Chinatown: Stop letting the other ’hoods use me. If they don’t want to meet for dim sum during the day, then they can take their club beats elsewhere at night. And tell Nolita to quit invading my space.Photo by Christopher Schoenbohm

Look at you, New York! I hardly recognize this group of non-smoking, exercising, healthy-eating and organized individuals. What happened? You used to be fun. Interesting, at least.

The truth is, if everyone in New York sticks to their resolutions, it could throw off the balance of this entire city, country and world at large. Grocery stores will sell out of fresh produce, and SeamlessWeb will go under faster than it can send a confirmation email. Gyms will become so overcrowded that citywide riots will break out in a moment of elliptical desperation. Cigarette companies will—er, bad example.

Countless livelihoods depend on your laziness, unhealthy habits and destructive behaviors. Think of the artisan baker who relies on your sweet tooth to pay the bills. Don’t you believe in supporting small businesses? Don’t you want to stimulate the economy? Or how about the bartender who depends on your liquored-up generosity to support his true passion? Thanks to your selfish resolution to drink less, you may be robbing the world of his future Oscar-winning documentary exposing the slaughter of bonobos in the Congo. Maybe that film would have started a worldwide movement to save the bonobos from extinction. Perhaps even inspired an end to the Congo’s years of devastating warfare in the process. Don’t you want to end violence in the Congo? Don’t you think bonobos are cute?

So go ahead and smoke your first cigarette of 2013. Bite that hangnail. Fall so hard off the donut wagon that you might have broken something if not for their—and your—pillowy softness to cushion the landing. It’s the least you can do.

Our neighborhoods, however, are another story. They could use a few resolutions, and from the look of things, they have their work cut out for them in 2013:

Meatpacking: Drink lesssss [hiccup]. And learn Italian.

Chelsea: Stop making fun of MiMa. He didn’t make it up.

West Village: Start growing vegetables on the roofs of my restaurants. Oh wait, that was last year’s.

Midtown: Separate my work from my social life. Leave my Blackberry at—sorry, gotta take this … What? Now? I’m just finishing a scorpion bowl with my boys at BroJim’s. I’ll be at the office in 10.

East Village: Keep my beard clean.

Tribeca: Stop letting myself be defined by my friends. Tell De Niro I need some space. Again.

Nolita: Stop giving all the other neighborhoods adorably personalized gifts from my shops. When did anyone ever give me a necklace made of gilded flower petals in the shape of my name?

Little Italy: Go gluten-free.

Murray Hill (hers): Stop wearing my Kappa Delta Phi butt pants to unlimited champagne brunch.

Murray Hill (his): Stop hitting on girls wearing Kappa Delta Phi butt pants at unlimited champagne brunch.

Times Square: Meditate more. Like, all the time.

When the ball drops in Times Square and the humans are all out celebrating, your pets are at home reflecting on the previous year and making their own New Year’s resolutions. Here are their top 10 submissions from past years. They are relying on you to help them achieve their goals!

1. I need a checkup! Please remember to schedule yearly health exams with my favorite veterinarian. Both dogs and cats will benefit from a good physical, wellness screening, vaccines and preventative medicine. Many diseases can go undetected, and we want to be sure that I am healthy inside and out. I know that in this economy vet visits can be expensive, but skipping them is usually more costly. Now may be a good time to investigate pet insurance.
2. My breath stinks! If you want my kisses to be enjoyable, learn how to brush my teeth.
3. My human and I are both out of shape! While I love lying next to you watching Family Guy, we need to start exercising. For dogs, this means getting outside and walking. This way I get to expend some energy, socialize with my neighbors and maybe meet that special someone (humans are “mate magnets”). For cats, playing fetch with a catnip toy or feather pole can burn some calories and get that heart pumping.
4. I could improve my manners. Find a dog trainer and teach me some obedience, so I can behave better at the dog park.
5. Lifetime security wanted. What happens to me when you can no longer care for me? Make provisions for my care in your will or establish a Pet Trust. I don’t want to end up in a shelter because you weren’t thinking ahead.
6. When was the last time you gave me a bath? ’Nuff said.
7. Watch my weight. Check nutrition and calorie content in my food and make sure you are feeding me appropriately. Pet obesity has reached an all-time high. I don’t want to be a statistic.
8. Volunteer. Maybe we would make a good pet-therapy team? If not, you should go out and volunteer at a shelter. I am willing to share a little bit of the love you give me with a homeless pet.
9. Donate. I really don’t need another squeaky toy or a sweater. Please donate it to a shelter.
10. Adopt. There are thousands of homeless animals in New York. If we can’t expand our family, maybe we can help get the word out.

