Police suspect that a strange van filled with mysterious explosives found in Sunset Park may be linked to a landlord with a history of bomb-making activities. On Thursday, a career criminal broke into the van, intending to rob it but decided to tip off the police after moving it to a more desolate location. The NYPD's anti-terror task force responded, as did Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and the FBI, to the scene. WABC 7 reported......

Yesterday's Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest had a lot to live up to after last year's heavily-hyped and record-breaking victory that saw Joey Chestnut bring the Mustard Belt back to America by snapping the six-year victory streak of legend Takeru Kobayashi. How did they manage to top it? Overtime! After the two giants of competitive eating ended regulation in a dead heat at 59 franks a piece, Nathan's officials scrambled and decided to hold......

A three-year-old boy was seriously injured when a pit bull, unleashed by his mother's boyfriend, attacked him. Kamar Reynolds underwent surgery to reattach his ear and remains in serious condition; his aunt said, "His ear was torn off. His face was swollen. Half of his face was open. His mouth was bleeding blood. We put a sheet over his mouth so it could hold in the ear and the blood." Authorities say Reynolds' mother was......

Authorities have arrested a 62-year-old bus driver after a bus matron allegedly saw him fondling a mentally challenged student. The matron had left the bus to take another student into P.S. 226 in Bensonhurst, and when she returned, she apparently saw Efrim Bondarev's hand down the 14-year-old girl's shirt. Bondarev works for a private bus company contracted by the Department of Education.......

Today has turned out sunny and warm as dry air has finally moved into the city. The dew point plunged by fifteen degrees around noon. That dryness will let today's high approach the upper 80s, and, for the first time in many days, there's no chance of rain! With a warm, dry start tomorrow may heat up to the low 90s. Showers may return as soon as tomorrow night. By Independence Day we'll be back......

After a surveillance video showed hospital staff ignoring a psychiatric patient's last dying hours in the emergency room of Kings County Hospital, city health officials say they will make a series of changes, like checking on patients every 15 minutes. When asked what he thought of the video, Mayor Bloomberg said, "Horrified is much too nice a word. Disgusted, I think, is a better word." The patient, 49-year-old Esmin Green, had been waiting in the......

The Brooklyn Paper talks to a number of people about the inevitability of more national, big box and chain retailers coming to Red Hook. One commercial real estate broker says, "There are a lot of large parcels of land that are owned by single landowners [and] it’s favorably zoned.” So, will the death knell be a Wal-Mart...or an Olive Garden?......

With a recent uptick in gentrification griping in Carroll Gardens, Candy Chang’s interactive art project in the window of a vintage furniture store on Court Street was well-timed. For one week, passersby were invited to share their apartment info and rent costs on Post-it notes. After culling 151 responses, Chang tallied the info and found that:One resident has lived in a studio in Carroll Gardens for 43 years with a current rent of $146.Another......

A distressing video was released showing a 49-year-old psychiatric patient left to die in the waiting room of Kings County Hospital. The video shows the woman, identified as Esmin Green, slump and fall to the ground--and two guards and a doctor look in and ignore her. Finally, a nurse comes to check on her, but not before kicking Green, who was dead at that point. Attorney Robert Cohen told WNBC, "It's an emergency room,......

An early morning two-alarm fire in an apartment building at 1001 Ocean Avenue (near Newkirk) in Brooklyn injured several residents. WABC 7 reports seven members of the same family were seriously injured--two children suffered first- and second-degree burns--and a "pregnant woman and a 56-year-old man" jumped from the second floor. Some firefighters were also injured in the blaze.......

If you’ve ever watched acting so bad it made you want to shove the performer offstage and play the role yourself, Suspicious Package is for you. The creators of this clever little production have spared themselves the headache of dealing with actors by casting the audience and turning them loose on the streets of Williamsburg. It happens for just four people at a time, and when you buy your ticket online you cast yourself in one of the roles, choosing either the producer, the showgirl, the heiress, or the private detective....

When one man's family history pointed towards an association with Walt Whitman, research efforts resulted in a new website archiving the poet's old stomping grounds. Whitman's Brooklyn looks at the borough, where Whitman moved at the age of 4, during the mid to late 1800s. Along with each image on the site is an in-depth history of the area portrayed. In an 1847 engraving of what at the time was called Washington Park, it is......

The Brooklyn community board that covers Bay Ridge is fed up with the food vendors who clog 86th Street – all three of them. “The issue is cleanliness,” asserts the board’s District Manager Josephine Beckmann, whose husband is a police lieutenant. “It would be best to have no vending at all. It just causes problems.” So the board has unanimously urged the city’s Department of Small Business Services to banish them from the block. Sam......

Northeast Kingdom sits on the southwest corner of Wyckoff and Troutman streets in Bushwick, a block from the L train's Jefferson stop and myriad one-story warehouses and industrial spaces. Native Vermonters Paris Smeraldo and his wife, Meg Lipke, have invoked a funky ambiance with taxidermy and vintage wallpaper alongside a bar backed with orange and yellow stained glass. Throw in the flickering candlelight and you've got a place to linger for hours after dark.......

The owners of Union Hall and Floyd, Jim Carden and Andy Templar, along with Union Hall booker Jack McFadden, have been hard at work on their new venue. Earlier this year we got a glimpse of The Bell House while the space was still pretty raw, this week Sam Horine took a look inside to see how things are coming along. Located on 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues in Brooklyn, the venue will......

