When we finally made it to Midtown last week to check out the new underground Apple store, we were shut out from the 24-hour cube of tech design goodness by a private General Motors party. We cursed that cash bleeding Detroit outfit before ducking our tail between our legs and moving on. But perhaps it was for the best — as the folks trapped in the store's elevator can attest.
This last thursday- may 26th 2006 I was in New York city on a school trip. After going to a 8:00 show on broadway we decided to go see the brand spankin new "Apple Store"; so we walked down to fifth avenue and went in. it was a novelty, we stayed in the store for around 20 minutes. I took the elevator down because it was so cool. When we left me and 5 other members of my group went up in the asome glass elevator, when we got to the street level i got out of the elevator, AND THE DOOR CLOSED BEHIND ME!!- theres two diffrent doors an inner and outer door but curved glass for the round elevator, the exterior wouldn't open but the inner door kept on opening and closing. [...]
Now this was kind of fun because the elevator was glass and they we're panicing- they were dancing. but it was easy to take picures of them stuck- i took the picure above outside of the building through the glass wall + the elevator. The employees here were up on a stepstool looking for a fix, later they used the ladder and the open roof of the tube[the elevator car did have a roof though] and sneaked water bottles down though the opening and closing inner door to my friends stuck inside.
They finaly had to call the NYPD to get my comrades out of the elevator, by the time the NYPD go there they started to leak the hydralic lines to lower the elevator to the lower floor, and the wonderfull NYPD was rushing down the stairs with equipment to pry the door open, when the elevator got even with the lower floor the doors started to open and the police fully opened and held them open. The elevator was still going down to the basement floor, they the last person got out it was a good 2 foot step up. and two people burned there hands badly enough for them to blister on the hot lights in the shaft.
That MacBook firmware PR fiasco suddenly doesn't look so bad.
Stuck At Apple [TNTO, via Engadget]
Manholes? Exploding? In the Village? We just write the jokes people, we don't come up with them.
Manhole explosions leaves parts of Greenwich Village powerless [ABC 7]
Reports CBS 2 News:
A building has partially collapsed on the East Side. At least 2 people were taken to the hospital after the first floor of a residential building at East 51st Street off 2nd Avenue gave way.
On the positive side, at least we're not facing the traffic delays of July's West Side Highway wall collapse.
Breaking News [CBS 2 News]
Just in time for the holidays, the sweet smell of syrup is back. Investigative journalists and city officials had since Oct. 27 to investigate the scent – when it first showed up in Midtown – but still, nobody knows where it's coming from. Manhattanites do, however, know what it smells like.
• "Sweet"
• "Sweet, sweet, sweet"
• "Like pancake syrup"
There you have it folks: Something worth sniffing in New York, again. Here at Jossip HQ, we've got a vent of some sort right around the corner from us that's leaking the "sweet, sweet, sweet" smell of syrup. So if you don't hear from us in the next hour, that's where you can find it, getting high on fumes. And sniffing the syrup.
Mysterious sweet smell returns to Manhattan, without explanation [Luis Perez, Newsday]
Related: Sweet smell, not budget crisis, confounds New Yorkers
• Village Voice editor Don Forst is resigning from his post, effective Dec. 31. Nice ouster, New Times. [Gawker]
• Speaking of indie mergers, we seem to have missed the New York Blade getting together with HX. Gay marriage, at last. [NY Blade]
• To save Bryant Park from miscreants, the city formed the nonprofit Bryant Park Resotration Corporation. Funny, then, that the place is now being run like a business. [NYT]
• In-flight magazines are not, as it turns out, merely glorified sky malls. But they are in danger of going down without landing gear. [Mediabistro]
• Somehow, Simon Dumenco continues getting paid for screaming at his TV. [AdAge]
• Thanks to designers willing to let socialites borrow party dresses, the B-list never has to wear the same thing twice. [NYT]
• With the creation of "verified" circulation, magazine publishers receive the affirmation they've been looking for: to grotesquely inflate their readership numbers. [Folio]
• With ex-WWD scribe and alleged Halloween rapist Peter Braunstein being spotted throughout Ohio, all those sightings in NYC (like that Brooklyn cafe) are being labeled wishful thinking. [NYDN]
• Since Dakota Fanning is pretty much making bank for her family, it's probably appropriate that she gets whatever she damn well wants at Fred Segal. [Cityrag]
• Michael Jackson is making his move to Bahrain a little more permanent with the purchase of a quarter acre plot of land in the man-made Amway Islands for $1.5 million. Its seclusion will be perfect for, uh, hiding his children from the press. Yeah. That. [NYP]
• The relocated Fulton Fish Market opened for its first day of business at its new Bronx $85 million facility, complying with new federal law that mandates fish be refrigerated. Oh, and not sold by the mob. [NY1]
• Now that actress Amy Carlson is out of a job with Law & Order: Trial By Jury's cancellation, she's got plenty of time to serve on a jury. [New York]
• And we thought Keira Knightley's nip slip had gone unnoticed — or at least undocumented. [The Superficial]
• Jack Osbourne. Cosmo. Naked. Christ. You connect the dots. [A Socialite's Life]
• New Fast Company owner Joe Mansueto's lifestory isn't going to be told with his accomplishments. Rather, by his obnoxious soundbites. [USA Today]
Know what you could skip tonight and, uh, absolutely should? The Vendy Awards, where street vendors are finally recognized for the irritable bowel syndrom they've been dishing out for decades.
