On Foursquare, most people recommend the chocolate chip walnut cookies at Levain, which is known for its big gooey cookies. Bouchon, meanwhile, is more of a French lunch and pastry spot, known for its unusual flavors of macarons—like peanut butter and jelly.

FURRY FRIENDS FOR SALE!
This February, bring home a puppy or kitten without breaking the bank. Bideawee, the pet welfare center located on East 38th Street at First Avenue, will be holding a monthlong “Name your own price” sale. The sale is in celebration of Valentine’s Day, and is Bideawee’s first adoption promotion this year! Plus, if you think your brand-new pet is super photogenic, Bideawee will be taking photos of each new adoption, and putting them up for a public vote. The winner will have their pet featured as Bideawee’s Facebook timeline image. This promotion will run until Feb. 28.

DOT ANNOUNCES NEW SAFETY PROCEDURES FOR DELIVERY BIKES
The DOT announced recently that they have teamed up with Delivery.com to provide 1,500 commercial cyclists with free bike lights, bells and retro-reflective vests. Delivery cyclists from all over the city can attend one of the multi-language commercial bicyclist forums held all over the city to receive the safety equipment.

Other bicycle safety efforts include NYPD enforcement and inspector visits to businesses that use delivery cyclists. These inspectors serve to both inform and oversee the legal regulations such businesses are required to follow.

DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan notes, “Safety is everyone’s business, so it’s significant when the private sector steps up to the plate to make efforts in the public interest.”
Jed Kleckner, CEO of Delivery.com, is one of many who share in this sentiment. “In a city where food, groceries and wine can be at your doorstep in moments,” he said, “we empower the neighborhood economy by equipping our merchant partners with the right tools for making safe and speedy deliveries.”

Revised administrative procedures regarding bike safety will be enforced starting this April.

FURNITURE FROM COLUMBUS EXHIBIT UP FOR SALE

Remember the living room that was perched atop the statue at Columbus Circle? Now you can own a part of the former exhibit, “Tatzu Nishi: Discovering Columbus” which closed in December. Art Space is selling the furniture that completed the look of the “living room above Columbus Circle.” Much of the furniture has been gobbled up by art collectors (or people who really need a couch). But a $1,500 MG + BW chair is still available, as well as a $2,700 Samsung 48” TV, and several other items. And members of Art Space get a discount that slashes prices in half. According to Art Space, while it was still on display, the artwork drew more than 100,000 visitors from over 30 countries around the world.

Bibliophiles keep Westsider Books open for business in a changing retail climate

Westsider Books has the musty smell and sense of disarray that a used book store should have. Books pile high in every corner, even crowding the narrow staircase to the second floor. For owner Dorian Thornley, his store is the only game in town, and holds the unofficial title of the last used bookstore on the Upper West Side.

Thornley, originally from Blackpool, England, sits behind a desk on the second floor of the shop, peering at his computer through black-rimmed glasses. Business continues as usual at the moment, but he gives the publishing industry five years before the printing of new books comes to an end. At that point, he figures, physical books will become more of a novelty item than a means of reading.

“You can’t fight the future,” Thornley said. “What am I supposed to do—bomb the Kindle factory?”

Westsider Books began as a wheelbarrow full of used books for sale, later moving to a tiny storefront on Broadway between 80th and 81st streets. Thornley was originally an employee at the store, then known as Gryphon Books, and he eventually bought it with his business partner, Bryan Gonzalez, in 2002. Gonzalez and Thornley own both Westsider Books and Westsider Records, located eight blocks further downtown.

The Upper West Side used to be full of used-book stores, Thornley recalls. But today, their store is such an anomaly that Woody Allen chose Westsider Books as a setting for his newest movie, Fading Gigolo, due out in theaters later this year.

When not being used as a movie set, the store is filled with bibliophiles, some of whom come in twice a day. For diehard customers, Thornley says buying books is an addiction. Even so, the Upper West Side has changed a lot since the store opened 40 years ago, and his clientele is simultaneously more affluent and less academic.

