What is a Bike Share Program?
Bike sharing is essentially a self-serve bike rental. Members go to any one of the electronic docks to withdraw a bike and deposit at another dock when they’re done. Cycling is not only healthy, it’s often quicker than public transportation—and a lot more fun! Now, commuters can enjoy the benefits of riding a bike without having to worry about storage or maintenance.

How many bikes are there?
There will be 10,000 bicycles around the city, with over 600 docking stations to facilitate rental and return.

How do I become a member?
People interested in renting a bike through the program use the automated kiosks at every dock to purchase a daily or weekly pass with a credit card; they’re then given an access code. Those who’d like an annual membership sign up online and receive a special key in the mail that allows them to unlock the bikes.

How much does it cost?
The base prices for membership are $9.95 for 24 hours, $25 for a week and $95 for an annual membership. However, the cost also includes ride charges of up to $4 for 60 minutes, $13 for 90 minutes, $25 for 120 minutes and $13 for each additional 30 minutes over two hours.

How does it work?
Riders get the first 30 minutes of their ride free, while annual members get 45 minutes. Most bike trips in the city are under two miles and take less than half an hour. People who wish to take longer rides simply have to dock their bike and then rent out another one straight away.

What happens if I go over the limit?
People who hold onto their bikes too long get charged an incremental fee the longer the bikes are out of the system. This is designed to prevent theft of the bicycles more than anything. If you’re nearing the end of your time and the closest dock is full, there is an option to gain an additional courtesy time to find another dock.

How will I know if there are bikes or empty docks nearby?
Each kiosk will have its own map. In addition, CitiBike will also releases a smart phone app called SpotCycle, which will provide real-time bike and dock availability.

What’s to stop someone from stealing a bike?

Users are supposed to leave their bikes at the docking stations when they’re finished. If they try to bring the bikes home, they’ll soon face a rather large credit card bill. The bike parts have no resale value, and each bike is equipped with a GPS.

To most New Yorkers, Manhattan-based cyclists seemed to be faced with their own unique set of obstacles: screeching cabs, distracted pedestrians, drivers unexpectedly opening their car doors in the bike lane during rush hour. The island, however, is also home to some of the best cycling routes in the city, which offer some much needed respite for city-dwellers on two wheels.

Hudson River Greenway
The gently sloping Hudson River Greenway is more than just the largest green space in the city, it’s also one of the busiest, attracting over 7,000 cyclists a day, according to the DOT. You might wonder what all the fuss is about until you realize that the Greenway, which is the longest in the city and extends from Battery Park to Inwood, is one of the quickest ways to get around Manhattan. While the gentle slopes make it a cinch to ride, the Greenway’s calling card is its proximity to the water and notable sights, making this a must for any city cyclist.

Harlem River Speedway
Calling this a speedway seems like some sort of cruel joke. This riverside getaway connects the Hudson River and East River Greenways via two access points—at Dyckman Street and 10th Avenue and Edgecomb Avenue and 155th Street. The leisurely two-mile ride, built upon an old riverside walkway and carriage path, is one of the few Class 1 paths in the city, allowing riders a chance to relax and not worry about getting hit by an errant cab door. Swindler’s Park, located by the western access, provides an excellent location to while away those summertime afternoons. While the Speedway provides a great, if momentary escape, from city life, the lack of access points makes this one of the more difficult paths to get to.

Central Park
Spanning over 50 city blocks, cycling is the best way to see much of Central Park in an afternoon. Park Drive, the main road, which stretches a winding six miles through the park, is about to get even friendlier to bikers, runners and skaters, as cross-park paths at 72nd and 96th streets gain an additional bike lane. Terrace Drive is also reportedly set to lose one of its car lanes in favor of a second bike lane. Tours and bike rentals of the park are available year-round. Rentals for the day, which include helmets, locks and maps, start at about $15, making Central Park a no-brainer bargain.

East River Greenway
Comprising the eastern half of the Waterfront Greenway, this bike path runs from the Battery up to East Harlem, where it connects with the Speedway. While the cycling lane provides fantastic views of Brooklyn and Queens skylines, cyclists are warned that this path is interrupted between 37th and 63rd streets. The detour, which goes through city traffic, allows riders to bypass the United Nations.

