Results tagged “car”

This shaky surveillance video shows an unidentified man brazenly slashing the tires of three NYPD Parking Enforcement cars in broad daylight on Monday in Parkchester. (It was either very windy out, or the surveillance cam was afraid it would be slashed next, because it can't stop trembling!) The cars were parked outside a Bronx parking enforcement headquarters near the Westchester Square shopping district, were merchants say parking ticket blitzes are driving away their shoppers.

What on earth is the General Lee doing in New York City? The replica of the Dukes of Hazzard car was spotted in Brooklyn over the weekend, and it isn't the first Confederate flag to make it to the borough. Chances are you'll see it around town, those are New York plates! The Brooklyn Eagle ran it to it as well, parked over on Union Street in the Columbia Waterfront District. Let's us know if you see it catching some air.

If you spend enough time in Williamsburg, sooner or later you'll be passed by a man driving a red Subaru, blasting oldies and singing along at the top of his voice. That's just how Anthony Delia, aka Subaru Dude, rolls. Filmmaker Russel Fong recently rode around with Delia for Free Williamsburg, and the guy is exactly as ebullient as we always hoped. Take a look at Hipsterville through his happy eyes:

An East Village resident sent us these photos of the aftermath of a horrific automobile crash that happened early this morning, at First Avenue and Fourth Street. An NYPD spokesman tells us that according to a "preliminary report," a 55-year-old black female was killed after a delivery van and minivan collided. Apparently, the minivan was so totaled that EMS had to cut the top off to get inside. The spokesman said there were no other injuries (which seems hard to believe) and no one was charged (which seems typical). Streetsblog hears an "unconfirmed" report that "this was a T-bone collision in which the minivan ran the light."

A Fox 5 cameraman happened to be shooting footage near the Ed Sullivan Theater yesterday for a segment on taxi medallions when an angry brawl exploded between a pedicab driver and a cabbie. It starts when the pedicab driver, fed up with the hack honking his horn behind him, tosses a cup of coffee at the cab's passenger-side window. You gonna take that cabbie? Not in New York! Check it out:

Paging Doc Brown, this car is from the future! Well, at least the future we pictured back in the '80s. Or an old Transformers cartoon. Now it's more like a futuristic car based off of our nostalgia-inspired designs. Regardless, it was spotted recently on Avenue C and 8th Street and the photographer, Will McDonough, tells us "it had Hydraulic doors, that opened when the driver unlocked the door. He customized the dashboard with a tons of switches and levers... not sure what they did. This thing has so many blind spots, god knows how he can drive it through the city." How long do you think it'll last in this rough n' tumble town?

Now that everyone is paying attention to Javier Bardem and James Franco as they film scenes in Brooklyn, Gerard Butler's publicist is clearly leaking stories to the press as a reminder that he is also still in the borough making movie magic! The NY Post reports that he set for the new Jennifer Aniston film The Bounty (in which he co-stars) has been surrounded by paparazzi, and one bodyguard "allegedly flipped out and keyed a photographer's car—causing thousands of dollars in damage" to his 2003 Infiniti. The WireImage photographer was the victim of the East Flatbush incident, saying that he was "surprised that the community had my back." The guard was assigned to protect Gerard Butler, who is rumored to be dating Aniston; perhaps he was trying to stop the photog from taking this photo of Butler in flagrante delicto with another woman!

According to Reuters, "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced an agreement with Republicans to vote on Thursday on the popular 'cash for clunkers' auto sales incentive bill." The program, funded with $1 billion to offer people $3,500-4,500 to trade in gas guzzlers and buy more efficient vehicles, ran out of money in days (and spurred auto sales), prompting the government to put together another infusion. However, in some areas, clunkers are all people can afford: A Bronx car dealer told NY1, "People do come and say, 'I got $2,000 and what can you do for me? What car do you have in that range?" while the recent purchaser of a used SUV explained, "It was more convenient for me and it fit into my budget. I can't afford a new car. I can't. Not in this economy. I can't."

