Photo by doodlehedz.

July 18, 2016 Weather: Sunny and HOT, with a high of 95 degrees.

Notices:
Troilus & Cressida, the new Shakespeare in the Park, begins on Tuesday. Check out that and many more events on our calendar.

The city has opened cooling centers to help people beat the heat. Find one near you.

News:
Two Upper West Side men said they were robbed of $24,000 worth of Cartier bracelets, and other goods in Central Park last week. But their story began to fall apart. “Eric Danko, 26, was arrested after admitting to detectives during a follow-up interview that he falsely reported his iPhone and Beats By Dre heaphones were stolen around 9:30 p.m. Strangely enough, according to police, Danko made no mention of the three Cartier bracelets, a Bose speaker, $400 in cash or the U.S. passport that he had also reported stolen. ‘I don’t believe that these even existed,’ said a police official.”

How did 24 million gallons of sewage suddenly vanish from the Upper West Side in 1994? Pulitzer Prize winning reporter David Cay Johnston thinks it all ties in to a big project Donald Trump wanted to build. “It may be the raw sewage was simply diverted into the Hudson River, but Herschlag believes another answer is highly likely. He learned that there are two independent sets of sewage flow data. One is from the collector pipes, the other at the entry to the treatment plant. Herschlag believes someone tampered with the plant intake meter, but neglected to fudge the collector-pipe meters so their numbers would match, either out of hubris—what are the odds someone would compare the two?—or laziness.”

Patrick Healey, the 21-year-old Upper West Sider whose body was found in the Hudson River last week, was going to be a senior at NYU. He had been a well-liked athlete at his high school in Connecticut. “In the days before his death, Healey had posted a few despondent messages on Twitter. He was last seen Sunday at his Upper West Side home and was reported missing Wednesday. No cause of death has been released.”

Mathilde Freund, who turns 100 next month, has had a table at the flea market on 77th Street and Columbus, now called the Grand Bazaar, since 1976. “At her Grand Bazaar table these days, you can find antique jewels and articles, such as an exquisite Italian mosaic brooch or a delicate metal tea tin adorned by a Chinese-style portrait painting. What’s most precious, though, are the people who come through the market. ‘Luckily I speak many languages, so I’m able to communicate with people from all over the world,’ said Freund. She speaks German, Viennese, French, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish and English. ‘They give me a great pleasure, the conversations.'”

The Central Park explosive that severely injured a tourist from Virginia was made up of chemicals that can be purchased at hardware stores. “These substances, which are commonly and legally available for sale in certain hardware stores, can be used in combination with other products to develop a homemade explosive agent.”

As NYPD targets gangs and drug rings, shootings have fallen 20% in the city in the first half of this year and homicides are down 6%.

The Central Park Conservancy is looking to raise $300 million to restore historic Central Park structures and landscapes.

Barneys, lululemon and other tenants at the ground floor of the Astor on 75th and Broadway have a new landlord. “The Vanbarton Group dropped $103.5 million for valuable retail space at the Astor condominium on the Upper West Side. The average asking rent for retail space in the area is $385 per square foot, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s first-quarter Manhattan retail report.”