The Staten Island Advance has been following the turmoil brewing between a Wiccan family and their neighbors. The South Shore home at the center of the controversy is a duplex, half belonging to the Wiccan devotees, Ivy Colmer Vanderborgh, her husband and mother (the husband isn't Wiccan). Not hiding their practices, their property is decorated with a "witchy weather vane and cauldron out front," along with a massive stained-glass pentacle. Before the front yard cauldron......

Everything's coming up rosé on Staten Island: on the heels of the new aquarium unveiling in the ferry terminal, plans for the island’s first vineyard are coming into focus. Borough President James Molinaro (pictured, right) has pledged $2 million for the project, which will establish a 2 acre vineyard and demonstration winery at the Staten Island Botanical Garden. The organic vineyard will yield its first wine about four years from now; it’s the brain-child of......

Photographs of the Bedell House, clockwise from upper left: Normal-looking in 2005 (from Tottenville Historical Society), covered in graffiti in 2005 (from Tottenville Historical Society), and boarded-up in 2008 (from Staten Island Advance) A landmark Tottenville home that caused a bitter fight between its owner and neighbors has entered a new stage of its existence: foreclosure proceedings. The Staten Island Advance reports John Grossi, who bought the 1869 Bedell House in hopes of razing......

A 16-year-old Staten Island girl faces up to a year in jail for sending Myspace friend requests to three people. Melissa Fernino is charged with second-degree criminal contempt, a misdemeanor, because she violated a Family Court order of protection that barred her from contacting a 43-year-old woman and her two adolescent daughters. The court order, prompted by Ferino's history of "extremely violent threats," has something to do with a soured relationship between Fernino’s father and......

One of the Stuyvesant High School students seriously injured in last Saturday's Vermont van crash has returned home to New York. Junior Lucia Hsiao, a member of the girls' junior varsity track team, had suffered serious neck injuries but was able to "gingerly walk" to her room on her own. The Staten Island resident is wearing a halo around her head and will require a lot of rehab, but her dad said, "It could have......

The Staten Island Ninja Burglar's 19th robbery (and first of 2008) last week turns out to have been his biggest yet. The Advance reports that the initial $20,000 worth of jewelry nabbed from a mansion on Melhorne Road is now more like $225,000 worth: "Tiffany diamond earrings. A 1 1/2 carat diamond ring. Several 22 karat gold necklaces. A gold watch lined with diamonds." Ninja likes bling! The thief, who has taken jewelry from other......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a person struck by a train at 14th St. and 8th Ave. in Manhattan, a shooting on Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn, and a shooting on Houston St. in Manhattan. Yet another reason to celebrate: today is the 110th anniversary of Richmond County joining us as the 5th borough of NYC. The Staten Island Advance features a picture of a general store with a wooden Indian in front of it......

A Grinch has crossed state lines! Some NJ residents didn't receive their deliveries when a New Springville resident swiped packages from doorsteps during the holiday season. The Staten Island Advance reports that David Oakes would follow delivery trucks "to people's doors in Ocean Township, watching to make sure no one answered the door and claimed the packages." That's the problem with package delivery without signature! Apparently Oakes preferred "packages containing electronics, clothing and toys" -......

A "rising star" in the Fire Department was found with three gunshot to the head in his Staten Island home Sunday morning. The ME's office said that Douglas J. Mercereau's death was a homicide. It's believed that his 38-year-old wife, Janet Redmond-Mercereau, is a suspect (the Daily News calls her the "prime suspect"). She called 911 around 8:25AM on Sunday, saying she found her husband's body. The Staten Island Advance says the couple had "started......

A report released by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that foreign born immigrants living in New York are socioeconomically closer to the average citizen than elsewhere in the country. The study says that New York immigrants are more likely to be in the country legally, have health insurance and tend to be better educated. The New York Times reports that the states with the widest income gaps between immigrants and citizens are California, Texas,......