Some followup to a bicyclist's accusations that an SUV driver rammed into him in Central Park, which Gawker first reported: The Daily News reports that the police are investigating Brian Dooda's claims that he was "dragged more than 200 feet" by Don Broderick's SUV, adding, "Sources said a detective spoke to Dooda Tuesday but it was not yet known if charges would be filed against Broderick." The News, of course, notes Broderick's employment history—he's a "former New York Post reporter who now works for Rupert Murdoch's" Fox News—but notes the 53-year-old driving record is clean. But now Gawker says Broderick was once suspended for "assaulting a Fox co-worker...roughly ten years ago in the Fox newsroom." Streetsblog says the city's policy of keeping cars in Central Park's loop is to blame (the city has reduced car hours a little), "Until officials summon the small measure of political will needed to return the loop road to its rightful users, it will continue to be a contested street to which both drivers and park users believe they have a righteous claim. And the next Brian Dooda may not be so lucky." And Dooda offered one idea for Broderick's punishment to the News: "He has to ride a bike through Manhattan in rush hour."

Three pedestrians were killed by drivers in three separate accidents in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan yesterday, but there's one thing that ties the incidents together: As usual, none of the drivers were charged. In Harlem, 73-year-old great-grandmother Vivian Long, a retired teacher's aide, was crossing Amsterdam Avenue with her granddaughter when she was fatally struck by an Access-A-Ride vehicle. (For the record, Access-A-Ride drivers are the worst.) She died at St. Luke's Hospital. In Borough Park, 25-year-old Matvey Smolovich, who according to his relatives had mental problems, was run over by a mini school bus around 10 a.m. after stepping out from between parked cars 100 feet from the crosswalk. His father tells the Daily News, "He left the house without my permission... After this I don't care about anything. My life is ruined." The 55-year-old bus driver stayed at the scene, and the NYPD is investigating, but hasn't arrested anyone. Then in Flushing, Queens, the 19-year-old driver of a Nissan Altima killed a jogger who also stepped into the street from between parked cars. He was rushed to New York Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The latest adventure of Brooklynite Jake Bronstein raises an interesting question. To start off, he was loaned a vehicle by a car company that he custom picked the design for (it includes pink dots, a detail that is important later on in the story). Put aside any problems you may have with the corporate shilling for a moment: the car is missing! Or is it? He explains:

The police said they didn’t tow it; their automated number said they didn’t tow it; hell, even my frequent and frantic calls to all of the city’s tow-lots all turned up the same response… “the NYPD does not have this car.” I found a meter-man who said that on occasion cars get towed. And sometimes, just sometimes, they wind up in the system with the wrong plate number. When that happens, you’re pretty much screwed because the city will say they don’t have the car… and because they won’t let you walk around the lots they tow them to, that’ll pretty much be the end of it. Forever.

Here's the first peek at the new look of Times Square without a vehicle in sight as part of the "Greenlight for Midtown" program, which began today. The early shot looking down Broadway and Seventh Avenue from 45th Street comes from Streetsblog, which says, "It's obviously way too soon to judge how this remarkable experiment is working but today, at least, car-free Broadway appears to be a huge hit. "

      

Tomorrow is the start of the city's "Greenlight for Midtown" program, which involves banning vehicles on Broadway between 42nd and 47th Streets (by Times Square) and between 33rd and 35th Street (by Herald Square). The city hopes that traffic congestion can be reduced by "reconnecting the street grid on 6th and 7th Avenues and giving space to pedestrians on Broadway." According to the Department of Transportation, the plan will result in "Traffic lights with up to 66% more green time," "Significant travel time improvements on Sixth and Seventh Avenues," "Safer and simpler crossings for pedestrians," and "Faster bus speeds for 70,000 daily riders."

The shuttered Deli in the Slope location at Fifth Avenue and St. John's Place in Park Slope was the site of a "good morning" car crash around 9 a.m. today. Early reports indicate that the driver of the vehicle had a heart attack behind the wheel; he's currently in critical condition. A report over the news wire doesn't mention any other passengers in the vehicle, and it doesn't seem that any pedestrians were hurt. A manager at another Deli in the Slope location on Butler Street tells us that this Fifth Avenue location has been closed for about a year.

The Scarsdale mother who was arrested after abandoning her two daughters, ages 10 and 12, on a sidewalk three miles from their home last month will not be charged with child endangerment, a White Plains judge decided today. Speaking to the press for the first time outside the court house, Madlyn Primoff said, "Clearly I made a mistake, but I truly love our children and I know that I am a good parent." Primoff was pilloried by mothers as far away as Australia after the infamous incident, but today her lawyer explained that she did not intend to leave her children to walk home. Fed up with their bickering, she had merely ejected them from the car as a bluff while she drove around the block. But when she returned, they were gone! She soon found the 12-year-old, but the distraught younger girl had been taken in by a Good Samaritan, who alerted police. Prosecutor Audrey Stone said Primoff was "engaged in family therapy" and posed no threat to her children, so Judge Eric Press agreed to dismiss the case and seal it in six months if Primoff behaves.

