After years of grassroots activism, the High Line has been saved. Or maybe not. The well-loved elevated railroad on the West Side is set to become a public park and green space by next year. Friends of the High Line, the organization that fought developers’ demolition efforts, unveiled the plans created by the design firm Field Operations earlier this year. The first stage of the $170 million project (between Gansevoort and West 20th Street) is set to open to the public in spring 2009, and the second stage (between West 20th and 30th streets) may be completed the following year. New buildings by international architects have already begun to rise up along the structure, and the Whitney Museum plans to build a new outpost along the park as well. But while community groups and fans rejoice, preservationists say it’s not time to become complacent since the entire structure is not safe from destruction.
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With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, will Gov. David Paterson enforce a mandatory rehab program for the state’s ‘addiction to consultant crack?’
Albany is very real.With a fiscal crisis expected to balloon to a $47 billion deficit in the 2011- 2012 fiscal year and the source of 25 percent of the states tax income still unstable on Wall Street, Governor Paterson is asking for help and suggestions.
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“Who the fuck is Fu Manchu over there?”
I’m standing near the entrance to the stage at Webster Hall, when a sandy-haired prole sticks his fat finger in my face and asks me the question. Fat Finger jerks his head in the direction where a guy with a goatee and long jeweled braids topped with a cowl had been standing. I explain to the gentleman that Fu Manchu is Paul K, a Satanist art photographer from Los Angeles who, because of the recent economic turmoil, has recently lost half his trust fund. Then I get belligerent.
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NICOLE CALDWELL, Former editor-in-chief of Playgirl, ponders the size of Obama’s penis, the power of the Presidential paunch and whether all the fetishization will hurt the Barack Star on election day.
Let’s face it: Barack Obama is hot. As we move into the final days until the election, it’s become more apparent, however, that people are not making rational decisions based on voting records or even debating skills.
They are voting with their emotions, their passions, even their fantasies about who they would rather kiss, fondle or fuck. Bammers has single-handedly inspired the kind of adoration usually reserved for cultural icons like The Beatles, Elvis or Tom Cruise (circa Risky Business). That’s right, he’s a Barack star.Women weep at his rallies. Photos of him frolicking shirtless on a beach get splayed across pages of People.The media can’t get enough of him. He’s America’s sweetheart.
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The Lower East Side Tenement Museum entrance is an opening to a time capsule. History is everywhere: There are dirt-encrusted tiles on the floor; soot-covered paintings on the wall; grime-caked sheet-metal ceilings. Unlike the rest of the neighborhood—which is pocked with salons and fancy clothing boutiques, glass high-rises and gourmet restaurants—the building appears the same today as it was when millions of immigrants began jamming the neighborhood 150 years ago.
Inside the individual apartments, you see where generations lived, worked and died (often in the same two- or three-room flat). In one room, 20 layers of wallpaper and scattered artifacts found during the building’s early-1990s renovation and excavation are a reminder of the transient bustle of the time.
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NO PROBLEMS BOOKING that massage, right? Dialing a telephone number has never been a stretch. Remembering to get those low-fat yogurt as well as the vinaigrette is a no brainer. For sufferers of schizophrenia, though, even such simple tasks are a struggle.
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IN A RECENT interview, Woody Allen, perhaps the worlds most famous neurotic, wondered aloud whether he could have achieved artistic success without regular psychoanalysis. People would say to me, oh, its just a crutch, Allen told Adam Moss in New York.
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Often jeered as the death of nightlife, as the idea that exterminated fun in downtown clubs, the prick-friendly practice of bottle service is taking a well-deserved hit.
Some of those poor, poor bankers on Wall Street have fallen on such hard times that they can no longer afford to buy their way into nightclubs with even one measly $350 bottle of Grey Goose. As a result, clubs that have grown dependent on such gentlemen, who would often use $10,000 tabs to secure their welcome, are taking revenue losses in the neighborhood of 30 percent. Such venues now face a decision to either adapt or die off, opening the potential for a revolution in New York nightlife.
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If the court is known for anything other than some highly publicized cases dealing with celebrities (think Woody Allen and the Astors), it is patronage.The next judge to be elected to Surrogate’s Court must be qualified to tackle patronage and be open to reform in addition to having an astute legal mind and experience.
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Luis Garden Acosta was walking down Kent Avenue one day when he noticed a radioactive hazard symbol on a side door. “I was pretty shocked,” he says. “I knew that symbol well, and I was just confounded to think that there would be anything [radioactive] one block from a public school building, or in a residential neighborhood.”
The building belonged to Radiac Research Corporation, which handles and ships chemicals and low-level radioactive waste. The chemicals come from
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