Results tagged “nypress”

Merging urban exploration with something akin to La Blogotheque's Take Away Shows, the below video gives a glimpse at what's hidden in the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel underneath Downtown Brooklyn while performer Greg "Cosmo D" Heffernan scores the journey.

Seems like even at a Central Park West apartment building in the West 70s, robbers can get in. A CPW apartment belonging to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl and her family was "ransacked" by a thief last Friday morning. Apparently the thief, who stole over a $100,000 worth of items, managed to sneak into the penthouse by posing as a contractor - there are many projects at the building.

Today the alternative weekly New York Press announced the resignation of their new sex columnist, Claudia Lonow, after her debut column – and the cover story, no less – was found to have used some questions from old Dan Savage advice columns. The answers were her own, but, as Jezebel discovered, not questions like the one seeking advice about [paraphrasing] ‘what to do when you walk in on your girlfriend canoodling with her noticeably erect brother?’

Santa came early and dumped some carnivorous coal down the throats of vegetarians in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood this weekend. The NY Press has reported that the beloved Veggie Castle – so named because it was converted from an old White Castle fast food restaurant – has abruptly closed. The Veggie Castle was as famous for repurposing the White Castle as it was for its vegetarian twist on Caribbean classics, offering such delicacies as jerk tofu, curried tofu and a steaming vegan soul food buffet.

The New York Press is getting their Gawker Stalker on with their latest cover story about stalking Claire Danes...and how you, yes you, can also follow her home! All you need is the internet, a lot of free time and an obsession in which to fuel your fanboy/girl fire. The payoff? Well, for the author of the article, Becca Tucker, it was a cover story complete with creepy photo, headline and font. Just close your...

Since the Subway Sweethearts are so over, we're turning our slightly interested, but mostly disaffected, heads towards the "Love Spammer". The mysterious man who has apparently approached every girl that walks by him on 6th Avenue with the same exact line. What gumption! His name is (coincidentally) Patrick, his line is asking where Union Square is, and he somehow manages to get some of these innocent passerby to come to his "art studio" for some...

Two types of tropical weather will be the weather story to watch out for over the next several days. You may have noticed that this morning is much more humid than in the past few days. The humidity and warmer air are courtesy of the large high pressure system that has finally moved offshore. The southerly flow of air around the backside of that high pressure system will bring us a day or two of mid-summer weather. Expect today to be sunny and warm, with a high in the mid-80s. A few clouds may move in tomorrow, but it should remain warm and humid. Warm weather, humidity and a nearby front add up to a chance of showers, or a thunderstorm, beginning Saturday night and into Sunday.

The OSA (Open Space Alliance) has been working with the Parks Dept and between two community planning sessions, surveying at a concert and at McCarren's track & field they have surveyed 500 people. They also have their own outlet for your opines available online here. Those looking for more concerts will be disappointed to learn that this summer will likely be the last of the pool parties - the NY Press reports:

The mayor’s money has pool advocates confident that these large, loud concerts will soon be a thing of the past. “It’s not going to be the concert venue that it is now,” notes Joseph Vance of the Open Space Alliance, an organization expected to partner with the Parks Department for the renovation and subsequent administration of McCarren Pool. “There will be a pool with water in it,” he adds.

Continue reading "McCarren Park? Pool? Public Art Space?"

In 2005 Barbara Walters mentioned her distaste for public breastfeeding on The View and was met at the show's studio with "lactivists" protesting her statement.

Newsday reports that NYPD Assistant Chief Bruce Smolka is retiring. While many officers Newsday spoke to love Smolka, he leaves behind an interesting legacy. Let's paraphrase Aaron Naparstek's 2005 piece about Smolka for the NY Press' 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers issue:

...Smolka was the commanding officer of the NYPD’s infamous Street Crimes Unit. It was his officers who, in February 1999, pumped 41 bullets into Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant guilty of nothing more than standing in the hallway of his own apartment building....

Continue reading "Controversial Police Chief Retires"

Love it! The MTA's board says free newspapers are what caused subway flooding in 2004. Which contradicts an April report from the MTA's inspector general, who found that the agency was at fault for severe flooding that shut down much subway service on a September day (September 8, 2004 - when Hurricane Frances came to town and wreaked transit havoc). The April report noted the MTA's "historic neglect" of valves, difficulties Transit Authority first responders had in arriving to the scene, lack of TA command centers, and trash and muck clogging drains. MTA board member Barry Feinstein, however, said, "These hand-distributed free newspapers have been and continue to be a major cause of clogging the drains."

Yesterday (we think), NY Times published a Q &A with its photo editor Michele McNally. It's very interesting and informative, with notes on what kinds of cameras are used, why color photos on actual newspapers can suck, the paper's policy on publishing pictures of wounded or dead American soldiers. But there was an odd part answering a university student's question, "after 9/11, what obstacles do your photographers encounter and how do they get the shot that they are allowed by the Constitution?" McNally wrote:

"If you are stopped by the police, I suggest that you cease shooting, explain yourself and never be confrontational. Shoot only from public spaces. You are prohibited from shooting bridges and tunnels, less so the subway."

It is perfectly legal to photograph bridges and tunnels from public areas. Imagine if you couldn't take photos of the Brooklyn Bridge? Port Authority and TBTA have signs up indicating no photography, but where is the law? Test it one day.

Continue reading "All the Photos That Are Maybe Fit to Print"

COMEDY: Sara Schaefer's latest show is at UCB, following up her long running series "Sara Schaefer is Obsessed With You" with a new show called "Video Gaga". The night features Schaefer counting down funny music videos for you (we've been told that tonight will include The Fresh's Myspace video), a live musical act (tonight it's Erin McKeown), special guests and glittery dance numbers! (We hear she has her own version of Fly Girls!).

