Between 700 and 800 Canada geese are expected to be rounded up from parks in and around New York City and killed in the next several weeks, the city Department of Environmental Protection said Thursday afternoon.
The city will not say which parks, however, or when.
But Prospect Park, currently home to about two dozen geese and a round-the-clock “goose watch” patrol aimed at thwarting a repeat of last year’s extermination, is not one of them. Read more…
A series of articles profiling favorite local haunts.
What’s your neighborhood joint?
Something is clearly going on behind that modest blue door near the East River waterfront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Burlap sacks cover the windows, but music and laughter spill out. Strolling by, you might mistake it for a cozy house party.
But wander in and you will discover an old-timey dude’s world called Brooklyn Rod and Gun, a fishing club that welcomes anyone willing to follow a few simple rules: “No booze in. No booze out. Throw your peanut shells on the floor.” Black waders dangle from a coat rack, a four-foot bass sprawls across a wall, and dim lamps illuminate a long wooden worktable where members commune over fly-tying and American roots music.
“I’ve lived in this neighborhood since the 1980s, when there were a lot of Polish and Italian social clubs, and I was always inspired by that idea of creating your own community center,” said Chris Raymond, 48, a fly-fishing enthusiast and the information-technology director for Abrams Books. His signature accessory is a worn red baseball cap stitched with the words “Fish Pimp.”
The cars driven by the Police Department’s army of civilian traffic enforcement agents have long stood out from the standard patrol cars driven by officers. The traffic agents’ cars were black with white lettering while the patrol cars are all white and affixed with royal-blue decals.
But one by one, the traffic agents’ black cars are being replaced, as they age out of use, with standard blue-and-whites. Eventually the entire fleet will be the same color. Three years into the gradual changeover, half of the fleet of 330 traffic agent cars has changed colors.
There are several reasons for the switch. Read more…
Of all the pleasure-boaters who dock in Manhattan once the weather turns nice, Rick Batchelder may be the only one with shreds of tires along the sides of his vessel and a pair of mounted water guns at the stern.
Then again, there do not seem to be too many other recreational mariners who live on a tugboat.
Mr. Batchelder, 58, believes he and his wife, Renee, are the only people in the country who do. He says they spend about half the year living aboard the tug, a workhorse of a boat that is better suited for towing aircraft carriers than sipping mai-tais from hammocks on the deck.
On Wednesday, Mr. Batchelder was tied up at Pier 59 at Chelsea Piers, part of a four-day pit stop during his annual migration from upstate Kingston, N.Y., where both man and boat spend the winter, to Block Island, R.I., their summer home. Read more…
No doubt about it, James J. Bulger, known as Whitey, was as Boston as cream pie and the Tea Party, Version 1.0. But even he had his New York moment.
In fact, Mr. Bulger, the legendary crime boss who was arrested in California Wednesday night after 16 years on the lam, had at least three New York moments, and all at the same spot. It seems he held a bit of a soft spot for a pair of landmarks that, ironically, could aptly describe the attributes of the legions of investigators who hunted him.
Patience. And Fortitude.
The first visit took place in May 1995.
“He called to ask me to meet him ‘at the lions’ in New York,” Mr. Weeks wrote. Read more…
A small fire broke out early Thursday morning in Courtney Love’s West Village home, a Fire Department official said.
The fire, in a fourth-floor bedroom of Ms. Love’s town house, at 250 West 10th Street near Hudson Street, was probably started by a candle next to the curtains, the official said. Ms. Love discovered the fire, the official said, although it was not clear whether she placed the 911 call, at 1:52 a.m. There was also a male occupant at the home at the time.
By the time firefighters arrived, the fire was mostly extinguished. Ms. Love had a light burn on her hand, “almost like a sunburn,” the fire official said. She was not taken to the hospital.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, but it has been deemed not suspicious. The bedroom curtains were burned, the official said, and nearby bed linens were also slightly burned. Read more…
ALBANY — A decision on whether a vote will be held on same-sex marriage appears to be at hand.
The State Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, said Thursday morning that his Republican caucus would meet during the day to discuss the issue of gay marriage. The meeting would be the first time the caucus has fully discussed the issue this week.
“This will be decided by the conference, when they’re going to bring it out,” Mr. Skelos said of the marriage legislation. “I expect it will be a lengthy conference, a thoughtful conference.” Read more…
Updated, 6:42 p.m. | We have liftoff.
At 11:55 a.m. on June 23, the 49th day of her life, Pip the red-tailed hawk, reality star of the Hawk Cam, flew the nest.
She took off from her 12th-floor ledge at Bobst Library at New York University, glided across the southeast corner of Washington Square Park and down to the roof of Joseph and Violet Pless Hall, a seven-story building at 82 Washington Square East, perhaps 200 feet away.
“She was graceful,” Read more…
ALBANY — After three days of protesting gay marriage, the Hall family was exhausted. Their stash of supplies — homemade sandwiches, sunflower seeds and sliced vegetables — had been depleted. And the monotonous routine of holding up handwritten placards had lost much of its novelty.