An alert came over the newswire not long ago regarding an accident investigation at Manhattan Avenue and India Street in Greenpoint, where at least one victim has been transported to Bellevue Hospital. A reader has just sent in the above photo, and we're hearing rumors that "the driver of one of the vehicles struck a woman on Huron Street and was fleeing the scene, and caused this pile up. From what the police were saying, it appears that the woman in critical condition at this scene was an occupant of one of the cars on the bottom of the pile."

Have you ever actually seen a Google Earth car roaming around and capturing souls with its sophisticated camera technology? Nylon has a photo of one that was seen on Mercer and Houston streets in SoHo yesterday. They note, "The wild contraptions above the car record the latitute, longitute, and elevation of every place the car goes, while the camera snaps… well, you know, you’ve stalked your friends’ houses on Google Earth a million times before." Currently you can't go down Mercer on Google Maps, so we're guessing that's all about to change, and finally the world can glance upon yet another SoHo street.

Just like last year, the press is having fun looking at how Congressman get around town at taxpayer expense. Representative Charles Rangel was previously skewered for (legally) using his office budget pay for the $777.54 a month lease on a Cadillac DeVille. Rangel's office now says he's using a ride owned by his campaign. But there are still other targets for populist outrage! According to House records, Queens Democrat Gregory Meeks doesn't give a damn about the American auto worker: He uses taxpayer money to cover his $998 a month lease on a Lexus, which is made by Toyota! And Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-Brooklyn) pays $715 monthly for his Lincoln, though his spokesperson tells the Daily News it's okay because the car is basically his mobile office and he "typically works seven days each week." But what about potential mayoral candidate Rep. Anthony Weiner? He's actually a paragon of modesty, budgeting just $147 a month for a Chevy Impala, though it's unclear how much more he pays to pimp it out.

In a continuing effort to get the Taxi and Limousine Commission to turn green a little faster, the Bloomberg administration announced a new set of incentives for fleet owners with hybrid or other low-emission vehicles, the NY Times reports. Starting May 1st, taxi fleet owners can charge drivers $3 more per 12-hour shift for hybrid or clean diesel cabs. They will also be able to "penalize fleet owners by lowering the amount they can charge to lease cabs that use more fuel and pollute more, like the Ford Crown Victoria, the most common type of taxi." The new rule will decrease that charge by $4 per shift. While it would ultimately clean and green the streets of NYC, there are some opponents. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade called the plan "unconscionable," saying fleet owners bought their vehicles under the former lease cap. Currently of the 13,237 cabs in New York City, there are 2,019 hybrids and 12 clean diesel vehicles.

While aliens are being spotted in New Jersey, there have been some out-of-this-world car sightings right in downtown New York recently. The NY Post reports on the mysterious Jeston-like car that many pedestrians have been intrigued by, but it turns out it's only making a rare East Coast appearance. The Aptera 2e, a 1700-lb, 3-wheeled electric car set to hit the market later this year (here's a video showing it in action), will only be sold in California at first. It's classified as a motorcycle, but if you have the $25-40K to hand over for one, you won't need the proper license because it operates like an automobile (even containing a trunk and airbags). The car can drive on both city streets and highways, and one Wired writer just sat shotgun for a ride, saying of his driver, "he suddenly gunned it at a green light, turned right on a dime, faded three lanes to his left while outrunning a cab turning left from the opposing lane and came to a comfortable stop perhaps 50 yards later." The car 200 miles per gallon, meaning you could drive 100 miles for less than it would cost to take one trip on the subway.

Newsday reports that a 20-month-old toddler managed to crash his parents 1993 Buick into a building on Long Island yesterday. Apparently the child's mother left the car running—with the boy's father in the front passenger seat—while she went inside a check cashing business last night. The toddler climbed from the backseat into the front and "put the car in gear, rolling it into the building." According to WABC 7, "The vehicle took out a brick column and a window before coming to a stop inside a store." Thankfully no one inside the car or in the store was injured.

Though not as impressive as this one, Lost City spotted a massive knitting project on West 37th Street last night. The car cozy was allegedly "a patchwork of separate pieces of knitting" that were made to fit snuggly around the car, as part of a Chashama exhibit that's running through the weekend. Countdown to a knitted bike cozy craze?

