Results tagged “alcohol”

The woman who killed eight people, including herself, when she drove the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway vomited twice on the side of the road before the collision. Police reports obtained by the Post reveal that just under two hours before the fatal crash — witnesses "noticed an adult female outside of the vehicle with brown hair, wearing blue, knee-length shorts, bent over with her hands on her knees, as if throwing up."

                     

Earlier this year we chatted with Rachel Maddow (MSNBC host, swine flu survivor and cocktail aficionado) about many things, including the search for the perfect pre-prohibition Scotch drink. At the time, she told us, "Scotch is used in very few cocktails, but when it is used, it can be very effective. So I'm very interested in trying to figure out what's beyond the Blood and Sand in terms of Scotch in cocktails."

Hot on the heels of their undercover work at the city's trendy nightclubs, Inside Edition heads to a much less glamorous scene: the construction site.

Mayor Bloomberg, you really won some votes talking about bringing back the Brooklyn trolleys, but you'd really win over the city if you allowed public drinking in parks. The NY Post reports that he recently addressed the no-drinking policy, saying, "I never understood why we don't let you drink in the park." However, he didn't show any signs that he'd be changing the policy, only saying, "We don't let you drink in the park. I mean, you go to watch the Philharmonic, you can't have a bottle of wine." In the past he has suggested that a bottle of wine while watching something akin to the Philharmonic is okay—something that was called out for being a classist sentiment. Recently Marty Markowitz was also supporting a form of drinking in public, after he was spotted with a glass of white on a stoop in Brooklyn (but he wasn't fined, like the Brooklynite drinking a beer was).

It's sort of fitting that with our death sand and polluted water that our city's beach lifeguards are probably drunk and under-trained. Going to the beach is now just as adventurous as going to Tompkins Square Park after midnight in the 80s—danger lurking around every corner and no one there to save you! Anyway, the NY Post is reporting on the sad state of affairs, saying the Parks Department has launched an investigation into beer drinking at the Orchard Beach lifeguard office; which comes on the heels of the Rockaway iPod lifeguard incident.

Like "everyman" Kimber VanRy before him, Marty Markowitz is standing up for stoop drinking. The Brooklyn Borough President was caught red handed with a glass of white as he sat on a Brooklyn stoop for an interview on NBC's "Talk Stoop" segment. VanRy, who became the poster boy for stoop drinking when he was ticketed for it last year, told the Daily News, "I just think there's a clear double standard. A law should be applied blindly to everyone, or it should be deemed ridiculous and we get rid of the law."

For the first time ever the Museum of the City of New York is opening its "romantic sunset Terrace—overlooking Fifth Avenue and Central Park—for summer fun with a Prohibition Era-themed Speakeasy serving up classic cocktails and Roaring 20’s dancing music." The classy debauchery will take place every Wednesday evening from 6 to 9 p.m., starting next Wednesday the 15th. They've even renamed the joint, so if you're in the know you'll call it the Speakeasy at 1220 Fifth. Which sort of gives it away. Anyway, the $12 admission includes one free drink and access to current exhibitions. Food will also be available for purchase. Here's a list of other museums that get boozy after dark.

This year is will be the 248th St. Patrick's Day Parade. While the parade honors Saint Patrick, the patron Saint of the Archdiocese of New York, it's become a popular celebration of anything remotely Irish, be it the heritage of a person or a beer.

A trader for DRW Commodities on the 34th floor of 7 World Trade Center was having a late night partying at the company's offices when he was struck with a pyromaniac urge today. 24-year-old Ryan Brinkerhoff was arrested and charged with six misdemeanor counts and 12 felony counts, including arson, reckless endangerment and burglary after spraying flammable liquid on a door and some phones around the office around 3 a.m. When security cameras led Port Authority police to him, they found him inebriated and on cocaine and stopped him before he set the fluids off. A source told the Post, "He was having a party up there. He's going to wake up and be in deep shit." After being booked at the First Precinct, he laughed at photographers and asked, "Why are you guys taking my picture?"

Suffolk County police investigating the death of 14-year-old Garrett Quedens arrested a 19-year-old and 24-year-old yesterday. Newsday reports Ishmoile Mohammed III and Reynold Jennings were charged with "first-degree unlawfully dealing with a child" after 14-year-old Garrett Quedens' for selling Quedens and his friend a liter of Georgi Vodka—$10 for the alcohol, $10 for the gas."

