Photograph of a squirrel in a Forest Hills house courtesy of the Parks Department It's a walk-up, but the price is right. City squirrels are enjoying the goodwill of concerned citizens and the Parks Dept., who cooperated to install squirrel houses in City Hall Park. Mark Garvin had five of the boxes, which measure about a foot around, built with soft pine for several hundred dollars a piece--city real estate insanity extends to the......

Photograph of Hamilton Grange by wallyg on Flickr More than 200 years after its construction, preservationists aren't sure which direction Alexander Hamilton's country house should be facing. Hamilton Grange, located in Harlem, has already been moved and reoriented once, but that was just a temporary relocation undertaken in 1899. Now preservationists want to give the Federal-style country house a more permanent and less cramped site, but can't agree on what axis to place it.......

Times Square Shuffle, by ShhPeKo at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: shots fired and a large crowd at 98th St. and Rockaway Blvd. in Queens, a carjacking on Ave. Y and Nostrand Ave. in Brooklyn, and an overturned auto on 28th St. and 7th Ave. in Manhattan. The New York Post continues to discover the brave new world of "twisted sex play," commonly known as BDSM. The gentrification of Harlem is colorblind, to the......

It may have looked like simple joyriding on a Friday afternoon, but the Parks Dept. employee careening around Battery Park near Whitehall St. yesterday afternoon was actually a man on a mission, i.e. to kill as many birds in the park as possible. Martin Hightower has been a Parks Dept. employee since 2005, but was arrested after 911 started receiving calls about a man driving recklessly on a golf cart at the southern tip of......

The Parks Dept. decided to throw in the towel on litigation that's been going on for three years and conceded to reevaluate its requirement that no more than 50,000 people could gather on Central Park's Great Lawn at one time. Aside from six allotted exceptions (per year) that include four reserved for performances by the Metropolitan Opera and the NY Philharmonic, the city's rationale for crowd-size restrictions was that very large crowds could damage the......

The person who hung a noose on the doorknob of a professor at Columbia's Teachers College the other week seems to have been a catalyst for NY metro idiots, who have been been copy-cating or otherwise emulating public displays of hateful symbols. Most recently, Parks Dept. employees were appalled to find 10" nooses wrapped around the necks of their clothes when they opened their work lockers in Queens Saturday morning. Kenny Clark and Michelle Rouse-Williams......

City Comptroller William Thompson Jr. stated in an audit released Thursday that the New York had wasted almost $6 million attempting to develop a Scottish links-style golf course in the Bronx. That's not how much the city spent; that's just how much Thompson thinks the city wasted. Developer Ferry Point Partners has been working on the project for the better part of the last decade (since 2000), and in 2002 requested additional funds for environmental......

After receiving a dispensation from city officials last month to remain open until the end of their traditional season, the Red Hook Ball Field vendors are serving up their South and Central American and Mexican fare today and tomorrow for the last time this year. Whether they will return next spring is an open question. This summer the Parks Dept. proposed opening bidding for vending concessions at the fields, which would push most of the......

Even as Astroland is on the verge of losing its lease, City officials are looking to collect $200 million from various sources to overhaul the Coney Island boardwalk. The New York Post reports that funds are being sought from New York State, the federal government, and even Brooklyn real estate owners who will benefit from a refurbished seaside walkway. The sought-after $200 million will be used to replace a three mile stretch of boardwalk from......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a triple shooting on East 21st St. and Caton Ave. in Brooklyn, a missing child on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, and a mass casualty incident at Castle Hill Ave. and the Cross Bronx Expressway. Many New Yorkers donned black this Thursday in solidarity with the Jena 6. Cops are looking for a man who applied for a job at the Duane Reade on 34th St. and 5th......

Plans for a water park on Randall's Island are on the verge of collapse as the developer granted a state concession to build the amusement complex missed its second deadline in seven months to secure financing. According to the Daily News, many East Harlem residents and park advocates were ecstatic at the project's possible failure. Tickets for the water park would have been priced at $37 a person and would result in a de facto......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: falling debris on W 47th St. and 8th Ave. in Manhattan, a shooting on Broadway on Staten Island, and a suspicious boat at the Verrazano Bridge near Brooklyn. For a reason unrelated to terrorism, the U.S. Parks Dept. is going to keep the crown of the Statue of Liberty closed because it's a fire death-trap. Iranian President Mahmoud Amahdinejad's wish to visit Ground Zero was blocked due to security......

