Results tagged “trends”

According to the NY Times, "New York lost fewer residents to other states in 2007-8 than during any year in at least a generation." Demographers at Queens College broke down census info and found that "some 257,000 people moved away during those 12 months...the first time the number dipped below 300,000 since the Census Bureau began measuring the annual flows in 1982." And why might this be happening? The real estate market—if you can't sell your house, you're not moving. And a possible "silver lining" to keeping residents in New York, where the economy isn't doing so well? The Empire State may only lose one Congressional seat, instead of two.

Over the weekend, the Times used all of the buzz surrounding the inauguration frenzy down in DC to spin out the age-old question, "Is New York over?" The article focused in on the doom and gloom of late around town (jobs being lost, shops closing down) to question whether we're all collectively basking in an "ambient bummer." Apparently LA isn't slowing down as they keep "spinning out hits" like Gran Torino and Bride Wars (was Hollywood expected to shut down?). Ultimately it's one of those pieces that takes no real stance, citing prodigal daughter Joan Didion calling the city "over" 40 years ago. But the article still manages to speculate that we're “definitely shedding whatever New York was a few years ago.” Not to celebrate the tanking economy, but if one of those things we're shedding is "people complaining about $20 cocktails or $300 bottle service," is it possible that we're righting our course?

Joel Kotkin, author of The City: A Global History, pontificates on urban social trends over at The Observer, saying that New York should, and may already, be modeling itself after other cities. He warns that "New York has been on what you could call the ‘plutonomy wagon.’ So New York has been the ultimate trickle-down economy—it’s been a relatively small group of people driving the economy. The skills of New York are still here; the roots of some of the industries are still here. But, unless many things are grown to replace this plutonomy, the city’s going to continue to go through this spiral where it becomes more and more bifurcated—there are no middle-class jobs, except in the plutonomy." His solution: look to San Francisco as a model! Or Chicago, though all he really says about the Windy City is that they have good PR.

Approximately 85 undocumented workers are being fired from the high-end grocery delivery company Fresh Direct on the on the eve of the holiday season because their status as U.S. residents is disputed. Dozens of workers filed out of the company's Queens warehouse. Fresh Direct blamed a federal probe for the axing of almost a hundred workers. According to the Daily News, "management insisted it carried out the purge under pressure from federal authorities to crack...

Official crime statistics recorded by the city this year indicate that New York is on track to record fewer than 500 murders in 2007, the lowest number since reliable statistics began to be recorded in 1963. The trends recorded thus far this year, show that murders by strangers are also down dramatically. So far, there have only been 428 murders recorded in 2007––412 killings and 16 people who succumbed to injuries sustained earlier. According...

This weekend Kanye West's mother (and manager), Dr. Donda West, died after surgery - which the BBC is reporting was cosmetic (UPDATE: she was warned prior to getting the surgery). West was very close with his 58-year-old mother, often speaking publicly about their bond and even writing a song for her. Just this summer the two were at Borders to promote her new book, Raising Kanye. Kanye was in London when told of the death,...

You may or may not have noticed that it's Fashion Week -- either way, style is saturating the city right now more than ever, and we've asked Faran Krentcil to help us figure the whole thing out. She who holds down the fort at Fashionista.com fills us in on The Tents, the trends and the tricks.

After a protest in East Harlem, baseball cap manufacturer New Era has agreed to pull Yankees caps from store shelves. A number of caps seem to refer to the Bloods, Crips and Latin Kings and became a controversy during a back-to-school shopping trip.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian struck on Pennsylvania Ave. and Fulton St. in Brooklyn, a bank robbery on Co-Op City Blvd. in the Bronx, and a commercial high-rise fire on Broadway in Manhattan.
• An actor who once played a police lieutenant on L&O: SVU turned himself in to NJ cops today on suspicion of possession of child pornography.
• YouTube wants to subpeona comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in a lawsuit charging that the pair appear in purloined Internet videos clips of their shows on the video-sharing site.
• A family court judge is being investigated for perhaps being too TV-friendly while serving on the bench of an actual family courtroom. She's mocked the foreign accent of a lawyer and routinely trash talks people who appear before her.
• We doubt this story about dressing up dogs in wigs is worth an email to the ASPCA, but it's getting close.
• A man was crushed to death between an elevator car and the elevator shaft at an industrial site in Brooklyn.
• Staten Island's Victory Diner was carted from its Dongan Hills location to a Parks Dept. location thanks to the donations of the Richmond County Savings Bank and several other local organizations. "'I was so happy when I heard it was going to be saved I actually cried,' said local resident Susan Pugliese, who was married in the diner."
• A directory to charity thrift shops around NYC.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a large fight on Fordham Rd. and Jerome Ave. in the Bronx, police activity in the employee parking lot at JFK Airport in Queens, and a pedestrian was struck on East 57th St. and Madison Ave. in Manhattan.
• Donald Trump owns almost 20% of Brooklyn's Starrett City that his dad bought for him when he graduated from business school. He now advises lower-income residents of the development that "This is not Communist China," in response to protests against a proposed sale and probable eviction.
• New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer points to the obvious conclusion of recent trends: two Duane Reade drug stores directly across the street from one another. What, no Chase banks nested inside?
• CSI: Egypt. The Brooklyn Museum catscanned a mummified body from Egypt and analysts determined that it died a completly normal and uneventful death.
• A former East Village drug kingpin is now busy getting West Village residents high on endorphins as a personal trainer.
• New York tap water may be proclaimed as the best by Mayor Bloomberg, but the city still pays $1 million annually for Poland Spring and other delivered water.
• The city is re-opening the bike-only lane on the north side of the Manhattan Bridge. Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn notes that it's been closed since October 2006.
• And a City Council member wants Councilman Dennis Gallagher, indicted on rape charges, to resign.

