Name (And Eat) A Cockroach For Valentine’s Day
Via ScienceDaily:
Valentines Day is upon us and there is no better way to say “forever” than with the gift of a cockroach.
The Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo is offering a light-hearted way to make sure your loved one knows your feelings are forever — with a roach in their name and a 100 percent solid dark chocolate COCOA-ROACH.
Last year thousands of hopeless romantics from around the world named real live Madagascar hissing cockroaches at WCS’s Bronx Zoo after their favorite loved one, “ex,” or mother-in-law. The zoo is again offering the opportunity to name a new crop of cockroaches for Valentine’s Day 2012. Each gift comes with a colorful certificate emailed to your loved one announcing that a cockroach has been named in his or her honor.
To make the offer even sweeter, this year you can also purchase a COCOA-ROACH for that special someone — a genuine artisanal 100 percent…
Three-Foot Rat Found In New York City Shoe Store
Wondering what creature will inherit the earth after the fall of man in 2012? Well, take a peek at our future masters. Someone tweeted this photo of a gigantic rat, supposedly caught inside a Foot Locker store in the Bronx. Similarly sized rats were spotted in Brooklyn last year (with some photographic evidence as well). Via Gothamist:
Take Off Your Pants And Ride The Subway
Today is No Pants Subway Ride day, in New York City and around the world, wherever subway (underground) trains are to be found (all sorts of places, not just the obvious ones like London’s Tube and the Paris Metro). Started by comedy group Improv Everywhere, this is what it’s all about:
The No Pants Subway Ride is annual event staged by Improv Everywhere every January in New York City. The mission started as a small prank with seven guys and has grown into an international celebration of silliness, with dozens of cities around the world participating each year. The idea behind No Pants is simple: Random passengers board a subway car at separate stops in the middle of winter without pants. The participants do not behave as if they know each other, and they all wear winter coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. The only unusual thing is their lack of pants.
You can participate in the next edition, taking place this Sunday, January 8, 2012, around the world. [New York Details and Details for Other Cities]
A documentary about Improv Everywhere is currently raising funds on Kickstarter. Here’s the trailer showing how No Pants started:
Letter To The NYPD On Evicting The Protesters From Zuccotti Park
As of now, it appears that the forced removal and/or arrest of Occupy Wall Street protesters at Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s behest has been postponed. Via n+1, an open letter to the police concerning their possible marching orders:
Last night, we learned that because of the complaints of Brookfield Properties, the company that owns Zuccotti Park, Mayor Bloomberg has ordered the Occupy Wall Street protesters to remove themselves and their supplies from the Park at 7 AM tomorrow. If the protesters don’t leave, Bloomberg likely will order you and your colleagues to forcibly remove and arrest the men and women who have come there to protest the policies, politicians, and financial leaders responsible for the continuing economic crisis. As concerned citizens, we ask you not to follow this order.
Bloomberg and Brookfield Properties claim that the protesters must be removed in order to clean the Park. Anytime thousands of people assemble in a…
JP Morgan Chase Donates $4.6 Million To NYPD On Eve Of Protests
Wondering how much it costs to buy off the police department? JP Morgan Chase just gave the New York City Police Foundation the largest donation in its history. How the police show their gratitude will presumably determine whether they receive similar donations from companies in the future. Via Naked Capitalism:
No matter how you look at this development, it does not smell right. From JP Morgan’s website, hat tip Lisa Epstein:
JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD’s main data center.
