The 12-year-old girl who survived a fourteen-story fall down a chimney by landing on collected soot is not out of harm's reach just yet. The Daily News reports that she is still in intensive care with "a thousand tubes coming out of her." Grace Bergere's father talked to the paper while the jazz musician held onto a commitment to play a gig in the Poconos last night saying, "She's having a hard enough time breathing.......

Last night, a 12-year-old girl fell 15 stories (according the Post--the Daily News says it was 14 stories) down a chimney at the Westbeth Building on Bethune Street. Apparently the girl, who was on the roof alone (it's unclear what she was doing up there), managed to climb up to a two-story chimney and fell inside. The Post reports the father yelled at the building's security, "My daughter fell down the shaft!" and the FDNY......

Chef Cesare Casella announced that his West Village restaurant Maremma will be closing after tomorrow night's service. Casella said that Maremma, which specializes in chianina (Tuscan beef), will reopen in other location; in the meantime, he is opening Salumeria Rosi, an Italian specialty foods grocery-and-wine bar, on the Upper West Side this fall. As for Maremma's West 10th Street space, Eater speculates it could be an offering from the dell'Anima team (we asked dell'Anima owner......

Inexpensive lodging has finally come to the West Village; The NY Times reports on 113 Jane Street's latest incarnation: The Jane, which is offering up rooms for under 100 bucks. The catch? The hotel's rooms are 50-square-feet...but for a double-digit price tag in that zip code, it's not too shabby. Plus the owners also run the Bowery and Maritime Hotels, so they know what they're doing and have equipped each room with a/c, a flat......

Clover Club: This new Cobble Hill lounge has no connection to this Clover Club “located in beautifull [sic] Mark, Illinois,” so leave your green face paint at home. The atmosphere here, as evinced by the photo, is old world charm and sophistication, hearkening back to an era when men dueled with pistols, not text messages, and the curse of the Cosmo had not yet darkened New York. Small plates include oysters on the half shell,......

Police are searching for a man in his 30's who broke into a West Village apartment wielding a knife, only to be driven off by the occupant's furious response. The Post spoke to the resident, Jennifer LaPierre, a 41-year-old writer who lives in a basement apartment on West 11th Street. The article makes clear that when she's not pounding the keyboard, she likes to pump iron and work out at a nearby gym. LaPierre woke......

A drug law reform activist was arrested in the West Village on Thursday night for trying to stop police officers from arresting two teens who were smoking pot outside his house. The Post reports that Randy Credico, who heads the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, allegedly yelled, "You guys are really solving murders out here? Why don't you guys get a life! F--- you all! You can't tell me what to do!" The......

Nestled away on a romantic little bend of Commerce Street in the West Village is Commerce, the newish bar and restaurant from chef Harold Moore and restaurateur Tony Zazula. Operating out of a carriage house dating back to 1911, the place was formerly a Prohibition-era speakeasy, then Blue Mill Tavern for 50 years, then the neighborhood favorite Grange Hall. You might assume that its new iteration is a fussy stab at resuscitating the past, but......

Some West Village restaurants can’t catch a break this week; first an old water main broke and flooded them out during Memorial Day weekend, now the city has been stone cold shutting them down. Eater has it that the Department of Health ordered Diablo Royale on West 10th Street to close yesterday for “unsanitary conditions” – a tipster says the inspectors faulted the restaurant’s flooded basement. Now the swank bar/restaurant Employees Only has gotten......

Photo by Erik Dane of The Foggy Monocle The late Saturday night water main break in the West Village has left residents with water-damaged apartments and businesses in the lurch. A restaurant owner lamented about throwing away food and needing to be closed over the holiday weekend to the Daily News, "New Yorkers love to brunch and when there is a holiday weekend there is an extra day of brunch. We got hit really......

If you're walking home through the West Village tonight, you may be wishing you'd brought your galoshes, or waders, or a rowboat. A major water main break on West 10th St. has flooded the area surrounding it. Reader Erik Dane ( of The Foggy Monocle) sent us this on-the-spot photo of West 4th completely underwater. He reports that cops and firemen are swarming the area to get the situation under control. So if you're......

There's a lesson that parents should learn before signing contracts for a private school: always read the fine print. The NY Times tells the story of a Soho couple (David and Michele Bender) whose daughter won a coveted, if pricey--$26,000/year--spot in the kindergarten program at the West Village's Little Red School House (pictured). The Benders put down a $2,500 deposit and another $7,500 towards the tuition, but then three months later, their daughter was accepted......

There’s been a lot of snarky ink spilled about how fast the ill-fated BarFry transformed into Cabrito. As is the case with many restaurants that fall under the scrutiny of bloggers, this new Mexican spot helmed by Dave Schuttenberg, whose pedigree includes stints at Fatty Crab and Craft, has already had the viability of its concept questioned. Blogger blathering aside, an initial visit shows Cabrito to be a high-end homage to a broad swath of......

Marc Jacobs, who is no angel himself, had a questionable employee managing one of his three stores in the Village. The NY Post reports that 24-year-old Kyle Avila stole approximately $62K from the designer in just 18 months. Gawker notes that the Kansas boy also once posed nude for a Jacobs t-shirt (pictured), so maybe he just felt he was due. It appears no one was the wiser at the 385 Bleecker Street shop, as......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni hands down his verdict on Commerce (pictured), the trendy new inhabitant of 1911 West Village carriage house formerly occupied by Blue Mill Tavern, among others. Overall, he deems the new tenant fussy and cacophonous; chef Harold Moore’s “polyglot menu and intricately wrought dishes let him strut his stuff in a way that a more archetypal bill of fare might not. In doing so he creates a rankling dissonance, his......

