Industrials Sector

Boston Shutdown Snarls Penn Station

With Boston in a full lock-down due to the ongoing manhunt for the surviving suspect in Monday's marathon bombings, travelers throughout the northeast found themselves facing delays and cancellations today.

The Memory Show

UPDATE: A Drone Flies in Brooklyn? Pilot Reports Unmanned Aircraft Sighting

Cue the heavy drums and eerie science-fiction score. It looks like drones have already made their way to New York City skies, according to a CNN report. The pilot of an Alitalia passenger jet heading in to John F. Kennedy Airport for landing yesterday afternoon reported sighting a small unmanned ai ... More >>

NLRB Rules School Bus Strike Legal

The National Labor Relations Board announced earlier this morning that the Amalgamated Transit Union's school bus strike is indeed lawful. A group of 20 bus companies filed a charge with the NLRB arguing that the ATU Local Union 1181 violated NLRB regulations when its bus drivers and matrons went o ... More >>

Union Insists Mayor Holds Ultimate Power to End School Bus Strike

Leaders of the Amalgamated Transit Union hosted a town hall teleconference last night to clarify facts surrounding the school bus strike--facts that they argue have been distorted by the Bloomberg administration and the media. Last night's telephone town hall was held for the constituents of City ... More >>

Parents of Special Needs Children Fed Up With DOE's Flawed School Bus Service

By the time parents got their turn to testify at yesterday's City Council hearing on the city's problematic school bus service, lead officials from the Department of Education, such as Deputy Chancellor of Operations Kathleen Grimm, were long gone. "I'm just so disappointed that the [DOE] and the ... More >>

House for Sale

Dirty Housing Officials Convicted of Taking Bribes

Two guilty pleas entered yesterday revealed rot inside the city's affordable-housing department. Luis Adorno, an inspections supervisor with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and Michael Provenzano, the department's director of construction services, both confessed to taking b ... More >>

It's the Post Office Customers Who Are Now Going Postal Now!

It used to be that post office workers were stereotypically accused of going "postal" and turning batshit psycho out of sheer boredom. But the mail tables have turned! At my post office yesterday, there was a long line of old-school types who wanted to actually land-mail something, and because thi ... More >>

When Will New York Get Its High-Speed Rail?

With news last week of the first major high speed rail project receiving the green light in California, transportation aficionados were ecstatic at the prospects of the project, especially as China continues to pump them out like hot cakes. But, from a New York perspective, our competitors on the We ... More >>

South Bronxites Sue FreshDirect, City For Ducking Asthma Risk Study

When the city Industrial Development Agency voted back in February to give FreshDirect $128 million in tax breaks and other goodies to move their shipping headquarters from Queens to the Bronx, local residents who were peeved at the prospect of a fleet of produce-laden trucks idling all night -- in ... More >>

Michael Provenzano, HPD Official, and Four Others Busted For Bribery in City Construction Contracts

A pretty good government corruption story out of the federal prosecutors' office in Brooklyn: The director of construction at the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development has been arrested for taking annual $10,000 bribes over 5 years to provide inside information to contractors seeki ... More >>

Judge Pauses Bloomberg's "Livery Cab" Plan, Outer Boroughs Must Suffer

Contrary to popular belief, there are people that live outside of Manhattan. The hustle and bustle of New York City is not limited to one island; actually, almost 80 percent of New Yorkers live in the outer boroughs (probably because they cannot afford its real estate horrors). And, if tax ... More >>

LIRR: Smooth Operator or Rife With Problems?

