Results tagged “newyorkcity”

It's only a minor loss in the ever-growing billboard problem in Los Angeles. A judge placed an injunction on the city prohibiting them from taking action against SkyTag's 18 unpermitted supergraphics saying they had proof they were up before the December moratorium. While Los Angeles has its problems, New Yorkers are taking illegal billboards into their own hands. Check out the photo to the right, it's just one of many from the recent "Public Ad Campaign."

While hovering helicopters are commonplace for Angelenos, folks in downtown Manhattan (understandably) are wary when they see low-flying planes. And that's what happened this morning: They spotted a low-flying plane being tailed by fighter jets. Some buildings were evacuated while others told employees they were staying put—and then the FAA explained "the Defense Department is conducting a photo op that involves deploying two F-16s and escorting a Boeing 747 in the vicinity of Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty... the maneuver was not an emergency and was coordinated in advance with the FAA and state and local officials." (The Boening 747 was one of the planes that the President uses, but President Obama was not on board.) Of course, the warning from NYC government came right at the same time as the maneuver, not in advance, because the feds apparently didn't want the flight to be disclosed. So, this is clearly a Department of Defense FAIL, right? Update: NYC Mayor Bloomberg is "furious" (apparently he didn't know about the flyover!) and now t he White House has apologized.

JetBlue announced this morning that they will begin offering two daily nonstop flights each way between LAX and JFK in New York City and Logan International in Boston. Tickets will go on sale February 4th with flights beginning on June 17.

It sure seems like Aziz Ansari is doing all of the right things at the right times these days, and he’s definitely getting noticed for it. For a few years now, he’s been steadily climbing the comedy ladder, doing stand up and stage work both here in Los Angeles and New York City. After Aziz paired with Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer to form the wildly popular Human Giant on MTV, he really began to take off and can now be seen in a few episodes of Scrubs, an Office-like show coming this spring, and touring with his Glow In The Dark stand up tour, coming tomorrow night to the Largo.

How come people in movies don’t just call the police? Seriously. The police exist in this world specifically for occasions when bad people are trying to do bad stuff to you. CALL THEM. What if a character in a movie needed a pizza? NEEDED it. Like, if they didn’t get this fucking pizza, they were going to die. Would it be reasonable to assume that instead of calling Domino’s or Pizza Hut or any one of 1,000 local slice joints, the hero or heroine would instead embark on a city-wide frantic manhunt for the correct sauce, cheeses, dough, and toppings, all while evading those pizza-haters intent on their demise? No. It probably wouldn’t be reasonable to assume that such a scenario would occur, without groans and grumbles from the audience. So why do we put ourselves through the hassle, why do we let ourselves get sucked into convoluted twists and sub-plot after sub-plot when the solution to all the problems is just a phone call away? Probably, because getting there is more than half the fun.

Last night, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people gathered for a protest outside the Church of Latter Day Saints' Manhattan Mormon Temple and march down Broadway to Columbus Circle.

This is one of those times it's good to be behind in the polls. Chicagoist reports: "We're third in population, but first in murders. For the first time in 10 years, Chicago has surpassed New York City in murders (and L.A. to boot). As of Tuesday, Chicago has had 426 murders so far in 2008 compared to 417 for New York City and 302 for L.A."

Via Gawker, we find Homethinking who has launched a nifty tool comparing neighborhoods in one city to another city. It's fun, but beware: their methodology is not income based ('cause rent is just a tad higher on Manhattan), but rather demographics such as "age, marital status, whether the household has kids or not and the frequency of arts and culture activities," as they explain. It's a start...

Los Angeles, as a culture, lives by it’s own standards and plays by as many (or as few) rules as money can buy. But with that is the tacit understanding that, on many occasions, it will also die by it’s own shortcomings. As a result, Southern California is and will be the birthplace of many things, but those things will often leave their home to experience greater and more profound success elsewhere.

Remember that crazy list from Travel + Leisure where we were ranked as the rudest and dumbest city earlier this month (and not to mention last year, too)? Well, the magazine has a little online bracketed game where you can vote for the best cities.

Reviews of Jay Babcock's review of Los Angeles didn't go so well in the comments section yesterday. Babcock, the man behind Arthur Magazine, left Los Angeles for Brooklyn earlier this month. Soundboard on LA Times caught up with him and quizzed him about his move and Babcock went off on Los Angeles.

The man behind Arthur Magazine, Jay Babcock, recently took the indie rag's operation to Brooklyn where he decided to resettle. Soundboard, the LA Times music blog, got a hold of him for a short interview. His answer to the first question, "what prompted the move to Brooklyn?", is quite a read:

The music venue that is the Knitting Factory has been a mainstay in the resurgence of Hollywood since 2000. As an anchor tenant and early adopter of the area, the New York City based club saw Hollywood change from having the 18th Street Gang territory sit one block away to having tourists flock the area making it a likely candidate for one of the most pedestrian dense areas in the city. Now that the area is built up and the Factory is surrounded by national brand name stores and businesses, trouble has come knocking on the door.

