Remember how Vito Fossella, the Staten Island Congressman, faced mandatory prison on account of his .17 score on a blood alcohol test last Thursday in Virginia? Fosella was arrested on May 1 in Alexandria last Thursday.He told officers he was visiting a friend in the D.C. suburb.  Today he admitted that his friend is his
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Despite an “unbearable” first season featuring a real-life Countess! and a high-powered career woman!, Bravo appears ready for a second season of The Real Housewives of New York City. And its producers are “looking for women who typify the Manhattan socialite.” Don’t get too excited yet, even if you, too, manage the seemingly impossible by
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Today is May Day, which means it’s either time for a pagan pole dance or to celebrate the worker with International Labor Day.  While most Americans celebrate Labor Day in September with barbeques and car sales, the New York May 1 Coalition is hosting a rally for immigrant and worker rights at 4 p.m. at
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At 3 p.m. yesterday, half a dozen men gathered outside of the fence surrounding City Hall.  Dressed mostly in genuinely distressed black leather jackets and truly worn jeans, the men—two with gray beards past their shoulders—looked out of place next to city politicos in pinstripes and pencil skirts.  At 10 minutes after three, they walked
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The 2008 UkeFest, a four day-long homage to the cigar box-sized stringed instrument – starts next Thursday at the Theater for the New City.  If you’re not fully prepared to immerse yourself in ukulele culture, futuristic musical Sex!Drugs! & Ukuleles! offers a small introduction. The show is set against the backdrop of a pharmacological dystopia
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“I call this evening ‘I got all my sisters with me,’” Kathleen Warnock began, kicking off the monthly Drunken! Careening! Writers! readings at KGB bar in the East Village last night.   Soviet propaganda posters  and framed clippings  of the readings’ reviews with punny headlines like “Back in the USSR” and “Much Better Red than Dead”
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On Monday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack posted to the department’s six-month-old blog, Dipnote. McCormack seemed to be wrestling with the challenges of new media just as much as the newspapers.  The blog is a mix of diary-like entries by diplomats, information on President Bush and Secretary Rice’s trips abroad and attempt at public discussion
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The short bus might not have been a bastion of positive sexuality and kink back in grade school – hopefully it wasn’t, anyway – but Shortbus, the 2006 film written and directed by James Cameron Mitchell, won the top prize this year from CineKink for its “extraordinary depiction of kink and sex-positivity mainstream.” CineKink, which
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This morning’s blast in Times Square failed to harm anyone, disrupt the morning commute or cause severe damage. Authorities – from the NYPD to the FBI to the ATF – are looking into it, but for now we don’t know who did it, with what or if there’s more to come. If this is brought
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The institutional gray paint, hard-back chairs and lines at teller windows at 105 Delancy Street suggest a clerk of courts office or the local DMV.  The crumpled white slips of paper, flat screen televisions and the man shouting at one screen clarify. This is one of over 70 off-track betting locations in the city, run by the state-sanctioned New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation.

Last Tuesday, Mayor Bloomberg announced that OTB will close in June, when it will start losing money. When OTB closes its doors, the men here—mostly older, many retired, a few smelling faintly of alcohol—will lose their daily routine.
 
Sitting and standing against the wall near the entrance, was a group of men managing a conversation as they waited for their horses to pull ahead.  "My personal opinion is that they're not going to close it.  I think Bloomberg is playing chicken," said a man who would only give his first name, Tommy...

Read full "Off Track Betting" here.

Photo by slice on Flickr
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