Even newcomers are impressed with the tiny shop. One first-time customer, Mike Higgins, 30, whispered “wow,” as he peered up at the rickety ladder that scaled the towering bookshelves.
“They’ve never seen a bookstore like this before. We’re celebrated for being a holdout,” Thornley said. “We’re getting older, and the customers are getting younger.”

It should go without saying that you probably won’t find the latest bestseller at Westsider.

“We like to think we have a good selection of books here,” Thornley said. “No one raving into a cellphone, no lowbrow dreck.”

Instead, the shelves are filled with unusual books from people’s basements and attics, or even suitcases, collected over interesting, far-flung lifetimes. John Springs, an elderly man with a gray beard and gap-toothed grin, lugs a ragged suitcase full of paperbacks into the shop. He is a regular bookseller at Westsider, and claims to have once been a bestselling author.

“If you just come here, you’ll see something,” Springs said. “It’s real comfortable; they know where everything is.”

But being a book expert is not enough. Thornley says he tries to keep his store relevant by updating Westsider’s Facebook page and responding to Yelp reviews. What really keeps the bookstore running though, he says, is the location: on a main thoroughfare and right near the 79th Street subway stop. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the Barnes & Noble across the street closed a couple of years ago.

“It’s a vocation. It chooses you; you don’t choose it,” Thornley said. “I’m selling books; what could be better than that?”

Big Nick’s, the family restaurant on Broadway and 77th Street that has been serving up diner fare for half a century, announced that it is struggling to stay open after a recent 50 percent rent increase. Owner Nick Imirziades said that he is currently in negotiations with the landlord to stay afloat.

“I can pay the $40,000 per month I am paying now,” he wrote on Big Nick’s Facebook page. “I just can’t pay $60,000. It is only 1,000 square feet (and you know how small my place is)!”
Imirziades declined to comment further for the story, preferring to wait until negotiations with his landlord were complete. The announcement has sparked Internet and local outrage with comments like “Please don’t go, Nick!” and pleas of starting an online petition.

“I think it’s horrible that Nick’s might be closing,” said Emily Easter, who lives in Fort George, but was having a slice of pizza at Nick’s on her lunch break. “There’s no respect for the neighborhood. What do we need, another Urban Outfitters?”

Big Nick’s is a remnant of an Upper West Side from another era. The atmosphere is cramped, a bit grimy and full of character—with walls plastered with news clippings and signs like “Now serving lime rickeys!” Regulars, many of whom have been coming to Nick’s for decades, know to avoid the unkempt bathroom, and newcomers are often overwhelmed by the 27-page menu with a table of contents—serving everything from tuna pizza and avocado burgers to pages of Greek food and sandwiches.

They even have a real New York attitude, with signs chastising customers for using laptops and a no-nonsense attitude toward serving food. They do have a soft side, usually dispensing balloons to their youngest customers.

“I’m emotionally shocked, but can’t say that I’m really surprised that they’re closing,” said John Goldman, 27, who grew up on the Upper West Side and now lives in Bushwick. “It’s definitely not a place where everyone knows your name.”

Nick’s fans say the gruffness is part of the old-school charm. Michael Singer, an Upper West Side resident who has been going to Big Nick’s for over 40 years, said he cannot imagine a world without the Upper West Side fixture. He first had a Big Nick’s burger when he was eight years old, back when it was called “Burger Joint,” and has been hooked ever since.

“It’s gotten to the point that when I call to place my order, the staff instantly know what I want the moment I give them my name,” Singer said. “This is a story of landlord greed, and obviously a huge part of me will be taken away if Burger Joint closes.”

It certainly looks like it might close. According to a real estate listing, the ground floor of 2175 Broadway, which includes Big Nick’s, will be on the market come Feb. 1. RKF Realtor, which handles the property, did not have any information on the sale of the building. The person listed as the building owner, John Huber of Lophijo Realty Corp., refused comment, saying that he no longer does real estate in New York.

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

(by Alissa Fleck)

Various unofficial online NYPD discussion forums—including Facebook and the message board Thee Rant—have been an outlet for intense racism by NYPD officers in recent years. Gothamist reports last year numerous officers faced disciplinary action for hateful comments posted on Facebook following the West Indian Day Parade. The recent dismissal of Fishel Litzman, a Hasidic cadet, for controversial reasons, spurred a renewed onslaught of hate speech.

