Photo by Priscilla Degan. Flower by Honschar.
April 11, 2016 Weather: Cloudy, with a high of 61 degrees.
Notices:
The first street fair of the year and dozens of other local events on our calendar.
If you’d like to lead a Jane’s Walk tour (walks set for May 6-8) this year, sign up here by Wednesday.
WQXR is collecting gently used instruments, to be distributed to New York City and Newark, New Jersey’s under-resourced music and arts programs. Learn more on how to donate here.
We got a very strange tip this week: “Was wondering if anyone had any information on a bizarre incident I saw from my apt window (64 and Riverside) taking place along the West Side Highway. Two cop cars took up a lane, they seemed to be looking for something (even looked over the edge of the highway a number of times) and finally, after 20 minutes an ambulance showed up and they seemed to pass something/someone over the barrier. It was hard to really see, but definitely strange and I haven’t been able to find any reports on it. Hoping you all might know!” Anyone have any info on this?
News:
A police officer from the 24th precinct helped calm a woman down and buy some time by talking about Central Park flowers as she stood on a ledge on West End Avenue last week. Nina Friberg “engaged the desperate woman in conversation about flowers in Central Park for 10 minutes until Emergency Services Unit officers arrived…” An ESU officer eventually got to her: ‘She let go with one hand and I knew we had to interject. When her knuckles started to turn white, I knew she was about to let go.’ Miller said he grabbed her hand. Other ESU officers pulled her to safety through a window one story below.”
Choice Hotels is no longer associated with the Rodeway Inn on 71st street, which has been the site of multiple crimes in the past year. “‘Our hotels are independently owned and operated franchises. We are immediately removing this franchise,’ said Sarah Lee, the company’s director of public relations.”
A dead man was found in a car on West 95th street on Saturday. Police suspect suicide.
A state investigation could give many tenants new rent-stabilized leases: “Owners of as many as 50,000 units in 4,800 buildings will have to offer rent-regulated leases to tenants following a Tenant Protection Unit investigation. The state body found that the owners had improperly removed the unit from the rent-stabilization rolls.”
A profile of Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Central Park’s first administrator.
A 76th street hotel just changed hands: “Ronald Domb’s Empire Hotel Group purchased the 137-key Milburn Hotel at 242 West 76th Street on the Upper West Side, paying $69.4 million to Melvin Newman, according to property records filed with the city Tuesday.”
I DON’T CARE FOR GRAFFITTI
This guy doesn’t even know my mother.
It’s … chalk? And pretty. On the list of things to get upset about, this would seem to be around negative ten thousand.
I don’t know where the phrase “notorious” hotel comes from, referring to the Milburn. The Milburn has always been a very nice, shabby-chic European style hotel, where I often put friends and relatives who I could not accommodate in my apartment overnight.
Many of my business contacts have also stayed there in order to get out of busy midtown.
The lobby is “European” i.e. nothing fancy, but the rooms were always quite fine.
The Rodeway Inn is the hotel deemed “notorious,” not the Milburn.
What news from the neighborhood! I live at 96th and WEA and can’t imagine that someone died in their car at 95th and WEA. So sorry to the person, family and friends.
On a much happier note . . . FINALLY the state has investigated the landlords who illegally removed stabilized units and are going to make them put some back! Landlords should be allowed to earn an income don’t get me wrong, but many of these units were not upgraded and are so awful! Yet landlords still got those big rents. Now let’s hope the people who really need a stabilized rent get them. No cheating people . . . if you make a big salary, pay current market and leave the affordable apartments who need them. Excellent news.