Photographs by SilvaAzniv on Flickr (left, right); the steam in the right photo is from Con Ed - not a fire At West End Avenue and West 59th Street, a water main broke, flooding the Amtrak tracks. The FDNY is pumping out the water and a number of other city agencies, including the Office of Emergency Management and Department of Environmental Protection are on the scene. According to other reports, a new building (an......

Move over Crazy Cat Ladies of New York, a West End Avenue tenant may just have you beat. The Post reports that court papers have been filed by a building owner against 71-year-old tenant Jacqueline Bartone, calling her apartment a "zoo" and listing the pets that reside with her -- including three dogs, several reptiles and cats, "and as many as a dozen birds, including an African Grey parrot and a macaw parrot." Bartone and......

The Post reports that a woman running on the West Side managed to escape from a man who tried to rape her this past Saturday morning. According to the police, Jason Washington grabbed the 24-year-old woman from behind around 7AM. He then "fondled her and dragged her to an empty doorway near 12th Avenue and 58th Street." Luckily, a loud truck "startled or distracted" Washington and the woman ran away and called 911. Washington, who......

Rappers Ja Rule and Lil Wayne both found themselves ending their weekend with arrests last night. The separate incidents both took place in the city. Lil Wayne, fresh off the Beacon Theater stage following his Sunday night show there, was found smoking pot by his tour bus on 61st and Columbus Avenue at 11:30pm. What not to do while smoking an illegal substance, on the street, in the city? Carry a firearm. Lil Wayne had......

Real estate sales data showed that co-ops seemed to be losing favor since condos are much more flexible with buyers. Well, there's yet another story about how co-op boards wield a lot of power. The board at 320 West End Avenue is reportedly trying to kick out a family because the 19-year-old son has allegedly harassed residents, employees and pedestrians. The family is striking back, asking a judge for an injunction to prevent the board......

It’s already two decades since the unlikely hit song Luka put Suzanne Vega on the map; six albums later she’s still swinging with her New York-themed Beauty and Crime. Along the way she’s had a divorce and a daughter (Ruby, now 13), married the man who proposed to her back in her pre-Luka days, and been dubbed "The Mother of the Mp3" when her song Tom’s Diner was used as the model for the algorithm......

Yesterday, it was announced Tishman-Speyer, the real estate firm that bought Stuyvesant Town for $5.4 billion, along with Lehman Brothers would buy real estate investment trust Archstone Smith in a $22.2 billion deal; the Observer calls it the "largest public-to-private acquisition ever among apartment REIT’s." Archstone Smith has over over 85,000 rentals nationally and almost 3,800 in NYC, which would given Tishman-Speyer over 15,000 apartments for its portfolio. According to Crain's, there's been more interest......

Yesterday at the Time Warner Center, Chef Marc Murphy somewhat stealthily opened the doors to the uptown outpost of Landmarc, his 3 year-old, well-regarded Tribeca restaurant. Murphy began to look northward last year when he opened Ditch Plains in the West Village. With Landmarc firmly established as a neighborhood bright spot with serious food (like the $12 roasted marrow bones with onion marmalade and grilled bread, pictured), and with Ditch Plains going strong with its......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a finger amputation in Queens, a fall victim on West End Avenue, and a combination "jumper up / gas leak" (!) on Staten Island. Detestable: while announcing all sorts of government reforms at the State of the City address, NYC politicians managed to illegally block three lanes of traffic on Jay Street. The Paintsplasher has struck again-- this time in Williamsburg. Meditate on this: can the act of defacing......

Very bizarre and chilling: A man walking on West End Avenue was stabbed by a bicyclist last night. Around 7PM, the cyclist attacked the victim from behind, stabbing him either in the torso (per the Daily News) or the shoulder(per the Post) at West 63rd Street. Police believe the attack was unprovoked and random. The victim, who was with either his girlfriend (the Daily News) or his 8 year old daughter (the Post), had been......

Wow. The Transport Workers Union's headquarters on West End Avenue was sold for $60 million. Back in April, it was reported that the headquarters were worth $39 million, but that there was a $60 million offer. And clearly, the TWU decided the cash out. One source tells the Post, "This amounts to yet another miscalculation on the part of the MTA and Governor Pataki. They thought they could bust this union, but we are now......

The hearings to determine the Transport Workers' Union fine from the three day transit strike is just full of (weird) new tidbits. The TWU has been arguing that paying a $3 million fine, plus not receiving its union members' dues automatically each paycheck, would ruin them. The MTA says that the TWU's 80 West End Avenue headquarters are worth $39 million - and TWU treasurer Ed Watt said that there was an offer on it......

While a 12%+ commission makes it hard for anyone to feel that sympathetic towards real estate agents, the market can be rough. For example, a real estate agent was showing a 30th floor apartment at 101 West End Avenue, only for the potential client to pull out a gun. The Post reports that the man told the agent to leave, and she then called the police, who found out his gun was a fake. The......

After yesterday's massive freaking downer of a mashup, we thought today's map should be on the lighter side-- so here's The Geography of Seinfeld. Most of the action predictably takes place around the Upper West Side, but there are some outlier points in the Bronx (Yankee Stadium), Queens (the scene of the Kramer late-pickup episode), and Coney Island (Nathan's). Amusingly, the map was obviously programmed by someone who has never been to NYC: at......

2:04 AM - The media is being told they have to wait a while before the TWU will talk. So with that, Gothamist is going to bed to get ready in case there is a strike - we're going attempt to check out the Brooklyn Bridge in the morning, which is supposed to be really cold tomorrow morning. Dress warm and dream of the strike being resolved by the time you wake up. Thanks for......

- A ten year old Indiana boy made his own counterfeit money on his home computer, reminding us of the Columbia counterfeiting ring - A body was found on the Woodstock property of the man who plays Big Bird; Carol Spinney, however, is not a suspect - someone who did yard work is - Why Roger Friedman at Fox News is annoying - William Weld has started to attack Eliot Spitzer on NY1: "I'm just......

The Times has a nice piece today on a now-gone mystery wall on 59th and West End Avenue. Found by construction workers digging foundation for a new apartment building, the 30 foot deep and 100 foot long wall with it's two rows of small openings offered romantic ideas of a lost New York City fort. Further inspection by archeologists however led to the real story, provided by an art history professor who specializes in......

Yesterday's Puerto Rican Day Parade shimmered along Fifth Avenue, although there were some problems. In a nutshell, a police officer was slashed, gang members tried to crash the parade, three people were stabbed - 175 arrests all told. Oh, and two on-duty police officers were accused of groping women! The Daily News says that many men "wearing black-and-gold Latin Kings shirts" wanted to march, but the police claimed they found a gun and knives on......

We knew that 80s icon Cyndi Lauper lived on the Upper West Side, but Gothamist didn't realize she was trying to only pay $508 in her rent! Lauper, who sublets an apartment at the Apthorp, the apartment building that takes up Broadway to West End Avenue, 78th to 79th Streets, is suing the owners of the building because they had been paying $3,250 a month for many years, while the previous owner had paid only......

Post snow coverage: The Daily News proclaims Dig We Must, and all I have to say is luckily many people had President's Day and that lots of kids were already on their mid-winter break. The New York Times features the messy travel part of the blizzard, as well as how the snow muffles a bit of the terrorist jitters. Of course, the Post says that basically the clean up will be pricey at about......