Results tagged “qtrain”

    

A tipster spotted this truck stuck under the Q train subway station on Avenue J in Midwood this morning around 8:45 a.m. We're told "the truck was all crumpled and the fire department had to come out." We're guessing at this point they're just waiting for a giant stick of butter.

An off-duty firefighter got called into action Friday night when he ended up pulling a Wes Autrey and jumping down on the tracks to rescue a man who had fainted and was laying unconscious on the tracks just as an uptown Q train began pulling into the Union Square station. 30-year-old Adam Rivera, originally of Bay Ridge, had been out in the East Village getting Indian food with his girlfriend to celebrate their seventh anniversary. The couple was heading home to the Upper West Side when Rivera spotted 45-year-old Marco Delamo on the tracks. The firefighter out of Engine 10 in lower Manhattan told reporters, "People were panicking, but nobody was doing anything...I thought to myself, 'This is my job — I'm a New York City firefighter, and I have to do something...There was no time to be afraid. You can't waste time hesitating. You just move, and the thinking stops...Being right there in a position to help — that's why I joined the department." Rivera and two other men lifted Delamo to the platform before he was taken to St. Vincent's intensive care with head injuries.

If the MTA's service cuts announced earlier this week do in fact go into effect, 1.3 million New Yorkers will be affected by the changes. During the press conference Thursday, MTA heads Elliot Sander and Dale Hemmerdinger encouraged straphangers to contact their reps in Albany as a last resort to bail out their 1.2 billion deficit. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver must have heard the call because yesterday he suggested a tax to help alleviate the burden on the MTA saying, "I am not afraid of a reasonable, responsible tax being part of the solution." The only additional good news following the announcement of cuts is that with the W train gone, plans are to extend the Q to Astoria.

Stand clear of the platform edge and then some: A 14-year-old boy fell into the tracks at the Kings Highway subway station when the platform partially collapsed. Avi Katz was able to get away before the approaching Q train made it into the station.

Hassan Askari, the Muslim college student who intervened in a violent subway attack against a group of Jewish riders, was honored at City Hall yesterday. The fight allegedly started when some thugs boarded a Q train yelling "Merry Christmas", prompting one of the Jewish riders to respond with a "Happy Hanukkah." Fisticuffs ensued, with one of the non-Jewish attackers shouting, "Happy Hanukkah, that's when the Jews killed Jesus!" One of the goons is also said to have exposed his tattoo of Jesus before the fight, because you know how Jesus was all about beating Jews.

One of the ten suspects arrested in the Q train beating of a Jewish man during Hanukkah is saying that hate crime charges are completely uncalled for because he himself is Jewish. Joseph Jirovec Jr. was arrested two weeks ago after a group of Hanukkah revelers was beaten while on a the Q train after wishing happy holidays to other riders. Members of a crowd on the train took objection to the Jewish greetings and a beatdown ensued. In an encouraging twist, it was a young Muslim man who came to Walter Adler's aid. Hassan Askari was recently honored for his interfaith Good Samaritanism.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian was struck on Wythe and Metropolitan Ave. in Brooklyn, an overturned police car on Gun Hill Rd. in the Bronx, and a bank robbery on Austin Rd. in Queens.
• Joseph Jirovec, one of the teenagers accused of the Hannukah Q train hate crime, says that he and his friends were the victims. He said the fight began only after a racial slur was directed at one of his party and a knife was brandished towards them.
• A commission established by Gov. Spitzer is recommending that the SUNY system of public universities in New York be allowed to vary tuition from school to school and raise tuitions without authorization from the state legislature.
• A commercial laundry worker found a discarded fetus among bed sheets collected from a Brooklyn hospital.
• The father of a teenager testified that he didn't mean to shoot another young man when he pulled a gun on him at his home, but that he was attempting to protect his son and the gun went off when the other man tried to grab it from him.
• A 59-year-old Queens woman got her hair cut for the first time in 45 years.
• The MTA is increasing the frequency of service on the L train over the weekends starting tomorrow. Expanded weekday service on the 7 train is scheduled to begin Monday.
• Why don't pregnant women tip over? The Times reports.

Joseph Jirovec and Kimberly Babajko are two of ten people arrested in an attack that was initiated by a friendly greeting of "Happy Channukah!" aboard a Q train in Brooklyn last week. Both Jirovec and Babajko have criminal records for assaulting minorities and could face hate crime charges in their latest brush with justice. Both are scheduled to appear in Brooklyn Criminal Court today for the vicious beating they allegedly administered to Walter Adler, who was on his way home from a holiday dinner. Adler and his girlfriend were spared further injury when a complete stranger, Hassan Askari, intervened at his own physical expense. The young Muslim man was beaten alongside Adler.

