You'll only be getting babes, not booze, when you go to Scores West: The State Liquor Authority has taken away the strip club's liquor license after police found prostitution at the Chelsea joint (the Upper East Side location is not affected). An SLA administrative judge wrote that prostitution was "open and notorious such that the licensee knew or should have known of its occurrence." more ›

Wildly successful young chef and restaurateur Michael Psilakis – whose Anthos is one of only two Greek restaurants in the world with a Michelin star – refined his talent not in culinary school but in the kitchen beside his Greek mother during his childhood on Long Island. After earning a business degree, he found himself drawn back to the food world, where he worked his way up from waiter to owner of the Long Island restaurant Ecco. His subsequent enterprise with celebrated restaurateur Donatella Arpaia, called Dona, was one of Esquire's Best New Restaurants in 2006, but the place closed when the building housing it was sold to a developer. more ›

Nothing says romance like a public proposal in The Daily News. Marina Maiuri stood atop the Empire State Building (which is so "Sleepless in Seattle") to have her photo snapped by the paper on the observation deck; but she wasn't looking for love, she was looking to propose. more ›

In a few days the city will begin its promised crackdown on the glut of parking placards issued to civil servants. But according to Uncivil Servants, a website that documents illegally parked cars displaying city permits, employees of Park East, an Upper East Side synagogue, have been using bogus DIY parking placards for years. And since they don’t even work for the city, their privileges won’t be affected by the new rules. more ›

After the startling Midtown robbery yesterday afternoon in which a man was beaten and robbed of $149,000 in cash on the street, the police are still looking for the suspect. The victim, Seton Ijams, a music management company executive, had just visited a Chase bank, and police believe it may have been an inside job. more ›

Fingers are being pointed at a Queens psychiatrist who allowed David Tarloff to be released 10 days before he killed an Upper East Side psychologist and attacked another. Tarloff had been arrested after assaulting a security guard at St. John's Episcopal Hospital, and police say Dr. Reddy Bezwada's evaluation read, "The individual does not require further psychiatric treatment at this time." more ›

The man accused of slashing Upper East Side psychologist Kathryn Faughey to death and attacking another doctor was arraigned in court yesterday. And 39-year-old David Tarloff, a schizophrenic with a history of violence, made it quite an arraignment. more ›

The police arrested a Queens resident for the murder of a therapist on the Upper East Side. David Tarloff, 39, apparently made "statement implicating himself" in the brutal death of Dr. Kathryn Faughey as well as the attack on Dr. Kent Shinbach, who Tarloff claimed institutionalized him in 1991. Tarloff, who is schizophrenic, has a history of violent crime. more ›

School teacher and aspiring novelist Matthew Thomas won the jackpot in the New York apartment lottery when he scored his Upper East Side studio apartment, around the corner from Elaine’s, for just $14,000. Literally; the man won the right to buy the apartment in a lottery that makes available a minuscule number of apartments to people with incomes under $49,625. The units are part of 24 Mitchell-Lama co-op buildings in Manhattan and most applicants wait a decade for a shot at one. more ›

The police questioned a friend of Upper East Side psychologist Kathryn Faughey, who was brutally murdered in her office Tuesday night. William Kunsman, who resides in Pennsylvania, voluntarily went to a PA state police barracks in Bethelem for hours of questioning before he was released. more ›

Update: The police questioned and released a man in Pennsylvania about the murders. The police apparently found the man, who had met Dr. Faughey and her husband at a guitar camp, by looking at Faughey's email. more ›

Yesterday, the Post reported about a strange and disturbing road rage incident in Red Hook last week. A woman was ultimately repeatedly hit by the driver of a Land Rover. more ›

After the stunning Giants' Super Bowl win, people cheered like they hadn't seen a Super Bowl victory in 17 years! Throughout the city, folks were stumbling onto streets, chanting the names of players and even getting arrested. more ›

A state judge has shot down Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to rent sports fields on Randalls Island to private schools because the administration failed to follow the legally required land-use review process when it made the deal. The plan was for private schools to pay $2.6 million a year for the next two decades in exchange for use of the renovated fields during peak hours from 3pm to 6pm. The Parks Department had agreed to contribute $65 million to refurbishing 36 sports fields and building new fields on 12.5 acres of the island. more ›

After a public scrutiny over police procedure when dozens of youths were arrested on their way to a gang members' wake, the Brooklyn DA's office has decided to drop the charges of 22 of the arrestees. Ten others will face charges. more ›

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Are you ready to meet the Real Housewives of New York City? Bravo is spinning off their Orange County-based reality show with a look into the lives of some select East Coast ladies. The show will air March 4th, and The Daily News reports that the "stars" will be Bethenny Frankel, LuAnn de Lesseps (that's Countess, to you), Ramona Singer and Jill Zarin of the Upper East Side and Alex McCord of Cobble Hill. We're glad they branched out of the UES and threw a Brooklynite in there (though we wish it was a Park Slope mom); at 34 she's the youngest of them all. more ›

There's a old joke that many people look through the obituaries to find apartments in the city. Whether that's true or not is unclear, but what is known is that there can be difficulties in selling a deceased person's apartment. The NY Times has a big feature, "Heirs to a Headache," about this very phenomenon that pits sibling against sibling, in the midst of the very raw emotions of death and the vicious real estate market. more ›

