Results tagged “nyc”

Reclining her hospital bed yesterday, the 66-year-old Harlem woman who took a stray bullet in the leg in Harlem Wednesday sent a strong message to Mayor Bloomberg about what Harlem needs: "Bloomberg's getting in there and making the place look fancy and all of that, but it's not safe and people won't want to come here," Virginia Valree told the Daily News.

You might remember back in May when the Taxi & Limousine Commission threatened the public with three new pilot programs that would reduce congestion by packing more fares into fewer cars. Well, unlike most pilot programs, it appears this one is actually happening, and as soon as next month. TLC announced Thursday that they will be setting up three locations where two or more riders and/or strangers can hop into a single cab for a discounted fare—and possibly a missed connection.

       

From the team behind the tiny and exclusive club The Eldridge and Upstairs, CV is the latest reboot of a space in The Hotel on Rivington [i.e., THOR] that has previously done business as 105 Riv. Hilarious interview subject Matt Levine brought in nightlife poobah Steve Lewis to redesign it, and Lewis says he's made the place "a warm, comfy space to hang with a 'Meatpacking' aesthetic." (The name, by the way, is the address in Roman numerals; so now you have a dope pick-up line when you go there.)

The NYPD's stop and frisk policy shows no signs of abating. The latest data on the controversial program shows that the NYPD is on track to stop a record number of New Yorkers this year.

              

Click on the images above for more details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans, Broken Embraces, Fix, The Blind Side, Missing Person, Mammoth, Planet 51, Staten Island, Defamation, New Moon, Psycho, Jabberwocky, Red Cliff, and Rene'.

[UPDATE BELOW] Life is so unpredictable: One minute you're pulling out of a New Jersey gas station, the next minute you're diving off the George Washington Bridge to escape police after a high-speed chase. An unidentified man presumably fell to his death yesterday morning after trying to escape from cops who pulled him over for a "routine stop" while driving his 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix through Fort Lee. Police say the man was pulled over around 9:30 a.m. for failing to yield, and the vehicle "had law enforcement equipment inside." But within minutes he sped away toward the bridge, with the fuzz in hot pursuit.

A 66-year-old Harlem woman became the second victim of stray gunfire this week in NYC. Virginia Valree was walking along Lenox Avenue in Harlem around 3:30 p.m. yesterday, carrying potatoes to deliver to a sick friend, when a bullet struck her left leg and knocked her into traffic on West 135th Street. "I'm horrified. All I know is I was just standing there and my leg gave in," Valree told the Daily News from her hospital bed last night. "I was on the ground. I was laying there saying, 'Somebody stop the traffic!' because I didn't want to get run over."

       

Click on the images for details on newcomers Spot Dessert Bar, Obao, Lucy's Cantina Royale, and the latest at Emporio and Death & Co, which just introduced their fall menu.

Not a good couple of weeks for Access-A-Ride, the bike-lane blocking fleet of giant vans that shuttle infirm New Yorkers around town. A local news crew caught one driver sleeping on the job last week, but now maybe the fatigue makes sense: the Access-A-Ride headquarters in Long Island City has been infested with bed bugs since the summer of 2008! The situation's become so intolerable that workers picketed outside yesterday, and one employee, who brought the bugs home and had to throw out all her furniture, tells the Daily News, "They really need to clean this place. This is not a joke."

    

Check out the lipstick on this pig factory farm cow: McDonald's Corp. spokeswoman Danya Proud says this McDonald's location on Sixth Avenue between 14th and 15th streets is the first in the nation to get a so-called "urban redesign." It has free Wi-Fi and laptop outlets, upholstered vinyl chairs instead of seats bolted to the floor, subdued lighting, and all-black uniforms for employees. The metrosexual look is, naturally, de rigueur in Europe, but like something out of another world for us boorish Americans. One customer tells the Associated Press it's "beautiful" and more "like a lounge"—but with the same revolting "food."

            

This year the DOT reached a goal of adding 200 more miles of parking space bike lanes in NYC—but as every cyclist knows, these also double as sweet traffic lanes, loading/unloading zones, and parking lots. The danger in all this, of course, is that when a bike lane is blocked, bicyclists are forced to merge with auto traffic, sometimes causing accidents and fatalities.

On Monday the City Council passed a bill that would give motorists a five minute grace period on parking tickets issued at Muni-Meters or when a vehicle is in violation of alternate side parking regulations. Mayor Bloomberg has vowed to veto it, but the Council approved it 47 to 2, and they only need a two-thirds vote to override a veto, meaning the law could very well take effect in 90 days. Will "chaos" reign, as Bloomberg predicts, or will motorists receive a welcome relief from "parking enforcement officers hiding behind the bushes, waiting for the meter to run out," as one parking commissioner in White Plains puts it?