The Long Island Rail Road isn't just fraught with fraud: Looks like the MTA's plan to hook up the LIRR to Grand Central Terminal might be delayed a third time, the New York Post reports. What this means? The long-awaited, $7 billion connection wouldn't be complete until 2019, four years after the ... More >>

New York City's New Boro Taxis Are Green -- Apple Green, That Is

It's not lime green, not key lime pie green, not sea-foam green, nor is it chartreuse. Nope. The city's new taxi for upper Manhattan and the outer boroughs, unveiled this morning, is apple green. The mayor's office emphasized this specific shade of green at a press conference at City Hall this morn ... More >>

Mayoral Hopeful John Liu Goes After City's Management of Staten Island Ferry Boats, Says Money is Being Wasted on Problematic Fleet

City Comptroller John Liu took a trip to Staten Island today to criticize the city's management of new ferry boats that he says have been chronically out of service and have wasted taxpayers' dollars. The announcement was a chance for Liu, who is expected to run for mayor in 2013, to get his name ... More >>

Car Service Horror Story

When going out of town, I usually book a car service to the airport just to make sure I get there, since a cab isn't always a possibility. But even with the definite car booking, you'd have more luck hailing a yak these days.

With OWS Support, Advocates Plan Rally to Protest Post Office Closures

In the age of who-uses-paper-for-anything-ever-anymore, there's one casualty in New York City that has activists from across the five boroughs up in arms: the post offices. This month, a group of advocates are rallying together to bring attention to the United States Postal Service's plan to poten ... More >>

Bloomberg and Diaz Jr. Write Op-Ed In Favor of Fresh Direct's Move To The Bronx

​Mayor Bloomberg and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. weighed in on the Fresh Direct controversy stewing in the Bronx in a New York Daily News op-ed Sunday. Writing in favor of Fresh Direct's move to the South Bronx the two politicians tried to assuage critics' fears over the damage the ... More >>

City Panel Votes to Approve $128 Million FreshDirect Payoff (liveblog)

Last Tuesday, the city Industrial Development Agency announced that it and several other city and state bodies planned to hand over $128 million in grants, tax credits, and assorted vouchers to FreshDirect, which would use the cash to move its headquarters to the Bronx waterfront ... all the way fro ... More >>

Some People Are Not Happy With FreshDirect's Move to the Bronx

It started as a take-that-New-Jersey story -- but now it's become not-in-my-backyard. Ah, land use battles in New York City! The central character in this debate is FreshDirect, the online grocer looking for a new home, having outgrown its location in Queens. Last week, news broke that the compan ... More >>

Prepare For Major Postal Service Cuts

​The United States Postal Service--that thing that puts L.L. Bean catalogs in your mailbox--is preparing to make massive cuts that will go into effect next spring. The changes will amount to around $3 billion worth of savings for the USPS and only mark the start of what is going to be a long c ... More >>

Airspace Over Zuccotti Wasn't Closed During Raid -- At Least, Not Officially By NYPD

The Columbia Journalism Review ran a story today asserting that the NYPD did not close airspace above Zuccotti Park to news choppers during the raid. That intel has been widely reported and was originally tweeted by Reuters social media guru Anthony De Rosa: Erika Fry at CJR found that the NYPD ... More >>

Wilson Ramos, MLB Catcher, Rescued From Kidnappers; Top Mexican Official Killed in Helicopter Crash; Solyndra Emails Released

​Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos was rescued yesterday after being abducted outside his home in Venezuela. Ramos was living in Valencia, a town outside of Caracas, during the MLB offseason and was held in a mountainous region while his captors demanded a ransom. ESPN reports "the fi ... More >>

Ryanair Finally Adds Standard Porn Amenities

The Ryanair cabin, where you'll be watching porn. ​Ryanair, "bus of the sky," preferred travel mode of student backpackers and tightfisted Europeans, is adding some new in-flight entertainment. Porn. Now, you can sit next to a skeevy old man and watch him watch porn while you fly. Another bonu ... More >>

Transport Workers Union Denied Injunction Against City's Use of Bus Drivers to Transport Arrested Protesters; Suit Not Dismissed

Today the Transport Workers Union, which last week voted unanimously in support of Occupy Wall Street, went to court to fight against the city's use of city bus drivers to transport arrested protesters. Following the Brooklyn Bridge arrests on Saturday, the Union said the NYPD had commandeered numer ... More >>

