David Blaine couldn't pull a cab out of his bag of tricks last week when his pregnant fiancée, Alizee Guinochet, went into labor during the latest blizzard. According to the NY Post, "the doorman and people on the street tried to help him flag down a taxi. But there were absolutely no cars on the road," and not a car service in town would pick the couple up. But it turns out Blaine had luck on his side, and a plow owned by a private contractor came around the corner and picked them up. The couple welcomed a baby girl, whose name they have not yet released, but... what would the baby version of Mr. Plow be? more ›

Bloomberg has yet to issue a statement about Tuesday evening's/Wednesday morning's forecast of snow, which means everybody panic! CBS AccuWeather Meteorologist John Feerick says we will get several inches of "plowable snow fall," but if we've learned anything from the last storm it's that no amount of snow is too much to not plow. Perhaps the city will continue their overpreparedness, but for now we're stocking up on canned goods and waiting for the springtime thaw. more ›

Excuse our sarcastic quotation marks, because even if this is true it's almost too ridiculous. The Sanitation Department is saying, over a week after Blizzageddon paralyzed NYC, that there was a massive "equipment glitch" that caused many of the plows to fail. And what was that glitch, you ask? A "tripping mechanism" that caused the plows to stop if they hit something, like a giant pile of snow. more ›

Tipster Kara in Astoria sent us the above picture, with this note about the state of the snow removal in her neighborhood: "7 days after the storm, they keep sending trucks to scrape the bare street. Trying to overcompensate?" Reports about the disparities in snow plow response rates between Manhattan and the outer boroughs showed that Brooklyn and Queens streets were widely neglected. And with Mayor Bloomberg and his administration getting flack from every direction for their handling of the blizzard, it's not too hard to imagine Bloomberg exasperatedly saying, "here are your damn plows people, what more do you want?" more ›

Just about everyone has been congratulating piling on Mayor Bloomberg and his administration for their excellent job cleaning the streets post-blizzageddon. But the Mayor didn't truly hit bottom until this Post lede today: "If Mayor Bloomberg had taken a page from Rudy Giuliani's snowstorm playbook of 1996, he might not be getting pilloried for blowing the blizzard of 2010." At least now there's nowhere to go but up? more ›

The Department of Investigation began a probe this week into allegations that Sanitation workers purposefully staged a slowdown during the Blizzard clean-up as revenge for department budget cuts. There have already been reports that Sanitation bosses purposefully targeted certain well-heeled neighborhoods, such as Borough Park, to "gin up the p.r. machine," and that Sanitation workers were instructed to use a variety of tactics to stall the clean-up process. And what were some of those tactics? Getting plastered, or calling in "sick." more ›

Officials have begun looking into allegations that Sanitation workers purposefully conducted a massive slowdown during the Blizzard clean-up as revenge for budget cuts, endangering lives and leaving streets unplowed for days. But not every Mr. and Mrs. Plow out there was doing something underhanded—some were truly risking their lives. Plow drivers Adir Aires and John Ribero were robbed at gunpoint on Sunday night after their plow got stuck in the parking lot of a Newark housing project. "The next thing, I know, I got a gun in my face. Two of them had guns. We gave our cell phones and wallets, and they just walked away back into the projects," said Aires. He told reporters he wasn't scared at the time, but mad: "Here we were working to clean out their place. And they rob us! It was crazy." more ›

As we've sorted through the wreckage of the last couple marshmallowy days, blame has been shuffled, Tony Soprano and Corey Booker emerged as heroes, and at least two teens got wasted. But seeing as how everything was supposed to be cleared by 7 a.m. this morning, maybe it's time to debate: which borough got hit the worst? more ›

Yesterday, allegations were bandied about that the city's Sanitation Department conducted a massive slowdown during the Blizzard clean-up as revenge for budget cuts. Today, many of those allegations are being reported as true: City Councilman Dan Halloran claims that a group of guilty Sanitation workers confessed the whole slowdown scheme to him. "They were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file," Halloran told the Post. more ›

The tabloids went and caught up with the guy who shot yesterday's video of a truck towing a plow into an SUV. They also got a few words in with the man whose city-owned SUV was smashed. A day later, everybody seems to have calmed down a bit. more ›

To clear snow from outdoor subway lines during this week's winter storm, the MTA brought out the heavy artillery: A five-car diesel train outfitted with a high-powered snow blower than can launch snow as far as 200 feet from tracks. Using a six-foot cylindrical brush, the train sweeps snow into a metal tube and hurls it out of a chute so it doesn't block the tracks, according to the Daily News. "It's like your household snow blower but a million times bigger," said agency engineer Edward Macina. more ›

Chances are you're not trying to ride your bike anywhere today in this mess, but anyone who's tried to pedal over the bridges connecting Brooklyn with Manhattan this week was in for a treacherous trip, because the city has yet to adequately plow or salt the bike and pedestrian paths. As of last night, much of the Williamsburg Bridge path (pictured) remained impassible on two wheels, and commenters on Streetsblog say both the Manhattan Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge remained unsalted and icy. more ›