The evildoers of the MillerCoors corporation announced today that they will "remove caffeine and three other ingredients from Sparks alcoholic energy drink" after some people thought it was targeting youthful imbibers. "A coalition of state attorneys general had complained the stimulants reduced drinkers' sense of intoxication and were marketed to young drinkers." The other ingredients being removed are taurine [i.e. bile], guarana and ginseng. NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said this measure "will ensure that from here on out, these drinks are kept off New York shelves and away from New York consumers." The remaining Sparks will be sold (stock up!) and the company will cease production by January 10th, when a new, less-stimulating formula is dispensed. So feared is the old Sparks that one temperance crusader at the Center for Science in the Public Interest even declared it "a devil's brew." Sinners! Pour out your Satanic Sparks and open your mouths to the cleansing waters of non-energizing drinks. Or just clean the bathtub and start concocting a homemade recipe to get you through.

With New York's obscene real estate market starting to look ever so slightly less obscene, real estate brokers are panicking like jocks on prom night stuck with dates who won't neck. The crack trend spotters at the Times report that brokers are plying their clients with hard liquor and expensive wine so as to wear down their resistance. "Alcohol brings everyone together," declared broker Kipton Davis while showing a group of bankers and traders around a $9.9 million penthouse—as they knocked back Chardonnay, Chinon, and Lagavulin ($77/bottle) whiskey. But no matter how much these brokers promise to respect their clients in the morning, prudes like 28-year-old banker Jeff Nelson are still throwing up the Heisman. Sure, he's happy to take the free drinks, but let's face it: "The way prices are going, there’s no way to know where these prices will be next year." That's right, Nelson; a wealthy young catch like yourself ought to make 'em beg for it.

Court papers obtained by the NY Post reveal that two Brooklyn Legal Aid defense attorneys were involved in a physical altercation outside Boat Bar in Cobble Hill after one of them urinated on the floor inside the bar. The incident occurred earlier this summer after Legal Aids Brendan Relyea and Michael Pate went outside the bar after Relyea relieved himself on the floor rather than wait on a long bathroom line. When they were encouraged to leave by former prosecutor Matthew Knouff, their response was to punch Knouff out and fling him into a roll-down gate. Knouff is no stranger to drunken mischief himself, having been suspended since 2006 after he threw a brick through a car windshield following the DA's office Christmas party. Pate and Relyea were charged with assault, menacing and harassment and Relyea with public urination.

The confusion about public drinking continues! It's illegal, but Bloomberg created a huge gray area when in 2003 he declared that wine consumption at Central Park concerts was a-okay. Now Brownstoner focuses in on stoop drinking after a Park Slope man received a $25 open container violation ticket for enjoying a brewskie "after Biden's speech" when a patrol car with an observant cop came by. The officer "explained that if I was behind a fence or gate I would be ok. Since we don't have a gate, the set-back from the sidewalk didn't matter." The NYPD press office hasn't responded to our question about whether stoop drinking is okay yet, so we'll take that as a yes. Besides, in 2005 the NY Times all but encouraged stoop parties.

Drinking in New York has long been reserved for private homes or establishments with liquor licenses (or speakeasys!), but how well is the law enforced when it comes to drinking on a stoop or in a public park? Apparently, and unfortunately, the law is still being upheld very well. A few years back the tabloids wondered why cops looked the other way when it came to Chardonnay swilling audiences listening to the symphony in Central Park, while the beer-drinking crowd at a 9/11 memorial in Rockaway incurred plenty of fines.

Clearing up a legal gray area, state lawmakers have passed a bill regulating the sale of frozen dessert products made with wine, permitting the sale of ice cream and sorbet to anyone over the age of 21. The bill limits the alcohol content to 5 percent by volume and requires warning labels – even though it would take two gallons of wine ice cream or one pint of wine sorbet to equal one glass of actual wine, according to upstate purveyor Jeff Kostic.

Wonder what a police raid on a Hamptons gallery that's serving-alcohol- at-a-party- without-a-license looks like? Plum TV was there for the spectacle that landed gallery owner Ruth Vered on the cover of the Daily News and Post.

Thank goodness for alcohol crackdowns in the Hamptons, or else the Post and Daily News wouldn't have covers today! East Hampton gallery owner Ruth Vered (of the Vered Gallery) is featured on the front pages of both tabloids being hauled away by the police for serving alcoholic drinks without a license on Saturday night.

With all the buzz (and zzzz) over Sex and the City's silver screen debut, it was inevitable that a New York establishment (conveniently located by Union Square's Regal Cinema theaters) would take advantage with an oversized novelty drink.

