In the Gothamist documentary above, we meet Dave, Bailey, Bucket, Jon, Mark, Tara, and Steve-O, a group of squatters who once lived in an unattended house in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. In June of this year, their landlord kicked them out and sold the building—you may have heard that the neighborhood is gentrifying—but before that, filmmaker Jeff Seal got a glimpse of the way they lived.
In your humid Thursday media column: ridiculous WaPo Twitter uproar of the day, everybody's needlessly peeved at Jose Antonio Vargas, Gothamist is sponsoring long-form journalism, an editor flees New York mag, and the Village Voice could have itself a strike.
We hear Cablevision's much-heralded acquisition of blog network Gothamist might be imploding. That would certainly help explain why Gothamist is trying to hire its own sales guy, a month after news of its supposed acquisition.
Renderings by Cook + Fox
Photograph of Devils goalie Martin Brodeur shoving the Dallas Stars' Sean Avery by Rick Schultz/AP
Chris Ortloff, state parole board commissioner, was arrested for allegedly arranging to have sex with 11- and 12-year-old girls. The U.S. Attorney's office said Ortloff had been chatting with the girls' "mother" (an undercover state police investigator) online since June and arranged to meet the girls at an Albany hotel on Monday. According to the Times-Union, when the police went to to the hotel room, the 61-year-old father of two was "buck naked" and had "condoms, lubricants, sex toys and a camera." His lawyer suggested his defense may include entrapment and that his client didn't know the girls were underage. And when he was Plattsburgh's assemblyman, Ortloff supported Megan's Law, "Our government must do more to keep dangerous, sexually violent predators away from children and women."
After months—if not years—of rumors, British tabloid The Sun claims Madonna and Guy Ritchie are getting divorced. Apparently the couple will release a statement about the split because they "can’t bear to live with the pretence any longer." The source says, "Madonna wanted a highly stage-managed separation, with their split being announced when it when it was convenient for her" — she's currently on tour— but apparently the fighting has been too bad for that! The Sun suggests that Madonna has "rekindled a close relationship" with Carlos Leon, who father daughter Lourdes, but our question is whether the Material Girl's next stop is A-Rod.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spent $3.5 million on advertising online in the first quarter of 2008, $3 million of which went to Google. Granted, Obama's done well in contributions from Googlers — as of Q4 2007, contributors who listed Google as their employer contributed $338,965 to the Obama campaign. Which means that early investment has already paid off tenfold. Or considered another way, Obama can bank a 10 percent discount on ads from Google. The Clinton campaign? It only received a paltry $79,170. Other companies cashing in on election season? Yahoo got only $350,000, which was still $282,000 more than Microsoft. Even urban blog network Gothamist managed to pull in a direct buy worth $2,800.
Gothamist.com, the NYC news-about-town blog, today posted a straightforward item about a 19-year-old woman who was raped in her apartment building in Soho last night. They described the suspect: "a black man, about 5'8" and 200 pounds, with a possibly pockmarked face, and he may be between 20-30 years old." Now, we were under the impression that Gothamist's readers are mainly drawn from the broad hipster demographic. So either our impression is way off, or many hipsters are thinly-veiled racist fucks (somewhat true, actually). Because the comments quickly turned into a call to throw black men off buildings:
