Is Peter Vallone Jr's favorite daredevil, Jeb Corliss, back at it? While he's facing misdemeanor charges from his 2006 attempt to jump off the Empire State Building (the Daily News notes that he's still fighting to get the charges tossed due to missing evidence), Corliss may already be planning his next move. He told The NY Post that he would "absolutely" take advantage of the new law passed that allows urban stunts like parachuting off......

Long Island waiters who provide a tantalizing description of the daily specials while omitting such vulgar details as price may have to change up their patter if a proposed law in Nassau County gets passed. Of course, resistance is coming from the New York Restaurant Association, which in recent years has failed to block regulations on calorie info and bans on artificial trans fat. The executive vice president of the group maintains, "It’s good business......

Suffolk County on Long Island has become the first place in New York State where it's illegal to send text messages while operating a motor vehicle. Effective immediately, drivers spotted fiddling with their cell phones will face a $150 fine. Similar legislation has been passed in Nassau and Westchester counties but has not gone into effect, and a statewide law is still tied up in the legislature. In August, New York City Councilman David Weprin......

Yesterday State Senator Jeff Klein, a Democrat from the Bronx, released his third annual "dirty dozen" list of New York City's most unsanitary restaurants, based on inspection scores and citations for pest problems. Unfortunately for celebrity chef Mario Batali, the press conference was held outside his Del Posto Ristorante in the Meatpacking District. The three star restaurant was hit with dozens of violations in June, including a citation for food that was "spoiled, adulterated, contaminated......

Photograph of open store doors from the NRDC The City Council voted by an overwhelming margin to pass the bill requiring chain stores to shut their doors when their air conditioners are running, leaving many small business unhappy. Cookie Falack, the owner of six Cookie's clothing stores called it "anti-business" and claimed that when they closed their doors earlier this summer, business went down almost 25 percent. But Mayor Bloomberg is expected to sign......

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......

A woman who dropped a hundred dollar bill somewhere near a food cart at East 58th St. and Lexington had the money returned to her! The Daily News reports that an unidentified man found the bill on the sidewalk Monday and gave it to Egyptian immigrant food cart operator Emad Youssef. The vendor then turned it over to Rochelle Meyers, his distraught customer, when she returned the next day. Myers, an infertility clinic administrator from......

Photo of Adidas store downtown via Paolo Mastrangelo's Flickr. Last year City Councilwoman Gale Brewer proposed a bill that would fine establishments $200 per open door/window in air conditioned spaces (as well as heated spaces in the winter), the bill wasn't fully backed by the Bloomberg administration and never saw the light of day...until now! The NY Post reports that the environmentally friendly bill is now supported by Bloomberg and "is expected to win......

Encouraged by the passage of a law requiring chain restaurants in New York City to display calorie information for food and beverages, Councilman Domenic Recchia has introduced a bill that would require store owners to post signs or labels warning parents about bite-size foods that pose a choking hazard for children under the age of five. Recchia tells the Sun he was motivated to do something after a 2-year-old boy in his district died in......

The lactivists were at it again today! WNBC reports that to help kick-off World Breastfeeding Week, "breast-feeding advocates boarded an A train on Friday for a ride from the Bronx to Brooklyn to call attention to a mother's right to nurse her baby." Since breastfeeding in public has been legal for 14 years, their main goal was to get NY lawmakers "to pass legislation that would require health care providers to tell pregnant women about......

It’s been over a year since the City Council passed a bill regulating pedicabs, but police have been unable to enforce the laws because of a lawsuit brought by the New York City Pedicab Owners' Association, which is just one of several pedicab organizations in the city. Consumer Affairs Commissioner Jonathan Mintz tells the Post that the group is trying to claim all the 325 available pedicab licenses for themselves. But Chris Marlow, a flack......

Earlier this year Queens Council Member Peter Vallone Jr. introduced a bill that would make it illegal to jump or climb a building (monument, statue, crane and bridge) 25-feet or taller. Yesterday the City Council unveiled bill No. 721, which The NY Times is calling the "anti-Spidey law." Following Alain Robert and Renaldo Clarke's climbs of the NY Times building earlier this month, the city is on edge over stunts. The Times notes that the......

What's a Mayor to do? When he's not trying to quiet rumors that he has a bad relationship with Albany, Mayor Bloomberg is still getting shafted by Albany. The NY Times describes the latest indignity: How a city proposal for bus-only traffic lane enforcement was shot down. The bill, which would have put cameras on the new rapid transit buses (the whole bus rapid transit system will be complete by 2011) to catch cars the......

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......

The NY Sun has a status report on the proposed rocket train. Good news for rail riders, "the House passed legislation [The Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act] requiring the federal government to solicit proposals for its financing and development." The plan has Bloomberg's full support, and would make the NYC to D.C. trip under two hours...but it will cost a pretty penny.New York was in full support calls for $14.4 billion in rail investment......

Make sure you’re sitting down: Because of a surge in visa requests, America is currently in the grips of a severe fashion model shortage. The problem is that professional good looking people from overseas have to apply for the same H-1B visas that pasty high-tech workers require. According to Politico, demand for the visas is double the 85,000 spots available in the category per year; in the fiscal year 2007 only 349 models from overseas......

City councilman and mayoral hopeful Tony Avella held a press conference today at City Hall to spotlight a pending council resolution urging the New York State Senate to outlaw force-feeding ducks and geese to produce foie gras. A bill to ban the practice is languishing in Albany, and Avella hopes his largely symbolic gesture will push it forward. Yesterday Avella told the Village Voice that though there are only two foie gras farms in New......

Photo via Jake Dobkin In a recent Guardian article the subject of the New York art world rejecting street art was touched upon, a topic that led to a bigger discussion on New Yorker's views on the medium. One New Yorker, Council Member Peter Vallone Jr., has proposed a new bill which will attempt to do what decades of efforts has failed to do: abolish graffiti. The NY Sun notes that the "legislation would......

Would-be Empire State Building jumper, Jeb Corliss (pictured), isn't in the clear yet. Last year's decision from Supreme Court Justice Michael Ambrecht to dismiss the charges against him was overturned yesterday when The Supreme Court Appellate Division decided to bring the case back to life. A four-judge panel unanimously voted, and the Manhattan District Attorney's office can now pursue its charge of reckless endangerment against Corliss for his 2006 attempted jump. The judges did reduce......

Queens Council Member Peter Vallone Jr. has introduced a bill that would have Evel Knievel rolling in his grave. If it becomes law, stunt men are going to have a tough time working on their craft in New York, as it would outlaw climbing and jumping off any structure taller than 25 feet; daredevils could get fined and spend up to a year in jail. Alain Robert is not going to be happy about this......

The plastic bags that New Yorkers walk away with after shopping have many functions in their 2nd lives - picking up dog poop, reuse as garbage bags, or even getting caught in trees - but there's one especially novel usage. In today's entry on the city's new plastic bag recycling bill, which awaits Mayor Bloomberg's signature, we learned that plastic bags can also be used as toys for children: The best way to reuse plastic......

Not everyone got an over-hyped "I'm Not A Plastic Bag" when it hit Whole Foods last year, so the powers that be had to step in and put an end to the bag's nemesis: The Plastic Bag! Yesterday, the City Council passed a bill, 44 to 2, requiring stores over 5,000 square-feet to offer recycling for plastic bags, as well as have bins where bags can be returned. And on the plastic bags stores give......