A real estate agent who was handling the sale of a foreclosed houes in Jamaica, Queens discovered 100 marijuana plants inside. The subprime meltdown really is hitting all corners of the city. more ›

Another pot farm bites the dust: A small fire in Queens led the Fire Department to over 200 marijuana plants growing inside a home. more ›

Responding firemen managed to get the five occupants out using ladders leading to bedroom windows and by pulling others out through the smoke-filled living room.

"We could hear people yelling for help and screaming," said Lt. Gregory Prial. more ›

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.... more ›

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... more ›

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... more ›

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,... more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›

neighbors called 311 to complain. more ›

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. more ›

The police arrested the boyfriend of a woman found murdered in a Soho apartment. The victim, Denise Deperrie, was found by her roommate on Wednesday and police immediately suspected Juan Rios, her boyfriend who had slashed her with a samurai sword in July. more ›

amNewYork's cover story, "Grand Funk Railroad," takes a look at the special scent of subway stations. Subway smells were vividly described as being "rancid excrement" or "rotting garbage and vomit." Smelly subway platforms - and trains - are nothing new, but the New York City Transit Authority is adding 350 more cleaners to help fight the grossness; amNY reports the cleaners will "be able to respond to specific stenches faster." more ›

It is near impossible for the Department of Education to fire a teacher easily, but when it comes to a principal allegedly using chicken blood in a Santeria ritual to cleanse her high school, that's another story. The DOE says it will reassign and later fire Matritz Tamayo, the principal of the Unity Center for Urban Technologies, a Manhattan high school in Soho, for coercing staff members to participate and help pay for a number of Santeria rituals. more ›

After Attorney General Cuomo found that Governor Spitzer's staffers were using state police records to attack rival Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, everyone agrees on one thing: It's very bad for Governor Spitzer. more ›

• 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.

Here's a heads up on sunny summertime shows. Sure, after the first week we'll be complaining about the heat, the smell of the city as it melts, and the lack of shade...but it's always nice to have some music to look forward to. So stock up on the SPF for the following shows: more ›

Though more than half of all New York CIty smokers tried to quit smoking in the past year, 80% of them (about half a million people) lit up again within three months. While the average smoker tries to quit about 8-9 times before actually succeeding, nicotine replacement therapy has been shown to double one's chances. more ›

The Hamptons may reek of money, but Coney Island is getting its very own scent, courtesy of downtown fragrance company Bond No. 9. Inspired by all the recent development along Brooklyn's bayshore, parfumeur Richard Harpin designed a location-based scent that is the borough's first from the company. It will retail for $40 an ounce, $125 for 1.7 ounces or $180 for 3.4 ounces, indicating to us that the value lies in the increasing size of the bottle, rather than the contents inside. more ›

A Sunday NY Times roundup of development and community planning process in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn contains this hidden threat: more ›

Playwright Adam Rapp etches elegantly bleak portraits of America’s young lost souls; his Red Light Winter was an Obie-winner and Pulitzer-prize finalist, Blackbird was recently adapted into a film which Rapp also directed. (He wrote and directed his first feature, Winter Passing, which starred Ed Harris, Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrell.) Rapp’s published seven novels, plays in a band, and is not someone you’d want to play one-on-one basketball with to settle a bet. more ›

A condo on the Upper East Side has slapped a $500,000 lawsuit against the owner of a Subway franchise. The condo board of The Waterford, located at 300 93rd St, complained that the Subway, which opened two weeks ago around corner at 1776 Second Ave., caused the building to be "inundated with strong and nauseating food odors," and affected the value of their property. Welcome to New York! more ›

On the one-week anniversary of the noxious natural gas-with-mercaptan stink that took over Manhattan, eastern NJ and parts of other boroughs, we thought that new NY State homeland security chief Michael A. L. Balboni had an interesting idea. The NY Times reports he expressed frustration about the lack of an answer, “What if next time it smells like almonds and it turns out to be cyanide?” He also said he would "put people’s feet to the fire" to get to the truth. more ›

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Best email we've received today - aside from all the speculation on what the damn gassy smell is:

After contacting Carts of Brooklyn Racing Association (COBRA)* about this very issue, it appears that the producers of CSI:NY ARE using the name Idiotarod in press releases in regards to Wednesday's episode "Obsession." COBRA, and all shopping cart racers of New York and the country, will not take this disrespect. One, they used the name with out our permission. Two, they are portraying us as thieves and murders. Three, CSI:NY is a crappy show. more ›

We don't know what's up with the crazy gas smell. The reports we've read had the location at 34th Street and 5th-7th-8th Avenues in Manhattan, but our readers are smelling it from the Upper West Side to downtown. WNBC reports that the smell is so strong on the 6th floor of 30 Rockefeller Center, "people are leaving the building." NY1 says the smell is strong around Herald Square and in NY1's neighborhood in Chelsea." more ›

It had been a few days since anyone had seen Haydee Soto or her children, 13 year old Valerie Rivera and 15 year old John James Bordoy at the Walt Whitman Houses in Fort Greene. A smell had been coming from the family's apartment, so neighbors and relatives asked the police to open the door, only to find a grim scene. The dead bodies of Soto, Rivera, and Bordoy, as well as Hector Viera, in different rooms. Police believe Viera killed the three with a baseball bat and then committed suicide by overdosing (a hypodermic needle was found in his arm). The bodies were so badly beaten that the NY Times says that "it made it unclear what had caused their deaths," but City Councilwoman Letitia James said, "All indications are that it was a murder-suicide." The Post on the crime:

Cops theorized that Viera first killed the mom in the living room while her children were at school, then dragged her body into her bed to make it seem as if she were sleeping. They suspect he then separately killed each of the children as they arrived home.

CBGB has been dismantled, and MTV was there to document the final hours. Not suprisingly, decades of rock does not smell good. more ›

It's Law & Order: Public School Division! Teacher Yolanda Moorjaney is on trial for allegedly writing "hateful" graffiti in the girls' bathroom at PS 256 in Queens. Moorjaney, who is white, is accused of writing things like "N-----r Die!" and sexual references. From the Daily News:

The two detectives, who were hiding in a classroom across the hall, had made sure there was no graffiti before Moorjaney entered. They rushed into the bathroom as soon as she left and found the graffiti inside a stall, Farrugia said. more ›