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing “profound gratitude”…
New York Times Scorns The Occupy Wall Street Protests
Photo: David Shankbone (CC)
Peeved by the mainstream media “blackout” of the Occupy Wall Street protest? Worse than those who have ignored it is the New York Times, which ran a steaming turd of an article (titled “Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim”). The takeaway is more or less that the protesters have no legitimate grievances, and the piece concludes with a wise middle-aged Wall Street trader lampooning the activists for owning Apple laptops. (The protesters favor higher taxation of the super-rich, yet they also own computers! What hypocrites!) Their coverage:
By late morning on Wednesday, Occupy Wall Street, a noble but fractured and airy movement of rightly frustrated young people, had a default ambassador in a half-naked woman who called herself Zuni Tikka. A blonde with a marked likeness to Joni Mitchell and a seemingly even stronger wish to burrow through the space-time continuum and hunker down in 1968, Ms.…
Peaceful Protesters Penned And Maced
The Occupy Wall St. site has footage of the disturbing pattern of police abuse from the protests near New York City’s Wall Street and Union Square, including this example of police entrapping female protesters in net barriers and macing them:
NYC’s Beloved Monster Island Closes
Surprisingly, the demise of non-profit music and art venue Monster Island (which was as weirdly charming as it name would imply) drew a write-up in this past weekend’s New York Times. Like its brethren Market Hotel and Silent Barn (both of which also shuttered their doors this past year) Monster Island stood in stark, defiant contrast to the commercially-oriented music club model. It helped to foster some of the city’s most acclaimed and exciting bands in recent years, before falling prey to the incessant steamroller of gentrification:
The concert was particularly poignant for the hundred or so people who stood listening intently in the bright light off the East River in Brooklyn because it was the last time they would be able to gather for a block party at Monster Island, a collection of performance spaces and studios in a faded commercial building covered with murals near the Williamsburg waterfront. Many…
Occult Map Of New York
Last year the venerable Watkins Books published a Spiritual Sightings Map of London. The intent was always to expand the map globally and now disinformation author Gary Lachman (Turn Off Your Mind) has contributed an Occult Map of New York:
I had already been living in New York on East 10th Street for a few months when in the early spring of 1975 I was asked to play bass in a fledgling rock band that would later become fairly successful. Their name was Blondie and their bass player had quit to join another group, Television.
CBGB on the Bowery was just starting to make a name for itself and would soon become the home of an honest-to-goodness scene. Soon after joining the group I had to give up my place on East 10th, and I moved in with the singer and guitarist. Their tiny flat in Little Italy, however, quickly proved too small…
Acrobat Arrested After Performance Atop NYC’s Williamsburg Bridge
Perhaps channeling 1970s World Trade Center daredevil Philippe Petit, aerialist Seanna Sharpe gave a performance from high on the Williamsburg Bridge, the Wall Street Journal reports. A crowd gathered to watch before the police used two vehicles and a helicopter to catch her:
It took approximately seven minutes for Sharpe to scale the tower, followed by fifteen minutes of midair twirls and flips. During that time, she remained tethered to the bridge only by a length of silk rope she had tied to the bridge beams.
The NYC Fancy Rat Convention
June is a special time of year in New York, when the sun warms the city, and the rats come out of hiding and get whisked off to fashion shows in the finest of attire at the Fancy Rat Convention.
NYC Bill Would Criminalize Buying Knockoff Goods
The Wall Street Journal reports:
NEW YORK — A city lawmaker said Tuesday she’ll introduce a bill to criminalize the purchase of counterfeit designer goods including handbags and watches.
The bill proposed by City Councilwoman Margaret Chin would impose penalties of up to a year in jail or a $1,000 fine for buying knockoffs.
“I urge visitors that come to New York to come for the authenticity, not to buy these fake bags or electronics,” Chin said. “We have local designers that create unique items at affordable prices, and they’re available. So don’t just come here for the knockoffs.”
A 2004 report by then-city Comptroller William Thompson found that about 8 percent of the approximately $287 billion in counterfeit goods sold in the United States annually is sold in New York City, resulting in more than $1 billion in lost tax revenue.
It is already illegal to sell fake designer goods, but Susan Scafidic, head of the…
New York Libraries: Come on in and Watch Some Porn
Photo: PFHLai (CC)
Sam Biddle writes on Gizmodo:
If you don’t mind getting your face punched in, New York’s public libraries might just be your new favorite place to watch people have sex with each other on the internet. Sure, you’re surrounded by other patrons, but it’s free!
You might think that watching people pound away at each other in the most graphic and jarring manner in public might run contrary to a library’s mission of promoting literature and the arts, while providing a safe and tranquil place to read, work, and study. And sure, in 1973 Miller v. California pulled porn out of the categorical forcefield of free speech. But, the NY Post reports, NYPL rep Angela Montefinise thinks everyone’s favorite part of the Bill of Rights includes PornHub: “In deference to the First Amendment protecting freedom of speech, the New York Public Library cannot prevent adult patrons from accessing adult content that is…
9/11 First Responders To Be Screened By FBI Against Terrorist List
One of the many air sampling locations set up around the site of the World Trade Center.