Governors Island
This is the hidden treasure trove of New York biking. While tantalizingly close to Manhattan, it is another world that offers unprecedented views of the city. Governors Island is accessible by a free, five-minute ferry ride from the Marine Battery Building, next to the Staten Island Ferry. The hidden retreat is seemingly made for biking, with five miles of car-free paths and plenty of parks and sequestered buildings. What makes Governors Island so ideal is that cyclists can either bring their bikes or rent them there from Bike and Roll. And, unlike with the new Bike Share program, you can finally ride that tandem bike you always dreamed of.

The so-called living wage bill was a watered down version of the same bill proposed last year. The latest draft would force companies that receive $1 million or more in city subsidies to raise the pay rates of service workers such as janitors and security guards. Companies would only have to pay additional salary if they earn $5 million or more in revenue annually.

Roughly 600 private sector service workers in 41 buildings were to be affected. Their wages would be boosted to $11.50 an hour, or $10 an hour with benefits. Minimum wage in New York is currently $7.25.  Speaker Christine Quinn, a major proponent of the bills, argues that the wage bills would help low income earners gain entrance into the middle class.

Mayor Bloomberg is set to veto the next bill, commonly called the prevailing wage bill, when it is introduced on April 30. Before he vetoed the living wage bill on Wednesday, he gave a 15 minute prepared speech where he called the legislation “a throwback to the era when the government viewed the private sector as a cash cow to be milked rather than a garden to be cultivated.”

The mayoral veto is expected to be overturned by the Council who initially passed the measure 46-4. Bloomberg fired back that he would take the Council to court to protect tax payers and business interests from what he sees as shaky legal ground. Hizzoner believes that raising the wage would limit job creation and damage businesses due to higher operating costs.

In 2002, Mayor Bloomberg signed the largest wage legislation in modern history which affected some 60,000 workers. Workers such as health aides, day care workers, and some building service workers received a pay boost.

“It’s her “Chaise lounge”, and it’s actually outside the “Think Coffee” on the corner of Bleecker St. and the Bowery in NYC. I see her most days when I get my coffee there,” posted user Robsta333.

He wasn’t the only one to spot the pickle eater. User Mr-Personality wrote:

While user Ford37ci posted:

The new building, located in the old MTA headquarters of 370 Jay St., will be the Center for Urban Science and Progress ­­– an applied science research center created by NYU and NYU-Polytech. CUSP was handed over to NYU in a $60 million deal that will see them paying to relocate any remaining offices and equipment of the MTA and the NYPD. NYU will take over the MTA’s rent of $1 annually. In 99 years, the school will have the opportunity to buy the building.

According to the office of Mayor Bloomberg, the city has allocated $15 million in benefits to NYU, with most of it being allocated towards green initiatives such as a new roof and facade. Nearly $4 million of the fund money will be immediately available to begin the first phase of construction. The new campus is set to be completed by 2017.

NYU President John Sexton has already tapped Brooklyn native Steven E. Koonin, a theoretical physicist who has served as Undersecretary of Energy for Science, Chief Scientist of BP, and Provost of the California Institute of Technology as the facility’s director.

The Center will be the new home of roughly 530 students as in an applied science research setting. There, NYU hopes to train the next generation of engineers and scientists in an increasingly urban world.
“Downtown Brooklyn is an ideal location for an additional applied science center in New York City. As you are aware, in Dumbo, young companies such as Etsy, Carrot Creative, and countless startups have flocked to the neighborhood to create what has become a Digital District… Utilizing the neglected building would be an enormous win for the thriving Downtown Brooklyn business district and at the same time alleviate the cost of building an entire new campus from scratch,” said Senator Kristen Gillibrand in an open letter to Mayor Bloomberg.

Forensics teams from both the NYPD and the FBI assembled at 7 a.m. yesterday morning at the basement of 127 Prince St. at Wooster St., which according to reports currently serves as a storage space for the Leslie/Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Police say new evidence led them to search the property. Several stores on and near the property, including a Lucky Brand store and the boutique Wink, have been closed to facilitate the investigation.