A woman shoved into the Brooklyn-bound Q train tracks at Union Square was saved by two bystanders on Monday night. Suzanne Trotman only suffered bruises as she was pulled from the tracks less than a minute before a train pulled in. Two people, a man and a woman, jumped into the tracks to help Trotman out. Trotman told the Post she 'got up really quickly," adding, "Good thing I didn't get knocked out... I kept...

The story around the possible hate crime attack on a Q train the other night seems to be made for the season. Not only does it come while subway violence is a big topic, it also involves a group of Jewish subway riders being called "dirty Jews" and "Jew bitches" and attacked by people who cried, "Happy Hanukkah, that's when the Jews killed Jesus." And here's the kicker: The only person who stepped in...

Police are investigating an attack on a Brooklyn-bound Q train as a possible hate crime. A group of people (WNBC says they were on their way home from Hanukkah celebrations) were called anti-Semitic phrases and then beaten up by another group of ten people at Canal Street. The Post has some more details: Apparently one of the attackers "made anti-Semitic remarks about Jews killing Jesus, saying, 'This is a Christian country.'" But the father of...

A Brooklyn family is mourning the death of 44-year-old Anthony Senisi Jr., after he was stabbed on the way home from buying some milk Saturday night. Senisi was attacked at Brighton Sixth Street and Brighton Fourth Terrace, near his apartment building. He walked home and collapsed in his 77-year-old father's arms, saying, "Daddy, call the police, someone hit me."

Yesterday evening, a 19-year-old was fatally shot on a northbound Q train. According to witnesses, Trevell Belton was shot as the train pulled into the Avenue U stop. Belton collapsed on the platform, while the shooter and his friend ran away.

We were fortunate enough to be at the Time Out New York Eat Out Awards last night to watch the winners of both the Readers' Choice awards, chosen by readers who made over 14,000 submissions, and the Critics' Picks awards, selected by the TONY staff. The coveted plates hang on restaurant and bar walls throughout the city.

It's opening day on Coney Island's boardwalk and there's still time to hop on a D,F,N, or Q train to Stillwell Avenue before things get started. 11 a.m. marks the Blessing of the Rides at Deno's Wonder Wheel with a ribbon cutting and live music. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz will break the ceremonial egg cream at 11:30 a.m. to open the rides and the first 100 people on the Cyclone get to ride free. The Coney Island Polar Bears will serve as a chorus at 2:30 p.m. in a live performance of an original piece of music titled "Save Coney Island." Theater lovers may want to drop by the Coney Island Museum at 5 p.m. for an adaptation of Herman Melville's "The Confidence Man" (tickets $10). And 12th St. and Surf Ave. is the place to be at 6 p.m. for the 2nd Annual Band Organ Rally. Full details are available at ConeyIsland.com.

A 20-year veteran transit worker was clipped by a Q train yesterday around noon. Fifty-five year old Yakov Tesenter was near the Avenue U stop in Brooklyn on the Q. He was part of a team inspecting switches for repair, when he somehow got separated from the group. amNY reports that investigators are looking into whether the "flag man, who alerts oncoming trains that work crews are present," was at his post.

Some good news for N and Q train riders: The snazzy new R160 trains successfully completed its 30 day test period. NY1 reports that an entire order of 700 new trains will be on the N and Q lines by the end of 2007. As for the R and W lines, you'll still have the groddy trains.

Tales of voodoo and secret families are coming to light as police investigate the tragic drowning deaths of two Staten Island children, apparently at the hands of their father who then threw himself in front of a subway. After working a 3pm-11pm shift at a nursing home, Francoise Mercier found her 5 year old son and 2 year old son dead in a bathtub in their Daniel Low Terrace apartment at 11:40pm. A few hours earlier, her companion, Frantz Bordes, had thrown himself in front of a Q train at Church Avenue and was decapitated. Police found a suicide note on Bordes and more suicide notes at home, with Bordes claiming Mercier's family was using voodoo on him. Bordes' brother said that Mercier's mother used voodoo to cause his headaches, while Mercier's brother said that was untrue and that Bordes had threatened to kill the children before.

A strange and sad case is unraveling in Staten Island. A mother returned home to find her 5 year old son and 2 year old daughter dead in a dry bathtub. Their father had been in charge of watching the children while the mother worked at a nursing home. And this morning, the Staten Island Advance reports that the husband killed himself by jumping in front of a northbound Q train in Manhattan Brooklyn.

