Earlier this morning, a tractor trailer overturned on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The tractor trailer's cargo - an assortment of live chickens - spilled onto the highway and broke open, leaving crews to chase a lot of fowl for hours during clean-up (a worker estimated there were 500!). It's unclear whether all the chickens were retrieved, so if you live near Flushing Avenue and see a feathered friend more suited to a coop than a......

The serenader of the 50 states, Sufjan Stevens, grew his midwestern roots and reached New York in the late 90s -- where he has resided since. So it's only fitting a tribute to our state has arrived, after nearly a decade of soaking up the city. And perhaps separating himself from the rest of the city, he's found something special in the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. As announced this summer, Sufjan's latest muse is none other than......

Bright Eyes Shows Off His Friends Okay Conor, we get it: you have cool friends. This week, during the Bright Eyes 7-night run at Town Hall, the band promised a special guest each night. So far he's brought out the likes of Lou Reed, Steve Earle, Jenny Lewis, Norah Jones and Ben Kweller. Each played a few songs of their own mid set before joining in jamming with the rest of the group. On the......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a double shooting on St. Johns Pl. in Brooklyn, a collapse on Grant Ave. in the Bronx, and a barricaded emotionally disturbed person on 102nd St. in Queens. Like Robert Moses in reverse, Mayor Bloomberg wants highways to give way to housing by covering roads like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, as well as rail yards, and constructing housing above them. New York's own Big Dig? Ricki Lake's documentary, which is......

A terrible aftermath to Representative Joseph Crowley's holiday party. His staffer Eileen Gillepsie was driving with best friend and former staffer Peggy Bartichek afterwards, and Gillepsie drove down the wrong way on a Queens street. Her car was hit by a town car and "slammed" into a parked truck. From the NY Times:They were headed home about 12:50 a.m. yesterday, the police said, when Ms. Gillespie, heading south on 69th Street in Elmhurst, failed to......

Another city worker died today: Twenty five year old sanitation worker Michael Occhino was driving a sanitation truck on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway early this morning when it overturned and broke through a guardrail, throwing Occhino over the railing and onto the ground. The truck remained dangling over the side of the BQE above Furman Street in Brooklyn Heights for hours. Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said, "He encountered a slick roadway. No doubt that he......

Yesterday's tanker fire on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway caused huge problems along the artery, and roads were mostly reopened by this morning. The truck, carrying 8,000 gallons of diesel fuel, seemd to have tipped over and immediately burst into flames. The huge fire could be seen for a distance, and the immediate area was evacuated. Luckily, no one was hurt and the driver was only "slightly hurt." Tthe NYPD says some people noticed the truck lose......

What happens when 8,000 gallons of fuel explodes on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway? Well, there's a huge fire and tons of traffic, both car and subway, is diverted, as a tanker crashed on the BQE around noon today. Luckily, the driver managed to get out of the truck and no one was hurt. WNBC reports "part of a temporary overpass apparently fell on top of the truck," causing the fire. Yikes - we wonder if the......

Yesterday, we were admiring the NY Times' interactive map for a possible transit strike. It takes a Google map of New York City and information about HOV lanes, car pool pickups, and taxi zones Now, they've added another component: You can email your commuting story with your starting zip code and somehow they'll add it in. Go, go map fun! Gothamist wants to know your commuting stories - you can enter our "Most Inconvenient......

After what they claim was a four-month investigation, the Daily News today starts a three-part series on "how real-life Tony Sopranos and mobbed-up contractors steal your tax dollars, put workers' lives in danger and even screw up traffic at rush hour." And actually it's pretty interesting. Today's installment focuses on the $138 million Brooklyn-Queens Expressway repair and on a bridge in I-95. The two projects combined add up to a vast amount of money slipping......

Gothamist loves the NY Times article about the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge New York Region > A Bridge Too Fat" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/nyregion/18bridge.html">being too fat, because for a moment, we thought, "Hey, that's not nice, calling a bridge fat!" But then it was actually an interesting (and a little scary) look at how the suspension bridge is being re-engineered, with new technology and materials, to make sure it can support the traffic in the future. For instance, Robert Moses......

That Marty Markowitz - he's always coming up with some new and crazy idea. Like signs at Brooklyn's exit points that say, "Leaving Brooklyn...Fuhgeddaboutit." The NY Post reveals the wacky Brooklyn borough president's thinking - "Once you enter Brooklyn, there's no good reason why you should ever leave" - and goes on to point out that many Brooklynites (and sports teams) do leave in fact, and it's possible that one in four Americans has roots......

Dateline, Hong Kong One of the main differences between New York and Hong Kong is the low pedestrian friendliness. The public transportation is great (see my tram thoughts from 12/26/2002), with extensive train service, trams, and many different kinds of buses linking Hong Kong. Walking outside is another issue. Hong Kong's streets are teeming with cars, taxis, buses, and trams, leaving pedestrian crossing like you're in an actual game of Frogger. The main streets of......