If you own child pornography—which? gross—you might want to make sure it is well packed when you are moving. Just ask (now former) NYPD auxiliary cop Daniel Sayer. The 59-year-old was arrested this week and charged with two felony counts of possessing child pornography after police allegedly found a "massive" collection in his possession. According to one Greenwood lake resident who saw cops take Sayers away, "He didn’t seem surprised." more ›

All dogs go to heaven, but heaven is so jejune. Fortunately for NYPD's finest equine officers, a former New York Corrections employee and farrier is immortalizing their gorgeous forms through art. Specifically, by assembling and repositioning their skeletons after death. Walter Varcoe, who ran the farm program at Otisville Correctional facility in 2004, tells the Lexington Herald-Leader that horses are his muse. "I find horses just beautiful, and (seeing their skeletons) impresses me even more that they can do what they do." more ›

Yesterday afternoon, two small single-engine planes crashed in the air over Wawayanda, in New York's Orange County. The pilots of both planes were killed, and a witness said, "One clipped the other, clipped the wing is what it looked like from my angle. The one spiraled directly down, and the other was more at an angle over the hill." Also, one of the planes burst into flames while the other didn't. more ›

Today in Orange County, police have resumed the search for Laura Garza, the Brooklyn woman who left a nightclub with a registered sex offender three months ago, never to be seen again. State police will focus once again on trails off of Route 17, including the area where they discovered a piece of carpet that they believe came from the apartment of the man Garza left with, Michael Mele, who police have only named as a "person of interest." Garza's family and friends recently camped outside of Mele's apartment, demanding he provide more answers since being labeled by authorities as "uncooperative." As for the search that will take place today and tomorrow, police say that they have declined offers of assistance from the public due to fears of tainting any evidence and said that they can't make headway into Sullivan County because there is too much snow on the ground. Captain Wayne Olson said the previous searches have turned up evidence but told reporters, "We have submitted a number of items for analysis and we've had some results, and I can't go into specific." more ›

In case there has been any ambiguity up until this point, Michael Mele is not a nice person. One of his employees at the Quizno's he manages in Orange County recounted to the Post today about how her boss berated her, screaming into the phone at her for revealing to police where he lived when they came by investigating the disappearance of Laura Garza. more ›

As the investigation continues for the missing body of Laura Garza, the 25-year-old last seen leaving the nightclub Marquee early Wednesday morning, the details that have come in are not very pretty. Police are still searching around the Wallkill home of Michael Mele, the Quizno's franchise owner and convicted sex offender Garza was last spotted leaving the club with. Yesterday they found a woman's shoe near Mele's apartment in the dumpster he was seen scouring through in recent days, a piece of cloth resembling women's undergarments in a nearby shrub and bite marks and scratches on Mele himself. more ›

Police are investigating the disappearance of a 25-year-old Brooklyn woman who was out clubbing well into Wednesday morning and they suspect was murdered by a man she was seen leaving with. Laura Garza, who had just recently moved to Bay Ridge, spent the night dancing at Chelsea hot spot Marquee before taking off at 4 a.m. with the man she had been hanging around, 23 year-old registered sex offender Michael Mele. Mele turned himself into state police in yesterday in Newburgh, not far from his Wallkill apartment where they believe he may have committed a violent assault on Garza. more ›

Earlier this year Bravo announced their "Real Housewives" series would be moving from Orange County to The Big Apple. The show premieres tonight, and critics have already gone sour on it. more ›

The cold and windy conditions that caused problems yesterday will continue through the day today. Today's high will be around 25 but the wind chill will stay around zero degrees for most of the day. With wind chills that low it is a good idea to cover up if you will be outside for more than a few minutes. We were reminded of this when our cherubic cheeks started getting numb on Gothamist's walk to work. more ›

Big gas guzzling SUV's aren't completely worthless, especially if you need to withdraw some cash in a hurry. A surveillance camera in Orange County New York shows an intrepid robber ramming the back of his SUV through the front of a convenience store in an effort to steal its ATM--the whole machine. Starting at the top left and going clockwise, you can see 1) the SUV slamming through the front of the store 2) the driver pulling forward to give himself some room to work 3) wrestling with the heavy cash dispenser that he knocked over while entering, and 4) lifting it into the back of the vehicle. See, they aren't kidding when they advertise how much cargo space those things have! more ›

