Results tagged “party”

The two state workers busted for turning a parking garage storage area into a makeshift drug-fueled rec room pleaded guilty yesterday. Gary Pivoda, 40, a former custodian for the state’s Office of General Service, and his supervisor, Louis Marciano, 50, both admitted to defrauding the government, and Pivoda also pleaded guilty to grand larceny. He'll do a year in prison for dealing drugs out of the so-called man cave, while Marciano got five years’ probation and has to perform 250 hours of community service. Both men must pay thousands of dollars restitution to the state for the time spent sleeping, playing board games, watching TV, and doing drugs while on the clock.

As if watching NFL football wasn't torture enough, a Bronx man claims he was literally tortured by his guests at his Super Bowl party last year. Michael Terry, 40, says he invited his drug-dealing neighbors over to watch the big game, but after the Giants defeated the Patriots, his guests overstayed their welcome, and used his apartment to sell drugs to other buyers. When he tried to throw them out, Terry says they handcuffed him to a chair and put him through hell.

At around 1:15 this morning a report came in over the newswire that a male had fallen down an elevator shaft at Broadway and Berry Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A reader sent in photos shortly after, and the building the incident took place in is actually at 338 Berry, between South 4th and South 5th streets — a former noodle factory converted into various multi-use spaces, including residential lofts. The victim was at a party in the building being hosted by the Uniform Project. After the fall he was in serious condition, unconscious and unresponsive. We'll update when we get more details.

Channel 7's Tappy Phillips wants answers about that Tavern on the Green debacle that went down on Halloween night. To recap: the restaurant pointed the finger at the promoters, who in turn pointed the finger at scalpers who pushed the event over capacity and advertised the wrong start time. As a result, thousands more than expected showed up to the restaurant and stood around for hours trying to get in. Because what else are you going to do in New York City on Halloween? The cops eventually shut the party down at 1:30 a.m., about an hour after it started. But don't worry, Tappy's on it!

We received our smiley-face laden wristbands so that we may gain entry to the Vice 15th Anniversary + Halloween party this past Saturday — but around 11 p.m. that night we were already hearing that the 1994-themed extravaganza was total mayhem, so we took our flannel elsewhere.

The Tavern on the Green seems to be cursed lately, so it's fitting that they housed a Halloween party from hell over the weekend. The Daily News reports that the restaurant was a frightening scene on Saturday night "when thousands of extra revelers showed up — many of whom bought bogus tickets online" for a party that promised to begin at 9 p.m. and include an open bar and an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Meet (or revisit) Jimmy McMillan: retired postal office worker, Vietnam veteran, former stripper, and Mayoral candidate. His party is the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, which features one of THE best websites in the universe by loudly and proudly confirming the obvious: "There Is Nothing Else To Talk About! We apologize for the bad grammar. But... your rent is still too damn high." Woah, how did he even know that? The psychic McMillan would have a complete lock on the election, but a certain someone is obviously a little threatened, and so the Board of Elections is turning up the heat.

A 22-year-old woman who had survived being shot in the torso just this past spring was shot again at the same spot Saturday in a drive-by, this time the incident proving fatal. Shante Graham was at a party with friends on Nashville Boulevard in St. Albans when two men opened fire from inside a dark sedan at around 12:30 a.m. yesterday morning. Graham was shot in the stomach and would later be pronounced dead at Jamaica Hospital. Two other people at the party were shot and treated at other hospitals, both listed in stable condition. Graham had just attended a memorial earlier in the day Friday for a friend who was killed in a domestic dispute. Graham's mother told the Times that her daughter had fallen in with a bad crowd, saying, “She was around negative people, doing nothing, hanging in the streets, not doing anything with herself.” ' Her mother also added that Graham aspired to be a school safety officer or a crew member at JFK. Police found the vehicle the shots were fired from near the party, abandoned in a parking lot.

       

This boat is reeeeaaaaaal. In a city where privacy is all but extinct, New Yorkers relish being in on a secret, even if hundreds of other people are in on it too. The Bushwick Boat parties offer the same degree of clandestine exclusivity as PDT or Milk and Honey, which is to say not very much.