Galapagos officially changed hands earlier this year, with Matt Roff & Co. now at the helm. With the Galapagos name moving to DUMBO and the artspace under new ownership, there was a contest to name the 70 N 6th Street space (after briefly working under the name Natural Selection). Well, they've finally come to a decision (drum roll please): Public Assembly. Roff tells us that they'll also be holding the official after parties for the......

Last week an ex-con attacked a woman in Park Slope, and the news is hitting the papers today. The NY Post reports that 32-year-old Thomas Russo followed 39-year-old Diana Greiner along 6th Avenue in Brooklyn last Tuesday around 11:45 p.m. Somewhere near Lincoln Place, Russo struck Greiner's skull (fracturing it) and slashed her face and body before fleeing on foot into a bodega. He was caught on tape and is currently being charged with attempted......

Three people were shot last night around East 94th Street and Church in Brooklyn. A car is also full of bullets. WABC 7 reports that while the "conditions of the victims are unknown," one victim may have been shot in the head, another was shot in the arm, and a third victim was able to drive to the hospital. Police are investigating.......

Slice's Adam Kuban takes his life into his hands by conducting a taste test of all the slices in his neighborhood, Park Slope. Although Kuban claims to have learned secrets of such intense pizza samplings "like only sampling slices, not entirely consuming them," he still manages to ingest over 15 slices in some way, shape, or form. In the mozzarella-hazed-aftermath, Kuban deems Tomato & Basil (226 Fourth Avenue, 718-596-8855) the "best in the Slope overall.........

Two months ago, Con Ed admitted that the former power plant on Kent Avenue would be demolished (when asked earlier about all the activity at the site, the utility claimed it was just "spring cleaning"), and now it looks like the beautiful, century-old building's final days are here. Photographer Nathan Kensinger, who currently has an exhibit at the Brooklyn Public Library documenting Brooklyn's fading waterfront, took these exclusive photographs of the Powerhouse. From the looks......

After reviewing a new design that one commissioner promised would “rival the Tate,” the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved revised plans for a massive residential and retail development at the disused Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg. One bit of good news is that the iconic Domino sign, which had been missing from previous designs, is now preserved. Brownstoner was liveblogging the hearing and reports that LPC chairman Robert Tierney called it a "brilliant adaptive plan."......

Last September the NY Aquarium's walrus Ayveq, along with Kulu, brought a new baby Walrus into the world. Sadly, the Brooklyn Paper reports that the nearly one-year-old walrus is now fatherless; at age 14 Ayveq has died (most likely of a bacterial infection)...but at least he left a legacy. Aquarium Director Jon Forrest Dohlin told the paper “We are all still in shock about it. He was an absolute delight. He had a magnetism and......

With Brooklyn being stamped on everything these days, it makes sense that the owners of Brooklyn Brewery, Brooklyn Industries and Brooklyn Wine got together last week for a discussion on the branding of the borough. The NY Times reported back yesterday, declaring that Williamsburg is popular well outside its zip code, in Japan, and Chicago seems to be filled with fans as well. Brooklyn Brewery owner Steve Hindy stated: “We sell beer in Chicago, and......

Red Hook seemed eerily quiet on Saturday, as we checked out the traffic flow on Columbia and Van Brunt Streets on the West Side of the neighborhood. Any prediction of overwhelming weekend gridlock seemed not to be panning out-- except for one Ikea bus ferrying people from Boro Hall, the scene seemed as quiet and bucolic as any summer weekend in years past. Indeed, maybe even quieter, as people who'd normally be out at......

Miss Heather refers to this scenario she snapped a shot of as "mildly disturbing," but the photo of a man bound and gagged in Greenpoint is seriously unsettling. What landed this man in such a precarious situation? Miss H tells us the scene wasn't just a gag or from a movie shoot...but was very real. While details are unfolding, what is known is that the incident took place at a restaurant in the neighborhood, between......

Due to an unexpected increase in shipping through the Port of New York, the city now lacks the necessary number of dry-docks to service barges in need of maintenance, according to a recently released study by the SUNY Maritime College. The findings were announced by the city's Economic Development Corp. just as the new IKEA in Red Hook opened. The parking lot at IKEA was controversially built over one of the city’s last remaining “graving docks,” which can accommodate larger ships....

Photo, by joe holmes at flickr By all accounts, it seems like Saturday's Mermaid Parade was a great deal of fun, enjoying perfect weather and drawing large crowds. One can only hope that the Coney Island tradition dating back to 1903 remains as popular in coming years. Thanks to everyone who tagged and/or submitted their photos "gothamist." Update: We've added more pictures to the gallery!......

Mermaid Parade Coney Island 2008 from Seamus Condron on Vimeo Yesterday's festive Mermaid Parade brought out many revelers, some of whom captured the festivities on video. Here are some of those videos--if you have some, let us know by emailing us at tips(at)gothamist(dot)com. Above is some of the parade floats and participants, and below is one of the Brooklyn Bombshell Revue, via Rikomatic: After the jump, three more videos including Reverend Billy, Mermaid Queens......

Four more people can be added to the total number of New Yorkers who have been run down by drivers finding it difficult to stay on the road this weekend. In the fourth incident in two days, two toddlers were badly injured when a 16-year-old driver swerved onto the sidewalk in Flatbush, Brooklyn and injured two children and two young women. Both of the toddlers needed to be hospitalized--one in critical condition and the other......

Clover Club: This new Cobble Hill lounge has no connection to this Clover Club “located in beautifull [sic] Mark, Illinois,” so leave your green face paint at home. The atmosphere here, as evinced by the photo, is old world charm and sophistication, hearkening back to an era when men dueled with pistols, not text messages, and the curse of the Cosmo had not yet darkened New York. Small plates include oysters on the half shell,......