Here’s an unwelcome birthday gift for Rudy Giuliani, as he travels around the city raising money: protests from fire fighters and family members of September 11th victims. They've shown up in the past at Giuliani's presidential events. Today, they’re gathering in Bay Ridge, and they have plans to follow him nationwide starting sometime Read More
Rudy Giuliani is gently pushing back against the notion that he's not loved by fire fighters. Giuliani's campaign just sent out a letter from a retired fire fighter, which says: "There is no one who respects firefighters and first responders more than Rudy Giuliani." It's in response to a draft letter a national fire fighters Read More
A reader familiar with City Hall's lobbying efforts in Albany notes the flipside of the new hires at the mayor's legislative affairs office in the state capital , which is that a number of seasoned veterans have moved on. This number includes the man who headed the office for eight years, Skip Piscitelli, Read More
A nightmare week for the Upper East Side continues. NY1 reports that there's been an enormous fire at Coach president Reed Krakoff's new $17 million home. Earlier this year, Michael Calderone wrote: When Mr. Krakoff purchased his new 30-foot-wide townhouse on East 70th Street, between Park and Lexington avenues--the same tony block that Read More
Tom Westman: Looking good! The New York City Fire Department has released its annual fundraising campaign, the 2007 "FDNY Calendar of Heroes." It features pictures of hot, shirtless firefighters, and is photographed by Cary Hazlegrove, who lives not in New York but on Nantucket Island. According to blogger Andy Towle, among those photographed in Read More
FRANCESCA: The rooftop bar of Hotel Gansevoort was exquisite - sunset, cool breeze, bp everywhere. Among them: my New York posse of girlfriends - out to celebrate and lament the imminent end to my single life. But after a couple of rounds of bellinis and passionfruit cocktails, it was time to move on. Alas, the Read More
Saturday, a congressional candidates forum will be held for the 10th and 11th districts followed by a march protesting development in Downtown Brooklyn beginning at P.S. 261. Anthony Weiner flips the ceremonial coin toss at start of the 34th annual "Fun City Bowl" football game between the NYPD and FDNY at Floyd Bennett Field in Read More
Last Sunday sixty people were evacuated from a couple of buildings at 345 and 347 West 16th Street because of a fire. And then, after the FDNY extinguished the blaze, they discovered that sections of the buildings were crumbling. Now the tenants have to wait till the building's shored up before they can move back Read More
The high-end auction-house business is considered among the more genteel of professions. But apparently it has its perils—and not just for those who bid over their heads. On Dec. 5, the NYPD was summoned to Sotheby’s after three employees were exposed to a toxic substance. The substance in question wasn’t formaldehyde that leaked from some Read More
New York City residents use about 1.3 billion gallons of water a day, and most of us have no idea that it's only dumb luck that keeps the water flowing into our homes. In fact, the city's water system is balanced on the brink of disaster: If either of the two water tunnels which currently Read More
With the Fire Department of New York once again under fire for its lack of minority firefighters-the department is 92 percent white, 4.7 percent Hispanic and 3 percent black-the agency is facing a lawsuit filed by the Vulcan Society, a group of black firefighters. Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta assured everyone that the department's recruitment efforts Read More
That new anti-terrorist face- (or is it fingerprint?) recognition technology in use at airports might also come in handy at Manhattan pickup bars to help screen one's potential companions, if a couple of recent incidents are any indication.
On Jan. 1, a 43-year-old gentleman was drinking at Scores, the upscale strip joint at 333 East 60th Read MoreLast week in this space, retired firefighter John Finucane put forward a proposal for a separate memorial at Ground Zero for the firefighters who died on Sept. 11. Perhaps not surprisingly, the idea is winning support from a good many firefighters and their families … and their survivors. The sacrifice of the FDNY on that Read More
The idea has been circulating, quietly, for several months now, and soon it's likely to find its way into the public debate over the future of Ground Zero: a separate memorial for the 343 members of the Fire Department of New York killed in the line of duty on Sept. 11, 2001.
One of those pushing Read MoreThe Fire Department's memorial ceremony at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 12 was appropriately solemn. The speakers-Mayor Bloomberg, former Mayor Giuliani, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta and others-were uniformly eloquent. Politicians in the crowd knew enough to remain in the background. None of them was introduced, save for the Mayor and ex-Mayor. The music was well-chosen Read More