The building was originally searched in 1979 when it housed a carpentry workshop. Othneal Miller, who used to live in the building’s basement apartment, used to reportedly pay the young Patz to do minor chores around the building. At the time of Etan’s disappearance, the basement had a dirt floor where officials hope to find personal effects or human remains. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne stated that the case is still being treated as a missing person, and not a homicide.

The joint investigation began in 2010 after Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance reopened the case after the parents of Etan, Stanley and Julie Patz who still live in Soho, petitioned Vance to find out the fate of their son. Tim Flannelly, of the FBI’s New York Field Office, stated that a combination of new and reexamined evidence led them to search the property.

Work has begun in earnest, but is painstakingly slow. The NYPD plans to work around the clock and expects to complete their search of the 13’x62’ property within the next four days. Investigators are currently mapping out the unused basement before the meticulous removal of the drywall and cement floor. At press time, they have begun removing bookcases from the room.

“We’re going about this very carefully, to make sure that if any evidence is found it will be preserved for forensic testing,” said Flannelly.

The six-year-old Etan became the poster child of missing children everywhere, and thanks to the tenacity of his parents, was the first child to have their face on a milk carton during the 1980s. No one was ever prosecuted in connection with Patz’s disappearance.

Sean Sweeney, Director of the SoHo Alliance and a longtime neighborhood resident, recalls when SoHo was filled with artist lofts and industrial retail stores at the time of Etan’s disappearance. The residents were a very close knit community, he said.

“When Etan Patz disappeared, his mother contacted all the other mothers. There wasn’t a lamp post south of 8th St. that didn’t have his missing child poster on it,” said Sweeney. “I think part of Etan being so well known was that his parents were tenacious. His father was a photographer and they had a good picture of him. At the time, missing children were barely reported in the news or not at all.”

Murmylyuk, a Russian national living in Brooklyn, created the fake employment website jobcentral2.net, where he is accused of stealing the personal information of more than 300 people. The site, which purported to have government sponsorship and was intended for people with low income, was emailed through job search forums and college listservs. Murmylyuk is alleged to have taken the information submitted to the site and created falsified wage information to receive tax returns in victims’ names. He successfully obtained refunds ranging from approximately $3,500 to $6,500 each from 108 different stolen identities.

“At a time when many unemployed New Yorkers are turning to the Internet to find work, this defendant is charged with preying upon online job seekers and tricking them into divulging personal information,” said District Attorney Cyrus Vance in a statement.

The 31-year-old schemer recruited 11 Kazakh students to the US to open bank accounts around the country where the stolen tax returns were deposited. They then passed on the information to Murmylyuk’s use, and many returned to their native Kazakhstan shortly after. Those students, who range between 19 to 23 years of age, are being charged in absentia.

Murmylyuk is charged with scheme to defraud, money laundering, grand larceny, identity theft, and computer trespass, which have been added to his existing charges from the Department of Justice. Murmylyuk was indicted earlier this year for his alleged role in $1 million scheme where he hacked into retail brokerage accounts and executed fraudulent trades. He will be arraigned on May 2.

Since 2008, yellow cabs in the city are required to have a touch screen that provides maps, fare information, and a credit payment system. Many of these systems are already provided by CMT. This new tech gives CMT equipped taxis nationwide with audible touch screens. The new monitors will allow passengers to hear fare changes at regular intervals, and provide a new way for the visually impaired to use their credit and debit cards. With the swipe of a special card, or by asking the driver, riders can make the screen accessible to visually impaired. The touch screen is then divided into large, easy to navigate sections that are prompted by step-by-step spoken instructions.

Council Member Vacca and Former Governor Paterson testing the new audible touch screen taxi technology.

“I know that New York City is one of the most difficult places for blind and visually impaired individuals to navigate, because my own father was blind. This issue is personal for me,” said Vacca in an emailed statement. “This technology will make a real difference for people who need it.”

The new touch screens are the latest in a string of pro-accessibility measures championed by Vacca, who is also Chair of the Council Transportation Committee. On March 28 the City Council passed three bills aimed at improving mobility for the visually impaired, including a bill by Vacca that requires the Department of Transportation to post maps online that are accessible to those with sight and hearing disabilities.