The Staten Island homeless man who repeatedly attempted to lay claim to the SoHo Grand Hotel has pleaded guilty and faces a year in prison. Kouadio Kouassi is an immigrant from the Ivory Coast and has been jailed since last December. He repeatedly filed claims with the city's Dept. of Finance in an attempt to assume legal ownership of the $76 million boutique hotel. Upon sentencing, Kouassi will like be quickly released and then deported......

A group of influential paisans from Staten Island, drunk on the idea of starting the first vineyard in contemporary New York City, have been on a wine-tasting tour of Tuscany, researching vineyards to figure out the best way to bring their brain-child back to their home borough. Yes, you read that correctly – according to today’s Times, you’ll soon be able to step off the Staten Island Ferry and pick up a bottle of Fresh......

Claiming he was panicked, the driver who fatally struck a mother of four in Staten Island Tuesday night now faces felony charges of leaving the scene of a fatal accident. But the law is a strange thing. The Staten Island Advance reports that if 19-year-old Ibraim Qoku "hadn't run away, he could have ended up with nothing more than a speeding ticket." Qoku was driving 50MPH, 20 MPH over the speed limit, on Hylan Boulevard......

Need a last minute costume idea and in a New York state of mind? Here are a few NYC-themed ideas for your Halloween fête... R.I.P.ped from the Headlines • Thor Equities Need: Winged Thor helmet and hammer, brochures or maps (which can be printed out) of Coney Island -- and something to destroy them with. • The Staten Island Ninja Burglar Need: Ninja outfit, complete with nunchucks. Fake stab wound to the chest. Map......

The Staten Island District Attorney's office has dropped hate crime charges against two young white men accused of beating a black man in Mariners Harbor. SI DA Daniel Donovan said, "At this point I believe the evidence provided to my office by the police is legally insufficient to support hate-crime charges." Skylar McCormick was allegedly punched, kicked, beaten and threatened with a baseball bat Tuesday night after he touched Daniel Avissato's Cadillac. Avissato and Mark......

A few months ago, a more unlikely scenario could not be imagined. The Yankees are barreling into the playoffs after recovering from one of the team's worst season starts in franchise history. The Mets, on the other hand, are staggering towards the end of the season having lost five straight and 11 of their last 15 games. A seemingly insurmountable lead in their division has been whittled to second place behind the Phillies, and the......

A Todt Hill couple's home was broken into by the infamous Ninja Burglar last night. The craziest part: The wife ran into him. The Staten Island Advance reports that Mary Ann Carlo bumped into the intruder. Carlo said, "I started screaming, 'The Ninja is here! The Ninja! The Ninja!'" The Advance has the details AND gets a plug:At about 10:30 p.m., Mrs. Carlo turned off the television and headed downstairs toward the bedroom, where her......

Cops seized 160,000 pairs of counterfeit Nike shoes from six locations in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island after conducting a multi-year investigation to disrupt pirated merchandise. The New York Sun reports that it was one of the largest busts of counterfeit goods in US history and one of four recent successful operations that targeted purveyors of fake Microsoft, Motorola, and Nike products. The haul of bogus shoes was reportedly worth $7.1 million. The Staten Island-based......

Yesterday morning, two Bangladeshi brothers jumped off a freighter ship that was leaving the Port of Newark, "somewhere between the Kill van Kull and Verrazano-Narrows Bridge." One brother was found, while the other is still missing. Authorities say that 27-year-old Mohammed Nayem Uddin was found by fishermen on Hoffman Island, "shivering and covered in garbage bags." The Staten Island Advance reports he was taken to the hospital for hypothermia-like conditions. Uddin did not cooperate with......

There were a number of deaths and injuries from incidents all over the city early Sunday morning. The first was a collision between a Toyota and BMW on Hylan Boulevard in Staten Island. The Toyota's driver, 29-year-old Paul Vinin, died while the BMW's driver Jolyn SIlva, was critically injured. Silva's passenger, 17-year-old Paulina Vivirito, had minor injuries. The Staten Island Advance, which said that Toyota "t-boned the BMW", reports that both Vinin and Silva had......

