Maybe the strangest part about this drunk-man-steals-occupied-limo story is that W. 4th St. and W. 10th St. really do intersect

Note W. 4th St. bending upward in Manhattan's West Village, at the left side of our map, to intersect with W. 10th St., W. 11th St., and -- yes, eventually -- W. 12th St!

by Ken

It seems like a pretty straightforward story of some drunk taking off in a limo that (oops!) had passengers sitting in the back and a few blocks later crashing (kerplunk!) into a car, bringing an end to the brief joyride. But look more closely at where our lad came to rest.

Drunk Man Steals Limo With Passengers Inside, Police Say

By Danielle Tcholakian on May 16, 2014 6:57am


DNAinfo NY caption: "A man jumped into this limo while it was idling and took off with passengers inside before crashing it, police said." No one was hurt, but the limo has probably looked better.

WEST VILLAGE — A group of limo riders was abducted when their driver left the luxury car unattended on a West Village street and someone else jumped in and drove off, police said.

The white stretch Lincoln Town Car was idling with five passengers inside at the southeast corner of Seventh Avenue South and West Fourth Street at 3:12 a.m. May 7 when Marwan Elbordiny, 24, took the wheel, according to the NYPD.

Elbordiny blew through a red light and raced several blocks before crashing into a car at West Fourth Street and West 10th Street, police said.

When police arrived, Elbordiny smelled of alcohol and he was flushed, glassy-eyed and unsteady on his feet, the NYPD said. He blew a .181 on a blood alcohol test, more than twice the legal driving limit of .08, police said.

The passengers were said to be scared, but unhurt.

Elbordiny was driving with a suspended license after receiving multiple previous moving violations, police said.

Elbordiny was arrested on charges of unauthorized use of a vehicle and is awaiting arraignment in New York Supreme Court on June 11. His attorney could not be reached for comment.

It sounds like an April Fool's joke, but there really is an intersection of W. 4th St. and W. 10th St.

It all has to do with fallout from the intersection -- along Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas on the map, but not to any real New Yorkers) -- of the old grid from what was then New York City's far-northern Hudson River-side suburb of Greenwich Village (when New York City was still huddled down at the lower tip of the island of Manhattan), and is now the West Village, with the grid imposed on most of the island up to 155th Street by the Commissioner's Plan of 1811.

Street names changed a lot over time, but it was presumably someone with a lively sense of humor who decided that west of Sixth Avenue (OK, OK, Avenue of the Americas), W. 4th St. would shoot more-or-less-northward on a collision course with W. 10th, 11th, and 12th Sts. It certainly didn't make for a happy landing for Marwan Elbordiny.

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Thanks to the discovery that brunch is an "event," New York's besotted brunchers are back in booze heaven

Thrillist

by Ken

In a moment the question that's going to come to the fore is: Is brunch an "event"? It's a question that hasn't come into play as much as you would expect among the great philosophers. In my vast reading of Plato, for example (that's a joke), I don't recall coming across any citable insights.

However, if upon reflection you come to the conclusion that brunch is not an event, well, there's a portion of the New York population that would beg you not to voice your opinion within the hearing of New York's State Liquor Authority (SLA). These people have just been to hell and back, and may not be able to withstand the possibility of another reversal from the SLA.

For those of you who may not be familiar with this only-just-resolved crisis, Thrillist's Dave Infante (who describes himself in his bio as "an editor for Thrillist Media Group who would rather just split the check evenly, because you DID have some of that calamari, remember?") took his readers on a step-by-step trip through these momentous events, and we really can't do better than to follow along on the tour.

What Really Happened in NY's Illegal Bottomless Boozy Brunch Scandal

PUBLISHED ON 2/27/2014
BY DAVE INFANTE



For three terrifying days, bottomless brunch was illegal in our city.

On February 24th, 2014, our right to boozy brunch -- nay, the very right to be a community! -- came under attack. The bedrock promise that New York weekends are strictly about two-plus hours of unlimited mimosas? Threatened. Nobody knows who struck first.