Sometimes you get the luck of the draw. The rain we were expecting this weekend mostly stayed north of the city. Sticky weather will be here for the rest of the day and there will be a chance for showers and thunderstorms, some with heavy downpours, this afternoon and evening. A high pressure system will be pushing the humidity out this evening, so tomorrow will be sunny. Both today and tomorrow will see highs in the 85-87 degree range.

The New York Times details how it was not for a lack of trying that homeless grew during Bloomberg's tenure in office. The city spent $79 million on initiatives to fight the problem, including a Compstat-like program to track incidences of homelessness and identify trends that could be corrected before they became full-fledged problems. Bloomberg took on programs that he thought encouraged people in marginal housing to become homeless, and met stiff opposition.

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities.

EVENT: The New York Book Club at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum presents…"Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered New York City". The panelists include "Hal Buell, longtime AP photo editor who put images of the Vietnam War in newspapers across America; Richard Drew, AP photographer who has covered New York events including 9/11; Edie Lederer, longtime UN correspondent and first woman to be the foreign chief of bureau; and Valerie Komor, corporate archives director of the AP."

As Mayor Bloomberg continues his full court press to bring congestion pricing in some shape or form to the city, the folks at Quinnipiac University conducted a poll to see what New Yorkers think. And even though 90% of the respondents think that city traffic is a pain, 56% oppose congestion pricing (37% support it). But what's interesting is how the boroughs differ. From Quinnipiac:

Manhattan voters support congestion pricing 62 - 29 percent. Voters in other boroughs are opposed to the proposal:

Continue reading "Another Way Manhattan Differs From the Rest of NYC"

EVENT: BKLYN DESIGNS 2007 kicks off today. The design expo will not only provide the latest trends and lots of fabulous things for your home - but all day panel discussions, interviews and of course parties, after parties and much more.

SCIENCE: The UnCoolKids have done it again, scoping out the science events around the city. Tonight is Café Scientifique:

Sigh. The fog has taken a bite out of what would have been a pleasant spring day. Instead of sunny and 65 it is foggy and 48. With any luck the fog and clouds should be gone soon. The sun should be out by mid-afternoon, which doesn't leave much time for warming. Highs today might reach 60. Tomorrow should be warmer –at least until the showers arrive in the late-afternoon.

There may be March Madness in the air, but East Village Idiot has the cure for New Yorkers who can't get behind the NCAA: March Radness, which take 64 disparate NYC moments/ people/ objects/ stores/ trends/ nonsense and sees who will reign supreme.

Peter Marinello works for NARC (National Advertising Review Council). His job is to watch infomercials and review the accuracy of their claims. So if anyone knows if Beano works or if Xantax is for real, it's him.

Okay, we sort of screwed up on yesterday's forecast as the storm stayed further north than everyone thought it would. Lucky for Gothamist the forecast for today and tomorrow is much easier: sunny, breezy and cooler.

January 13: Seasonal Game Cooking Class

The yellow awnings heralding the arrival of Park Slope’s latest addition emphasized the long arm of Manhattan dining trends, in this case the recent influx of burger joints dotting the city’s restaurant scene. Theoretically, the formula works: accessible, kid-friendly comfort-food in a prime location sure to attract hoardes of evening commuters. It worked for Smiling Pizza, the mediocre joint that has held court in the same intersection for more than 20 years. And it still might work for Brooklyn Burger Bar — the place has hosted a considerable crowd since its December 21 opening. Convenience, it seems, goes a long way for hungry Slopesters.

Two months after Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village were sold by MetLife to Tishman Speyer for a record-breaking $5.4 billion, an epic review of the deal by Charles Bagli of the NY Times ties up loose ends and brings several underlying issues into sharper focus. Reading between the lines:

In 1941, Encyclopedia Britannica put out a little educational film called "The Arteries of New York City". As you can guess, it describes how transportation to, from and inside of Manhattan, works.

- Just in time for Chanukah, The Food Section breaks latkes out of the archive.

Yesterday we posted about the kindie rock scene in Park Slope, and today we discover...baby disco at Southpaw! As described on the site:

Rachel Corrie was an American college student killed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to block the demolition of Palestinian houses near a refugee camp in Gaza. (Israel officials claimed the demolitions were intended to stifle attacks along a road parallel to the Egyptian border.)

Yesterday, there was an interesting NY Times article about new trends in retail store design. Namely, how some stores are eschewing big windows for more secretive look - and how Ruehl, an off-shoot of Abercrombie & Fitch for the post-college consumer, looks like a city townhouse. While there is Ruehl on Bleecker Street that sells accessories, most of the stores are in the suburbs. From the article:

Intrigued by a store they cannot see into, consumers walk in to solve the mystery and stay to shop, executives said.

Continue reading "Ruehls of the Fashion Retailing Game"

Fashion writer Adena Halpern made a name for herself with her "Haute Life" column in Marie Claire and decided to turn her love for clothing into a memoir, She takes readers through her various wardrobes choices, from the unfortunate to the invaluable, weaving her jobs and relationships into the fabric of her tales, including the title garments, which each play a major role. In chapters such as "The Devil Wore Treetorns" and "Girdles, Corsets, and Other Ways of Killing Yourself," Halpern probes the meaning of clothes and the power individual items have to make or break one's day-or relationship. She takes readers with her on her shopping and dating endeavors, from bargain hunting for a living to getting her fake Prada tote stolen, dating a "Democrat in Republican's clothing" and lusting after "The Beautiful Boy in the 8-Ball Jacket," emulating (and even encountering) Madonna, often joined by her gang of girlfriends, "the six women you meet in Los Angeles." Rather than a rundown of endless outfit changes, hers is a fun account of just how far one woman will go for the perfect pair of underwear.