After years of legal wrangling, the Appellate Court has backed the College of Staten Island and says that the CUNY school can deny official status to fraternity Chi Iota. But the battle may not be over, as the brothers want to fight this at the Supreme Court. Chi iota had applied for official status at CSI in an attempt to be the first Greek-letter organization on campus, but CSI denied their application, finding that the......

The lawyer for Brigitte Harris, the Queens woman accused of killing and mutilating her stepfather, says that Eric Goodridge committed a "pattern of repeated and systemic sexual abuse." Harris's lawyer, Arthur Aidala, told reporters that while he couldn't say what happened on Saturday, when Goodridge was found dead in Harris' apartment, he did say that his client had been abused from age 3, "This guy was a monster." The Staten Island Advance reports that there......

The man who throttled, stomped, kicked, and beat a peacock into a mortal state Thursday morning was turned in to police by his own stepfather yesterday. The Staten Island Advance is all over the story. It reports that John N. Potts was arrested yesterday, after threatening to smash his stepfather's face with a shovel in the older man's home. Potts then ran off and jumped into the Raritan Bay, shovel in hand. The Advance describes......

After scaring residents of two boroughs when a woman discovered a pipe bomb on her Jeep Cherokee, police arrested Baudelio Rodriguez for making a pipe bomb and placing it on a car. What makes the story more strange is that it was Rodriguez's daughter who discovered the bomb - the Jeep belongs to his daughter and his wife! He was reportedly angry at his wife for leaving their Brooklyn home and staying with their daughter......

June 21-23: NYC Food Film Festival, Part 2 See last week's calendar for the full description of the festival and the website for the schedule of events. This weekend's fim focus in on hot dogs and sausages, currywurst in particular, and even includes a hot dog eating competition, so get your gullets ready. At Water Taxi Beach. June 21-24: Staten Island Restaurant Week In their first ever restaurant week, over 50 of Staten Island's restaurants......

One can hear plenty of trees falling in the forest in Staten Island these days, as the Parks Dept. is on a massive tree-killing spree after the notice of a few dozen Asian longhorned beetles. The insect is a scourge and first appeared in Greenpoint, Brooklyn about a decade ago, after possibly being imported in a wooden packing crate from China. The female of the species lays its eggs in a tree and the larva......

Successful Staten Island high school track star Arielle Newman died from poisoning that occurred from the over-application of topical pain-relieving balms. The 17-year-old was found dead in her bed by her mother the morning after she attended a large party on Staten Island in April, and suspicions initially turned to drugs or alcohol as the cause of her death. An initial autopsy that proved inconclusive only deepend the mystery surrounding the loss of a promising......

The Staten Island Advance reports that work has begun to stabilize the retaining wall that collapsed late Monday in the Dongan Hills neighborhood. Five homes were evacuated after a 50'-by-50' chunk of wall - including boulders - fell downwards from a wall built to support John D'Amato's home, hitting other homes; luckily no one was hurt. D'Amato is notable for two reasons: 1) One neighbor complained that the wall was built illegally back in 2002......

An update about the Tuesday-night incident where a reckless 19-year-old driver hit a bicyclist in Staten Island: The Staten Island Advance reports that Leon Wilson was high on painkillers while driving. And his past driving experience was so terrible that his learner's permit had been revoked in January. Yet somehow, he was behind the wheel of a rental car on Tuesday night, crashing into 47-year-old Juan-Han Guan, who had been biking home. Guan, who was......

Tody on the Gothamist NewsMap: a carjacking in Staten Island; a missing patient at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn; and a fatal accident in Queens. The Staten Island carjacking, which included a police chase, injured three people, including a child and a police officer. One suspect is in custody and police are on scene looking for a possible 2nd suspect. The fatal accident in Queens was a small school bus striking a 23 year-old woman......