Shaq is on the attack again.

As part of Sundance Channel's green programming, tonight's episode of Big Ideas For A Small Planet features cities tackling transit with green solutions. No, Los Angeles is not featured (save for a couple stock shots of an orange Metro bus), but the ideas presented in the episode are all something the region could or is already looking into.

As reported yesterday in the midst of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's scandal where he was busted for his involvement in a prostitution ring, the same high-scale service he used has ties in Los Angeles as well as Washington, DC, Miami, London and Paris.

As the country waits to see what the future holds for crusader turned illicit copulater Eliot Spitzer, it is worth examining what impact his prostitute predilection might have on the Democratic Party.

• Gothamist found that an explosive set off outside the Times Square army recruiting center may be similar to five past bombings in New York City.
• Seattlest worried when severed right feet and bottles of rat poison started washing up on local beaches.
• Shanghaiist was surprised by Bjork's rooting for Tibetan independence at her concert (see video), and the political fallout has only just begun.
• SFist debated the merits of new bronze plaques that will be placed in locations where San Francisco's homeless have died.
• DCist was obliged to respond to the worst Washington Post Outlook column ever published, in which conservative writer Charlotte Allen tried to make the case that women are dumb.
• LAist found Satan's ice cream truck trolling the streets, and they recorded the music.
• Some crafty Torontoist readers didn't like the dearth of ski hills in downtown Toronto, so they just built one of their own on their deck and (of course) recorded a video of them all taking turns on it.
• Bostonist knows the city's subway and bus system, the MBTA, has problems. So does this 17-year-old who submitted a report and told the MBTA brass how to fix it.
• Phillyist explored the possibility of an Ivy League prostitute, while their commenters debated the most ethical approach to proving or debunking the story.
• Londonist spent a little too much time looking at airbrushed operatic private parts, and enjoyed an enlightening comment from someone who was there.
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After reports that 10 members of congress, including California Senator Dianne Feinstein, received letters and photos in the mail that possibly claimed responsibility for yesterday's bombing in Times Square, the FBI did the obvious thing: go to the man's house who was listed on the return address. Nothing turned up when they questioned the man. "We're continuing to investigate, but right now there is no evidence linking the individual being questioned to the incident in New York or the letters themselves," Eimiller said to KNBC.

Update 8:25am, 3/7: "Laura Eimiller, an FBI spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said an individual was questioned there about the letters to Congress and "there is no evidence linking the letters, which contained no threat, to the bombing," according to ABC7.

Director/choreographer/performer Liz Hoefner seems to bring her life to the stage. While this isn't a new or different way of making theater, Ms. Hoefner's life is filled with humorous moments that surround the challenges of being alive in our 21st century.

An Urban & Environmental Planner friend of mine in New York City believes that when you build bigger and beefier streets, all you do is build increased traffic congestion. "Build it and they will come," he would say. Today, Steve Hymon in his weekly Road Sage column explores the subject by extension of the Pico/Olympic plan, where city officials are planning to begin adjusting the two busy arteries to act like one-way streets starting March 8.

I discovered this street art on 8th, just west of Grand in downtown LA last week.

In the wake of the big Fidel Castro seemingly-non-news of him stepping down as president (meanwhile the US recently bombed Pakistan without notice or permission), it's interesting to look back at the impact of the man on Los Angeles. The divide between those who wanted to work with Castro's Cuban government and those who vehemently opposed it led to violence -- eleven such terrorism incidents occurred in the Los Angeles area alone according to Cuban Information Archives, a site dedicated to "source materials pertaining to Cuban Exile activities as they pertain to their struggle to wrestle Cuba from Fidel Castro."

Back in 2004, two Harvard graduates decided to make a dating website with the vision that dating should be free. Since then, OkCupid.com has gained 525,000 active users (meaning active within the last 8 weeks), climbing their way up to the top of the online dating empire, possibly freaking out Match.com, which has an estimated 1.3 million users. In Los Angeles alone, OkCupid has 54,000 registers users (including Tom from MySpace... maybe that's him, maybe not) with about 10,000 to 15,000 who are active within a 50-mile radius of downtown.

Now here's the quote of the day via the Daily News: ""I think if there were laws that required mayors to take transit, you'd see transit systems improve remarkably." That's Ted Balaker, a policy analyst for the Reason Foundation who spoke to transit beat writer Sue Doyle, who wrote a piece on Mayors across the country and their public transit use.

At last week's meeting between Metro and the public about the Westside extension, Metro said that a subway (or subways) could be built and finished in five years.

If you're like me and you hate pro football, or if you're looking for something to do after Football Team A defeats Football Team B in the field of Superbowly Combat, go to The Scene in Glendale tonight, and see NYC based Indie Pop Band Murder Mystery, along with LA's The Tartans and Oxnard's Maria.