Seeing as how it takes the Parks Dept. 3 to 5 years to deal with tree problems, it's unlikely that Bay Ridge resident Richard Mahany will get the gingko tree that's stinking up his neighborhood removed any time soon. The Brooklyn Paper reports that the man is angry that the tree "dumps its foul-smelling fruit on the sidewalk in front of his 78th Street home."
Yesterday morning, the decomposing body of a Vietnam War veteran was found in his Brooklyn apartment—apparently after months of neighbors' complaints about a foul smell. However, WABC 7 reports, the body of 60-year-old James Gales was only discovered because "A man who just happens happens to work the for the medical examiners officer, according neighbors, saw the apartment window open. When he passed the opened window, he apparently knew immediately that there was a dead body inside."
When we announced that Burger King had entered the fragrance business with BK FLAME™ – the new men's body spray promising "the scent of seduction with the hint of flame-broiled meat" – your reactions ranged from "I prefer my men to smell like White Castle" to "I want!" But one blogger was bold enough to actually purchase the FLAME™ at Ricky's during his lunch hour and apply it directly to his bare flesh back at the office. The result was predictably revolting: "Everyone gathered around began coughing. And therein lies the horrible secret of Flame: it’s not burger-scented...Try as I might, I could not smell anything related to meat. If you want to know what a Burger King smells like when it’s burning down in a horrible grease fire, though, this is probably as close as you get to the real thing. The acrid, eye-watering scent will not attract anything to you. Even my dog would start choking if it licked this off my wrist...If this is what The King smells like then I don’t want him anywhere near me."
The fourth New York City location of The Palm restaurant opened on Friday in Tribeca. This outpost is located in a luxury condo on 200 Chambers Street, and some residents there are none too thrilled about their proximity to the popular steakhouse. One gripes on the Wired New York board: "The Palm Restaurant is ruining my life...The entire lobby smells of the exhaust of the Palm Restaurant. Also certain hallways in the building and interiors of apts are also complaining about the smell."
As part of a $300-million cleanup, for the next two years the city will shut down the flushing tunnel that pumps water from the Buttermilk Channel through a sewage-filled sluice into the Gowanus canal. The tunnel has to be deactivated so the underwater propeller, located at the head of the canal, can be replaced by three smaller pumps. Now there's concern the next couple years will be very noxious for Gowanus residents, as untreated waste that floods the canal during heavy storms lingers undiluted. The Brooklyn Paper, evoking that Reagen-era Massengill disposable douche commercial, worries "the dirty duct" won't have "that just flushed feeling." So in the meantime, locals may want to stick to mouth-breathing and focus on 2013, when the DEP promises a Gowanus utopia of kayaking, condos, and 34 percent less raw effluence poured into canal per year!
Unfortunately, there are no clear answers, but a number of hypotheses were posed to the NY Post. They include rotting fish (ghosts of the Fulton Fish Market?), bodies from the Bodies Exhibit, illegal dumping, the NYC Waterfalls--and the smells reek like "dead rat," "stinky cheese" and "raw sewage." Mmm, and naturally that hurts some restaurants in the neighborhood. A smell scientist put his olfactory nerves to the test and told the Post, "Yes that is fish. But it's also yeasty, like bread." Like Subway's bread?
While columnists, TV commentators and many others are falling over themselves to bid Yankee Stadium a respectful, sentimental good-bye, players were a little more honest when asked what they wouldn't miss about the house that Ruth built.
Could Apple be planting a seed on a location near Lincoln Center? The Meatpacking district Apple store still has that new-store smell as Apple fever extends north. According to the Post, Apple is looking to take over space at the northwest corner of Broadway and West 67th, where there's currently a two-story Victoria's Secret store.
The gas main explosion that rocked a home on 48th Ave. and 41st. St. Wedneday––killing one woman and injuring six others––occurred despite what ConEd and FDNY say was them following proper procedures preceding the incident. Kunta Oza, who died at the age of 69, was burned over 90% of her body. In addition to the six others injured in the explosion, 200 people were evacuated from the block until it was deemed safe to return....
The 69-year-old woman who was burned over 90% of her body in a gas explosion in her Sunnyside home died yesterday. City Councilman Eric Gioia said, "It is with great regret and sadness that I announce the passing of Kunta Oza. My deepest condolences go out to her entire family, and I ask that all New Yorkers keep them in their Thanksgiving prayers." On Wednesday afternoon, calls were made to 911 about a gas smell...
Yesterday afternoon, a gas explosion in a Sunnyside home burned a 67-year-old woman over 90% of her body. Six other people were also injured, as over 200 people needed to be evacuated and over a hundred firefighters responded. Kunta Oza, who lives in a three-story at 41st Street and 48th Avenue, is at New York Hospital Burn Center in critical condition. WNBC reports that she "sent her grandchildren outside as a precaution. The move might...
While the maple syrup smell remains a two-year-old mystery to us, 30 Rock entered the fray with a hypothesis. On last night's episode, Liz Lemon, who smells waffles from her Upper West Side apartment, calls Tracy Jordan to remind him to practice his Re-Run dance for the What's Happening! sketch. But Tracy, in his NJ home, says that the smell of waffles is distracting him. Then Liz gets another call - it's Jack Donaghy,...