A teenager in Brooklyn was gunned down while walking home from a party just after midnight last night. 15-year-old Craig Shelton was preparing to be a sophomore at Metropolitan High School and recently learned he was expecting his first child with 17-year-old girlfriend Tania Moore. Friends say Shelton was not feeling well when he left the East New York party around midnight and was shot multiple times across the street on Euclid Avenue. Shelton was pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting; police did not offer any motive or say that they had any suspects. His grandmother said, "He was a good boy. He never got into any trouble." And the four-months pregnant Moore told the News, "I don't know what I'll ever say when the time comes, when our baby asks where their daddy is."

Cheyenne Jeudy's parents had been meticulously planning her $50,000 sweet sixteen birthday party for two years, but what they didn't plan for was the appearance of a group of drunken, unruly party crashers from a wedding reception held in another part of the catering hall. According to a lawsuit filed by Cheyenne's mother Denise, a NYC cop, the party turned ugly because Russo's on the Bay, a Howard Beach catering hall, didn't stop the party crashers from molesting young girls at the Sweet 16, nor from beating up her nephew outside.

While you were out enjoying the night for no reason, others were out enjoying the night for a cause. And that cause is to be able to enjoy many nights, more often, forever and ever. The Nightlife Preservation Community... is something that exists, and it was launched by the NY Nightlife Association on Monday. It's here to help you go out more often, stay out later, and age quicker—like Chloe Sevigny over there.

We've got to admit, when we heard that residents near the Thomspon LES Hotel were vehemently complaining about the noise from the hotel's new rooftop patios, we wondered if maybe they weren't overreacting just a tiny bit, considering that they choose to live in a part of Manhattan not exactly known as an oasis of tranquility. But good grief, check out this recent Thompson LES pool party, documented by a neighbor who should be credited for shooting video, not bullets.

Four intoxicated revelers tried to stay out of harm's way by taking a taxi home from the Southampton nightclub Pink Elephant early Monday morning, but their cab's collision with a teenage drunk driver landed them all in the hospital anyway—two of them in critical condition. Police say the cab driver took an illegal left turn into a convenience store parking lot around 4:20 a.m., and was struck on the passenger side by 18-year-old Ryan Rozynski, who survived the crash with minor injuries and is being charged with DWI. Not so lucky is 33-year-old Brian Cano of Jersey City; the impact threw him from the taxi and he wound up with a 12-inch gash on his head. Phil Ward of Manhattan and another unidentified passenger are both still in critical condition at Stony Brook hospital. According to Newsday, one woman was thrown through the windshield. And the Post reports that it was quite a dangerous Memorial Day weekend out in the Hamptons, with two drug overdoses, 5-10 alcohol poisonings, and a fatal stabbing during a brawl at a Hampton Bays diner.

              

The Village Voice OBIE awards are always a raucous affair; a sort of debauched downtown theater raspberry to counter the Tonys' mainstream proceedings. And because the OBIEs call attention to risk-taking, less-famous artists who succeed despite severely limited budgets, they're arguably much more vital to the theater world—at least, the part of that world that consistently pushes the envelope. Last night's bacchanal—the 54th—at Webster Hall was even more festive than years' past because after the awards (see below) were handed out, the club was taken over by a risque, gender-bending after-party hosted by Michael Musto. Pole dancing, body painting and short shorts were wall-to-wall.

In the immortal words of Ween, Cinco de Mayo's on Tuesday. Which is tomorrow. It will be raining, but did a little rain stop some 4,000 Mexican soldiers from defeating almost twice as many French invaders back on May 5th, 1862? No, they vanquished their oppressors, just as we shall vanquish the temptation to stay inside watching Biggest Loser: Couples tomorrow night. Here is where you'll find us raising a glass to General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín, who we've been big fans of since we looked all this up on Wikipedia five seconds ago.

Yesterday the Times spotted a new trend: The rent party, which is when a deadbeat tenant refuses to accept that he's living beyond his means and won't move back in with his parents like a real man, so he decides to leech off his friends by inviting them to a "party" and charging them money for admission. Instead of sitting these moochers down and having a sober chat about their extravagant lifestyles, all the friends in the article play along and cough up—except for one brave woman who refused to be shaken down for the $6 charge to "party" in a New Jersey basement. But over in Williamsburg, destitute men's wear salesman Daniel Marks brags that his last rent party went so well ($400) that he'll throw one every month—at least until he bleeds everyone dry: "I don’t think I’ve tapped out my friends." If these parties really are the new craze—the concept dates back at least as far as 1920s Harlem—and this isn't just some manufactured trend article, you'll probably want to know how you can get a piece of the action. Here's an instructional video on how you can effectively make your party parasitical; it's not as easy as you think!

