Results tagged “sheepmeadow”

Noooo! When the old sheepfold occupied by Tavern on the Green is taken over by a new operator in January, the notoriously mediocre tourist trap will lose the one thing that justified its existence: immaculately maintained public restrooms. The alternative, for the uninitiated, is the gross public restroom in Sheep Meadow, but since the '70s Tavern's facilities have served as a idyllic alternative. A spokeswoman for Tavern tells the Times, "We’ve always had the position we’re on public land, so certainly the bathrooms are open to the public." The new leaseholder, Dean J. Poll, who runs the Central Park Boathouse, isn't such a populist, but he actually spins the upcoming privatization as a thoughtful gesture for the bathroom-starved rabble: "Going past the bride or groom or people dressed to go to dinner, maybe that’s not what someone wants to do, and feels uncomfortable about it." Also, he adds, "the people in the restaurant feel uncomfortable." Good Heavens, Thurston, hoi polloi are in the powder room wearing short pantaloons! As a sop to the masses, Poll promises to construct a food concession stand outside the building with public restrooms, but nothing will ever, ever replace the satisfaction of using Tavern for its toilets.

We've been talking about the Cat Show at Madison Square Garden this weekend a lot, but don't worry, pals of pups - today is the My Dog Loves Central Park Country Fair.

With 30,000 red yardsticks on hand, New York artist Gene Schmidt is measuring the width and length of Manhattan. Each yardstick is numbered, used once, and later taken to Schmidt's studio and added to a sculpture. The pilgrimage/performance/art project, titled Manhattan Measure, was inspired by an ancient Hebrew text, but also parallels city walking "pioneers" like Mike Epstein.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an unusual sexual assault on Broadway in Brooklyn, an unstable building on Sutphin Blvd. in Queens, and a shooting on West 142nd St. and Amsterdam Ave. in Manhattan.
• Central Park's Sheep Meadow was the first park location to upgrade its wifi Internet connection to high speed. The new 15-megabits-per-second service is five times faster than the previous connection.
• Madame Tussauds wax museum in Times Square wasted no time in dressing its likeness of Lindsay Lohan in prison stripes, after the young star was arrested for drunk driving and drug posession shortly after leaving rehab.
• Former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason is in talks to fill the morning time slot on WFAN left vacant by the abrupt departure of Don Imus.
• Williamsburg! The Musical will premiere August 11th as part of the 11th Annual Fringe Festival.
• Gridskipper has a guide to NYC record stores for vinyl enthusiasts.
• Turning Long Island City into a giant sundial, with the Citibank tower as the shadow-casting spire.
• The City Council is thinking of revising its cell phones-in-schools policy, to allow kids to bring them to school, but not use them there. Schools would be required to set up cell phone storage facilities to secure the devices during the day.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a carjacking on 130th St. and 15th Ave. in Queens, an overturned auto on Spring St. and West Broadway in Manhattan, and a stabbing on Caton Ave. in Brooklyn.
• Remember when Paris Hilton forgot that she'd left her Tinkerbell with her grandma and papered her neighborhood with Lost Dog flyers? New Yorkers hire private detectives and publicists to get the job done right. A tiny dauchsund is missing.
• New York Magazine re-examines the "conceptual-Marxist street-art supervillain" daubed "The Splasher."
• We're no "law-talking guy", but find the Times' account of a police officer posing as a legitimate news outlet's reporter to lure a protester to an arrest fairly alarming.
• Roller skaters continue to boogie down in Central Park just north of the Sheep Meadow every weekend, and have been doing so since 1977. If you have never seen this in person, you must.
• A bolt out of the Jet Blue struck a plane flying into JFK yesterday and the passenger jet carrying 140 people made an emergency landing. There was no fire or injuries, but the passenger cabin was filled with the smell of ozone.
• The Daily News continues its report on Building Boondoggles, setting its sight today on disasters in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
• On Memorial Day, The New York Times examines the efforts of praiseworthy volunteers to identify and re-mark more than a thousand graves of New Yorkers who were killed during the Civil War and are now buried in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetary.