Six months after Carol Gotbaum died in police custody at Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport, her family has filed an $8 million notice of claim against the city of Phoenix, saying "members of the Phoenix Police Department used excessive and unreasonable force on Carol, as if she was a dangerous criminal, rather than as the sick, intoxicated and vulnerable person she was."

Was your New Year's Eve a recipe for a hangover? Luckily there are a few recipes to cure what ails you, too. Last year we found some facts about hangovers, but learning isn't going to make that first headache of '08 go away.

ART: Art, fashion and blogs meet tonight at the Met. In an exhibition entitled blog.mode: addressing fashion, viewers will be able to comment on what they see. It's "the first in a series of shows designed to promote critical and creative dialogues about fashion. The exhibition presents some forty costumes and accessories dating from the eighteenth century to the present." Visitors are then encouraged to share their reactions online or from a "blogbar" of computer terminals in the exhibition galleries. Pictured is one of the dresses -- you know you have comment about it.

Peter Braunstein really loves the New York Post. The fashion industry reporter-turned-prison inmate, after being recently convicted of the kidnapping, sex assault, armed robbery and burglary of a former co-worker on Halloween in 2005, gives his first interview since being locked up this past summer to the tabloid.

Haru: The Japanese mini-chain’s takeover of New York is proceeding according to plan with the opening of their latest location in the financial district. The elegant, bi-level space (pictured) is located in the landmark 1903 Beaver Building, which calls to mind a mini-Flatiron Building. This location features two floors of dining to accommodate 160 guests, a 17 seat sushi bar, a second “alcohol” bar and two private party rooms. Like the other Harus, the extensive...

The off-duty police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Bronx man earlier this year was indicted on manslaughter charges. The indictment will be unsealed today, and police officer Raphael Lora will be arraigned. Manslaughter has a maximum penalty of 25 years. On a May night, Lora ran outside of his home when a minivan, driving the wrong way on the street, crashed into a car on the street. Lora chased the minivan, which was...

Tonight striking writers and friends will take the stage again for a 2nd Strike Night! Joining John Oliver (The Daily Show), Liz Cackowski (Saturday Night Live), Andy Secunda (Conan) and Maggie Carey, Joe Grossman (Letterman) is John Mulaney -- possibly one of our favorite young comedians today. Mulaney helped host one of our Movable Hype shows last year and currently can be seen on stages around town and on screen at Best Week Ever. Buy...

Even though two women accused of looting apartments during open houses were arrested last week, it's unclear whether some real estate agents have taken the crimes seriously enough to make sure their home showings are less crime-prone. The Post sent a reporter to some open houses, only to find it all too easy to potentially steal things like clothes and knickknacks. Of the four open houses the reporter and photographer went to, no ID's were...

December is here, and the responsible citizens behind National Drunk and Drugged Driving (3D) Prevention Month have their work cut out for them, because this month is also National Egg Nog Month. On Monday night the fabulous folks at Mount Gay Rum (no comments, please) will be kicking off the month-long nogathon with an eggsellent event at the swank World Bar, former home of the world’s most expensive cocktail, located in the Trump World Tower....

A middle-aged man held several workers hostage at Sen. Clinton's New Hampshire campaign office in the town of Rochester yesterday, before surrendering to police. The alleged bomb he had taped to his chest turned out to be simply a number of road flares. Leeland Eisenberg's motivation for seizing Clinton's field office is unclear, but he appears to be a disturbed individual. The New York Times declined to speculate on Eisenberg's purpose ("[Police] would not discuss...

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a foot pursuit on West 50th St. and Broadway in Manhattan, a missing person on West 110th St. in Manhattan, and a stabbing on Grove St. and Seneca Ave. in Queens.
• The 57-year-old man shot to death by a federal agent during a grenade sting this week was a career criminal. Authorities believe the proposed sale of what turned out to be an inert grenade was probably just an attempt to scam a gullible buyer.
• On the heels of his attempt to curb NYC's pigeon population, Councilman James Oddo now wants to reduce the population of wild turkeys on Staten Island, which he claims are a nuisance to the town of Ocean Breeze.
• Dick Wilson, the actor who played the ("Don't Squeeze the") Charmin salesman Mr. Whipple, died this week.
• A firefighter featured in the 2005 Calendar of Heroes was arrested on misdemeanor assault charges yesterday.
• Contrary to popular opinion, it isn't the tryptophan in turkey that makes people tired after Thanksgiving dinner. The likely culprit is a combination of eating too much, alcohol, and a long day.
• Approximately 1,000 doctors at Columbia University are now at risk for identity theft after a healthcare provider published their social security numbers online.
• BoingBoing brings us the holiday krunk video "Turkey Wrap."