Oh wait, that’s just a quote from The Matrix. We do know exactly who struck first! The NYC Hospitality Alliance started the maelstrom, by firing this unassuming tweet across the bottomless-Bellini bow of our fair city’s brunch spots.



Behind that link is the trade organization’s press release on the matter, which totally snitches politely cites Section 117-A of NY state’s booze laws. This particular SLA statute is clearer than a vodka tonic:



What?! No! Yes? The truth seemed obvious: Gotham’s beautiful, benevolent, Benedict-slinging, bottomless brunch spots have been ILLEGALLY pouring unlimited booze into our livers the entire time. The dream was over. Never again would a sunny Sunday begin sunny-side up and end, many drinks later, with you face-down in a couch surrounded by seven gyros and grievous shame.

No. Nonononono. NO!

But buck up! Despite the setback, we’re still the best city in the world, right? New Yorkers, for their part, reacted with that aplomb.



Here Dave reproduces three tweets, including the heartrending one I've put atop this post.

It was happening. The hour of judgement was upon us. TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU CAN CARRY AND HEAD FOR THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE.

No one can accuse New Yorkers of crying over spilt milk. We’re a tough bunch. That said, milk is sort of weird, and also not made of alcohol, and so, for two days, blogger outrage flowed like beer tears. Think pieces were posted. Office listservs lit up. At least one New Yorker not named Dave Infante called his mom to ask about moving back home, because what’s the point anymore, and also it would be good to save some money on rent. Together, we wept.

But this is a family magazine (neither of those words are true, but just go with it, Barry Diller!), and every damn day, New York City tells a comeback story like one you’ve never heard. The saga of the Great Illegal Boozy Brunch has a happy ending, and not like the one you used to contemplate paying for on the West Side Highway after too many endless mimosas. The hero Gotham needed was about to emerge.

Batman! Not really. Wouldn’t that be great though? NYC’s actual liberating force turned out, improbably, to be the SLA itself. On the morning of February 27th, after nearly 36 hours of panic, a liquor board rep told Business Insider in a statement that reads equally bemused & befuddled:



So, as everyone who's ever been to one knows, boozy brunches are indeed events, and events are sometimes exempt. We were saved.

Play it again, Sam. Play it again, and again, and again. Then, play that sweet tune one more time for the shining stars at the SLA, who pulled an entire city from the jaws of despair by creating a loophole IN ITS OWN STATUTES so that we could continue to brunch like the kings & queens that we one day hope to become.

And that, dear neighbors & friends, is how it came to be that for three perilous days in February 2014, New York City lost, then won back, its right to bottomless brunch.

Now of course the "bottomless" boozed-up brunch isn't really bottomless. Typically it's all you can drink in an hour. And for most of us that's not likely to be a liver-killing quantity of the stuff. Still, one has to wonder at the quantity of agita experienced among the hard-core New York brunch set. (Or am I the only one wondering?)

I mean, even the strict interpretation of the ABC law in effect for those three blackout days would have permitted restaurants to offer special deals on two or three drinks. (Unless of course there's some other provision of NYS's often-impenetrable liquor laws that might have come into play.) One wonders then just how much those broken-hearted boozing brunchers are accustomed to consuming.

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Wish you had snow of your own? Eat your heart out!

Upper West Side (Manhattan)

DNAinfo caption: Instagram user Alex Tarhini (@alextnyc) took this photo of a snow-blanketed Upper West Side street. (Click to enlarge.)

by Ken

Some of you have probably had recent snowstorms of your own, while others haven't and are probably feeling mighty jealous. I suppose there are some of you who haven't and are just feeling Schadenfreude for us, which is really mean, but you may enjoy these pictures even more, you rats. Here in the Big Apple we've had a pretty frosty weekend following our big storm of Thursday-into-Friday, which made it regrettably unmanageable for me to get to work Friday, so I worked at home. (Shucks!) The upshot was that my weekend walking tours featured that special Manhattan post-storm ground configuration of a sleek hard-ice glaze and warm streetsides piled with deep slush and equally deep lake-size puddles.