The Central Park Conservancy, the private, non-profit organization that manages the park, let us know about some new signs that will be appearing soon. It's a call to action for park goers to help out: Fifteen signs are being installed with "before" photographs showing how far the park has come since the 1970s and 1980s, with the words "What would we do without your donations?" on them. This is a rendering of the sign that'll go in front of the Belvedere Castle, which certainly doesn't look like that anymore.

Strange finding in Central Park's sheep meadow: An actual sheep, with its legs bound, was left there, only to be found on Tuesday night. The sheep is now at a farm in Connecticut (why not the Queenty County Farm?) and am New York says that the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals transported other farm animals on behalf of Animal Care & Control, including roosters and chickens (yes, it seems that annoying neighborhood roosters are sent away, not killed).

Gothamist loves city parks, and we might love sleeping even more, so we were pretty intrigued by the Times story about public "lounge chairs" in various parks in the city. Since New Yorkers are more (!) civilized (!) than (!) ever (!), the city - and the landscape architects it works with - finds it easier to put more lounge-like park outdoor furniture out there. Formerly, residents didn't even want benches, for fear of loitering people or homeless camping out, but nowadays, it's more palatable. Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe explains why these chairs will only be seen in certain parks, "When you think of a chaise longue, you think of a beach or the waterfront. It's a type of furniture that fits more into a modernist landscape than in a traditional landscape." So none in Central Park - you'll still need to bring your blankets for the Sheep Meadow. One of the chairs is this "Chill" lounge from Landscape Forms (but in blue); three are at the ferry terminal. And there are plans to put glow in the dark "sculptural lounges" at the federal plaza!

The last time Improv Everywhere had a mission they were asked to do something for the Howl Festival. A 1997 Old Timey Photobooth was then created, where passerby could take a photo with '97-specific nostalgia embedded all around.

The NYCDOH released today information about a Bronx man who injected himself with suspected contaminated heroin. He reportedly did not feel his typical euphoric state afterwards and presented to the hospital complaining of diffuse pain that progressively worsened into severe muscle spasms. He eventually was placed on a ventilator and his status remains unknown. The DOH believes that the heroin was possibly contaminated with strychnine or Clostridium tetani. Gothamist Health believes that street drugs are...well...bad. Who knows what kind of conditions in which these substances are manufactured? Obviously the FDA has no power to regulate potency, purity, and sterility in the process in even the cleanest meth labs out in Missouri. On second thought, neither does the FDA have the power to regulate any of the (air quotes) Dietary Supplements and Herbal Remedies (air quotes) we as Americans love to feed our bodies. Thanks to the Clinton Administration's failure to ensure that herbs sold to unsuspecting Americans receive strict regulation, we now must guess which grassy area of the Sheep Meadow is being sold to us as St. John's Wort (hopefully it's not the grass under the butt of that slimy dude that hit on me and my girl). So once again, please think long and hard about what you put in your body -- be it heroin or ginkgo biloba. And be smug knowing you might have to spend an arm and a leg on your herbs. The study referenced above found that the higher priced supplements also tended to be the most pure. By the way, if you are wondering what the hell that picture is, it's a painting by Sir Charles Bell of a soldier suffering muscle spasms while dying of tetanus.

Randy Kim, NBA.com

Forget spring fever - it's summer fever in the city, with the Daily News and Post giving their pick-up suggestions for New York singles. The Daily News lets women know where to pick up certain kinds of guys with 25 bars: Jocks and wanna-bes (places with TVs); young professionals (Pastis, Whisky Blue); firefighters (ale houses); alterna boys (Sweet & Vicious, Baraza); prepsters (Automatic Slims); muscle men (go outerborough). The Daily News is trying to help those girls who are not models find guys who are not looking to date models - i.e., normal girls looking for normal guys. Gothamist just wants to say, ladies, just don't run around the city clutching this list.