After taking us through New York City's labyrinth of underground tunnels and sewers, "urban explorer" Steve Duncan is back with a new video featuring his trek through the abandoned half of a subway track along Spring Street in Nolita (which just so happens to be right below Gawker's offices). Watch Duncan's exploration in the video above. [via Gothamist]
The runaway peacock that flew the coop at the Central Park Zoo in favor of a windowsill at a co-op in the Upper East Side returned home on its own volition this morning, zoo officials say. Now it's back at its boring small-time roost, hanging out with the boring small-time peacock friends it grew up with, smoking cigarettes and sighing about how the other peacocks just don't understand what it's like to be young and free in New York. [WNYC, image via AnimalNY]
Faye Dunaway is a much-feared resident of West Hollywood. That's pretty much common knowledge. Ask around a bit, and you're sure to hear a tale or two about the star of Mommie Dearest and Network terrorizing a Koo Koo Roo or holding an El Salvadorian car wash employee hostage with a barbecue lighter. And like any Norma Desmond worth her salt, Dunaway has more than a few skeletons squirreled away in her closet. Some of them are literal skeletons of Thai food delivery boys who'd forgotten her chicken satay. Others, however, are figurative skeletons — shadily held property holdings, for example, such as the one-bedroom walk-up on East 78th St. she's been calling her "primary residence" since 1994.
Will this plague of zoo animal escapes never end? Animal New York reports that a peacock has escaped from the Central Park Zoo, and is hanging out in a windowsill at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 65th Street. City Room notes that apartments in the building have been up for sale for as much as $24 million. I wouldn't give that up for the zoo, either. [AnimalNY, City Room, image via AnimalNY]
Out of all the crazy shit that happens in New York's subways, this might be the most quietly disconcerting: A filthy refrigerator sat on the West 4th Street subway platform for four days.
Likely presidential candidate Rick Perry, governor of Texas, hurt the Christian conservatives' feelings last week when he said about gay marriage in New York, "That's New York, and that's their business, and that's fine with me. That is their call. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business." That was courageous of him! But now it's all over, and he suddenly supports a federal marriage amendment.
It's not just passengers that are acting up on the subway. Employees of the MTA are misbehaving as well! Here's footage that a YouTube user (and Bloombergian anti-smoking activist, we're guessing) recorded of a couple of MTA workers smoking inside the Christopher Street 1 Train station on Sunday morning. Are you totally outraged yet? Is the smell of smoke better or worse than the usual subway odor of urine and feces? We're just grateful that these guys didn't follow in the footsteps of these people and strip off all their clothes.
It's almost that time of year: 9/11 time. One media outlet would like to commemorate the 10th-anniversary of our national tragedy with a "9/11/back-to-school fashion photo spread," whatever that means.
Just when you thought it was safe to venture out into the once poop-infested waters around New York, the city's Health Department yesterday closed four beaches — three on Staten Island and one in Brooklyn — "based on review of both water flow through the harbor and evaluation of actual water samples taken in the harbor and at the shoreline." In other words, if you've been swimming anywhere between the Verrazano and George Washington bridges, well, you get the picture.
Following today's official legalization of same-sex marriage in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened up Gracie Mansion to serve as both host and officiator of longtime staffers John Feinblatt and Jonathan Mintz's gay wedding. The couple's two daughters shared flower girl responsibilities during the short ceremony, which ended with a double dose of the traditional Jewish glass-breaking ritual. A video of the wedding's highlights is above.
Everything that Justin Timberlake owns is a sex something, so here's the New York City sex condo he just sold for $4.4 million. That figure is about 10% under what he bought the place for in 2008, but that slight loss is a drop in the bucket for the budding movie star.
Think you can escape the heat by going swimming? Think again! Following a "catastrophic fire that shut down one of the city's largest sewage treatment plants," New York City is awash in poop. Millions of gallons of untreated sewage poured into the Hudson and Harlem Rivers this week, tainting beaches as far as Brooklyn and Staten Island. Basically, New York is a big, hot Port-a-Potty today. A festering cauldron of fecal matter. A fetid puddle of poo. [NYT, image via Flickr]
We've always wondered what would happen if a cybercrime dragnet collided with artsy Brooklynites. Earlier this week, denizens of one Williamsburg loft complex found out as the feds raided their weed-laced bohemian paradise.
Whenever the thermometer creeps north of 90 degrees in NYC, you can be sure an intrepid wire photographer is going to head out and start snapping pictures of kids playing in fountains and people lounging in their underwear on park benches. Since it's so damn hot, here are some of the best "damn, it's hot" photos we could find.
If I were an annoying New York doorman or the guy at the bodega who tries to make lames jokes all the time, I'd ask, "Is it hot enough out there for you?" But I won't do that. I'll just show you pictures of the street melting into a giant sink hole.