Police have arrested five young men allegedly involved in the altercation that led to the shooting of innocent bystander Vada Vasquez, a 15-year-old Bronx girl who was chatting with a friend after school Monday afternoon when a stray bullet struck her in the head, shattering inside her skull. She is currently in critical condition and on a ventilator. The bullets were directed at Tyrone Creighton, 19, who was hit in the back as he fled five men who had confronted him outside a bodega near Bronx Latin School. Police believe revenge was the motive.

Business owners did their best yesterday to scare off Council members mulling a bill that would require all employers in the city to provide up to nine paid sick days. The owners insist such a law would force small businesses to slash salaries and benefits, lay off employees, and eventually flee the city. "Pile on another expense to us, you’re gonna put people out of business. You’re gonna encourage people to move their business out of New York City. I’m a mile from New Jersey. It’s a hop over the bridge. And it’s very tempting," said Tom Scarangello of Scaran Heating & Air Conditioning.

This week Sam Sifton at the Times re-reviews the new location of Oceana for the paper; it previously received an impressive three stars from Frank Bruni, but the seafood restaurant recently moved from a cozy townhouse space to a big new home on the ground floor of the McGraw Hill building, in the theater district. New York's Adam Platt deems the reboot "a cavernous expense-account joint," and Sifton also downgrades the new Oceana to two stars.

Bowing to pressure from families of drunk driving victims, state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has thrown his support behind a bill that would make it a felony to drive with a blood alcohol content of .08 while a passenger 15 years old or under is in the car. The legislation is named for 11-year-old Leandra Rosado, who recently died in a crash on the Henry Hudson Parkway while riding with her friend's allegedly drunk mother.

How many times have you arrived at a roof party only to realize that you left your Snuggie at home? Probably never, but just in case, this winter the rooftop garden bar 230 Fifth has you covered. Literally. Owner Steven Greenberg has purchased 1,000 Snuggie-esque fleece hooded robes for outdoor use at the Flatiron district lounge. He tells us this is the third year he's supplied them to guests; during the first season he bought 300, and by spring they were all gone due to theft. He then restocked with 500 last year, but by the end only 300 remained. But instead of lining the robes with GPS-rigged explosives programmed to detonate a block away, Greenberg just bought another thousand. So don't feel too bad if you wake up back at home still wearing yours.

According to The Real Deal, Judge Charles Ramos told lawyers for Corcoran to "read the riot act" to their client, finding the company "grossly negligent" for failing to preserve and turn over e-mails revealing that Corcoran agents canceled appointments with prospective buyers on rainy days. Apparently, the flooding in the three-bedroom Park Slope duplex was so bad that it was like "the side of a swimming pool has come down," Einstein tells the Daily News. Well, it doesn't take a genius to see that Corcoran's in a bit of hot water here.

           

Down at the Winter Garden in the World Financial Center, this year's Canstruction exhibit is underway, with 100,693 cans being used to make ingenious sculptures to benefit City Harvest. All these sculptures were assembled in a single night, and yesterday the winners were announced, with jurors declaring "Feed the Bank (Piggy Bank)," by Arianna Braun Architects, PLLC, best in show. The award for Best Use of Labels went to the Beatles-inspired "We Get By With A Little Help From Our Friends," by Ted Moudis Associates. Best Structural Ingenuity went to "A Fungus to Feed Us" by Platt Byard Dovell White Architects

In 2007, a high-water mark in white truffle excess was reached when Le Cirque owner Sirio Maccioni dropped $7,000 on a 1.1 pound white Alba truffle. Now see how the mighty have fallen: Last year NYC restaurateurs were outbid for the biggest truffle of the season by Chicago, and this year Philadelphia has made the Big Apple look like small potatoes. Philly steakhouse Barclay Prime just outbid Daniel for the biggest truffle to hit town this year, a 1.1 pound monster bought for $4,100. Grub Street has video of that bad boy, which sure could upgrade plenty of cheese steak sandwiches. Of course, as Mauro Maccioni once told us, "what really matters is firmness, not size."

       

Last week we noted the opening of a charming new restaurant/cocktail lounge/jazz bar called The Manhattan Inn in Greenpoint (located on Manhattan between Bedford and Nassau); but as you can see this place is so good looking it merits its own feature. This weekend we were actually lured there twice; the first visit was occasioned by our desire to wait out the Saturday afternoon rain and read over cocktails. The back room was uniquely suited for our purposes, and the Manhattan's Manhattan ($9) was as big and inviting as a heated private lap pool. (The classic specialty cocktail menu is from James Endicott, formerly of Per Se and Allen & Delancey, and there is also wine and craft beer on tap.)

