A 51-year-old man from Brooklyn got in a nasty altercation in Washington Square Park this afternoon that sent two young men to the the hospital. A Walk in the Park reports that Charles Graham "removed a broken bottle from a sock and slashed two males, ages 22 and 27" in a dispute around 1:15 p.m. around Washington Square North and Fifth Avenue. It is unclear if the slashing was in any way provoked. more ›

Move over, Clementine Lee, the Parks Department has a new Public Enemy #1: The older Russian women enjoying a swim at Brighton Beach—and yesterday a few of them were handed $250 tickets for cooling off in the water. A tipster writes in: "I guess there's a sign somewhere on the boardwalk that says swimming is not allowed 6 p.m. to 10 a.m., but I never noticed it. It's hot, it's August, and some people have to work during official swim hours." more ›

Those pushovers at the Parks Department have accepted the apology of MIHventures, who trashed Prospect Park during their annual illegal Heatwave BBQ. The Brooklyn Paper notes that everyone is getting along, and the Parks folk say they "will also ensure that they [MIH] fully comply with our rules and regulations when considering any future events at Prospect Park or any other park." more ›

As we know, the 4th of July left a huge mess in the city's public spaces, particularly Prospect Park. Nothing says independence like the freedom to trash your neighborhood! At the time, the Prospect Park Alliance had noted the challenge of cleaning after holidays, but the Brooklyn Paper reports that this Sunday the park was left in even worse shape. Allegedly a company called MIH Ventures held their annual Heatwave BBQ there, leaving behind hundreds of pounds of trash. more ›

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 trees! more ›

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. more ›

• Today 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 consternation and frustration of many newcomers and long-time residents.
• A Bronx man and his son, who were bound, robbed, and shot in the alley next to their home, may have been followed all the way from Brooklyn by their assailant.
• QueensCrap notes some less-than-professional tree pruning after the Parks Dept. improperly issued permits to a notorious company. There's a difference between pruning and just lopping off most of the tops of trees.
• Ironic Sans was included in a new book titled Ultimate Blogs; masterworks from the wild web. Congratulations!
• The persistence of gay bathhouses in what only seems like the post-AIDS era.
• TreeHugger wonders about the carbon footprint of a bloated Gmail account.

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 Manhattan. more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›

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 remediation. Of the $7.2 million the Parks Dept. paid Ferry Point Partners since then, an audit released by Thompson's office determined that $5.8 million did not go towards environmental remediation. more ›

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 present vendors from the scene. Offering indigenous Latin American fare at low prices, there is little chance any of the vendors would be able to outbid a better capitalized organization. more ›

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. more ›

• 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 Ave., only to return to the store a few minutes later brandishing a silver-colored gun and demanding money.
• The Parks Dept. has officially ended the bid for a company to build a 26-acre water-park on Randall's Island.
• A 45-year-old bachelor is striving for independence from the bedroom in his parents' home, where he's organizing a campign for an independent Long Island Nation. He wants Brooklyn, Queens, and the rest of the island to break off not just from NYC, but to secede from the United States.
• A kayak and canoe ramp opened in the Idlewild Park Preserve on Jamaica Bay in Queens, but not all residents seemed that enthusiastic.
• Former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey was ordered by a judge to pay his ex-wife $2,500 a month in alimony.
• New York City and State have agreed on a set of safety protocols that will be enacted at the Deutsche Bank building in the next two to three weeks.

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 reduction of public park space for those unable to afford admission. The neighborhoods closest to the proposed water park are the South Bronx and East Harlem. more ›

• 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 concerns.
• Leaping Labradors! Dogs competing for top dog dock jumping honors were jumping into a pool at Bryant Park.
• Money should start flowing quicker than spilled oil now that Julia Roberts stand-in Erin Brockovich has jumped into the Greenpoint oil spill pool.
• Despite objections from transit groups and the state comptroller, the MTA is prepared to propose a fare increase for commuters.
• Are New Yorkers in store for a second taxi strike?
• Filmmaker brothers Ethan and Joel Coen are attempting to pass off Brooklyn as the Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, DC. Mutual outrage will likely ensue.
• The vigil for recently deceased carriage horse Smoothie has been moved to the southeast corner of Central Park at the northeast section of Grand Army Plaza. It'll take place Thursday from 5:30-7:30 p.m.

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. more ›

• 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 that the pair appear in purloined Internet videos clips of their shows on the video-sharing site.
• A family court judge is being investigated for perhaps being too TV-friendly while serving on the bench of an actual family courtroom. She's mocked the foreign accent of a lawyer and routinely trash talks people who appear before her.
• We doubt this story about dressing up dogs in wigs is worth an email to the ASPCA, but it's getting close.
• A man was crushed to death between an elevator car and the elevator shaft at an industrial site in Brooklyn.
• Staten Island's Victory Diner was carted from its Dongan Hills location to a Parks Dept. location thanks to the donations of the Richmond County Savings Bank and several other local organizations. "'I was so happy when I heard it was going to be saved I actually cried,' said local resident Susan Pugliese, who was married in the diner."
• A directory to charity thrift shops around NYC.

