we if we were being held by a specter.

The NYC Department of Health issued a drinking water advisory after the yesterday's flooding may have affected NYC's Hillview reservoir. The DoH says that "higher than normal levels of particles" have been detected in the water supply. While that water has been diverted, they ask that "infants, the elderly, pregnant women and New Yorkers with conditions that compromise their immune systems– those with HIV/AIDS, especially those with CD4 counts less than 200; those with leukemia; and those who are post bone marrow transplantation - use either boiled or bottled water as a precaution for the next 24 hours (until noon Friday)." The NYC DoH has information on what you should do with your water in the meantime; it's unclear whether a Brita filter works, so perhaps boiling water is just the safest thing. [Via Marisa]

Pity poor Gothamist, this time last week we were enjoying our last day in pleasantly cool Alaska, writing our name in the snow, only to return to the tropical steambath that New York has become. The steam is going to be around for a couple more days, with tomorrow being more unpleasant than today. Conditions may be ripe tomorrow for an official heat advisory. Today, though, the Weather Service is just giving us a friendly special weather statement. To beat the heat read these tips from the NYC Department of Emergency Management. You can always stay cool by visiting the uptown Fairway's refrigerated room or MoMA, which seemingly are kept at about the same temperature.

The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will give the first 45,000 callers to 311 free nicotine patches, as part of a campaign to help New Yorkers stop smoking. The Daily News says the Pfizer-donated kit includes "a six-week course of nicotine patches, instructions, educational information and online support." Health Commissioner Thomas Friedan says the 2003 free-nicotine-patch program helped 11,000 New Yorkers quit smoking, but Gothamist isn't sure if there's follow-up after that; he hopes this year's program will help at least 5,000 to quit. Of course, many know that our Mayor has aggressively put smokers in the corner with the smoking ban at bars and restaurants. If anyone does call and get the kit, let us know!

See if you should enroll in the WTC Health Registry. And four the remaining ex-presidents, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, will be the honorary leaders of the WTC Memorial, which will open in 2009.