Bill de Blasio’s attempts to deliver on his promise to ban Central Park’s horse and carriage industry on “day one” of his mayoralty have produced little more than a federal investigation into the animal-rights interest group backing his candidacy. Now, the mayor is obligated to give those very same drivers raises.
Today, the most heat-generating issue in New York City—the issue that is prompting our council to consider a measure that it has never used before, according to one member—is not homelessness, or a lack of affordable housing, or even the L Train apocalypse—but the fate of the horse-and-carriage industry. How did we get here?
If you forgot some reading and writing material on the Great Lawn in Central Park last night, here it is. Presumably you went to the New York Philharmonic concert there, which marked 50 years of the Concerts in the Parks series. It was a nice show but hectic—the unexpected rain forced an early intermission, caused a couple of numbers to be dropped from the program, and led some people to flee early.
Imagine you're walking in Central Park. A cyclist speeds by, dressed in full Hasidic garb, then skids out of control, toppling to the ground. His injuries are brutal: broken eye orbit, fractured shoulder, bone poking through the skin of his arm. He looks up at you as if to plead for help, and surprise! It's Bono!
Rich: Central Park's Loeb Boathouse is the kind of a place an old person would go to for a celebration demarking another milestone. In the process, that only reiterates the oldness.
It's so cold outside, on the freezing streets of Manhattan. Yet the dogs must have their walks. They are city dogs, after all, and it takes an army of dog-walkers to get these beasts out of the apartments at regular intervals. We headed up to Central Park West to meet America's most pampered canines, all dressed up in their winter coats. Here's our first NYC dog of winter, in his red knitted sweater. It's Oliver, the French Bulldog!
Gawker reader Amy Baker sent in this photo of two headless chickens she discovered near the corner of 72nd and Central Park West this morning. Her theory is voodoo, which seems about as likely as anything else.
Being overshadowed by a minivan in the eyes of one's father would wound the pride of even the strongest of men. Sadly, such is the lot of Anthony Roho, who's been forced to compete with a Nissan Quest for his father's affections—and for far too long, it seems.
The runaway peacock that flew the coop at the Central Park Zoo in favor of a windowsill at a co-op in the Upper East Side returned home on its own volition this morning, zoo officials say. Now it's back at its boring small-time roost, hanging out with the boring small-time peacock friends it grew up with, smoking cigarettes and sighing about how the other peacocks just don't understand what it's like to be young and free in New York. [WNYC, image via AnimalNY]
Will this plague of zoo animal escapes never end? Animal New York reports that a peacock has escaped from the Central Park Zoo, and is hanging out in a windowsill at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 65th Street. City Room notes that apartments in the building have been up for sale for as much as $24 million. I wouldn't give that up for the zoo, either. [AnimalNY, City Room, image via AnimalNY]
A "white male in his 40s" (isn't it always?) hopped the chain-link barricade around the Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park on Sunday, and leaped in for a refreshing swim. When firefighters arrived at the scene, the man, bobbing joyously about 20 feet from the northeast edge, flatly refused to emerge. Three firefighters then swam over to him "with a yellow rope and lassoed him." He was checked by paramedics for signs of drowning, for some reason, and taken to St. Luke's Hospital, where he's listed as in "stable condition." Feel free to direct your flowers and teddy bear gift baskets to "Stubborn Reservoir Guy, c/o St. Luke's."
