Photographs of James Blake (above) by Charles Krupa/AP and photograph of Roger Federer by Elise Amendola/AP Whoa! James Blake beat number 1-ranked Roger Federer in straight sets during their Olympics tennis match today. The Yonkers native, currently ranked #7 in the world, won 6-4, 7-6 (2) during a quarterfinals match. According to NBC Olympics, "Federer seemed off his game from the start. His forehand -- once the sport's most feared -- was unreliable, and......

Photograph of Michael Phelps during the 200m butterfly semi-final by Thomas Kienzle/AP After setting yet another world record last night in the 200m freestyle, swimmer Michael Phelps racked up his third gold medal at these Beijing Olympics. And he has two finals, the 200m butterfly and 4x200m freestyle relay, which will air tonight in the United States--the 200m fly at 10:18 p.m., the 4x200m relay at 11:16 p.m. While there's attention on whether Phelps......

The Empire State Building will celebrate the Olympics by illuminating each of its sides with the colors of a different nation's flag throughout the sixteen days of the Summer Games. This will be the first time the skyscraper will have separate color schemes on each side as it will represent the 66 nations with the most athletes sent to Beijing. A typical color change at the Empire State Building takes six electricians six hours to......

Last night during the opening ceremonies in Beijing, the U.S. flag was carried by Lopez Lomong, one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan" who now hails from the upstate town Tully, NY. Governor Paterson issued a statement on his web site praising Lomong for not only "the joy and dedication he brings to the sport, but because of the amazing story of how he came to represent our State and Nation." Lomong is one of......

Two Americans were stabbed in Beijing today by a crazed Chinese man who then immediately committed suicide. The victims were a man who was killed and a woman who was injured, both relatives of a U.S. Men's Volleyball Coach. The stabber, a 47-year-old man from Hangzhou, then threw himself from the second story of the site of the attack, the 13th-century Drum Tower three miles from the main Olympics site.......

The 2008 Summer Olympics officially opened today (or tonight as NBC would like you to believe) and the New York area is well represented. Not only are more than 40 athletes from the tri-state area competing for the U.S., but there are also several residents of New York City are heading to Beijing with dreams of gold. 19 year-old Sadam Ali, who was born and raised in Canarsie, is the first Arab-American boxer to compete......

Yesterday, the U.S. Olympic cycling team arrived at Beijing's airport and their masked visages caused a frenzy. The cyclists wore the U.S. Olympic Committee-designed and issued masks to protect them from Beijing's polluted air. One team member told the NY Times, “They told us that the Chinese were mad and that this is a politically charged issue, but we didn’t mean to offend anybody. When [the USOC] handed us these masks, they never said, ‘Here......

A march from the Brooklyn Bridge through Chinatown to celebrate the Beijing Olympics is exposing a big rift in Manhattan's Chinese immigrant community. Opposed to the celebrations are older Chinese-Americans from Taiwan and Hong Kong who've seen their ranks diminished; on the other side are newer immigrants from the mainland who've poured into Chinatown in recent years. A 74-year-old business consultant tells the Sun,"The mainland government, they're Communists, and we don't like that. The new......

Photo of the Twin Towers in Beijing's World Park. Infinite emails (all from the same source) flooded inboxes citywide last night (following a Reuters photo that was published) with messages pondering "how Americans would feel if they knew that just before the Olympics start, a theme park in Beijing still shows the Twin Towers standing in a NYC exhibit of mini models?" With many Americans already protesting the Olympic Games, this might not help......

Olympics planners and San Francisco authorities made many attempts (making up the route as it went along) to prevent demonstrators from disrupting the Olympic torch's only North American appearance on Wednesday, they couldn't stop a torch bearer from the Bronx from expressing her pro-Tibet sympathies. Majora Carter, a 41-year-old environmental activist from the South Bronx, had tucked a small Tibetan flag up her sleeve, with the torch in the other. The NY Times described her......