A few readers let us know that they smelled the sickly sweet smell of a maple syrup-like substance last evening. Now, this brings back a flood of memories from 2005, when a maple syrup smell blanketed much of Manhattan. The smell, which has made return visits in early December 2005 aJanuary 2006, March 2006 and November 2006, leading us to believe this is a cold weather phenomena. One reader noted that it was detected around...
Last week demolition was underway at the former CBGB. At the time Racked put their money on a Duane Reade taking over the space, but today The Post reports that John Varvados will be opening a chic boutique in the old punk rock palace. With his eye on a Spring opening, it's unclear how much of the 13,000 square feet will be taken over by the designer.
Clutched like a shot put by a chef in Le Cirque's kitchen, here’s a photo we took of that $7000 truffle that has been making the news this week- it even landed in the Daily News' gossip pages. In true Page 6 style, we became ad hoc truffle paparazzi Tuesday night in an effort to score a candid of the truffle at the restaurant. Armed with our crummy digital camera and generally warded off by Le Cirque valets, we knew the moment had arrived when the delivery car pulled up: From 5 yards away, the October air literally filled with the smell of truffles as the car doors opened.
Michael Dory is expanding the definition of graffiti, with his non-visual sonic street art (presented last month at Conflux). His inconspicuous concrete crickets (pictured) recently got some NPR and Boing Boing love, and his own site explains:
Graffiti is one of the most powerful and most personal displays in the urban experience, and can be used to make statements, tag territory, spread messages — urban markup language in practice. However, the output is nearly always visual in nature, making this experience one-dimensional. Furthermore, rarely does the work have a brain of its own, and is usually incapable of reacting to anybody observing it.Continue reading "Concrete Crickets Are Amongst Us"
THEATER: Noah Diamond has worked as a licensed tour guide on all the major double decker bus lines in town, presenting his spoken word elucidation of New York in a near-continuous loop – ten hours a day for seven years. But when he finally quit the business, he found he could not stop guiding: “You wake up screaming, I'm not a tour guide! Then you do ten minutes on the General Slocum and go back to sleep.” He’s now found a way to recover, by performing a one man multimedia virtual tour of New York. 400 Years in Manhattan is a theatrical journey that takes not just one loop around town but rolls through four centuries of city history. - John Del Signore
The Fire Department believes a bad connection from the gas line to the stove, not a gas leak, caused the explosion that caused a flash fire at 10 West 119th Street in Harlem on Saturday. Several people were injured, including four children and their mother who lived in the apartment.
In the shadows of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, residents of Greenpoint will soon be able to go on a nature walk. The Department of Environmental Protection, which operates the sewage plant, is officially opening the Newtown Creek Nature Walk this Saturday. The 800-foot nature walk along Newtown Creek, which took 9-years and $3.2 million to complete, is landscaped and features access points to the polluted creek.
On tap for this year’s 33rd Annual Atlantic Antic festival, taking this Sunday from 10 AM to 6 PM (rain or shine, buddy) is the usual bonanza of pony rides, live music, and balloon animals. This year’s Antic has an added emphasis on food, which should hopefully make it a remedy to all the street fair food fatigue that’s been going around recently.
neighbors called 311 to complain.
Following complaints that a persistent odor was permeating the Hunts Point neighborhood in the Bronx and nauseating residents, the Department of Environmental Protection hired an outside consulting firm to sniff around the borough and see what it could discover. According to the New York Post, smell inspectors were dispatched throughout the south Bronx with cellphones to take calls directly from residents calling an odor hotline. They discovered that a lot of different things smell very bad all over the borough. The Post identifies the potpourri as bad B.O., or Bronx Odor.
We love this week’s NY Mag article by “locavore” Manny Howard, who planted a farm in his 800 square foot Brooklyn backyard. He grew vegetables and raised both rabbits and chickens, with the goal of using what he raised from March through July as his sole subsistence for the month of August.
BEER: This one is pretty simple...there will be lots (58!) of New York beers, and a few bands to soundtrack your drinking them, at the Seaport tonight. Go, imbibe, enjoy!
We wish we could claim this was good for you, spinach being the apotheosis of healthy food and all that, but it's really mostly made of carbs and butter. Tasty, tasty carbs and butter. This is our current favorite pasta dish. We love the way the red lentils look like jewels on the pasta, the utter gingeriness of the dish, and the burst of flavor from the spinach.
According to Wikipedia (and an unholy number of online gambling sites), the modern slot machine owes a debt to a mechanical device invented in 1880’s Brooklyn by Sittman and Pitt. This original machine had 5 internal spinning barrels, each painted with 10 different card faces. Good cards on the machine meant things like free drinks for bar customers with lucky nickels. Bad cards led only to bar customers loading more money into the machines.
If you were checking the Gothamist Newsmap yesterday, you may have noticed that there was a possible Hazmat situation at 55 Water Street in lower Manhattan. Apparently someone fell ill when opening a letter that contained an unknown substance and then other people were sickened as well!
Six years ago, the prospects for downtown Manhattan seemed uniformly bleak. A persistent fire that burned for months amidst the wreckage of the World Trade Center filled the air with an acrid smell that was a constant reminder of 9/11. Restaurants and shops shuttered for lack of business. And many firms considered moving across the river, fearing that every tower in the financial district had a virtual target painted on its facade. The New York Times has an article today, however, that not only has the area below Chambers St. recovered to 2001 levels, the neighborhoods of downtown Manhattan are thriving like they haven't in decades, if not centuries.
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
tweet this
add to facebook