The NY Press's editorial staff quit over the paper's decision not to publish the controversial Mohammed cartoon from the conservative Danish paper/tinderbox. The Politicker broke the news and printed editor-in-chief Harry Siegel's memo; here's part of it:

New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization. Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to them, the editorial group—consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editorJonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah, chose instead to resign our positions...

Continue reading "NY Press Didn't Want to Be Mohammed's Mountain"

We're sure you're all busy with office parties and hiding from the cold, cold weather. But it's one of the last weekends of 2005, so try to get out there (besides, who knows if we'll have subways after the weekend is over!)

We've heard that things are going badly over at the New York Press, but that's no excuse for what we saw over on their site today. Remember the tragic story of Dennis Kim, the 22 year old poet who drowned in the Hudson two weeks ago trying to retrieve a book of his poems? The Press's JR Taylor follows up on the story, and goes sort of nuts insulting the dead-- first accusing him of being a pedophile, and then calling him "lame" and a "dead creep"-- all this for possibly having slept with a girl five years younger than himself:

- The Village Voice gets director Victor Buhler (he did the documentary Rikers High) to do a feature about the kids getting their GEDs at Rikers

- And in this update about the closest baby panda to NY, aka the little guy in DC at the National Zoo, it looks like his eyes are open!

Interesting: A court ruled that newsstand owners should be paid if city decides to "remove or replace their newsstands." The city has been looking at bids from a number of companies to provide new "street furniture," because the new street furniture will mean more places to put advertising. What's interesting that while the Newsstand Operators Associations gives a value of $5 million for the 300 newsstands at risk (which is averages $16,000 a pop), any deal for new newsstands will be worth much much more.

- Check out this weekend's subway service advisories; Cobble Hill hipsters, you're screwed with the Manhattan bound service.

A few strange deaths have been in the local news lately. For instance, more body parts of a Bronx woman have been found, a Harlem pastor found a nude woman was found dead, hanging upside from a pipe (her foot got stuck when she was trying to sneak into Mount Olive Church) and neighbors in Midwood are waiting to hear what the police have to say about the body of a woman found in a yard. And police have found blood in the cabin of the Connecticut man who went missing during his honeymoon cruise. The NY Press details a motley of lesser crimes, from bank robberies to neighborly disputes involving hammers. And this week's Village Voice Shelter column was a spooky reminder for Gothamist: Toni Schlesinger visited the Patrick O'Rourke's downtown loft - the loft that Camden Sylvia and Michael Sullivan disappeared from mysteriously in 1997. For a while, it was thought that their landlord had killed them for the $304 a month 1400-square foot apartment (the place is now rented out for $3200) but there was never enough evidence to charge him. The NYPD's still have missing persons information for Sylvia and Sullivan.

Every so often, Gothamist gets passionate emails from Christopher X. Brodeur, who is running for mayor, about Mayor Bloomberg being corrupt. And yesterday, Brodeur sent us something about how a flier that Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields put together had Asians Photoshopped into it. As Gothamist had trouble opening the attachment and needed to rest up for the bid anticlimax that was the 2012 Olympics announcement, we had to wait for today's Post story with Fields's chief consultant admitting the whole picture was doctored:

Fields' chief consultant Joseph Mercurio said that the photo in the handout — "Virginia Fields, Democrat, a Mayor for All New Yorkers" — is actually four separate pictures that were melded together into one. Mercurio said the fake photo was intended to represent Fields' "inclusiveness."

Continue reading "Photoshop Fun for Fields"

Call it shameless self promotion if you want, but the place to be tonight (Monday) is Knitting Factory for Gothamist's own Movable Hype 3.0 show featuring some of the hottest bands from NYC and Austin. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah just self-released their debut self-titled album and its quickly become one of our favorite listens of the year (read the Gothamist interview). Fans of Talking Heads and the Arcade Fire should take note (MP3s at their site). And the $8.00 bill doesn't end there. NY Press cover stars The Fame (read the Gothamist interview), local favorites Man in Gray (read the Gothamist interview), and the popular electronic rock duo Ghostland Observatory from Austin make this show more than a bargain. Even Pitchfork agrees with the hotness. Get tickets (also available at the door if it doesn't sell out).

The Fame

Gothamist wanted to give you a heads for the next Movable Hype event. It's coming up fast, on JUNE 20th, and we'll be back at the Knitting Factory (main space) this time around.

Last year, a woman was killed by an oncoming train when she tried to retrieve her cellphone from the tracks. After hearing about stories like these, Gothamist makes sure we stand a good distance from the platform edge. The NY Press had a story about why the L train shouldn't be computerized - a man had fallen in during an epileptic fit. The Observer looked at the phenomenon of feeling like the subway trains are pulling you towards them as they enter the stations (more reason not to stand near the platform edge). Here's the MTA's guide to riding safely.

If an internet petition couldn't save Freaks and Geeks, can one possibly save the arts listings from the Sunday Arts & Leisure section in the New York Times?

Gothamist understands the need for advertising revenue, but this pop up ad from the New York Times website really took the cake. It seemed like a pop up ad appropriate when going to Maxim or FHM. Time to fire off a letter to new public editor, Daniel Okrent. "Dear Daniel, Love the paper, hate your ads." Granted, the ads seem to only appear after 11PM, but they're still kind of downmarket, back of Village Voice or NY Press style.

The NY Press has it all wrong with their "Best Absolutely Useless NYPD Initiative": Police on Segways are not useless. They are perfect for press conferences with Commissioner Kelly or with Mayor Bloomberg.