Now, facing a regular workday negotiating that lovely combination, I thought the least I could do was to share some pictorial representations of our storm, gathered by DNAinfo.com from Instagram. So you can either commiserate, envy, or else pity us.


Washington Heights (Manhattan)

DNAinfo caption: "There's nothing prettier than untouched snow up in Washington Heights," wrote Twitter user @stephenweisbrot.

42nd Street (Manhattan)

DNAinfo caption: Harlem Spirituals (@HSNYV_Tours) got a shot of 42nd Street during the storm. (Click to enlarge.)

Astoria (Queens)

DNAinfo caption: "Lowest Rates! Will work for cookies and hot chocolate!" Twitter user @JLa_NYC captures a couple of pint-sized shovelers in Astoria.

Long Island City (Queens), unplowed

DNAinfo caption: Kevin Lynch (@Caoimhin_L) snapped a haunting picture of Long Island City after the night's snowfall.

Long Island City (Queens),  plowed -- sort of

DNAinfo caption: "This is *after* 3 fleets of plows came through," wrote Twitter user @kambri of this shot from Long Island City. (Click to enlarge.)

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Local note

America's Next Top Mayor--watch them disappear.

New York's United Federation of Teachers has made an endorsement in the mayoral race for the first time since 1989, of William Thompson, the personable, knowledgeable Democrat who allegedly ran for mayor in 2009. I say "allegedly" because as far as I'm concerned he didn't run; he strolled for mayor, maybe, or ambled.

Thompson was one of the worst campaigners ever. Bloomberg's deep nastiness was beginning to show, and his bid for a third term was barely legal, and Democrats should have come much closer to winning than they did. I really have a hard time understanding the UFT's move. The Democratic field is extremely crowded, with a presumptive front-runner in King Michael's loyally postpartisan chancellor (Christine Quinn), a celebrity dick joke (Anthony Weiner), and at least three genuine progressives, two of whom (John Liu and Bill DeBlasio) are strong campaigners. It's really time to start uniting around one of these two.

In 2009 the UFT refused to endorse Thompson:

"It's a different time, and this union now is in a different place," Mulgrew said.

Yeah, last time Thompson seemed to have a chance of winning.

UPDATED: A Look At the 9/11 Memorial, Museum and Monument Designs at Ground Zero.

above: aerial view rendering of the 9/11 Memorial

above: one of the two 9/11 Memorial bronze name-etched reflecting pools in the foreground and the 9/11 Museum Pavilion entry in the background

Today, on the 10th anniversary of the tragic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers' twin towers and the Pentagon, there will be several memorials taking place as we honor the victims with moments of silence and reflection.

Below, President Obama, President Bush and their wives visit the Reflections of Absence this morning:


above photo by Robert Deutsch-Pool/Getty Images

The 9/11 Memorial will be dedicated on September 11, 2011 (today) in a special ceremony for victims’ families. Therefore, it is fitting that today I share with you photos, renderings, images and information about the 9/11 Memorial; its monuments, plaza and museum at the site of Ground Zero.


above photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

above photo AFP PHOTO/POOL/Justin Lane


Reflecting Absence



above: Water Falls in the Memorial North Pool (Photo by Joe Woolhead)

The 9/11 Memorial by Michael Arad (formally named "Reflecting Absence") is located at the site of the former World Trade Center complex, and occupies approximately half of the 16-acre site. The memorial features two enormous waterfalls and reflecting pools, each about an acre in size, set within the footprints of the original twin towers.



above: an aerial renderings of 9/11 Memorial Plaza and site


above: a cross-section of the Memorial Plaza and the Museum Pavilion and interior

above and below: rendering of the Bronze Names Parapets




above: a birdseye view of the 911 Memorial Monuments at night

The 2,983 names
The 2,983 names of the men, women, and children killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993, are inscribed into bronze parapets surrounding the twin Memorial pools, located in the footprints of the Twin Towers.



Every name has a code containing N for North Pool or S for South Pool, followed by a panel number that locates it on one of the Memorial Pools.