Photo Courtesy of Dave Winer

Two cops were injured Saturday night after a clash between the NYPD and a group of pipe wielding anarchists amidst an hours-long clash with officers. According to police, a group of approximately 25 individuals tried to smash the windows of the Starbucks on Astor Place using 8-foot metal pipes at 8:45 p.m.

The protestors had recently left the fifth annual Anarchist Book Fair at Judson Church on Washington Square South. There, a separate larger group of around 150 people had vandalized commercial property and overturned garbage cans in the area. Responding officers were pelted with pipes and bottles while chanting “f*** the NYPD,” and “all pigs must die.”

Clashes between anarchists and the police are nothing new in New York City. While recent scuffles with Occupy Wall Street protestors come to mind, this conflict has been steadily churning under the city for more than a century. The first commissioner of the NYPD, Michael C. Murphy, commanded all precincts to secretly find and record the names of anarchists and their meeting places.

“I don’t propose, if I can help it, to have any Anarchists living in this city,” Murphy stated in the Sept. 11 1901 issue of The New York Times.

During the spring of 1919, Galleanist anarchists mailed bombs to prominent politicians and appointees who they viewed as enemies of the working class. Included among the would-be victims were then-mayor John Hylan and his police commissioner Richard Enright. More recently, there were clashes between NYPD and self purported anarchists in the East Village. In 1988, nine protestors were arrested after throwing bottles and ramming a police barricade into a new luxury condo on Ave. B side of Tompkins Square after the NYPD tried to impose a 1 a.m. curfew. Scores were injured in the melee, with dozens of complaints of police brutality being reported.  Several years later, after anarchists were pushed out of Tompkins Square, another group clashed with residents and police at La Plaza Cultural on E 9th St.and Ave. C. Anarchists came out to party during a hot Sept. evening and the drunken revelers trashed the gardens and demolished fences.

A loss prevention officer, an undercover officer on the lookout for suspicious people, had her hand bitten when she confronted a pair of female shoplifters at a retail clothing store on Broadway. One of the shoplifters pushed the officer down, while the other clamped down on her hand. They then fled the store. While the pair wasn’t caught, they left their stolen items behind including a dozen shirts, three pairs of pants, three matching body suits and a package of socks.

Amped Up

Six men tried to rob a display case full of energy drinks at a chain drug store on Whitehall St. When an employee attempted to stop them by snatching their bag of loot, they dragged him outside. The thieves had a total haul of several 5 Hour Energy drinks and two Red Bull four-packs.

Gone in 60 Seconds

On a recent evening, a 39-year-old woman went outside of a Vandam Street bar to talk with a friend. When she returned to the bar, she found that her $350 designer bag had been stolen. Her bag contained her Apple iPhone 3GS, and the keys to her Audi A4.

Light Lunch

A woman slung her purse behind her chair while eating lunch at restaurant on Broadway. As she got up to leave, the 29-year-old noticed her purse felt a bit lighter. It turns out, some nimble purse picker scooped up her wallet and made $900 in charges at a local Macy’s.

Gesundheit!

An MTA L train operator was recently passing through a subway car when he spotted a man with a napkin pressed to his face. The train operator almost passed the man by until he noticed the napkin was seeping blood. When pressed for details, the dazed rider said that someone on Chambers St. had slashed his nose open with a boxcutter, though an arrest has yet to be made.

Last Supper

When staff recently arrived at their restaurant on King St. they were shocked to find that someone had stolen their tables. The eight outdoor tables, valued at $1,600, were chained to the restaurant. Even crooks, it seems, have dinner parties.

April Fools

A family of three was probably planning on taking their bikes back home, but a thief played a cruel April Fools’ joke when he stole their wheels. Three bicycles were locked up in front of a building on South End Ave., but the thieves clipped the locks and stole a 21-speed men’s Schwinn, a women’s 21-speed mountain bike, a bicycle trailer, and a child’s bike. The stolen items were valued at $1,020.

Time Out

A Rolex mysteriously vanished out of its display case at a boutique on Greene St. Employees say the watch started out its day under the glass and, at some point during business hours, disappeared. No one was seen near the expensive time-piece and store owners hope a serial number search will eventually turn up the $2,595 wrist piece.

—Compiled by Andrew Rice