McCarren Park Pool is getting a $50 Million makeover. Do you have a before and after image in your head? Well the NYC Parks Department wants your opinion as they ponder the design and future programming of the pool. Take their survey here. 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......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian struck on Pennsylvania Ave. and Fulton St. in Brooklyn, a bank robbery on Co-Op City Blvd. in the Bronx, and a commercial high-rise fire on Broadway in Manhattan. An actor who once played a police lieutenant on L&O: SVU turned himself in to NJ cops today on suspicion of possession of child pornography. YouTube wants to subpeona comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in a lawsuit charging......

When the Parks Dept. started to dredge The Lake in Central Park, they found huge fish specimens that have flourished unnoticed in the waters for years. Like the apocryphall tales of unseen alligators growing to enormous lengths in the sewers, dredgers found koi that were three feet long and weighing up to 30 pounds in the lake. Dredgers also dug up 50 lb. turtles and freshwater clams. Who knew? The lake is the last......

An ambitious plan to plant one million trees in New York is actually going to rely heavily, or primarily, on the the actions and funding of individual residents. On Earth Day back in April, Mayor Bloomberg announced one of many bold initiatives to make New York a greener city: plant a million trees by 2030. Bloomberg even said that $250 million would be devoted to the project over the next ten years to get it......

Kate Gilliam heads up Trees Not Trash, a group whose name pretty much explains it all. Gilliam builds planters, plants trees and makes her industrial neighborhood a little more green each day. Oh, and she's a seed bomber, too. We're betting East Williamsburg could use a lot more patches of nature, so help out by volunteering or going to their benefit show this Saturday. When did Trees Not Trash begin, and what prompted its inception?......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: multiple auto fires at 51st Ave. and 11th St. in Queens, a fatal double shooting on Watkins St. in Brooklyn, and a fatality under a train at 47th St. and Queens Blvd. on the 7 line in Queens. A 12-year-old boy was arrested for throwing two plastic bottles filled with an unknown chemical at two women with toddlers at a Queens playground. The four victims were taken to hospitals......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a church shooting on Schenectady Ave. in Brooklyn, a pedestrian struck on West 17th St. and Union Square West in Manhattan, and a water rescue in Raitian Bay between Staten Island and Sandy Hook, NJ. City Councilman Charles Barron's chief of staff, Viola Plummer, was suspended for six weeks from the City Council and by Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who she's also heckled, with a promise of reinstatment if......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a missing child at Richmond Terrace and Franklin Ave. on Staten Island, a stabbing on Blake Ave. in Brooklyn, and a patient went missing at Parkway Hospital at 113 St. and 70th Rd. in Queens. Physicist Stephen Hawking is writing an adventure novel aimed at middle-grade readers called "George's Secret Key to the Universe." After-school programs at city schools, which help kids with academic tutoring and offer music and......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting at Tremont and University Aves. in the Bronx, a person pinned by a bus on the upper level of the Queensboro Bridge, and a car overparked into a storefront at 258th St. and Riverdale Ave. in the Bronx. The Queens mother of a kidnapped soldier in Iraq hopes that her son is still alive, even though her son's ID and other effects were found in an al......

Sen. Chuck Schumer appeared in Red Hook yesterday to support the plight of the vendors that serve the people who come to watch and play sports at the Red Hook ballfields. The vendors have been cooking up ethnic food that appeals to their mostly Hispanic clientele for several years under a series of temporary permits from the city. The Parks Dept. wants to put an official vending permit up for bidding, and the current vendors......

One can hear plenty of trees falling in the forest in Staten Island these days, as the Parks Dept. is on a massive tree-killing spree after the notice of a few dozen Asian longhorned beetles. The insect is a scourge and first appeared in Greenpoint, Brooklyn about a decade ago, after possibly being imported in a wooden packing crate from China. The female of the species lays its eggs in a tree and the larva......

As part of his Earth Day address, Mayor Bloomberg is expected to announce a citywide plan to plant one million trees over the next ten years. The New York Post says that plan would involve tripling New York's tree-planting budget to $37.5 million annually. They would be planted along streets, and in parks and vacant lots - "every single place where it is possible to plant a street tree," vowed Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff yesterday.......

City Council members decided Tuesday to withdraw a bill that would have challenged the mayor's partial removal of cars from Central and Prospect Parks. The trial restriction prohibits vehicular traffic except for during morning and evening rush hours and allows cross-town traffic to continue through Central Park. The restriction was launched Monday and will run for six months. Central Park and Prospect Park list the exact street closing times on their respective sites. Paul Steely......

Not much has changed since yesterday's forecast. Warm tomorrow (near 60!). Rain and possibly a clap of thunder tomorrow night. The cold front will pass through on Friday morning. Temperatures will fall during the day so you may want to dress more warmly than you would otherwise think you need to dress. Then again, a Parks Dept. employee recently thought Gothamist was a homeless person, so you may not want to take our sartorial advice.......