Qwikster, Netflix's New DVD by Mail Service, Has Some Problems (See: Pot-Smoking Muppet)

​Qwikster! Have you heard of it? If you haven't, it's Netflix's new attempt to break its mail-in DVD service away from its online streaming Netflix Instant service, and, along with having a verifiably ridiculous name, it has other problems as well. For one, the @Qwikster Twitter account is cur ... More >>

United States Postal Service, Like United States, is Broke

It was either Cliff or Newman, and I chose Cliff. Deal with it.​The U.S. Postal Service reported a $3.1 billion quarterly loss on Friday and, at its current financial decline, won't be able to make the $5.5 billion payment for its retirement fund due next month. Politico reports that unless Co ... More >>

U.S. Postal Service May Cut More Than 30 NYC Post Offices to Save Money

​Today in things we don't really worry about until we order something from Amazon, the Post Office, which lost $8 billion last year, is considering closing 1 in 10 retail outlets and is studying 3,653 local offices, branches, and stations throughout the U.S., many of which could be replaced by ... More >>

U.S. Postal Service Tries to Stay Relevant by Increasing Social Media Presence

The 2012 Cherry Blossom Centennial Stamp​Yesterday, the dying government institution that is the United States Postal Service made one last attempt at staying relevant by offering sneak-peeks of new 2012 stamps over Facebook and Twitter. They will post a new stamp every weekday for some undete ... More >>

Drivers and Politicians Lobby Senate to Pass Livery Cab Bill

Esther Zuckerman​A collation that included City Council members, yellow cab taxi drivers and the president of Livery Base Owners gathered on the steps of City Hall this afternoon to ask the State Senate to pass a bill that allows livery cab drivers to make pick-ups in the outer boroughs and th ... More >>

Postal Service Rather Insensitive About Hipster Attachment to 11211 Zip Code

​As Joe pointed out last week, certain Williamsburg residents are now being informed by mail that they will be losing their 11211 zip code. This is a big deal, because even though almost no one actually gets mail anymore these days, except for horrible junk mail we don't want anyway, zip codes ... More >>

Williamsburg Hipsters Robbed of Prestigious 11211 Zip Code

​A letter from the U.S. Postal Service informed Williamsburg residents -- hipsters and real people alike -- that the zip code designating the Bedford Avenue gentrification haven will switch from 11211 to "the sadly less palindromic 11249," as one resident put it to Gothamist. The reasoning act ... More >>

L Train Suspended in Both Directions After Person Jumps in Tracks at Union Square

​We're hearing reports of a person jumping in front of an L train at Union Square around 11:30 this morning. There's now police activity at 14th Street shutting down L train service in both directions -- per an MTA Service notice: "There is no train service in both directions from the Bedford ... More >>

Lance Armstrong and His Accusers: Processing the Unthinkable

Lance Armstrong, flanked by two guys accusing him of nothing. Yet.​During Lance Armstrong's recent comeback, the Voice kept a fairly close eye on him. Despite what some commenters seemed to believe, we actually have admired the man and his incredible cycling exploits. For years, of course, Ar ... More >>

9/11 Flight Numbers Will Be Retired Forever

​United Continental will "permanently retire" flight numbers 93 and 175, Bloomberg reports, in honor of the flights hijacked on September 11, 2011. Over the past decade, the numbers have not been in use, but an error earlier this week caused them to pop up again, much to the chagrin of pilots' ... More >>

Frank Console, 49, Just Too Frank: Locked Up for Making Lunatic Death Threats

​In one of the noisier, and sadder, cries for help heard in a long time, 49-year-old Brooklynite Frank Console was nabbed after making a series of death threats against various state and local politicians and the Staten Island cops. Calling by phone to 911 from the St. George Ferry Terminal on ... More >>