What has Conan O'Brien been doing in his spare time? His writers have only been putting pen to paper for their picket signs, and even though he returned to his late night desk earlier this month -- he's been a one-man show, lacking his trusty troupe of scribes. Alone and living in a world of reruns, he's been unloading in his diary strike journal. more ›

Are you ready to meet the Real Housewives of New York City? Bravo is spinning off their Orange County-based reality show with a look into the lives of some select East Coast ladies. The show will air March 4th, and The Daily News reports that the "stars" will be Bethenny Frankel, LuAnn de Lesseps (that's Countess, to you), Ramona Singer and Jill Zarin of the Upper East Side and Alex McCord of Cobble Hill. We're glad they branched out of the UES and threw a Brooklynite in there (though we wish it was a Park Slope mom); at 34 she's the youngest of them all. more ›

An NYPD officer was arrested early Thursday morning by Middletown, NY police after a young girl came forward and accused him of repeatedly raping her while she was a student at the karate school where he taught. Trent Young is a married 39-year-old who has been with the NYPD for nine years. Middletown Police said that prior to becoming a police officer, Young was a schoolteacher. He is accused of sexually abusing a female student beginning when she was 13 years old in December 2005. According to the victim, who is now 15, Young had her sign an oath of obedience as an ostensible part of a green belt ceremony before making her take off her clothes and sexually abusing her. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: three pedestrians struck on 65th St. and 7th Ave. in Brooklyn, a tourist bus vs. building incident on 51st St. and Broadway in Manhattan, and a train derailment on East 239th St. in the Bronx.
• 47 years ago, two planes bound for Laguardia and JFK collided over Miller Field on Staten Island in mid-air. As body parts, Christmas presents, and debris rained from the sky over Staten Island, 132 people lost their lives. One of the two planes crashed in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
• A $35 million to $45 million renovation at Lincoln Center will displace the New York City Opera through the 2008-09 season.
• A Jewish family in Orange County, NY was the victim of a campaign of harassment by other Orthodox individuals. The local cops had to discontinue their investigation because no one was snitchin'.
• Aw, just in time for the holidays the Reds have gone Green. The Communist Party spent $1 million to make its NY headquarters more environmentally friendly.
• The driver in last week's passenger van-Q46 bus collision will not be facing criminal charges resulting from the accident that ejected a young girl from his vehicle, while she is still in critical but stable condition.
• Another grenade-related police shooting--this time of a man in Orange County, NY.
• A round-up of Christmas star cookie recipes.

Josh Schwartz left the sunny beaches of O.C. to bring his brand of teen drama to the gritty city. His new show, Gossip Girl, will premiere on the CW September 19th, and it's been filming all over town lately. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Clarkson Ave. in Brooklyn, another shooting on Madison Ave. in Manhattan, and a pedestrian fatally struck on Cross Bay Blvd. in Queens.
• 1010 WINS conducted an online poll asking "If a hurricane were to hit NYC, do you think the city would be ready?" 84% of respondents answered "Oh heck no -- look what happened Wednesday."
• Chicago police arrested the four men who allegedly bound and robbed Knicks guard center Eddy Curry in suburban Illinois.
• Because city express bus drivers don't have the authority to add stops on their own and the MTA didn't instruct them to, hundreds of express buses with empty seats bypassed soggy commuters at local stops during Wednesday's storm.
• The two largest individual parking ticket scofflaws in NYC, who combined owe more than $90K, have completely reasonable explanations: it was their ex-wives who did all the illegal parking.
• After decades of being isolated as a traffic island monument, the Columbus Memorial in the middle of Columbus Circle is now experiencing the human wear and tear that the rest of the city endures. $5 million is being budgeted to repair the accumulated and recent damage the monument has suffered.
• An aircraft was reported down northwest of the city near an Orange County airport.
• An opinion piece in the New York Times notes that while recent outrages over violence against animals garnered media attention and resulted in quick arrests, the brutal deaths of illegal immigrants quickly faded into the media-woodwork.