While San Francisco is bracing for tomorrow's Olympic torch relay--protesters scaled the Golden Gate Bridge and unfurled "Free Tibet" banners yesterday --torchbearers hailing from New York City say they aren't worried about potential disruptions. A retired NYPD cop, James Dolan, told the Daily News, "I've seen enough demonstrations in my career. I'm confident the city will be able to make the event go off smoothly." The Olympic torch is only visiting San Francisco in the......

Councilman Tony Avella (D-Queens) will be formally announcing his bid to replace Mayor Bloomberg this Sunday. Theories about likely candidates abound (e.g. Councilman John Liu, Rep. Anthony Weiner, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, City Comptroller Bill Thompson, and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly), but Avella is jumping to the head of the line by explicitly announcing his desire to be Mayor this Sunday at 1 p.m. on the steps of City Hall. Avella is the chairman of......

Top photograph of Tibetan protesters outside the United Nations building by Mary Altaffer/AP; lower photograph of the riots in Lhasa, Tibet from the AP Roughly 100 protesters, most of them Tibetans, demonstrated outside the United Nations today against the Chinese government, which has been trying to put down protests and rioting in Lhasa. Three demonstrators were arrested for trying, unsuccessfully, to enter the U.N. and six were arrested for disorderly conduct. This demonstration coincided with......

City Council member and probable 2009 mayoral candidate, Tony Avella, is the latest politician to ask for America's withdrawl from the Beijing Olympics if China will not grant Tibet independence. Under China's rule for over 50 years, Tibet has made no headway, even with the support of human rights groups, activists...and Richard Gere. When we interviewed Robert Thurman, co-founder of the Tibet House, earlier this year he touched on the Olympics, saying:The thinking is that......

Five different car crashes in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens have left five people dead yesterday. At Atlantic Avenue and Buffalo Street, a Honda Accord carrying four people hit a subway station pillar (pictured; via the Post) after midnight. Two of the passengers, a 25-year-old Naquana Kilpatrick and 17-year-old Gilberto Howard, died while the 19-year-old driver and another passenger were injured. Another car crash in Brooklyn claimed two lives: A car hit an unoccupied box truck......

drunkie the snowman, by brainware3000 at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an officer shot on Vandalia Ave & Ardlsey Loop in Brooklyn, a gas leak at Dongan Pl. off Broadway in Manhattan, and an aircraft emergency at JFK in Queens. The City's investigating whether its artificial turf fields are poisonous. The Brooklyn Paper finds Obama did get votes in many Brooklyn districts (here's the congressional district breakdown for all of NYC). Blogging by......

Photograph of the Trump Soho by Riccardo Sinti Gothamist went to the scene of the Trump Soho construction collapse, which left one construction worker dead and others injured (an indirect culprit - Manhattan's hot real estate market, causing rushed construction jobs).Shanghaiist is confused by media reports as to whether Playboy will be available in China during the year of the Olympics.LAist got fugged in an interview with the Go Fug Yourself girls.Torontoist set hearts......

The proposed expansion of the Jacob J. Javitz convention center is essentially dead in the water as government officials admitted that the amount of money it would cost to undertake the project would not be worth the marginal return on investment that additional tax revenues would provide. Empire State Development Corporation chairman Pat Foye testified that about half of the expansion plan's $1.6 billion budget would be consumed just making repairs to the existing Javits......

Torontoist discovered their city's most ridiculous holiday lights setup, with 80,000 lights and two––two!––synchronized music routines. Naturally, they snagged a video. Chicago tragically loses one of its most recognizable neighborhood icons, the pigeon man of Lincoln Square. LAPD leaves body in car at crash scene, then tows it. Massachusetts plus mullet equals PR mayhem. Londonist sleeps in a Haunted plague pit. UC Berkeley students strip naked and race through campus, NSFW floppiness ensues. Phillyist......

Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, who was in charge of Economic Development and Rebuilding in the Bloomberg administration, announced he would resign by the end of the year. The Post called the news "stunning," but we'd like to call it "classic," because his new job will be president of a little company called Bloomberg LP. At a City Hall press conference, Mayor Bloomberg said, "As a result of Dan's efforts, we've allowed for the creation of......