Charles Schumer Proposes No-Ride List for Trains

​It's been a busy couple days in train news, what with the PATH and Second Avenue subway tunnel breaches, plus that mishap on the PATH that injured 30. There's also a new call from Senator Charles Schumer to increase rail security, which comes after reports that Osama Bin Laden may have been p ... More >>

Livery Cabs Should Be Able to Pick Up Passengers Already

​Livery cabs are often the great savior of the drunken Brooklynite struggling to trek their way home. Like Jay-Z said, New York has its "yellow cab, gypsy cab, dollar cab" (holler back), and there should be no reason not to try them all, right? The thing is, they're not legal to take. New York ... More >>

Cruise Ships in Brooklyn to Get 'Giant Electrical Outlet' to Plug Into

​We've come a long way, people. At one point we thought the world was flat! Now cruise ships docking at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal will get to plug into a giant electrical outlet instead of spreading their diesel fumes into Red Hook. It's taken two years of "plug negotiations" (not the offic ... More >>

Big French Plane Hits Small American Plane at JFK

On Monday night an Air France Airbus A380, the biggest passenger plane in use, knocked into a much smaller Comair CRJ 700 Regional Jet at John F. Kennedy International Airport, spinning the tiny thing almost 90-degrees, but injuring no one, NBC New York reports. A minor event when all was said and d ... More >>

Virgin Galactic is Accepting Applications for Astronauts; We Applied

​On the Virgin careers website, Virgin Galactic has posted a want ad for Astronauts. They have three positions to fill, and we have sent in our application for consideration. They informed us via auto-reply email that if they feel we are an appropriate candidate, we will be asked to interview. ... More >>

Will Smith Quite Persnickety When It Comes to Planes

​Will Smith refused to board an Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Manchester the other day because there were no first- or business-class seats. Instead, he chartered a plane for 10,000 pounds, or about $17,000 -- for a flight that takes less than an hour. Will! How precious of you. The Mirror qu ... More >>

East River Ferry Coming This Spring

​The Economic Development Corporation of New York has agreed to a contract that will provide a year-round ferry service in the East River, moving people between Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, WNYC reports. New York Waterway's BillyBey Ferry Company will charge either $3.00 or $5.50 depending ... More >>

Julia Wolfe & Signal

Thanks to the Blizzard, FreshDirect Donated a Ton of Food to City Harvest

City Harvest​Well, here's a little smidge of silver lining attached to an otherwise gray cloud of un-plowed streets and disabled subway lines: according to City Harvest's Facebook page, FreshDirect donated 72,000 pounds food to the organization after Sunday night's blizzard brought business up ... More >>

Cargo Bombs Might Have Gone Off Over U.S. East Coast, Apparently

​In announcements of near misses that we are most certainly glad of (but also, to be honest, look upon with a certain dose of cynicism, because you never know who's angling for what), Scotland Yard has issued a statement saying that the toner-cartridge bomb discovered on a cargo plane in Brita ... More >>

U.S. Travelers Will No Longer Be Able to Travel With Their Favorite Large Ink Cartridges

A tampered-with large ink cartridge.​Well, this is going to put a damper on things. According to the latest air cargo security regulations (following reports of suspicious packages found on UPS planes en route from Yemen to Chicago, which turned out to contain explosives), airline passengers w ... More >>

Surprise! New York Area Airports Still Suck

​In a groundbreaking new report [pdf], the U.S. Department of Transportation's Inspector General has discovered that flight delays at John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark Airports remain terrible and make New Yorkers -- and, indirectly, people throughout the rest of the country (yes, we're t ... More >>

Report: Cabbies Get Bigger Tips on Credit Card Fares

In 2007, when they started installing credit-card readers in cabs, YellowCabNYC found some drivers resistant to the change. A commenter said, "I get yelled at 3 out of the 4 times for using credit card" even when notifying the driver in advance. The hacks may have been conflating the readers with ... More >>