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? more ›

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 going. A closer examination of the details of the plan show that the project's goals are extremely backloaded, with most of the planting of trees by the city coming after 2017, and individual residents are expected to plant more than three trees for every one that the city plants in the next ten years. more ›

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. more ›

• 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 for minor burn injuries.
• An 82-year-old woman died during a fire in her apartment, which firefighters said was in the "Collyers mansion" style, i.e., stacked floor to ceiling with clutter and junk.
• A short film that is ostensibly about a Coney Island boardwalk hustler, but the sights and sounds of Coney Island itself are the real focus.
• Five out of 12 restaurants visited by the NY Post were found to be using trans fat oil to cook their french fries, despite the recent ban. Only the Moonstruck Diner would fess up and admit it.
• NPR investigates the hidden bee hives of New York City.
• Tammy Faye Messner succumbed to cancer Friday night after a long battle with the disease. Her son now runs an unorthodox (in the non-ecclesiastical sense of the word) church in NYC.
• After fierce criticism the first time around, the Parks Dept. is showing its redesign plans for Washington Square a second time this Thursday (7/26) from 4 pm to 6 pm at City Hall.

• 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 she promises to behave herself. Plummer is in her 70s, but threatened another Councilman with assassination on a contentious vote.
• A grand jury in a federal court case voted to indict four alleged plotters that wanted to blow up JFK airport, kill thousands, and cripple the U.S. economy with a harebrained scheme to take out a pipeline that runs towards the airport.
• "...the red, white and blue leader of the Avengers was felled by an assassin's bullet on the steps of a New York federal courthouse." Captain America got capped, by Marvel Comics no less.
• A 21-year-old White Plains worker at the Rye Playland Amusement Park was killed when thrown from a gyrating ride. Gabriela Garin had changed shifts with another ride operator and then got on the ride to make sure visitors were properly secured, when her replacement started the ride.
• The new rules against noise and trans-fats go into effect tomorrow. Somehow we feel that NYers will remain louder, skinnier, and better looking than the rest of the country, regardless of what laws are passed.
• The City has a list of all the designated grilling areas around the five boroughs. The Parks Dept. says "Designated Barbecuing Areas," but frankly, we don't want to get into all that right now.
• We've pretty much given up on listening to radio, but this blog may point us to something it's possible we'll want to hear. Thank you New York Radio Guide.
• The Staten Island Advance points out that Mayor Bloomberg's ambitious plan to make all yellow cabs hybrid in a few years overlooks the livery cabs that service the outer boroughs. Car service owners and drivers would prefer to keep it that way.

• 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 art instruction that are no longer part of schools’ curricula, will likely have to close due to lack of funding.
• Former New York Giants linebacker LaVar Arrington was injured in a motorcycle accident, after he lost control of his bike and hit a guard rail while exiting I-495 in Maryland.
• Sean Bonner’s list of vegan restaurants and places with vegan menu offerings around NYC.
• New York City pools open June 29th, and the Parks Dept. has a borough-by-borough guide to all 51 one of them.
• Elle magazine editorial coordinator Nina Weiss is letting local students and teachers conduct their classes in her Brooklyn apartment - 9th grade boys in the living room, 6th graders in the kitchen nook - after they lost their usual space in a nearby church to a fire.
• Curbed notes that lawyers for 1 Sutton Place are suing New York, after plans were announced to make the building’s formerly private park on city-owned land open to the public.

• 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 Qaeda safehouse.
• Thanks to the "Mad Hatter," NJ is on pace to set a record for bank robberies in 2007.
• New York firefighters have mixed opinions about Giuliani's Presidential aspirations and invocations of 9/11.
• Someone was required to be rescued after falling into a sewer in Brooklyn (fuller post tomorrow).
• Langston Hughes' former 127th St. Harlem brownstone is being converted to a performance space.
• Brooklyn North criminal violence is up 64% over the last two years. A John Jay College criminal expert and neighborhood resident pins the blame on teenagers.
• A community group wants to respond to difficulties encountered with (more darn) kids by privatizing Manhattan Beach, which is maintained by the Parks Dept. Gowanus Lounge has all the details of heavy restrictions proposed for a popular seaside destination for city dwellers that can't afford shares in the Hamptons.

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 who sell relatively low-priced food to their customers are not assured of winning the contest over a business catering to newer and more well-heeled Red Hook residents. more ›

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 burrow their way towards the center of the plant. Once grown, the beetle chews its way out, leaving a large hole that can be lethal to trees when repeated enough times. more ›

The Parks Department says that there are approximately 500,000 street trees decorating New York's five boroughs. That number is based on a 1996 survey. Another tree census was conducted last year and The New York Times puts the current number at nearly 592,000, out of a total of 5.2 million trees in the whole city. The new decade-long tree-planting project would add 210,000 street trees around the city. more ›