If you watch just one Community Board Meeting video this summer, make it this one. Willets Point property owners who've been passionately protesting Mayor Bloomberg's controversial $3 billion plan to rezone the area (to make way for a hotel, convention center, offices and retail stores) have put together this video showing how the sausage gets made over at Community Board 7. Their gripping featurette focuses in on a contentious committee meeting that yielded a yes......

The four waterfalls installed by artist Olafur Eliasson and the Public Art fund at various spots on the East River are supposed be taken down on October 13th, but some Brooklyn residents fear that could be too late. In response to mounting concerns that spray from the salty, semi-polluted East River is blowing onto trees and slowly killing them, Judy Stanton, head of the Brooklyn Heights Association, is calling for the falls to be stopped......

That tree-hugging Mayor Bloomberg and his Million Trees NYC campaign can go play in traffic as far as Dyker Heights resident (and noted gadfly) Sonny Soave is concerned. Ever since discovering telltale white markings spray painted on the sidewalk outside his house, Soave has been futilely trying to stop the city from planting a tree outside his house. He rants to the Brooklyn Paper: “How is it that I have no say about what goes......

Brooklyn's own Harry Shasho, owner of luxury car detailing shop 212 Motoring, is suing the city for neglecting his Bentley while it was impounded as evidence for a year and a half. According to the Daily News, Shasho is seeking $190,000 in damages because police allowed "mold to grow inside and water damage to occur, rendering the vehicle inoperable." What the lawsuit doesn't mention is that Shasho's Bentley was already a little dinged up after......

The state law banning hand-held cell phone use while driving doesn’t extend to text messaging, something Councilman David Weprin, father of 16-year-old twin girls, would like to change fast. Motivated by last summer’s fatal accident in the Finger Lakes region, in which five girls in a sport utility vehicle died when the text-messaging teenage driver swerved into oncoming traffic, Weprin will introduce a measure today that would ban the sending or reading of text messages......

Photo courtesy Atomische. Angry opponents to Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to develop 62 acres of poorly-maintained land in Willets Point, Queens disrupted a press conference yesterday held by city officials in Washington Square Park to tout the proposal. Councilman Hiram Monserrate, whose district includes Willets Point, led over two dozen protesters to the press conference, where they drowned out advocates for the plan, chanting “Justice for Willets Point!” According to the Times, the police refused......

Watch your back, Dick Cheney! Actor Ed Asner, former Dallas Cowboy Mark Stepnoski, and formerly famous hip hop group Arrested Development are leading a petition drive to get a referendum on New York City’s November ballot that would establish a new 9/11 investigation. If the group, called 911 Truth, can collect 30,000 signatures before September 4th, the City Council will be required to consider the measure, which calls for an investigative panel with subpoena......

A week ago the Times reported on Jay Dines, an upstate farmer banished from the city’s Greenmarkets for selling meat he had not raised himself. Today the paper follows up with a look at these complicated Greenmarket rules that have many farmers chafing. Alfred Milanese, co-owner of Martin’s Pretzels, is in his 26th year at the Greenmarket. But he says other vendors resent him because he’s allowed to bypass the “producer-only” rule and sell pretzels......

Chain restaurants that haven’t been complying with the city’s new law requiring them to display calorie information for all their food and beverages can be fined by the Health Department starting at midnight. But some establishments like Olive Garden remain defiant; they’re refusing to cooperate in hopes that a Restaurant Association appeal succeeds in court. Over 252 violations have already been reported, but not until tonight can fines be levied. Other places are scrambling to......

Yesterday, weather apparently prevented Mayor Bloomberg from giving a speech at the NAACP convention in Cleveland yesterday, but, in his place, Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs said the city found 23% of NYC residents are living in poverty, above the 19% the U.S. Census Bureau found. The city's numbers are higher because the Bloomberg administration opted to use a different measure taking into account NYC's high living expenses. For instance, the federal formula doesn't include things......

City Councilman Eric Gioia suggests that the city and the state should pay hardball with countries and diplomats who don't pay parking fines or property taxes. The Post reports the Queens pol's ideas include cutting off electricity, taking away driver's licenses and towing cars. The city is owed about $78 million in unpaid taxes--Egypt owes almost $2 million in diplomatic-related parking tickets and India owes upwards of $16 million in property taxes.......

Despite a forecast earlier this year that City pension funds would break even this year, it now appears that the funds will post large losses for the year. Three quarters of the way through the current fiscal year, city funds have lost almost $5 billion. Taxpayers are the ones who likely be called upon to make the funds whole and meet worker benefit commitments. Of the billions that will have to be repaid, the first......

Last night’s Coney Island Public Scoping Meeting was the place to be, as activists like political performance artist Reverend Billy turned the meeting into a carnival, leaping up on a chair with repeated cries of “Coney-lujah!” Musician Amos Wengler stood up to croon his anthem “Save Coney Island,” and Savitri D., the Mermaid Parade queen who had been on a hunger strike since Saturday to spotlight the meeting, passionately derided the city’s latest proposal for......

A former city employee could face seven years in jail and a lifetime of ghoulish haunting if convicted of stealing $3,300 from a dead person’s safety deposit box. Arthur Orikher pulled the scam while working as an accountant for a Kings County office that administers the estates of those who die without a will or families. Assuming it’s the same Arthur Orikher who owns this gorgeous Siberian cat, can you really blame him for wanting......

Yesterday, the Post ran a cover story suggesting that Governor Paterson bitterly criticized Mayor Bloomberg. Not to Bloomberg's face or anything, but a source provided the Post's Albany bureau chief Fred Dicker with alleged Paterson quotes like "He has the same kind of anger that reminds you of Spitzer" and "It's obvious that Bloomberg has little use for the kind of people who come from Queens and Staten Island." But in an afternoon press......