Hello and welcome to New York City. Today I'd like to introduce you to one of our city's crown jewels: the subway. A glorious municipal means of transport the subway and its siblings the bus and the ferry, can take you almost everywhere in Gotham. Literally from the canyons of Wall Street to the beaches of Rockaway all for the low, low price of $2.00 - even lower if you ride enough and purchase an unlimited Metrocard!

We've heard about people getting ticketed for putting their bags on subway seats, but this one's even zanier. From the Gothamist mailbag:

Last night I was riding the R train back to Brooklyn after a night out. I was minding my own business listening to my ipod when the train stopped at Atlantic. A cop came in and asked me to step out side the train. He asked me if I knew why he asked me to get off and I of course said "No." Apparently he noticed that I had a foot on the seat in front of me. (Another cop had asked another passenger in the same car to get off for the sam reason.) After taking a few minutes to show us where in the rule pamphlet it says that it is a violation to put your feet on the seat, he proceeded to write me a ticket! For $50!

Continue reading "Put Your Foot Down (or Cough Up Fifty Bucks)"

Figuring out how to get where you are going, without driving, in a city with as many options as our own can be a chore. After very little time in the city your average New Yorker (imported or native) normally has a pretty good grasp of their basic routes but beyond that things can quickly get hazy. Enter the internet. Just like Mapquest and Google Maps simplified driving directions, the past two years has seen a cottage industry of municipal directions services pop up. The Times today takes a look at three of them, two of which we'd, tellingly, never heard of: HopStop, Trips123 and PublicRoutes.

"One doubles," a lady in line was ordering at the counter of Ali's Roti Shop. Is this some sort of code language that only Caribbeans know? How can you have just one doubles? It turns out that doubles is the essential snack food of Trinidad, and doubles is/are delicious. It starts with a small biscuit-sized disk of fried bread that is slathered with a thick chickpea curry and then topped with another round of bread. This finger sandwich of sorts may sound like a vegetarian dainty, but it packs a wallop. Especially if you ask for the hot sauce, and you should. The turmeric-colored bread is as soft and comforting as a pillow, and at first you might think you're taking a bite out of the Pillsbury dough boy. Then you hit the warming, earthy chickpea mixture, spiked with tamarind, cilantro, and cumin.

The Federal Transit Administration has approved the first part of the Second Avenue subway, and the Post reports that it means the MTA can start using $1.3 billion (of the $5 billion it'll take to create the 63rd to 96th Streets part; $13 billion for an entire East Harlem to downtown Manhattan) for design and engineering. The quote the Post has from Representative Carolyn Maloney is "The wheels are turning on the Second Avenue subway project, that's for sure. This is another sign of the progress we're making," but Gothamist has to say the wheels are very, very slow - public hearings for the Second Avenue subway began back in 2003 (okay, we're impatient). We really doubt the 63rd-96th Street part will be done by 2012, as hoped, but what's cool is that the Q train will be connected to what we think may be the T line at 72nd, 86th and 96th Streets. In the end, the Second Avenue subway will be a good, if semi-Quoixotic experience - it'll make things like the 4/5 construction issues easier to bear, even if we'll be wearing orthopedic shoes by the time it's ready.

- And some people do get to bear arms in the subway

- Guess what? With more police officers in the subways, crime goes down. At least crime like smoking, drinking alcohol, and turnstile jumping is done, as some new NYPD stats say that the number of summons issued was down 18% versus 2004 - even in spite of the new rules of conduct (but the MTA did collect more in fines).

Our question about issues on the N/Q line that led to delays for N/Q/R/W trains yesterday morning - and cryptic MTA announcements about a "sick passenger" and then "a sick passenger" plus "a police investigation" - was answered in an unexpected way by the NY Times: It turns out that a man was found dead on a Q train at 7:11AM. Yikes. Police believe that Eugene Reilly, a postal handler who was coming from night the 4PM-12:30AM shift at the Ninth Avenue Processing Center, died sometime after boarding a Q train around 1AM to go back home to Brooklyn. The NY Times says that Reilly may have been dead for hours before being found yesterday morning since the ride to his home in Midwood takes about 35 minutes - and that he "could have traveled back and forth on the line six times before someone realized he had died." Oh, dear. People do fall asleep on the train - and when we see someone sleeping, we don't think, "Is he dead?" - we just think, "Well, he might miss his stop." Gothamist wonders how people determined that he was dead - perhaps he was in a train car with the conductor who noticed he'd been there for a while? The NY Times says that Reilly was overweight and did have heart issue; and then there was this heartbreaking quote from his wife: "I didn't even get to say goodbye to him."

The Daily Heights rings in with the first report of subway masturbation-- the alleged perp is pictured here in all his blurry glory. Bonus points for the shearling jacket!

- New Yorkers for Parks continue to give away free daffodils tomorrow.