“We are very weary at the end of the day,” Rebecca Hall as she stood outside the ornate Senate gallery Wednesday night. “But it’s worth it.”
Over the last few weeks, the family — Rebecca, 36, Craig, 43, and James, 9 — had concluded that their Christian faith required them to travel 150 miles each way from Owego, N.Y., near Binghamton, to Albany to defend traditional marriage.
“We feel this bill is bad for the New York and the whole country,” Mr. Hall said. Read more…
Update, 11:55 a.m.: Pip flew!!!!
A small crowd congregated near the freshly laid wildflower beds in the southeastern corner of Washington Square Park on Wednesday, hoping to bear witness to a young hawk’s first flight. But as the afternoon wore on, bystanders in the park were pacing in anticipation.
“I wish I had my iPad,” said Clelia Parisi, who was seeing the tangle of twigs jutting out over a 12th-story window ledge at the Bobst Library at New York University, home of Pip the 7-week-old Hawk-Cam starlet and her parents, for the first time with her naked eyes.
“I’m just so locked into this whole thing,” she said. “I can’t believe I’ve become this person.”
Ms. Parisi took the bus down from her office at 27th Street, where she works at a lace manufacturing company, with great expectations of what she might witness.
“I better see some jump-flapping,” she said. Read more…
Word that H & H Bagels was shutting its store on the Upper West Side produced something on the order of a seismic reaction in certain corners of New York, which considers itself both sun and moon of the bagel-eating universe.
Inevitably, other New Yorkers weighed in. Commenters to City Room included a Kings County chauvinist who wrote that “Brooklyn bagels were always better” and a fellow in Albany who looked northward and proclaimed the superiority of Montreal bagels.
On a matter this cosmic, it didn’t feel right to leave the discussion to patzers. This required an expert. Read more…
Details, little nettlesome details, who needs ‘em?
A particularly baroque chapter of New Jersey politics closes today, as the State Assembly is poised Thursday to require significantly higher health and pension contributions from public workers.
By itself, that is less striking than the fact that two Democrats, the Assembly leader, Sheila Y. Oliver, and the Senate president, Stephen M. Sweeney, will have revoked the right of public unions to bargain collectively for health care. They could accomplish this slap-upside-the-head-of-labor with the votes of a majority of Republicans and a minority of Democrats.
The remarkably imprecise estimates of cost savings from these health proposals, and the last-minute maneuvering, are nearly as baffling as the politics. Pressed to put a number this week on likely savings, Gov. Chris Christie’s treasury officials retreated into bureaucratic mumbles.
The Democratic leaders did not fare much better. Mr. Sweeney has been unrepentant about cutting a deal with the governor. Principle over politics, he says. Read more…
The 952-foot Art Deco skyscraper formally known as the Cities Service Building at 70 Pine Street in downtown Manhattan has had many claims to fame over the years.
It was the world’s third tallest building when it was completed in 1932, right behind the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. With its tiered glass lantern and stainless steel spire, it is an icon of the Lower Manhattan skyline. In recent decades, it has been home to Merrill Lynch and the insurer A.I.G.
But the building was not a city landmark, which the Landmarks Preservation Commission remedied on Tuesday when it designated both the exterior — clad in white brick, gray Indiana limestone and speckled rose and black granite — and the first-floor lobby of the building, an orgy of marble with a light-wave-patterned ceiling that the commission’s chairman, Robert B. Tierney, called “one of the most stunning office building lobbies in New York City.” Read more…
The calls started pouring in around noon on Tuesday. And they weren’t just from customers placing orders for pumpernickel bagels or whitefish salad.
Instead, the voices on the other end of the line were frantic, sad, concerned that their beloved bagel shop was closing.
No, the workers at H & H Midtown Bagels East explained again and again, our store is not closing. That’s the H & H Bagels on the Upper West Side.
“You have to go through the whole explanation,” said Dayna Paulino, an office manager. “That was definitely the most frustrating part.”
Since news broke that the H & H Bagels store on Broadway and West 80th Street would be closing — by next Monday, the employees said — H & H Midtown Bagels East has borne the brunt of the public concern. There have been more than 100 telephone calls from people who are confused about the relationship between the stores. Namely, they think there is one. Read more…
Follow Pip, the red-tailed hawk born on May 6 in the nest of Violet and Bobby, high above Washington Square Park.
A City Room supplement to “Gotham,” the reporter's column on politics and government.
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A willingness to tolerate abuse seems to pervade institutions that house residents with developmental disabilities.
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Not a Flaming Llama, After All
By ANDY NEWMANUpdated, 1:43 p.m. | Well that was fun, kind of. On Wednesday, we posted the ominous-looking photo at right and asked readers to tell us what and where it was. Many of the 62 commenters guessed something along the lines of “streetlight encased in vines,” but a few took the unspoken hint and offered more fanciful answers, to wit: “ ‘Oh, No, it’s Gojira!’ ” [Japanese name for Godzilla], “a careless Rastafarian,” “Grover eats Pac-Man,” “a miraculous vision of the Flying Spaghetti Monster,” and our personal favorite, “a stack of pancakes covered in puppies, Midtown.”
It is, in fact, Read more…