Fine dining is officially on the menu in the Union Square Park Pavilion.
On Tuesday, a state appeals court ruled that Union Square’s popular pop-up holiday bazaar can continue to operate, ending a five-year attempt by the Union Square Community Coalition to eliminate commercial uses of the park, DNAinfo reported. The new Read More
Standing outside a shiny new red and tan brick building at 401 West 25th Street, indistinguishable from any other late-2000s new construction throughout the West Side, you can catch a glimpse of the future of housing if New York City’s Democratic mayoral candidates get their way.
A young woman who works in finance and moved into this building from a “real shithole” in the West Village, a computer programmer from South Carolina, a lifelong New Yorker who moved in from the projects a few blocks south, and a gay couple—one a playwright, the other a social worker—with a son, who moved from 14th Street and Seventh Avenue.
They all found places in a 22-story middle-income affordable housing development in an increasingly unaffordable Chelsea. The Elliott-Chelsea, developed by Artimus Construction, rose on New York City Housing Authority property with the help of an alphabet soup of government agencies. Some of the 168 units in the building are typical low-income units, reserved for families earning under $40,000 a year. But the bulk of the complex is set aside for middle-income earners, a group that this cycle’s crop of Democratic mayoral candidates is eager to court. Read More
With his mayoral term coming to a close, Mayor Bloomberg is rushing to put his “green” thumbprint on everything he possibly can. The latest in Bloomberg’s frenzied eco-friendly crusade? Composting.
New Yorkers now have the option of making space for a picnic basket-sized container designed to house food waste in kitchens the size of postage Read More
This is one sticky situation.
According to a new report from the Health Department, New Yorkers are more diabetic than ever, no thanks to Bloomberg’s assault on sugary drinks.
Nearly 650,000 adult New Yorkers report having diabetes, approximately 200,000 more than just 10 years ago, according to an April 2013 data Read More
Phew! No more fumbling with bike chains or cradling a helmet awkwardly under one arm all night long. Fixi enthusiasts attending the Barclays Center last night finally had the option of ditching their bicycles in style with a trial run of a valet parking service.
The service was offered by Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group for Read More
Cycling is a wonderful option for those energetic souls who prefer pedaling to a bus, cab or subway. The cost of a bike is relatively cheap as well—you can get a decent bike, one that will last you many years, at a local shop for less than the price of dinner for two at some of the city’s finer dining establishments.
So why, then, do we have to share bikes?
In inaugurating its bike-share program, New York City has now joined the likes of urban thought leaders such as Madison, Wis., and Minneapolis, Minn. Mayor Bloomberg, who deserves an honorary yellow jersey for his contributions to cycling, kicked off the program, along with his transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, designer of the rightfully mocked empty thoroughfares known as bike lanes. Read More
Citi Bike is up and running (well, biking) in select areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn, but the highly anticipated bike sharing program might have a stick in its spokes.
According to the New York Post, Citi Bike reported its first bicycle theft just one day before the program officially launched.
A crafty Read More
By the time Anne Pierre and her sons arrived at 199 Amboy Street, it was after midnight. The heat of the unusually warm April day had all but drained away, but there was a mellowness to the air, a contrast to the sharp, cold spring nights that had come before. From the outside, the red-brick building looked clean and well-maintained, though the darkness made it difficult to tell for sure. In Ms. Pierre’s experience, the exteriors of homeless shelters were poor predictors of conditions inside.
Late though it was, the family’s arrival at the Brownsville shelter marked the somewhat triumphant culmination of a bureaucratic odyssey that had started two days earlier, when Ms. Pierre had reapplied for shelter at the family intake center in the Bronx. It was only somewhat triumphant in that 199 Amboy was just a 10-day placement, the latest in a string of temporary housing assignments that had become the norm since the family lost its eligibility for shelter in February. But as it turned out, 199 Amboy was the nicest place Ms. Pierre and the two boys stayed since entering the shelter system in June 2012.
As 9-year-old Jordan described their arrival, “When we saw it, we was shocked. It was nice. It was decent.”
Decent is the kind of good-enough existence that has seemed to elude the family for the last 10 months. But it felt potentially within reach again when they fell asleep that night at a little after 1 a.m., relieved if still wary, with the alarm set for 6 a.m.—the preparations necessary for the school day ahead as uncompromising as the dawn.
Like many other families who have recently swelled the ranks of the city’s homeless population, routine has taken on an almost talismanic significance for Ms. Pierre and her boys. They live an approximation of a life that involved, until recently, an apartment of their own—a two-bedroom on Legion Street rented for four years with the help of a Section 8 voucher. Ms. Pierre paid $350 of the $1,100 rent until a recurrent mold problem disqualified the apartment. Read More
The City of New York, like many other large landowners, has been selling its land for centuries. However, these last few months have brought what many consider to be a disconcerting flurry of real estate transactions as the city, citing a cash crunch, moves to sell off a number of schools, libraries and municipal buildings.
The city and others have lauded the sell-off as a way to bring much-needed monies to institutions that are in dire need of help. Trading in valuable real estate, we are told, will keep the city’s civic institutions afloat. If only it didn’t have the vaguely desperate vibe of a pawn shop swap. Read More
- The intimidatingly assiduous Peggy Siegal greets people at the door; thanks us for coming to celebrate party with The New York Observer. “We are The New York Observer!” We cry. She doesn’t even pause. “Well, it’s great to see you anyway.”
-Terry McDonell: I’ve always loved the Observer, I have great respect for Peter Kaplan. The coverage of everything I was interested in New York in the past 25 years was reflected in The Observer at the highest level.
- Ray Kelly recalls the last time he was at the Four Seasons. “[We] feel like you never leave,” we tell the Police Commissioner. His reply: “A lot of people feel that way.” Read More