This year's hot new look for Spring is undoubtedly the surgical mask, and we're probably just moments away from seeing ironic, sequined twists on the timeless medical classic. To test whether New Yorkers are ready to embrace the latest must-have accoutrement, the Daily News's Edgar Sandoval took to the streets yesterday with his mask on, being sure to cough a lot (which he blamed on allergies). Reactions ranged from fearful to supportive, and in Times Square, Brooklyn's Daniel Dickie sagely observed, "With the mask, you look like you were full of germs." And last night Gothamist's Billy Parker (pictured at right) put safety first during a Mets game, eliciting countless cries of "Swine Flu!" and even a couple old school cheers of, "SARS in the house!"

Washington is all astir today at the bombshell news that Republican Senator Arlen Specter will leave the GOP and join the Democratic Party, bringing Democrats within reach of a filibuster-proof majority—if and when Al Franken is seated as Minnesota's senator. A 29-year senate veteran and the fifth-oldest senator, Specter is switching his party affiliation now so he can run in the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary.

Thanks a lot, New York Times. The gay crowd in Carroll Gardens was having a fabulous time partying it up at their regular Monday night "Fondle" party at South Brooklyn Pizza, but then the City Section had to come along write about it. Now the fuzz wants to know whether party organizers violated cabaret license regulations by enlisting musclebound guys in thongs to dance on the bar. According to Brooklyn Paper, on Monday night Captain Kenneth Corey of the 76th Precinct told the Neighborhood Association, "That [Times article] was the first I heard of it. We’re going to determine the legality of it. If they’re outside of it, then we’re going to take action." The party, which co-organizer Evan Siegel named "Fondle" only "after rejecting several others that sounded too gay," seems to have perturbed some locals in a community that's just not as Guido as it once was. 80-year-old Buddy Scotto, owner of Scotto Funeral Home, tells the Times, "We’re a lot more tolerant than we used to be. Maybe we can live with this, but we’re going to watch closely." We bet you will, honey!

                     

Last night the kilts came out for the Dressed to Kilt fashion show and charity event (benefiting the Friends of Scotland charity), hosted at M2. Hopefully this will be the only time that Sir Sean Connery, Obama Girl and Real Housewives Alex McCord are ever in the same room together, as the bold-faced names mingled with the D-listers all in the name of Scotland. While models debuted traditional kilts and fashion-forward couture, the big names also walked the runway in the appropriate plaid garb. Sadly, there were no upskirt shots of Gossip Girl's Ed Westwick, but a model gave the audience a (SFW) full frontal peak. Enjoy!

Wow, this article in the Times about the decadent brunch party scene at places like Bagatelle and Merkato 55 really makes us want to go all Helter Skelter! Try this quote on for size: A guy partying at Bagatelle who works for a large investment management firm reveals why the recession hasn't stopped revelers from dropping thousands of dollars on boozy brunch, "If you’d asked me in October, I’d say it’d be a different situation, and I don’t think I’d be here. Then the government gave us $10 billion." There's also 38-year-old Matt Sullivan, at Bagatelle for a birthday party. He concedes that "it’s obscene," but you get the sense he thinks that's a good thing: "We heard it was a hip brunch. But this is gluttony at its finest." High-five! Another party bruncher at Merkato 55 is recently laid off editorial assistant Joey Broder, who opines, "It’s like, ‘What recession? Look around. Do you see a recession?" Uh, what about the one that got you fired? LALALALA, Broder can't hear us: "By 4 p.m., the place was wall-to-wall bodies, and people were taking hits from a rosé-filled bong in the shape of a flamingo."

Following Monday night's Knicks game, Sean Combs was set to co-host a party with Kobe Bryant in honor of someone named DJ Clue's birthday...but Diddy never entered the club (M2 on West 28th Street). The NY Post reports that the rapper/entrepreneur/Vodka salesman wasn't a no-show, he was simply scared off by the NYPD's undercover gun detail set up to search every guest (those guys are always a buzz kill). They report that "a witness said he 'flipped out' when cops asked to search him and his friends." After one member of his entourage ducked back to the car, Diddy and the others "stormed off" and decided not to attend. Not suspicious at all! Especially when you already have a history of maybe opening fire in a club.