The Times’s Frank Bruni chimes in at last on the abundantly reviewed Merkato 55 (pictured), an ambitious pan-African brasserie in the Meatpacking District that “pivots into a sexy evening for the Marc Jacobs set. It’s Spice Market on the Serengeti.” Dishes like the cast-iron pot of lamb meatball in smoked tomato sauce are "a delight," but overall it’s hit or miss. And some unlucky waiter made the mistake of pouring water into his wine glass......

Why would a triplex in the West Village, measuring about 3360 sq ft, go abandoned for decades? More importantly, what's inside? amNY takes a look at the mystery of 43 MacDougal Street, which has had locals rumor-mongering about it for ages."I heard that it used to be a hangout for the mafia, and there was a police shootout there, and they had to close it for evidence," said Tal Kon, 22, who has lived on......

Chef Anita Lo, whose intimate and sophisticated Barrow Street restaurant Annisa has been a hit for years, has now opened a bigger venture in the West Village. It’s a 120-seat Asian barbecue restaurant called Bar Q, which specializes in dishes like baby back ribs made with Lo’s mother’s “special sauce.” In an interview last February, Lo said she’s been thinking about opening an Asian barbecue restaurant for at least six years, in part because her......

The Justice Department is denying federal benefits to the families of the two auxiliary police officers who were brutally killed by a marauding gunman in the West Village last year. Yevgeniy Marshalik's and Nicholas Pekearo's families each applied for $300,000 in benefits, part of the 2003 “Hometown Heroes” Congressional bill for families of first-responders killed in the line of duty. But the DOJ doesn't think they qualify, because NYC's “auxiliary police are not recognized as......

The police arrested a 19-year-old man suspected of attacking two women in the West Village earlier this month. The Post reports Anthony Rosado was "picked up" on Friday for the assaults. In the early hours of March 2, a man viciously accosted women in separate incidents on Bleecker Street. In one attack, he threw the victim to the ground, hit her head against the ground and ripped off her pants, while in the other, he......

When a restaurant throws down a chili-laced gauntlet with the title, “Can you take the heat?” most people expect to be crying by the end of the meal. Andy Yang, Rhong-Tiam’s executive chef, has issued just such a challenge. Yang’s three-month old West Village Thai spot is offering a special tasting menu, which gets progressively hotter, through April 15. The prize for eating every last spicy morsel is dinner for two at his upcoming East......

The construction worker who killed actress-director Adrienne Shelly in her West Village office was sentenced to 25 years in prison yesterday. Diego Pillco, an illegal immigrant from Ecuador, pleaded guilty last month, and yesterday, he faced her family's sadness and rage. Shelly's mother Elaine Langbaum mentioned her young granddaughter Sophie, "The baby [Shelly] wanted for so long will never know her mother. "She will never hold her mother's hand, kiss her mother's face or feel......

Remember that whole Hep-A scare at West Village bar Socialista? Reports came in this week that the whole thing may have been a joke -- but who's laughing? Probably not the owners of Socialista. Word is that Ashton Kutcher has a new show coming out called Pop Fiction, which has thus far been kept under wraps. Not straying far from his Punk'd roots, the series (which will air on the E! network) is a prank......

Police are looking for a man suspected of assaulting two women in separate early Sunday morning incidents and released a surveillance video of him. One of the victims said after getting thrown to the ground she got away and called 911 - only for the attacker to try again as she walked on Bleecker Street. She told the Daily News, "I started walking and calling 911 on my cell ... and he attacked me again...I......

The police released a sketch of a man suspected of attacking two women early Sunday in the West Village. In both incidents, the women were exiting cabs when he attacked. Around 2:15 a.m., a 30-year-old woman got out of her cab at 240 Bleecker Street, near Our Lady of Pompeii school. According to the Post, the "hooded thug lunged from behind, threw her to the ground and smashed her head on the ground." Though the......

In Warhol's days everyone was famous for 15 minutes, now everyone is famous for 15 blocks. Two twentysomethings have recently risen the bar, however, by getting a NYMag piece profiling their neighborhood "fame." These two ladies (typically stationed at 90 Charles Street) aren't helping out the community, or even talking to anyone but themselves, they're simply sitting on a stoop. All day, every day, winter, spring, summer and fall. The long-time friends moved here on......

Yohji Yamamoto's recently opened Y-3 store at 317 West 13th Street in the West Village is upsetting some locals. One tipster writes in:The idiots at the new Y-3 store on 13th street leave the front door (a garage door) open all day long. It is 30 degrees outside, yet that strip of the sidewalk is toasty warm.While a toasty warm sidewalk may sound cozy, it shows the wasteful energy practices of the store. Council member......

Untitled, by Pabo76 at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: a power outage on Cranford St. and Amboy Rd. on Staten Island, a bank robbery on East Gun Hill Rd. in the Bronx, and a carjacking on the Horace Harding Expressway and 108th St. in Queens. Update on the 14-year-old girl who was killed and stuffed into a boiler by her father: The ME's office found that she was pregnant - and they are testing......

When one hears there are caves at Murray’s Cheese, images of damp, subterranean chasms loaded with mounds of exotic fromage spring readily to mind. As a recent tour revealed, the cheeses aren’t stored and aged in actual caverns, but rather climate-controlled walk-in refrigerators designed by France’s leading affineur, Hervé Mons. Before entering the cheese storage area you’ll be told to wipe your feet on an antibacterial mat. This is to prevent unintended bacteria and molds......

It used to be one only had to worry about "the morning after" if they took another bar patron home with them, but the NYC Health Department is asking at least 800 imbibers of a West Village bar to get a hepatitis A vaccination! The precautionary measure is being taken because a bartender at Socialista has the disease. Now everyone who was at the bar on February 7th or 8th after 8pm or February 11th......