This is really just the cherry on top of the icing on the cake in terms of how ailing 9/11 heroes have been treated. Michael McAuliff writes in the Huffington Post:
A provision in the new 9/11 health bill may be adding insult to injury for people who fell sick after their service in the aftermath of the 2001 Al Qaeda attacks, The Huffington Post has learned.
The tens of thousands of cops, firefighters, construction workers and others who survived the worst terrorist assault in U.S. history and risked their lives in its wake will soon be informed that their names must be run through the FBI’s terrorism watch list, according to a letter obtained by HuffPost.
Any of the responders who are not compared to the database of suspected terrorists would be barred from getting treatment…
Deadly Cobra Escapes Bronx Zoo
A poisonous Egyptian cobra slipped out of its cage this weekend, the New York Daily News reports. By this time, it may have caught a downtown 6 train to Greenwich Village or elsewhere, possibly taking the connecting ferry to Staten Island.
A 20-inch cobra slithered out of its cage in the Bronx Zoo Saturday, forcing the exhibit to close while workers searched for the venomous serpent, officials said.
The adolescent Egyptian cobra went missing from an off-exhibit enclosure sometime in the afternoon and zookeepers quickly closed off the Reptile House, officials said.
Workers canvassed the building, eying several closed-in spaces that the reptile would naturally be drawn to coil inside, officials said.
The snake – native to Africa and the Arabian Peninsula – was not recovered Saturday night, officials said.
Hacking Times Square Video Screens With An iPhone (Video)
Pretty tame what he pulled here:
NYC’s Last Chinatown Arcade Shuts Its Doors
It’s a sad day for lovers of underworld history, as an important slice of gritty “old New York” just faded into dust: the last video arcade in Chinatown has closed its gates. The iconic and beloved Chinatown Fair arcade perfectly embodied the cool, seedy downtown culture of Taxi Driver/Warriors-era NYC, and offered a futuristic escape from reality for teenagers and misfits from all boroughs. The arcade was minorly famous for its “tick-tack-toe chicken” booth game, which allowed customers to play an electronic game of tick-tack-toe (sometimes losing) against a live chicken. NYC The Blog offers great photos and a farewell:
Rumors started flying around New York City blogs last week that Chinatown Fair, one of the last traditional arcades left in the city, was closing. Those rumors became reality yesterday when Chinatown Fair locked its doors for good at 8 Mott Street yesterday at 12:48 am. It was in business since at…
NYPD Officers’ Counter-Terrorism Trainings Feature A Muslim-Bashing Film
Via The Raw Story:
New York Police Department officers who showed up for mandatory counter-terrorism training were shown a “spectacularly offensive” anti-Muslim film claiming that American Muslims are secretly plotting to take over the country, a news report alleged Wednesday.
The news is further evidence that US law enforcement agencies are turning to extremist anti-Islamic “consultants” to provide training for terrorism investigations.
According to the Village Voice’s Tom Robbins, the NYPD used a film called “The Third Jihad” in training sessions this month. Robbins described the film as
72 minutes of gruesome footage of bombing carnage, frenzied crowds, burning American flags, flaming churches, and seething mullahs. All of this is sandwiched between a collection of somber talking heads informing us that, while we were sleeping, the international Islamist Jihad that wrought these horrors has set up shop here and is quietly going about its deadly business. This is the final drive in a 1,400-year-old bid…
Obama Signs Health Bill For 9/11 Responders
Via The Raw Story:
US President Barack Obama signed into law Sunday a bill to compensate emergency responders sickened in the rubble of the September 11 attacks, the White House said in a statement.
The president is currently in Hawaii, where he spent the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, and was expected back in Washington on Tuesday. He had been due to sign the bill at the Kaneohe Marine base near his vacation home.
The US Congress on December 22 approved a 10-year, four-billion-dollar program to help police, firefighters and other workers made ill by the fumes left in the wake of the worst terrorist attack on US soil.
The Senate and then the House of Representatives passed the measure after a last-minute compromise ended a Republican blockade in one of the final acts of the Democrat-led US Congress.
[Continues at The Raw Story]