Now, Gothamist reports, officers have taken to Thee Rant to spew more racism over this weekend’s West Indian Day Parade and subsequent violence, even referring to parade-goers as “savages” and saying should be allowed to kill themselves. NYPD Confidential columnist Leonard Levitt highlighted the hate speech in his column, at which point the commenters turned on him, slinging all imaginable variety of anti-semitic slur.

Thee Rant message board can be accessed here. 

photo from Wikimedia Commons

According to a recent article in Mashable, New York is becoming a hotter and hotter site for start-up businesses and entrepreneurs. Where Silicon Valley is king, NYC, for many reasons, is rising in the ranks.

Young and popular companies like Foursquare and Kickstarter, as well as companies like Twitter and Facebook who have building offices here, are highlighting a vanguard of new and growing tech companies.

In April 2011 there were roughly 15,000 relatively new tech up-starts in the NYC area, but now that number has increased by about 11,000, the article says. It also says that…

“Last year, venture investors plowed $2.75 billion into 390 startups in the New York City area — the most money and investments since 2001, when the dot-com bubble was rapidly losing air in Manhattan’s “Silicon Alley” and everywhere else, too. So far this year, $942 million has been invested in 182 startups in New York.”

That number is merely a fraction of Silicon Valley’s funding —around 12 billion, according to Mashable— but it’s surely an auspicious spurt in jobs, opportunities, and innovation. New York is, actually, the second-largest technology hub in the U.S.

According to a May report by the Center for an Urban Future, New York has surprisingly sprung up to second and is the only major U.S. area to see an increase in venture capital deals between 2007 and 2011. It’s seen a 32% increase over the four-year span, opposed to a 10% decrease in Silicon Valley, 14% decrease in New England, 8% decrease in Orange County, and 11% decrease in the U.S. overall. IT is also the leader in NYC since job growth since 2007. (Publishing down 15.8%… uh oh…)

This is eerily similar to the dot com era, but we’re in a better position right now than we were at that time.

“You can get traction before you have to raise money. The tools are orders of magnitude easier,
and so investors aren’t funding ideas… They’re funding businesses”, Frank Rimalovski, the managing director of the NYU Innovation Fund, said in the report.

These numbers mark an auspicious future for the city’s employment, entrepreneurship, and innovation which, ultimately, marks an auspicious future for the city as a whole.

Who wants to start a tech company?!

Mashable

Courtesy of Wiki Commons

A person’s surface identity may now be inextricably bound up with Twitter feeds and other heavily tailored, virtual life-mélanges (Facebook Timeline, LinkedIn, etc.), but everybody still uses email, and in a few words email says a lot.

My parents, entirely respectable people, still pay for AOL service. While I want to trust the decisions of those who raised me, AOL domain email addresses make me anxious. Unresolved parental childhood trauma aside, email addresses with “@aol.com” suggestively tacked on the end make my neck hair tingle.

My parents may gain a certain sense of security knowing they are paying to keep all their stored documents “secure” in AOL’s archives, but the very thing that makes them feel so safe—AOL’s unwillingness to go away—is what caused me to abandon the clingy service a long time ago. AOL keeps trying to step up its game, leading its followers on while acquiring platforms no one’s heard of and hawking sensationalist news stories, reluctant to acknowledge it’s well past time to cede the stage.

And what’s the cost of AOL’s clunky service model with its useless add-ons? It can cost a member as much as $55 a month, or $660 a year.

I remember growing up with AOL, as if it were a dysfunctional sibling. I remember the countless activation CDs that got environmental groups seething. I remember dial-up so slow it made me want to rip off my skin, the “you’ve got mail” voice that still haunts my nightmares. AOL was the first provider I used, I thought it was the internet. I even remember my elderly grandmother struggling to remember her username/password combo as AOL’s dialup sounds ground viscerally to life, like concrete in a blender.

Every time my parents find an excuse to resist transferring away from AOL, conceding to accusations of archaicness (“We have gmail accounts,” they say, “we just haven’t…used them yet”), I warn them all the money in the world won’t make AOL any less tenuous-seeming, outdated, backward. Maybe it’s simply generational to not trust “free” things, especially when you don’t fully understand how they work.