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. more ›

Say that headline five times fast! The city is cleaning up today following yesterday's late-winter messy mix of snow, sleet, rain, and freezing rain. Snowfall totals ranged from 2.5 inches in Sheepshead Bay to 5.5 inches in Central Park. There was probably more snow in the Bronx but nobody reported it. Across the region, Goshen, in Orange County, received a dash more than a foot of snow. Long Island didn't get much snow but the roads were slicked with ice. And if you read that Newsday story please be sure to click through to their odd and minimalist snowfall database. more ›

You know, it is a beautiful thing when all the pieces come together to produce a winter storm. There's a low pressure system deepening off the Virginia coast, sending plenty of warm, moist air toward us. To our north there's a high pressure system sending cold air our way. The warm air proves no match for the dense dome of cold air so it has no choice but to ride up over the dome. As the warm air rises it cools, saturates and starts dumping snow, enough snow to warrant a Winter Storm Warning. The Weather Service is estimating four to eight inches of snow and sleet are expected in the city by tonight. Lesser amounts are likely on Long Island where rain will be more prevalent. It will stay cool enough upstate for Orange County to get around a foot of snow. more ›

There is nothing like a little snow to make the local television stations go nuts. The madness really started yesterday evening with reporters sent out to find snow, special winter weather graphics and crawls with school closings along with other notes about the snowstorm on the bottom of the screen. more ›

Newsday has a good article looking at the transportation issues the next governor will deal with - the biggest being the MTA. The MTA, which already announced fare hikes for next year, faces insane budget deficits in the coming years: $905 million in 2008, $1.13 billion in 2009, $1.48 billion in 2010. The Straphangers' Campaign's Gene Russianoff says of the MTA, "They borrowed a ton of money to fix a system, and now the bill is coming due." more ›

As Travis the cat contemplates the clouds over the Hudson (we understand he is quite the weather fanatic), Gothamist wonders if we need to dig out a sweater tonight. The rain and clouds of this morning have mostly been pushed away by a high pressure system that has slipped southward from Canada. As the center of the high parks itself over us the winds will also die down. Clear skies plus calm air adds up to lots of radiational cooling tonight. There's little to stop heat from being lost directly to space so temperatures will dip to around 50, if not the upper-40s, in town and the National Weather Service has issued a frost advisory for Orange County. more ›

Hmm, were some fires at an almost completed synagogue in Williamsburg actually a message? A new Satmar headquarters is being built at Ross Street and Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, and the Post reports that two suspicious early morning fires occured there. The new synagogue happens to be right next to Satmar Grand Rebbe Zalmen Teitelbaum's house, and one thing that fire marshals cannot ignore is that many supporters of Zalmen's brother Aron, a grand rebbe in Orange County, believe Aron is the true Grand Rebbe. The two brothers and their respective sects had been feuding over who would be the next Grand Rebbe, and ultimately Zalmen was successful in saying the will of his father the Grand Rebbe Moshe Teitelbaum named him the successor. Wikipedia has quick look at the feud. more ›

They came, they mourned, they left? more ›

Apparently the Satmar Jews in Williamsburg went a little wild last night. According to Newsday: more ›

The tropical disturbance that was partially responsible for Saturday's rain is gone. The cold front that brought us the rest of the rain is still around, having stalled over the eastern Atlantic. As long as the front sits there we're in for cool, cloudy, rainy conditions. Right now the greatest chance of rain appears to be tomorrow night into Wednesday. We won't get nearly as much rain as over the weekend but the ground is saturated and flooding is likely. What's more, the onshore winds bringing us the gloomy skies will also push up the tides, possibly causing coastal erosion and flooding. Think of it as storm surge lite! more ›

- A case of boysenberry jam and a bucket of Mrs. Knott's chicken from Knott's Berry FarmThis is like a big FU, implying that we have no sun and beachy good times and can't sing have a theme song by Phantom Planet. Gothamist wonders who gets the swimwear and surfboard when NYC will collect the booty - we really don't want to be forced into seeing some Mayor B photo op where he's in swimwear...though wiping out on a surfboard is another matter entirely. And will his staff act from The O.C. script - clearly, Mayor B would be Caleb Nichols. more ›

We're so glad you asked this question, because we are getting ready to kick it into gear for Autumn of Fun 05, which involves getting large-ish groups of people together for autumnal excursions such as apple picking. We found a few orchards that offer apple picking and directions by mass transit: more ›