Remember how last week a reporter told Levi Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin's grandson, that Palin had declined to "trash" him during her interview taping with Oprah Winfrey? And Johnston remarked, "She's being smart. She knows what I got on her."? Well, that interview finally aired today, and it turns out Palin totally did trash him! So can we please get what he has on her now?

Today the City Council is expected to pass two laws that would give motorists more wiggle room when fighting parking tickets. The first bill would create a five-minute grace period for drivers for certain no parking zones, such as alternate side parking regulations and expired Muni-Meters. (The bill does not include regular coin-operated, single-space meters, seen failing here.) A second piece of legislation would require the DOT to post notices of new and changed parking restrictions in affected neighborhoods and online up to one week in advance. (Last October, Orthodox Jews in Williamsburg were outraged when the DOT wrote tickets for over 90 vehicles that were violating new parking regulations—on a Saturday.)

The New Yorker's annual food issue hits shelves today (we'll feel lucky if we get ours in the mail before Thursday). Articles include Calvin Trillin on Candians' beloved poutine, a peek inside flavor labs, Adam Gopnik on cookbooks, and John Colapinto’s "exclusive" look at the rating process of the New York Michelin guide. Apparently this is "the first time in its history" Michelin has permitted a journalist to speak with one of its anonymous inspectors. Colapinto joins an anonymous inspector for a meal at three-star Jean-Georges. It's a lonely and fattening life:

Assigned specific areas of the city to cover, Maxime, who lives in Manhattan, spends weeks riding the subway out to the farthest reaches of Queens to make her way through a selection of Thai restaurants, eating two meals a day, every day, and she typically eats alone, since talking with a spouse or friend is frowned upon... Maxime eats out more than two hundred days of the year, lunch and dinner. She eats the maximum number of courses offered—at Jean Georges, we were having three courses, plus dessert; that way, she said, “you really get to see the most food”—and she is required to eat everything on her plate. It is a regimen that calls to mind the force-feeding of the ducks that supply Vongerichten with his velvety foie gras.

The cab driver seen on surveillance video getting pummeled on Halloween by two men costumed as Super Mario Brothers spoke out about his ordeal at a rally for taxi driver safety yesterday. Senegalese immigrant Ndiaye Serigne, 48, told reporters, "I was really scared....At the time, I really think I'm going to die." Serigne says he was driving four costumed men back to Staten Island around 4 a.m. on November 1st when one turned off the meter, reached into his pocket, and grabbed $210. "Now it's a free ride," the suspect said.

Fox 5 is really sticking it to the taxpayer-funded Access-A-Ride system, exposing one NYPD Auxiliary Police sergeant's apparent abuse of the system, and busting a driver for flagrant on-the-job napping. The Access-A-Ride program, which is managed by NYC Transit, provides transportation for people with disabilities who can't take the subway or bus. Each trip ends up costing about $66 (most of which is covered by taxpayers) and this year the whole program is expected to cost $451 million—which makes this footage of a cop getting picked up by Access-A-Ride to go march in a parade even more galling!

Some city landlords have begun prohibiting tenants from smoking inside their apartments, because of the dangers of second-hand smoke. A study recently found that secondhand smoke causes at least 35,000 deaths from heart disease and 3,000 deaths from lung cancer in nonsmokers nationwide each year—and New Yorkers are even more at risk because their dense urban environment. As one tobacco expert put it: "Smoke doesn’t know to stop at a doorway. It fills the full capacity of every indoor location in which the cigarette is smoked." So at least one major real estate company is now stepping in to stop the smoke before it starts.

A mother of two was set on fire in the doorway of her Long Island City apartment yesterday morning by her estranged boyfriend and father of one of the children. Neighbors in the woman's Queensbridge Houses building say the woman had previously thrown the suspect, 25-year-old Kehman Clark, out of the home. He returned to visit yesterday morning, but stormed off after a domestic dispute, only to return with a can of gasoline.

One of the most memorable plays we saw last year was The Walworth Farce, a pitch-black comedy by Irish playwright Enda Walsh. The story concerned a menacing father who every day forces his two sons to join him in performing a farcical play he wrote about a phony brain surgeon's attempt to cheat his estranged brother out of his inheritance. In that frenzied, hysterical production, the family's shabby apartment doubled as their stage, and all nine parts were played by the housebound men, as a sort of elaborate domestic ritual for an audience of none.

Ah, fresh meat! After pleading guilty to staging their ridiculous hoax involving their 6-year-old son Falcon and a runaway helium balloon, fame-hunters Richard and Mayumi Heene were granted permission by a Colorado judge to visit New York City. The purpose of their trip? An unspecified "employment opportunity." See? Exploiting your children and deceiving an entire nation pays!