And I wonder: how many people does AOL continue to dupe, urging them to pay for its mediocre service, while their files are no more secure than anywhere else? As of 2011, 3.5 million. I got locked out of my AOL account years ago, but I know my inbox still sadly sits somewhere in cyberspace, where it’s slowly been accumulating spam for the past 13 years, like the sibling who, in the wake of abandonment, became a compulsive collector as a substitute for familial closeness.

So maybe I have personal experience to blame, but when I see an AOL address, I think: Stuck in the past. Afraid of change. Someone who probably shouldn’t be trusted. I think of my parents saying: “Let me just locate that in my AOL history…” as countless minutes tick by.

Because of my—admittedly—extreme bias, AOL is of the greatest offense to me, but there are an abundance of other domains which are equally worrisome (Angelfire, Hotmail, Yahoo increasingly), which proudly proclaim: “I know nothing, I have never known anything, nor do I care to at any future time know about [internet] progress.” Even Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer, recently forgot Yahoo existed while still employed at Google.

I say: move over antiquated online services, cyberspace is no longer big enough for the both of us.

Marty Golden

UPDATE:

Is the event canceled? That’s what the Daily News’ Ken Lovett tweets.

And now it’s confirmed by the Daily Intel.

However, the “bum rush” event’s founder Jon Reznick says on Facebook that the anti-Golden event is still going forward.

ORIGINAL PIECE:

Following up on our article this morning about an event being held by State Sen. Marty Golden — during which young Brooklyn women seeking jobs will be taught the “feminine presence”  — a Facebook group has formedto “bum rush” the event.

So if the event at Bay Ridge Manor still goes off on July 24, it promises to be mighty interesting. Currently, the Facebook group has 21 members, and its creators are promising “Go Go Dancers, your Burlesque acts, your corsets, and of course, everything LGBTQ…”

From Facebook:

Senator Marty Golden, being stuck in the 1950s is offering protocol training for women in the workplace. Before we noticed, his website said this event would offer to teach how to “Sit, Stand and Walk Like a Model” and how to “Walk up and down a stair elegantly.”
Let’s show Marty what the feminine presence really is. Bring out your Go Go Dancers, your Burlesque acts, your corsets, and of course, everything LGBTQ, and bum rush this FREE event, hog his press, and

WE WILL TEACH SENATOR MARTY GOLDEN HOW TO WALK LIKE A MAN BY SUPPORTING FAIR PAY FOR WOMEN IN NEW YORK

Many of the people attending appear to be local Democrats who are supportive of Golden’s Senate opponent, Andrew Gounardes. His campaign already put out a statement blasting Golden earlier today.

To read more from City & State click here.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new bill proposal was approved on Monday, and has largely been supported by a population anxious to finally tackle one of the nation’s deepest-rooted and most ignored problems: Bullying. However, disagreements on whether bullies should be brought to court persist. A look at how the French have done it may give us more insight on this delicate issue.

What most observers noted as the most important element of the bill was the emphasis on cyber-bullying. With the internet rapidly spreading to every home and cell phone, new ways of bullying fellow classmates have emerged, notably through the use of Facebook and other social networks. Much attention has recently been drawn to the issue after instances of cyber-bullying led to the suicide of two teenagers in the state of New York last year. In addition, results from a census which surveyed close to 10,000 New York students have shown that 70% of the respondents thought cyber-bullying should be made illegal, reinforcing the need for adapted legislation.

This turn of events may seem strange to some. This reaction is largely based on the notion that cyber-bullying is not as bad as actual, physical playground bullies. At least for the time being, the internet does not allow you to punch, give a wedgie or nipple twist anyone. While it is important not to let the struggle against cyber-bullying distract us from its more ‘traditional’ form, it is true that the psychological damage that can be caused through virtual means is often underestimated.

Very well, you say, but what exactly is cyber-bullying? As it is not possible to physically harm people via your computer (unless it’s a laptop with sharp edges and you throw it on someone), cyber-bullying mostly takes on the form of psychological torture. It can range from something as basic as spreading insults and rumors (for example, creating a hate group on Facebook), to hacking into your schoolmate’s accounts.

