It’s been a few weeks since we last posted our “weekly” bulletin, so we’ve gathered quite a heaping plate of news. Enjoy!
One Central Park West resident went to extreme measures to fix a loose manhole cover that Con Edison had ignored. He snuck into the street with a tub of glue at 3 in the morning to seal the manhole shut. Unfortunately for him, the police showed up too. “‘Put your hands in the air — now!’ the cops demanded. As they approached, Ron could see they had their hands on their holsters.” (amNY)
An Upper West Side family stopped paying rent because of a mold infestation that they said caused the mother to get seriously ill. They ended up in court with their landlord. That landed them on the “tenant blacklist,” a list of tenants that have been to court that gets circulated to landlords and makes it tough to rent another apartment. “Perhaps most troublesome, the threat of ending up on the list has impacted how tenants react when something goes wrong with their apartment, McAdams says. ‘You have to ignore the rights you have and let landlords get away with mistreating you,’ he says.” (Brick Underground)
Billionaire David Koch came to a settlement with UWS wine seller Acker, Merrall and Condit, which Koch said had been selling fake vintages. (NY Post)
A Manhattan woman says in a lawsuit that she was knocked down by a former American Gladiator while she was jogging in Central Park. He was on a bike. “Angela Coppa, 31, says in her lawsuit that Scott Berlinger, 47 — who competed on the TV game show from 1992 to 1993 as the bad-boy gladiator “Viper” — wasn’t looking where he was going when he barreled into her from behind while speeding.” (NY Post)
Meet Oliver, the king of Upper West Side bodega cats. (WNYC)
A goodbye letter to Westway Foods, the deli on 78th that closed a few weeks ago. (NY Press)
Cemetery space in NYC is getting more and more expensive. “Even in death, you can’t escape the property bubble.” (Bloomberg)
Finance titan Sandy Weill sold his maid’s apartment for $5.33 million. Where can I sign up to be his maid? (Curbed)
A chance encounter with Elaine Stritch, while she was lost in Central Park. (The New Yorker)
Lauren Bacall: Dakota denizen, dog-walker. (NY Times)
Aguila, which runs the West 95th street homeless shelter, has been evicting homeless people at shelters in the Bronx with little explanation. Aguila has reacted aggressively to fight the city’s attempt to cut the payments to homeless shelter operators, which can run as high as $3,700 per room per month. (Daily News and Gothamist)
Rats are proliferating at the Frederick Douglass housing project, and NYCHA admits it’s at fault. “A staffer for the NYCHA-owned buildings between West 100th and 104th streets and Amsterdam and Manhattan avenues told residents Monday that employees are failing to handle the garbage properly, giving the rodents an endless supply of food.” (DNAinfo)
Franklin Reyes, who hit and killed 4-year-old Ariel Russo while driving in an SUV last year, is now in jail. “An unlicensed teenage driver who fatally struck a 4-year-old girl last year while fleeing the police was taken into custody on Wednesday after a state judge doubled his bail because he had been arrested and charged with another crime.” (NY Times)
Upper West Sider Steve Post, a witty well-loved WNYC voice, died recently. (NY Times)
Fordham continues to expand. “Fordham University has closed on the $49.6 million purchase of a portion of the building at 43 West 61st Street from the College Entrance Examination Board, property records indicate. (Observer)
A woman filming police officers who were helping a homeless man on the UWS was arrested. Now she’s suing. It’s legal to film or photograph officers as long as you’re not interfering with their actions. (NY Post)
Illegal bike hawkers near Central Park are supposedly threatening legal bike rental businesses. (NY Post)
Times are getting tougher for NYC small businesses: “SBC Executive Vice President Steven Barrison is on full alert, emailing, ‘We are bleeding about 800-1,000 mom and pop stores per month in NYC! Costing us tens of thousands of jobs when you consider 7-8 jobs per store and 11,000-12,000 closings a year now! The CRISIS is real and it is here right now!'” (Gotham Gazette)
An apartment on West 98th street is up for sale for $1.2 million. The catch: the rent-stabilized tenant who lives there now has assembled “a hellish dreamscape of dolls, clowns, marionettes and what looks like an Evil Humpty Dumpty.” (Gothamist)
The Goddard School has a super-high-tech air-sanitizing machine. (FoxNY)
The Met Opera has come to a tentative deal with two of its unions. (NY Times)
The West Side Little League had a very strong year. “The Westside Little League 50/70 Division Team, led by Manager Paul Richards and coaches Sal Viviano and Rich Rosenberg, has achieved something that no other WSLL team has been able to accomplish: This group of 13 year-olds won the New York City Championship in their age group and earned the right to play for the New York State Championship.” (NY Press)
Real estate investor Frank Ring bought the commercial building at 80 West End Avenue (64th street) for $195 million from Gary Barnett and Jared Kushner, who had purchased the building two years before for $84 million. “Last December, United Cerebral Palsy agreed to lease 125,000 square feet at 80 West End. The 30-year triple-net lease means little work for Ring, who would prefer, sources say, to collect the rents and not have to work at managing the property. The Metropolitan Opera and RCN lease other spaces.” (NY Post)
The First Church of Religious Science bought the building at 204 West 84th street. (Observer)
For our last bulletin, click here.
Good round-up. About those illegal bike vendors, I find the whole situation infuriating and disheartening. I’d know a little about these jerks (I’m convinced my wife’s stolen bike has wound up in their cache, and I surveyed them at Columbus Circle for an hour once: these are exceedingly unpleasant people). The twist (learned in Post article linked above) about their death threats to staff from legal bike rental is sickening. How hard would it be for a few undercover cops to completely destroy this Nigerian racket/scam operating right in our back yard?