As local franchises start complying with the city’s new calorie law – which requires establishments with over 15 locations nationwide to prominently display caloric info – there are bound to be some bumps in the road. But this snafu is hard to top: Blog about town “Cellar Door” spotted an interesting discrepancy at two different Dunkin' Donuts purveyors located next to each other inside Penn Station....

A maximum $100 fine doesn't seem to be stemming the rising tide of self-absorbed assholes who drive cars while blathering on their cell phones. Though a state law prohibits the use of a hand-held mobile phone while operating a motor vehicle, the number of violations has jumped fivefold in New York City since 2002, according to amNY. Last year almost 200,000 violations were reported....

A nosy Post reporter may have cost Coney Island “Mayor” Dick Zugin his free apartment in a building he purchased with a 3.6 million grant from the city. Zigun runs his Coney Island USA sideshow and museum out of the Surf Avenue building, which the city helped his group buy last year. But when confronted with documents that report the address as his residence, Zigun admitted that he’s also been illegally living there, albeit humbly......

Don’t get too comfortable homeowners – the city’s foreclosure rate is skyrocketing, up a startling 66% in the first quarter of 2008 compared to last year, according to Crain’s and the housing research site Property Shark. Queens saw more foreclosures than the four other boroughs combined, with 508 in the first quarter, up 59% from the same period in 2007. The Queens neighborhoods of Jamaica, Hollis and St. Albans reported the biggest foreclosure increases,......

When we took note of the Health Department’s crackdown on chain restaurants that refuse to display their calorie information, some commenters wondered how movie theaters would be affected. Since the rule applies to any New York City food server with at least 15 locations nationwide, are chains like Regal Cinemas now required to confront moviegoers with the bad news about their concession products (which are, technically, food)? The Life Vicarious did a little digging......

Courtesy NY Post. The city’s Health Department has been schooling restaurants on the new law that requires any eatery with over 15 locations nationwide to display calorie information on all food and beverages. After numerous lawsuits from the New York State Restaurant Association, a judge ruled that the city could impose the new law, and it went into affect May 5th. But many restaurateurs are ignoring the directive, and the Health Department has been citing......

Sunset photo courtesy mrgeneko. Manhattanhenge, the visually stunning phenomenon that occurs twice a year when the sun sets in perfect alignment with Manhattan’s street grid, is happening tonight. It’s just too bad that Vice President Dick Cheney has arranged to be in town at the exact moment of the sunset, to speak at the New York Republican State Committee Dinner and simultaneously smother the golden light under his all-encompassing shroud of darkness. Of course......

New York City bus riders could soon be commuting just like the tourists if the MTA follows through on their tall talk about bringing double-decker buses back into circulation. The Post reports that NYC Transit President Howard Roberts floated the idea before the MTA board yesterday; the double-deckers are appealing because they fit more passengers and, according to transit officials, actually cost less to maintain. And if the dream becomes reality, the city won’t have......

Above Wonder Wheel photo courtesy NYCviaRachel As part of a plan to turn over 9 privately-owned acres of Coney Island amusements to the Parks Department, the Bloomberg administration is trying to wrest control of the landmark Wonder Wheel from the family that has owned and operated it since before Coney Island’s comeback. According to amNY, it was in 1948 that Coney Island hot dog vendor Denos Vourderis promised his girlfriend that if she married......

On behalf of the Village Voice, critic Robert Sietsema dines at chef Anita Lo’s newish Bar Q and deems the tuna-rib appetizer “mouth-worthy.” But then things go wrong, and Anita’s mom gets caught in the crossfire: “An appetizer of baby back ribs ($11) with ‘my mother's BBQ sauce’ tastes like it's been dumped out of a white carton from the local Chinese carry-out… The spicy pork wings remain flightless because they're heavily coated with cloying......

After years of hemorrhaging film production business to cheaper locations like Canada, New York City is seeing a spike in movie shoots, back up to the pre-9/11 level. Bloomberg reports that the city saw a 36% rise in production last year, with over 245 movies and television shows shot citywide in 2007. A consulting group hired by the mayor’s office determined that the industry pumps $5 billion a year into the economy and employs some......

It's a common observation, but are New Yorkers really more rude than residents of other cities? In Smithsonian magazine, New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella thinks we’re just misunderstood. After years of life in the city, she’s made a thorough argument that what outsiders perceive as rudeness is just a side-effect of life in New York, where the boundaries between public and private life are less pronounced. New Yorkers spend more time up in each......

Brooklyn Bridge circa 1896. The 125th birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge will be observed this month with a five day celebration from May 22nd through May 26th, Mayor Bloomberg and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz announced earlier this week. Completed in 1883, the bridge opened with a “People’s Day” celebration; for a penny toll the general public was permitted to traverse its span. (A few days later, on Memorial Day, 12 pedestrians were trampled to......

Last month the city announced that the space dedicated to amusements in the latest Coney Island rezoning plan would be cut from 15 acres to 9 acres. City officials explained that the downsizing was necessary to accommodate “local landowners” – the biggest of those is developer Joe Sitt, whose glitzy plans were previously derailed by the city for the express purpose of devoting larger space for the amusement park. Now Sitt’s Thor Equities stands to......

The Gray Lady slums it out to far East Williamsburg to report on the hipster bohemian squalor of the sprawling McKibbin Street “dorms;” two hulking buildings converted from garment factories to lofts in the late nineties by a trio of savvy Stuyvesant alums. It’s since become a filthy, bed-bug ravaged rite of passage for the young DIY arts set, who pile on top of each other in warren-like lofts more crowded than one of Dan......