Here rookie, have a machine gun. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly is making sure 1,000 rookie police officers assigned to Times Square on New Year's Eve are ready to rock with M4 automatic machine guns. Recruits at the academy will get three days of training to familiarize them with the weapon, which until now had only been used by officers in the NYPD's elite Emergency Service Unit. The New York Post exclusive is a bit vague on whether the cops will be given the machine guns during the festivities or if they'll only be armed in the event of a Mumbai-inspired massacre. Either way, isn't it a comfort to know that Ryan Seacrest, Taylor Swift, and The Jonas Brothers could all go down simultaneously in a blaze of Barney Fife automatic gunfire? (You know Dick Clark isn't sweating it; that dude's like the Highlander.)

It was around 3:30 a.m. on Halloween when Bill Murray surfaced at Dave Summers's loft party in East Williamsburg. The 58-year-old Garfield star—who had never met the 29-year-old Summers—had been party-hopping with indie darlings MGMT after their show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, and wound up staying at the loft until one sanctimonious hipster finally told him, "I think you're making bad life choices." Murray's wife of 11 years divorced him last May, and Page Six Magazine has strung together a number of Bill Murray sightings at random parties and lame bars in NYC, where he sometimes talks to young women!

Did you hear? The office party's been cut from the budget, according to a poll by FreshDirect & BizBash. This means that drunken coworker makeout, drunken coworker karaoke, and drunken telling your boss off will also be down to an all time low. Just how low? More than 65% of New York businesses are eliminating or scaling back on holiday parties this year, according to the survey of more than 200 event professionals in New York City. Of course, FreshDirect also has a solution to the problem: use their "At The Office" service to cut down on costs and party it up in your cubicles! Last month a catering company told ABC News that the drop-off in business is the worst it's been since post-9/11 2001. Oh well, take a break and watch a clip from The Office's season 3 Christmas special.

             

This is Greenhouse, a new 6,000 square foot, bi-level club that opened last week in Soho in the former Club Shelter space. As the name suggests, they're working the eco-friendly angle here with (deep breath) high-efficiency heating, an LED lighting system, fabrics made from recycled materials, bamboo floor and wall coverings, and furniture made with FSC wood. Owner Jon Bakhshi, who is applying for

Get shut out of the big inaugural party? PolitickerNY is reporting that "City Councilman Eric Gioia wants Jumbotrons erected in Central Park for all those New Yorkers who can’t score a ticket or get to Washington D.C. to celebrate Barack Obama’s inauguration in January." In order to make the party happen, private funding would need to come in to play, but Gioia seems determined, saying that “New York has a history of celebrating great human achievement." He also added a comment about his venue choice, saying, “If it’s good enough for Bon Jovi, it should be good enough for the inauguration.” If it happens, hopefully the private funds will also cover some heat lamps.

     

The artsy technology geeks at Eyebeam really outdid themselves with last night's sold-out "MIXER Underground" by turning their warehouse-size Chelsea space into an elaborate labyrinth and rock club. The place was swarming with giddy artists who must have spent weeks building their massive DIY creation, and the enthusiasm was contagious, evoking the spirit of the old Rubulad parties when they started in pre-gentrified South Williamsburg. There was a robotic bartender hidden away behind a fake closet, and the maze itself was filled with video installations, living sculptures, human rats, and electronic insects. On a high stage at the far end of the room, Roxy Cottontail and Judi Chicago churned out frenetic dance music, and vendors roamed the crowd with coolers of cheap beer. What more could you ask for? (Actually, some hash brownies would have been nice.) The parties are thrown quarterly, so check their website again in the winter if you want in.

While some revelers in the East Village were celebrating Tuesday night by dancing on top of buses, Obama supporters at Soda Bar in Prospect Heights were getting all naked for change. Well, for Spencer Tunick, famed photographer of naked mobs. According to Daily Intel, "just when CNN was getting ready to call Ohio, a waitress turned off the volume, stood on a chair and made a surprising announcement: 'You thought you were here for an election-night party, but really you are here for a naked party!'" How come the parties we go to never feature such announcements? In this case, some guests were more willing than others, with Intel reporting that a Hasidic man with long sideburns and beard was surprisingly eager to strip down to his yarmulke. Good for him—we're just glad Tunick wasn't photographing a naked McCain party.