At 7pm, come celebrate the sausage burners, the salmanela-laced chicken grillers and the cold pretzel servers at the glam location of 27 East 4th Street, otherwise known as the garage where vendors store their carts.
All vendors are great - that's why we love 'em. Over the last month, hundreds of New Yorkers have nominated their favorite purveyor of street eats. Everyone thinks their local coffee man/falafel man/fruit man/tamale woman is the best. But on November 10th we will learn who is REALLY the best food vendor in NYC.
Actually, this event might be worth crashing, if only because we never received our invite — and the cool crowd never do include us.
It's that time of year again, where they bring parts of New Jersey into Manhattan, instead of the other way around.
Tree & a memory [NYDN]
Here's a brilliant idea: Advertising that's animated. We know, groundbreaking! But when you take the idea and port it to a city sidewalk, well, you at least deserve a mention.
Here's the deal: When you walk by a set of static panels, the images scroll like a flipbook, producing an animated ad powered by foot traffic.
The ad — for Lincoln's new Zephyr sedan — shows the car cruising along a desert landscape shadowed by an unfurling red carpet, ending with the Lincoln logo.
"We travel at a busy pace, and you don't have to stop for this," said Submedia CEO Peter Corrigan. "When you walk by, it causes it to work, so it's perfect for New York.
And perfect timing for Sunday's marathon, where runners might actually make the Zephyr zip by instead of putt by at a walker's pace.
We wish this type of thing would just go away, but with news that Calvin Klein's "live" billboard vastly exceeded expectations, we get to look forward to plenty more visual pollution. We'd almost rather go back to St. Marks and get peed on.
Flashy Ads In Motion [NYP]
Calvin Klein's One Day Time's Square Billboard Worked [Adrants]
That fire raging in a Chelsea parking garage just won't quit, despite efforts by 175 firefighters. If you thought you had a raging burn after a holiday weekend, this four-alarm blaze is putting your clap to shame.
Fire Chief Peter Hayden said firefighters went inside the building but withdrew because of fears of exploding gas tanks on vehicles in the garage.
Eyewitnesses said explosions of cars' gas tanks could be heard outside.
Oh god, not the S class! Please, tell us there wasn't a 7 series! Oh wait, New York 1 employees park there and we're really not advocating anyone to risk his life saving a Kia.
New Yorkers are in a tizzy about something actually smelling pleasant yesterday. One woman, according to NY1, could sniff this lovely scent for more than 10 blocks. Ten blocks of sweet smelling NYC, can you stand it?
"It's like maple syrup. With Eggos. Or pancakes," he said. "It's pleasant."
Though anything would smell like sugar plum fairies when you're used to sniffing elevator shaft stench.
Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers [NYT]
Related: Why the subway reeks more than Fulton Fish Market
Otherwise known as: We're so fucking glad we don't have a real job that requires a commute.
Tourists, Broadway crowds, horse drawn carriages, Conde Nast. Do you really need another reason to avoid Midtown? The city would like to give you one just as soon as they get around to building a boat ramp at Pier 78.
Only then will they be able to support ducks, those amphibious tour buses so popular in London and Philadelphia. It won't be long before these half-car half-boat monstrosities are crusing the center of our fair city, then dashing off into the Hudson River.
But some, like us, aren't so amused by the idea.
"Right from the get-go, the concern the board had was yet more traffic in an area we feel has got way too much traffic already," Mr. Doswell said. As for being invaded by ducks, he said, "It all sounds a little strange, but I guess they figure people will pay money for this experience."
Indeed, people probably will. Each year, more than one million of them ride the vehicles, encouraged by guides to quack like ducks or blow kazoos as they bounce and bob along.
And you thought the tranny hookers on St. Marks were bad.
Make Way for Ducks, in Manhattan? [New York Times]
You might turn to the New York Times to get schooled on a news sports stadium, mayoral campaign or even whether it's ethical to help a woman locate the father of her test tube baby — but dog poop? We've reached a new low.
It took two writers to tackle the topic of New York's animal waste management, which effectively began with the horses of the 19th century (whose manure, we were recently told, was used to soundproof hotel rooms) and is now monopolized by those damn yip-yip dogs.
But even with a law on the books threatening a fine against those who don't tend to their animals' public dumping, not everybody is falling in line to keep the streets free of dog shit — but filthy with public urination and i-bankers.
But with a fine of just $50 for the first offense, the law doesn't provide much financial incentive to pick up after your dog. Nor does it seem to be vigorously enforced. Let's pretend that 99 percent of all dog owners do obey the law. That still leaves 10,000 dogs whose poop is left in public spaces each day. Over the last year, the city ticketed only 471 dog-waste violations, which suggests that the typical offender stands a roughly 1-in-8,000 chance of getting a ticket.