Just a day before the running of the NYC Marathon, the U.S. Olympic trials for the men's marathon were marred by an untimely death today. 28-year-old Ryan Shay died while competing in the Olympic trials in Central Park, just a few miles into the 26.2 mile race. Shay collapsed at the 5.5 mile mark of the race and was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital where he was declared dead. The cause of death has yet......

Making fun of hipsters isn't even ironically cool anymore, but this video of The Hipster Olympics somehow still manages to be funny. The hipsters go through a series of challenges including picking out ironic thrift store t-shirts (obvs), photographing themselves for their MySpace profiles, and tossing out albums by artists who have sold out by becoming popular (Of Montreal, Caribou, The Beatles and the sarcastic selection of Bruce Willis). Find out who wins the silver......

Starting this morning and through Sunday, the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour is making its 2007 stop in New York City with the AVP Brooklyn Open. In it's 2nd year in NYC, the Brooklyn Open features over 150 beach volleyball players, a temporary 4,000-seat stadium, and 13 outer courts that will offer general admission seating (ticket info). Qualifying round play began today at 8 a.m. One of the teams this morning almost missed its 8......

The NY Times takes a look inside the ping-pong world of New York. Sure, it may not be as big as the US Open, but the Naked Ping-Pong tournament is growing bigger and better every week out of a loft in Tribeca. The tournament (which is actually fully-clothed) was started by three friends in their 30s who hope to bring table tennis to the forefront of urban sport. The Times introduces them as "Jonathan Bricklin,......

Aha! We were right when we suggested that August 8, 2008 might be another coveted wedding date to consider, now that July 7, 2007 has passed. The date 08/08/08 is considered very auspicious by Asian cultures (in fact, the 2008 Olympics in Beijing will start on that day), and some weddings planners who specialized in Chinese weddings are seeing a big rush. One told LJWorld, "We like to do three weddings max a day, but......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: The Kill Point (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., Spike TV) The debut of a hostage drama miniseries starring John Leguizamo as a leader of a group of bank robbers who’s plans went wrong and Donnie Wahlberg as the Pittsburgh Police negotiator tasked to deal with them. Saving Grace (Monday, 10:00 p.m., TNT) Another cop show with a twist, this time Holly Hunter stars as an Oklahoma City Police detective......

Banner week for SFist as the site's new editor introduced himself -- hooray for Brock! While the NY Times weighed in on SF's mayoral race, only SFist had the (insert tongue firmly into cheek) hard-hitting latest on candidate/activist Josh Wolf. Coverage of a protest vs. gentrification spawned a fantastic debate amongst SFist's readers. Finally, from the sublime to the ridiculous: video of a man that confused a Board of Supes meeting with "open mic......

John D'Amato, a prominent Staten Island attorney, died of a heart attack yesterday; the 52-year-old had been jogging near his Dongan Hills home. D'Amato, a lawyer and lobbyist, had been appointed as the NYC campaign manager for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. (He had hosted a fund-raiser for Governor Spitzer's campaign last year, though.) The Staten Island Advance writes:John D'Amato was a titan on Staten Island -- one of the most ambitious, aggressive and influential of......

The New York Post is loving the NJ beauty pageant story, which includes allegations that a fellow contestant may have been behind the blackmail plot to get Miss New Jersey to relinquish her crown. Someone sent pageant winner Amy Polumbo a package of photos that were lifted from Polumbo's Facebook account and doctored to include sexually suggestive captions. The Daily News says that there is no breast-baring or drug-taking in any of the photos, but......

Police have arrested a man in connection to a string of sexual attacks in city parks in Queens and Brooklyn over a four year period. The Post and Daily News report that Alvin Henry, a sprinter who participated in the 2000 Olympics, representing Trinidad and Tobago, was arrested last night. The rapist was being called the "lover's lane rapist" because he would target women in couples or who had just been with a boyfriend. Three......