In an effort to please both environmentalists and animal rights activists, while still keeping the carriage horse drivers in business (albeit sans the horses), Councilman Daniel Garodnick is pitching eco-friendly replicas of vintage Model T Fords as a replacement of the horse drawn carriages (an idea that has been brought up in the past).

Looking for a new dumbbell, or perhaps a surefire way to break into someone's car? One man's bad luck may just be your ticket to toned arms and free cd players. From a Craigslist post this morning: "Some douchebag thief threw a 50 lbs weight into one of my car's windows (parked in Douchebag Central, aka Murray Hill), taking an old CD player walkman from my glove compartment. The CD player was useless but the window cost me $100 to replace. I'd like to recoup the loss. Thankfully, said douchebag thief left the 50 lbs weight in the back seat of my car as a souvenir (You needed to lug around a 50 lbs. weight to do the job of 3 lbs. crowbar? No wonder you broke into my car and not one with something valuable in it. You're an idiot). Now you can benefit from my loss by buying this weight at a discount."

"I opened my bedroom door and right in front of me there was a tire spinning at eye level," Long Island homeowner Jim Cordo told Newsday after a crazy car crash delivered a totaled Ford Mustang into the front of his house. After falling asleep at the wheel around 6:30 this morning, the driver struck a pile of firewood, sending his vehicle airborne and up over the hood of Cordo's car in the driveway. According to Cordo: "He went over my car and embedded himself into my house. It had to be airborne when it hit my car." Miraculously, no one was seriously injured, though the family's two orange tabbies are now missing. The driver reportedly apologized to Cordo and was not arrested or charged.

A compromise may be in sight between those who would rid Prospect Park of cars and community groups who say such a change would clog their streets. The Brooklyn Paper reports that at a Community Board 7 meeting in Brooklyn last night, Transportation Alternatives revised its call for an immediate ban, instead proposing narrowing the park to one car lane. About 600 motorists pass through every hour, and the thought of a full ban had board member Cynthia Gonzalez asking, "They want us to redirect 1,200 cars [each morning and evening] onto our streets, for how many bike riders?" Wiley Norvell at Transportation Alternatives tells us, "Our single-biggest issue with cars in Prospect Park is the danger they pose to park users. Speeding and reckless driving are rampant, and a 'road diet' would go a long way to improving the situation, without bumping up against the traffic concerns that have been raised south of the park."

The MINI people have announced their 100% electric, zero-emissions car, and a New York field trial program to go along with it. They're looking for 500 people in the area who want to be "motoring pioneers" -- sounds pretty exciting, right? Wrong. While the prospect of electric cars hitting the streets is exciting, one look at the laborious application and FAQ section and you'll quickly learn that the trial will cost you no less than $850 a month. That's just for the car. On top of that, you'll have to get yourself a garage and update the electrical wiring in your home. By the end of the year, you'll be broke, but the company declares that "as motoring pioneers, you'll proudly go down in MINI history as a widely respected group who helped pave the road to the future for us all." They will then take your MINI away. If you decide you want to take part anyway, be sure to read the fine print before signing up.

NYC comptroller William Thompson is proposing that the city plug the MTA's budget gap by raising automobile registration fees in the 12 counties served by the MTA’s trains and buses. If passed by the State Legislature, his plan would require drivers in the city and surrounding counties to pay $100 a year to register their vehicles. (The city currently charges $30 every two years.) According to the Times, drivers with vehicles weighing more than 2,300 pounds would have to pay an additional 9 cents per pound. By that measure, owners of Lincoln Navigators, which weigh in at 6,000 lbs., would owe the city $450 per year. Thompson says the revenue could add up to about $1 billion per year and serve as an alternative to the MTA's "devastating" budget proposal announced last week.

Windsor Terrace residents were joined by Park Slope Assemblyman Jim Brennan and local community board members at a rally to decry a proposal that would completely bar cars from Prospect Park for three months next summer to study the traffic impact. Last month Transportation Alternatives delivered a petition to Mayor Bloomberg signed by 10,000 people who want the park to be totally car-free.

While the House of Representatives voted against a measure to strip Representative Charles Rangel of chairing the House Ways and Means Committee, House leaders are planning an investigation of Rangel's ethical issues--you know, the lack of reporting income on his returns, his rent-stabilized apartments, using House letterhead to solicit donations for a center being built in his name. This comes as his 1972 Mercedes Benz, long unused, was towed from a House parking garage!