And the odds of getting ticketed for carrying that Starbucks on the 6 train? Exactly one in "Go fuck yourself, officer." And we'd much rather enjoy the privilege of public consumption than public dumping.
Wait, so malls in Manhattan aren't a good idea? A year and a half after the Time Warner Center opened to much fanfare, it's a bit troubling to learn that the upper echelon restaurants are empty enough that they can squeeze in a reservation for a nobody on nearly any given night.
Who's to blame for the TWC's continued wavering popularity? Time Warner? Skidmore, Owings & Merrill? Bloomberg? Urban dwellers?
Malls, almost by definition, are about cars and huge parking lots. Also, while Manhattan may not have room for big-box stores, the vast majority of its stores are boxes: discrete squares or rectangles, each with its own door facing a street, not an indoor corridor.
Whew, glad we got the way malls work cleared away in the third graph.
• One recording Michael Jackson did manage to make – of his chat with then-attorney Mark Gerragos – is finally hitting the courts. In a three-count federal indictment, Jeffrey Borer and Arvel Jett Reeves were charged with conspiracy, endeavoring to intercept oral communication and witness tampering for recording Jackson's conversations during the infamous Xtrajet flight recording from Vegas to California.
• Because there aren't enough Starbucks to take a free shit in, the city is looking to enlist a Spanish company to place 20 self-cleaning (huh?) pay toilets around town as part of a $1 billion deal.
• Kate Moss' mama Linda is willing to reconnect with her daughter to help her get better, intervention style. Even threesome partner Sadie Frost is in on the plan.
• Lara Flynn Boyle is said to have been whisked away to the VIP section of the DMV to replace her ID after being the victim of identity theft. But, uh, the DMV has a VIP section? Who's running the show over there, Scott Sartiano?
• After much talk of moving the Fulton Fish Market to Hunts Point, plans have been put on the ice thanks to a just-filed lawsuit. Which means more fish smell, more often.
• The International Freedom Center is fighting for its spot at Ground Zero, thanks to its plans to incorporate more than just 9/11 in its celebratory retelling of American freedom. That's not sitting well with 9/11 victims' families.
• Somehow we doubt JC Chasez is the only one running from Tara Reid.
The next big "fissure" between parents and non-parents (second to, well, the fact that one group has kids and the other doesn't) is the ginormous strollers taking over the sidewalks, supermarkets and even our shops.
Today's Thursday Styles tackles the supersized stroller, manned by parents wielding their baby-on-wheels like an urban lawn mower, cutting down everything in their path — even if it's your Ferragamos.
Pricey, supersize baby strollers like the Bugaboo and the Silver Cross - nicknamed Hummers - have been derided as symbols of yuppie extravagance. (They cost upward of about $700.) But some critics now say that size is not the only problem. What's worse, they say, is the way some parents use them to bulldoze their way through public places.
Though if we could stand children (as we already mentioned this morning, we can't) and went through the trouble of birthing and raising them, you're damn sure we'd find a way to manipulate them to our advantage, even if it's using their stroller to bogart the sweater shelves at Bergdorf's.
Gay men cruising parks isn't just for Connecticut suburbs anymore. Now these anon-a-fudge packers are taking over the softball fields of New York's outer boroughs (that is, Manhattan is still safe!).
And because it's the New York Times telling the story, you can bet your Hurricane Katrina relief penny jar on this phenomenon being entirely new, or at the very least, decently recent. You know, or not.
Manhattan may have its gay bars and such traditional pickup spots as the woods of the Ramble in Central Park and the piers of the West Village. But in the less-accepting climate of the suburbs and the boroughs outside Manhattan, gay men often resort to courting one another from the relative safety and privacy of their cars. They troll remote parking lots that become de facto pickup spots well known in gay circles but not to the general public.
You see, we thought surely by now that "gay circles" were the general public. Shit, we're going to have to rethink our entire Queerty mission statement. If only we had one.
While cab drivers would never be entrusted to, say, lead a group of elementary school kids around a museum, the Taxi and Limousine Commission is reporting our 42nd Street-loving cab drivers are turning over a new leaf and becoming nicer.
There's been a 26 percent drop in "rudeness" from cabbies, according to so called "city records." And leave it to TLC chairman Matthew Daus to point to the city's non-emergency 311 hotline, which somehow holds cab drivers accountable for rude behavior. (Because "You better not take me through Times Square or I'm calling 311!" works so well.)
But while the rudeness between the partition may have narrowed, that's not saying much for their behavior when you're not paying their meter.
Some frequent cab riders said drivers generally are not discourteous - but they're not exactly ambassadors, either. "Only when I'm a pedestrian do I find rudeness, when they try to run me down in the crosswalk," said Les Cohen, 51, a Manhattan sales rep.
Sounds like someone needs to understand what hussle means. Or at least put 311 on his speed dial.
Editorial Director