Ok, this sounds very annoying, but in a way, pretty harmless as well. While this may be the case for adults, stakes are much higher when children and teenagers are concerned. It sounds cliché, but in high school, reputation matters. If your reputation has been tarnished, you will feel those effects every day. Other children will insult you, make fun of you, or simply ignore you. And it isn’t like the movies, where bullied kids always find a true friend and everything ends alright. In fact, when a kid is being bullied, and deemed ‘unpopular’, other kids will tend to avoid him. Becoming friends with a bullied kid runs the risk of being assimilated to his reputation, and getting bullied in return.

It is this growing sense of isolation that represents the biggest danger of bullying. Having close to no friends and being constantly taunted by your peers, you will probably grow up to have low self-esteem, be socially awkward, and in more extreme cases, give into depression or suicide.

But what probably remains the most vicious aspect of bullying is the powerlessness that it imposes. Bullying victims often find it extremely difficult to break the cycle. In effect, there are three ways to deal with a bully. You can fight back, but this may not always be as easy as it sounds or yield the desired results. You can ignore it, and just keep thinking “In five years they will work for me,” but that takes an incredible amount of resolve. Or you can just tell someone.

Now it would seem as if reporting a bully to a teacher or parent would take care of the problem. However, the punishment received by the bully often pales in comparison to what then happens to the kid who snitched. A child knows that if they tell on a bully, he or she will probably get away with a warning, maybe get grounded for a few days. The victim, on the other hand, is sure to get it much worse than before. This trend is reflected in a recent survey, finding that only 20% of bullied children had reported it, the others being too scared to speak up.

Why isn’t bullying dealt with more efficiently? It seems to me that there is a lack of comprehension surrounding the gravity of the problem. Many adults, and that can include teachers and parents, think of it as simple child’s play. Boys will be boys, you know. And a child seeing this reaction in his parents will probably become increasingly reserved and distant.

In the adults’ defense, it can sometimes be very difficult to differentiate between actual bullying and simple teasing. Kids will always be mean to each other, but drawing the line between playful mockery and recurring bullying is not easy. Especially on the internet, where no physical harm actually comes to the victim.

Considering this last point, there is an aspect of the cyber-bullying bill that has been controversially received. It has been suggested that cyber-bullying should be dealt with in court. Now there are of courses instances where bullying does go too far, and where criminal charges should be considered. But, as pointed out earlier, the line between teasing and bullying can be a thin one.

My fear here is that schools turn into giant panopticons. Do we want our children constantly watching each other, denouncing each other, and living in fear of being arrested? Do we want schools where playful teasing can lead to lawsuits, where the only thing keeping kids in line is the threat of judicial repercussions? I am of course exaggerating, but if we open this Pandora box, who knows where it will lead us.

Facing this difficult question of what to do with cyber-bullies, it could be useful to turn our attention to the other side of the Atlantic. Last year, the French government had to deal with similar issues, having received over 30 complains of internet harassment in less than 6 months. In June 2011, the Education Minister Luc Chatel and the association e-Enfance (“e-Childhood”) signed a convention that outlined responsibilities for both parties in the fight against cyber-bullies.

This convention raised two interesting points that I would like to share with you.

The first is the emphasis on teachers and school principals. They are given the primary responsibility to identify and report cases of cyber-bullying at school, and will be given special formations to help them in this new duty. This is obviously a necessary step if we want to actively act against bullying, and it makes sense to say that teachers are the best placed to observe and act upon these instances.

The second point is perhaps more interesting for our discussion, and addresses the issue of punishment. One of e-Enfance’s main contribution, in the words of their director Jutine Atlan, is their “privileged relationship with Facebook.” This particularly concerns the “report” option of the world’s biggest social network. While it is possible to report abuse on Facebook, this doesn’t always mean that the situation will be given an appropriate response. There as simply too many people reporting each other on Facebook, sometimes even as a means of cyber-bullying. As outlined in the convention, e-Enfance wants to make sure that inappropriate behavior on Facebook will be punished accordingly, e.g, by closing the guilty person’s account.

