Results tagged “washingtonsquarearch”

Last night, an unoccupied five-story hotel at 22 West 24th Street collapsed; no injuries were reported. The former La Semana Hotel "fell into itself leaving a giant, although relatively tidy, pile of rubble," according to the Post. Witnesses said the 8PM collapse sounded like a bomb explosion and that "floor by floor, the building simply gave in." A fire official told the NY Times, "If this happened during the daytime, during a workday when there are a lot of people on the street, I think we could have had a lot of injuries here."

THEATER: Obie Award winner Adam Rapp has just unwrapped (sorry) his new play Essential Self-Defense at Playwrights Horizons. Set in a mean Midwestern town called Bloggs, the play has, fittingly, been generating big blog buzz. The “grim fairy tale” revolves around a disgruntled misfit “who takes a job as an attack dummy in a women’s self-defense class and finds himself mysteriously drawn to the repressed bookworm who’s beating on him. But all’s not well in Bloggs: with local children vanishing at an alarming rate, our hero, his lady friend, and a motley assortment of poets, butchers, and punk librarians prepare to battle the darkness on the edge of town.” With rock n’ roll karaoke! - John Del Signore

Try to hold back your laughter: NYU, aka "Las Vegas and Sodom rolled into one," told a Community Board 3 meeting last week that the school is interested in working with community and government officals to curb underage drinking. The school, an offical told the board, wants "a community partnership that includes local bar operators to devise a framework of 'education, responsibility and safety' regarding students and nightlife."

With the mercury rising to high for the city's liking, Mayor Bloomberg held a press conference at the Office of Emergency Operations in Brooklyn to emphasize what the city is doing during the heat wave. We suspect he's trying to be extra visible and genially authoritative (check out the plaid shirt!) in order to salvage public opinion after the Queens blackout, but his words are important:

“The heat wave affects New Yorkers in all five boroughs, and that’s why the City is aggressively moving to protect New Yorkers from Tottenville to Co-Op City from this week’s oppressive heat and promote energy conservation. Hundreds of people have already tragically passed away due to the heat wave in other parts of the country, and I urge New Yorkers – especially seniors – to take the danger of high temperatures and humidity seriously. You can beat the heat by drinking plenty of water, staying out of the sun, avoiding strenuous activity, and taking advantage of City cooling centers and public pools. The City is also actively taking large energy users such as wastewater treatment plants off the grid and conserving energy at City buildings across the five boroughs to help cope with the increased demands on the electrical grid.”

Of course, he reiterated all the things you should do to stay healthy during the heat. When asked about Con Ed handling public information better during the next (let's hope not) blackout, NY Times reports that the Mayor says he's "confident we will ask a lot more questions.” Yes - joined by all the Queens politiicans and residents who have experience asking basic questions like "what the hell is going on.

- And the AP interviews the blogging taxi driver, Melissa Plaut, who is awesome

The Villager got ahold of the revised proposed design for Washington Square Park-- check out this insanely gorgeous high resolution picture they were nice enough to put up. To our eyes, the design hasn't changed that much since the last iteration. Still at issue are three major elements of the design:

Reminder!!! Unsilent Night, the amazing participatory performance piece by Phil Kline, is tonight-- starting at 6:45pm at Washington Square Arch, and ending around 8pm at Tompkins Square Park:

- Check out the sponsored link beneath our Braunstein coverage from yesterday... indeed (thanks Joe!). Did we mention that Peter Braunstein got busted?

Gothamist became very relieved this weekend after a pair of articles touting that places other than our dear city would have various NYC charms. Because there's no nightmare we'd like better during a drunken bender than to be dropped into either Philly (which is supposedly masquerading as Brooklyn) or Las Vegas (which has a development called East Village, but includes the Washington Square Arch and a diamond district - for those high rollers, one can only assume), only to wake up in a strange new world that seems like New York but isn't New York. It would be a great high-concept movie (think Judgement Night) and a very terrible real life - where are our sweaty subways? Where are the rats picking through garbage? Where are the $20 cocktails? Where are the tourists with fannypacks? All told, we rather be lost in The Brick Apple or Lego's NYC Miniland (hope they revise the Freedom Tower design!).