Posts from — April 2008

43rd Street on Flickr.

Market Diner by striatic on Flickr.

The former Market Diner on the northeast corner West 43rd Street and 11th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen is planning to reopen–not replaced with hastily-built condos, but in use again as a diner! Word came last month that the diner would be returned to service, and yesterday it was confirmed that the opening will come in the first week of June.

The diner, which was built in 1962 by the DeRaffele diner-construction company, was shuttered in 2006 and faced an uncertain future. The new lesees James Athanasopoulos and John and Elias Tsinias will likely ditch the parking spaces that surround the current building for outdoor seating for 100 diners, and will also add a bar to the interior. The Tsinias family said about the rehab that “It’s going to be a 1950s diner outside and a more modern diner inside.”

The Tsinias family also owns the Cosmic Diner on West 52nd Street and 8th Avenue, and made a deal to pay less than the yearly half-million dollar rent that owners at the Moinian Group had hoped to fetch.

Market Diner photo in text by davidinmanhattan on Flickr.

On the Corkscrew by Marjorie Lipan on Flickr.

If city school bus contractors have their way, children will no longer get the chance to experience destinations like the Museum of Natural History, the Bronx Zoo, or the Hall of Science with their classmates, teachers, and for the unlucky, their parent-chaperons. As the price of gasoline around the city and the nation continues its climb to never-before-seen heights, bus contractors are requesting that the Department of Education immediately eliminate field trips from public and nonpublic schools.

The last contract between the busing companies and the DOE was signed in 2005, and the next renewal is not scheduled until 2010. In the time since ‘05, the contractors told the Post, they have had to absorb over $20 million in additional costs as a result of the 70% spike in fuel prices. They claim that the additional costs, which cannot be passed along to customers as airlines do, may drive smaller busing companies out of business for good.

For now education officials are not buying it–and will continue to hold the companies to the original contracts that they have signed. We’ll have to see what happens when we hit the $7 or $10 per gallon as predicted yesterday in the Sun.

Now that the innovative 9th Avenue cycle track (bike lane physically separated from traffic) has had some time to be broken in, let’s take a trip down it’s length and see some of its features, signage, and generally how it’s been holding up. The lane begins at West 23rd Street and terminates at West 16th Street, just blocks away from the delightful Meat Market Plaza.

Coming soon–Part 2: a trip from the Meat Market Plaza on West 14th Street to the Bowery via bike lane.

Tricia Walsh-Smith, who two weeks ago released a YouTube video in which she railed against her husband, Shubert Organization president Philip Smith, has released a sequel. In it she questions his plans to divorce her–”The only cruel behavior I’ve ever done to that man was make him have skim milk in his cappuccino”–and to evict her from their Park Avenue home. Tomorrow she goes to court to try and block the eviction proceedings against her, and asks viewers that if she loses, “I hope you’ll all donate and help me buy a tent.”

J. Kurtz & Sons on Flickr. 

Corner detail of the former J. Kurtz & Sons furniture store on Jamaica Avenue by Allmendinger & Schlendorf, 1931.

The three police officers who opened fire and killed Sean Bell with 50 bullets on November 25, 2006 (what would have been his wedding day) were today acquitted of all charges against them.

In a statement today, Judge Arthur Cooperman said that he felt that the prosecution’s case was undermined by “prior inconsistent statements” and doubted the credibility of some of the witnesses.

Below and continuing after the jump is the full transcript of Judge Cooperman’s statement today regarding his decision to acquit the three officers:

“Before dealing with the business at hand, I would like to remind everyone how important it is to honor the decorum of the court and remain quiet after the verdicts are rendered.

A trial is defined as a formal examination of the facts of a case by a court of law to decide the validity of a charge. It is also defined in the dictionary as a hardship. And, in many ways, this trial was a hardship.

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Ticket Busters on Flickr.

If there’s something strange in your neighborhood–like a Department of Buildings inspector or a meter maid–it seems like this company has got you covered. With offices in Queens and Brooklyn, they’ll remedy your building violations, fix your parking tickets, and even attend your Environmental Control Board hearings for you. Maybe the crane collapse folks over at 303 East 51st Street in Manhattan could get some pro bono representation–after all, their website asserts that Ticket Busters is a “community pillar in supporting social justice and advocating citizen rights.”

Bay Ridge United Methodist Church on Flickr.

Preservationists fear that the end may be coming for the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church at Ovington and 4th Avenues. This week the church erected protective screening and began the process of exhuming the remains of 211 former parishioners from an underground crypt at the church site.

The fate of the church has been up in the air as the dwindling congregation made plans to sell the church site to a Brooklyn developer who would construct a 50-unit condo on the site as well as a smaller new church space. Many long-time residents and preservationists have decried the redevelopment plan and have fought for alternatives to keep the over 100-year-old ‘green church’ from being destroyed.

Over at Bay Ridge Journal we get a first hand account of the exhumation, “As I turned onto Fourth Avenue from 72nd Street, I saw a bulldozer in full rut, running down the shrubs in front of the Sunday school in its frenzy to get at the dead.” The removal of the remains, which will be transferred to a cemetery in Cypress Hills, Queens, clearly indicates that the church is moving ahead with its plans to demolish the church building, even as concerned residents work to find another buyer who would keep the structure intact.

[Read more →]

Quality Sausages on Flickr.

This little piggie can peer into your soul at Esposito’s Pork Shop in Hell’s Kitchen.