Now this may not seem like much, but the way I see it, it is an interesting alternative to making cyber-bullying a criminally punishable offence. The idea is simple: If you ask a teenager, ANY teenager, to write down a list of his absolute top five fears, I can guarantee that you will see it up there. Right between “dying a virgin” and “Al Quaida.” There is something much, much worse that can happen to a fourteen year old. In a shaky and terrified handwriting, tarnished by obvious drops of anguished sweat, lies this existential horror, this primal fear shared by every teenager on the planet: “Losing my Facebook account.”

Photo courtesy of Samsung.

The Samsung Galaxy S III is just the thing to make Apple loyalists question the sanity in their devotion. Apple should do the same.

In 2007, when everyone was running around with RAZR flip phones in one hand and an iPod nano in the other, Apple gave us a sea change. Nobody who has ever bought movie tickets with Fandango, decided on dinner with Yelp, or wasted actual precious chunks of their lives playing brain-hole games like Angry Birds or Temple Run (e.g. me, sadly) can deny that the iPhone changed the way we interact with the world and with each other—by changing our understanding of how we could.

But, yo, people. That was five years ago. That thing caught everybody of guard. We were silly with it; remember? People paid $999.99 for I Am Rich, the arrow-pointing-up-I’m-With-Stupid-shirt for the new millennium. An app called iFart Mobile famously inhaled $10,000 dollars per day in 2008. iFart. iFART! Yes. We were silly, turns out it was all worth it, but we were super silly, y’all.

But now all that stuff that ooh’d and genuinely awed us is standard issue. So many people have smartphones that the New York Times actually thought it was news that a handful of contrarians choose not to join the fun. I wonder if they ran a similar article when that wacky Internet was all the rage. Remember that? I could Google it, but why bother?

What I’m trying to say is that unless the next iPhone is a G.D. spaceship, or transmogrifies the raw materials of the cosmos into Popeye’s famous popcorn shrimp, anything it brings to the table will likely be nothing new.

Will it have maps? Not Google Maps, which now runs offline on the SGS3, and all Android phones (lightning fast!). Will it have crazy good resolution? Likely. Retina? It would behoove them to do us the favor, but the SGS3 has an HD Super AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screen which, at 4.8” feels a little bulky, but dang if that thing doesn’t look cleaner than Starbucks bathrooms in TriBeCa. Will it have Facebook? Instagram? Will it have…what? A camera? Will it have a phone?

It may be time to face the facts: the rest of the world may have caught up to the iPhone.

Now, I’ll say this, Samsung may have been being real smart and all, but they came super cocky with it. Not a good look, y’all. They seem to think that the coolest thing about the SGS3 is how easy it is to share pictures, music, or just any pseudo-tangible item made of up to 3GB worth of binary. Like, that is cool. Certainly. But it’s not easy. Not unless all your homies also have the SGS3, and even then it involves permissions and settings and really, nobody’s sweating that stuff when it’s already very easy to share electronic data without forcing friends to resent each other cause they had to buy the same phone (if you want to twist our skivvies, stick a USB on that doggie, dawg).

No. The coolest thing about the Samsung Galaxy S III isn’t htat it dims to save power when you look away from the screen, or that it’s got wild facial recognition capabilities, or that you can watch video on a pop-out player while multitasking. No. The coolest thing is TecTiles.

This: little squares about 1” x 1” or so that can be programed to activate whatever stuff on your phone. The example I keep seeing is that you can put one nightstand to activate your alarm just by placing your phone on the thing. But there’re tons of potential uses for these TecTile deals:

• Put one: on the door and tap to open your subway app;
• near the table and tap to open your morning news;
• on your amp and set your phone down to open your guitar tuner;
• bands should have one on the merch table so that fans can FB Like them
• businesses might have one on the counter for a quick 4^2 check in;
• put one on your wallet and tap your pocket to open your camera (HOT!)
• etc. etc.

So, whatever, is the Samsung Galaxy S III going to be an ‘iPhone Killer’? Maybe not, but not for lack of guns. This little buddy is about as good as they get. If you’re looking to buy a phone this summer, it’s a good time to go Samsung. The Galaxy S III has everything you need, and a whole lot of stuff you probably won’t even know what to do with.