Ever since we read about osechi-ryori in the Times last week we’ve become a tad obsessed with this traditional cuisine that the Japanese whip up for the New Year. Stacked jubako, a more elegant take on the bento box, are filled with delicacies deriving from an age-old taboo forbidding women from cooking during the first three days of the New Year. In addition to sweet potato and burdock root and bits of grilled meat or fish, the boxes often include kamabako, or fish cake, whose red and white color are synonymous with festivals in Japan and kuro-mame or black soybeans. Mame means "health," symbolizing a wish for health in the New Year. Although Julia Moskin’s piece included several recipes, Gothamist decided to purchase a premade jubako or go to a restaurant for this festive fare. We quickly ruled out Kai, the elegant Upper East Side kaiseki spot, which was offering a 30-item jubako for $350. Also out of the running was Hakubai's $80 brunch. more ›

The city has been crowing about this year's low murder rate since last week, when officials announced it was likely to be under 500 murders. Currently, the murder rate is 492 as of Sunday night (we're not sure if that number includes the three men killed in Brooklyn); this year's murder rate would be the lowest since 1963, the first year with reliable data and a year that saw 548 killings. more ›

Thanks to the soft real estate market everywhere except our fair city, many New York City residents have been able to pick up and move out of the Big Apple for less expensive and literally greener pastures. The NY Times had an article yesterday about people who cash out of their NYC apartments and "get much more for their money outside the city." more ›

We knew Sean Connery was a tough guy (or so his screen persona and Darrell Hammond's impression would have us believe), so we might have imagined the lawsuits between him and his East 71st Street neighbor would pile up. But who knew that it would get to the point of a judge complaining that the two parties were being too fighty? more ›

This week in the Times, Bruni goes to Shorty’s.32 and Smith’s, awards each restaurant one star. Says that at both, “Skill, standards and a few well-chosen grace notes lift what might otherwise be favored neighborhood charmers into a slightly loftier league.” Loves the chicken and all side dishes at Shorty’s, though says the chef is “overly fond of wet fish and wet food.” Um, yuck. At Smith’s, says the lamb and lobster are the way to go. more ›

In recent weeks both a man and a woman have been charged with senseless violence against small defenseless animals - the woman for beating her boyfriend's cat to death, the man seriously injuring a girlfriend's dog. more ›

An argument between two men on a Manhattan bus this morning ended in a homicide, as one man stabbed the other to death. The incident occurred at 9:40 a.m. on the M101 bus that runs northbound on 3rd Avenue. A 52-year-old man was arguing with a 40-year-old man, when the bus stopped at 96th St. on the Upper East Side and the older man stabbed the younger in the leg. The victim was taken to Metropolitan Hospital where he died from his wounds. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a ceiling collapse at Franklin Ave. and Union St. in Brooklyn, a pedestrian was fatally struck on Queens Blvd. in Woodhaven, Queens, and an unusual rescue on the south bound tower of the Throgs Neck Bridge in Queens.
• An undercover cop forgot to turn off the wire he was wearing while discussing 11 bags of cocaine he seized in a Brooklyn bust that were never turned in. He was also sure to repeatedly refer to black people using the "N-word." [No link yet, but we saw the story on NY1.]
• The mother of an escaped convict is telling him through the press to keep running, and knows some day he'll be exonerated of his crime. We foresee either a one-armed man eventually brought to justice or subsequent imprisonment in a South American jail.
• Civil disobedience on 5th Avenue. We did not realize this, but the city has offered free vendor licenses to military veterans since the Civil War. Dan Rossi is protesting the curtailment of the practice by parking his hot dog cart right in front of The Metropolitan Museum.
• There's an interesting installation at the Gavin Brown Enterprise on Greenwich St. created by artist Urs Fischer, who's dug a hole in the ground. It is an absolutely enormous hole in the ground.
• Michael Douglas is the new announcer for the NBC Nightly News. Anderson Cooper responds that he would also consider a celebrity announcer, like Fran Drescher, Clint Eastwood, Paul Reubens, or Cher.
• Macy's is going to stay open 24 hours a day until Christmas Eve. Those are going to be some tired elves.
• A siamese cat named Yoda was bludgeoned to death in an Upper East Side doorman building. Sarah Favorite, the girlfriend of Yoda's owner, was arrested and is being charged with aggravated animal cruelty.

Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn have announced a plan to issue 1,500 new permits to vendors who commit to selling fresh fruits and vegetables from carts in low-income neighborhoods. The “Green Cart” plan, expected to be approved by the City Council, comes on the heels of a Health Department study comparing Harlem to the Upper East Side; it determined that supermarkets in Harlem are 30% less common than the UES, and that only 3% of Harlem bodegas carry leafy green vegetables, compared to 20% on the UES. The UES also has better sushi, but that disparity remains unacknowledged in Bloomberg's plan. more ›

In November, Charlie Rose sat down with rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z. The musician is originally from Brooklyn and late in the interview Rose queries about the expected success of the Nets once they move to Kings County. Jay-Z is very enthusiastic about the potential of the team and the virtues of the borough, as he prefaces every statement about Brooklyn with the words "we" and "ours." It is unintentionally comedic then when Rose immediately follows up with the question "And where do you live now?" The answer is a terse "In Manhattan, uh." The exchange begins around 48 minutes and 45 seconds into the interview and a quick transcript is available at the Atlantic Yards Report site here. It reminded us of the first time that we heard that director Spike Lee had moved to the Upper East Side. more ›

Intertube-savvy metropolitan diners now have yet another way to make sure their every culinary craving is sated: the new website FoodieBytes, now beta testing, lets users search restaurant menus based on the food they desire. For instance, typing in “pesto” and “whole wheat pasta” yields over a hundred New York eateries. You can narrow your search by neighborhood and, once you find a restaurant that seems appealing, peruse the entire menu, get the hours, address and price info, and find directions through a Google Maps interface. more ›