Names are placed within nine primary groups.


Around the North Pool:
World Trade Center North
Flight 11
February 26, 1993

Around the South Pool:
World Trade Center South
First Responders
Flight 175
Pentagon
Flight 77
Flight 93

Requested adjacencies within these groups:
Names are arranged by affiliation, so that the employees of a company or the crew of a flight are together. The next-of-kin of the victims and surviving colleagues made additional requests for specific names to be inscribed next to one another. Some requests were between relatives and friends; others were between people who had just met, but who responded together as events unfolded.



This design allows the names of family, friends, and colleagues to be together, as they lived and died. The requested adjacencies reflected on the Memorial make it unique from any other in existence.


above: rendering of interior of the Memorial Hall, a view of the reflecting pools from beneath

You can search for a name on the memorial here.

Memorial Plaza by Peter Walker and Partners

above: With its grove of trees, the Memorial’s plaza is an actual green roof for the structure housing the 9/11 Memorial Museum (May 2011, Photo by Joe Woolhead).

The landscape architecture of Memorial Plaza was designed by Peter Walker and Partners of Berkeley, CA. and is one of the most sustainable, green plazas ever constructed. Its irrigation, storm water and pest management systems will conserve energy, water and other resources.



above: renderings of the 9/11 Museum Plaza

Rainwater will be collected in storage tanks below the plaza surface. A majority of the daily and monthly irrigation requirements will be met by the harvested water.


above: The Survivor Tree Blooms on the Memorial Site (Photo by Amy Dreher)

The Memorial Museum and Entry Pavilion
The Museum’s entry pavilion was designed by the Norwegian architecture firm, Snøhetta and the underground museum exhibit space by Aedas, Museum architects.

The Mission of the Memorial Museum, located at the World Trade Center site, is to bear solemn witness to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993.


above: a birdseye rendering of the Museum’s entry pavilion

Visitors to the Memorial Museum will be presented with a sequence of experiences which allow for individual and personal encounters within an overall context of a historical narrative.


above: a rendering of the Museum’s entry pavilion

The nature of the Museum is such that the shell of the space, comprising existing foundations, the slurry wall and other in-situ elements of the site is as much an artifact of 9/11 as the contents of the exhibitions.


above: a rendering of the Museum atrium with Twin Tower "tridents."

Visitors will enter through a pavilion that houses an auditorium for public programming, a multi-purpose area for contemplation and refreshment and a private suite reserved for victims’ family members. Two of the original steel tridents from the Twin Towers will be enclosed within the pavilion’s grand glass atrium, standing as references to the past, while signaling hope for the future.


above: rendering of Memorial Exhibition in the heart of the museum site

Memorial Design Exhibition
The introductory exhibit leads to a gently ramped “ribbon,” toward the core exhibitions at bedrock, the archeological heart of the World Trade Center site.


above: rendering of the interior of the Museum

This descent echoes the ramp that once was used by construction workers to help build the World Trade Center and was again used in the aftermath of the attacks for the recovery and clean-up of the site and by victims’ family members to access bedrock on anniversaries of 9/11.


above: rendering of interactive tables and artifact cases

From the ramp, vistas will be created, providing a sense of the vastness of the site and the scale of the original Towers. Visitors will be able to stand between the locations of the original Twin Towers and experience their scale, which will be referenced by two metal-clad, ethereal volumes. The ramp that will bring visitors to the core Museum exhibitions has already been framed in steel and concrete.


above: rendering of space for remembrances

above: interactive tables and Wall of Faces

The final descent to the base of the site will take visitors alongside the Vesey Street Stair remnant – also known as the “Survivor Stairs,” which was used by hundreds to escape the destruction of the Towers on 9/11.


above: The "Survivor's Staircase" before being moved to the museum



After today's dedication ceremony the 9/11 Memorial will be open to the general public.

This post is in sincere remembrance of those lost in this tragedy. May they rest in peace.

More information can be found here.

some images courtesy of the LMCD and many of the computer renderings in this post were created by Squared Design Lab