Dr. Robin Brennen is chief of veterinary services and program operations at Bideawee.

Parts of Lower Manhattan may spend the holidays and beyond hooked up to noisy, noxious generators if building management companies don’t soon finish necessary repairs.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, many downtown Manhattan buildings relied on emergency generators for power in an effort to return to normalcy. As of last week, Council Member Margaret Chin’s office reported 105 emergency generators were still operating downtown, providing electricity to these buildings.

While these generators may be necessary in an emergency, community members and elected officials are concerned over why they still have such a prominent presence downtown. The generators emit potent, potentially hazardous fumes and often deafening noises. They also appear to be running largely unregulated by city agencies, which have not demonstrated much oversight in the situation, according to downtown’s elected officials.

“Many of the streets in Lower Manhattan, particularly in the Financial District, are literally lined with [these] generators,” said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. “We all know that after 9/11, thousands of Lower Manhattan residents were exposed to air that caused serious health problems, and we cannot allow that to happen again.”

A Con Edison spokesperson explained that the buildings’ management companies are responsible for the generators still in place.

“They’re the ones who bore the brunt,” he said.

Chin’s office agreed that Con Edison is not to blame for the delay. The buildings’ management companies reportedly continue to push back the dates when they’ll be ready to reconnect to power, now giving time frames as late as April in some cases.

“Con Edison is willing and ready to hook these buildings back up,” said Kelly Magee, a spokesperson for the council member. “The buildings are not ready to receive power. The buildings have some kind of issue, whether it’s damage to the transformer or a part that needs a replacement—they’re unable to hook back up to the grid.”

Magee said these buildings’ management companies would not return their phone calls and there was no explanation as to why the dates kept getting pushed back. She speculated building management companies are taking advantage of this opportunity to make other repairs to their buildings. Without incentive for the management companies and enforcement by the city, she said there’s not enough pressure for the companies to act in a timely fashion.

Once a building is ready to be hooked back up to the Con Edison grid, only a quick inspection is necessary before this can take place.

Council Member Chin, whose Lower Manhattan district has many such generators, is disappointed in the city’s response thus far. She said her office has received many residential complaints over the last month and that she’s repeatedly reached out to the city and tried to work through official channels.

One woman called the council member’s office to complain she had fainted while exiting a downtown subway because of the overwhelming fumes released by the generators.

“The residents are contacting our office and saying they need help—these fumes are going right into their apartments,” explained Chin. “People have been very patient and they understand it’s an emergency, but week after week … it’s taking too long.”

“The Department of Health needs to provide solutions,” said Chin. “Now they’re saying seal off your windows with plastic—that’s not an appropriate way to live.”

“The phone calls are seriously disturbing,” added Magee.

Magee said the council member’s office has been working to get the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene to come out and regularly conduct inspections of the generators.

“What it seems like to us is in the beginning there was an emergency situation; a lot was done without much oversight, and it wasn’t until we asked for enforcement that the DEP started doing anything,” Magee said.

“We go and look around ourselves, and we can see the smoke spewing out,” she added. “The DEP needs to be down there every single day, and they need to get the dirty ones out.”

The council member said it seemed not much thought had been given to the generators’ physical placement either.

“To be listening to one 24 hours a day is a lot to ask of residents,” said Chin, who explained they were loud enough to drown out any conversation in the street.

Ryan Carlino works on Water Street, right by the river. He said he was not allowed to return to his office building until Dec. 4.

“We literally have to walk through a tunnel of generators to get to the entrance of our building,” he said. “There’s smoke everywhere. It constantly smells like diesel fumes.”

“I’m sure they’re safe, I guess,” he added. “They were OK’d by the EPA. But they look like they could blow up or electrocute someone at any point.”

The generators are also loud, according to Carlino. “The noise isn’t a huge inconvenience since you can’t hear them inside,” he said. “It’s just really weird and post-apocalyptic walking through them to get to work.”

When asked how he knew the generator had been approved by the EPA, Carlino said his company’s operations coordinators told workers the EPA had checked them out.

A Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson confirmed that DEP inspectors are going block by block in Lower Manhattan to ensure that all generators are properly certified and are meeting emissions standards, and the DEP has also teamed up with the city’s Health Department and the state Department of Environmental Conservation to monitor air quality. The agencies have installed three additional air testing sites since Hurricane Sandy and have not detected patterns of higher concentrations of particulate matter.

While they may technically be safe, the generators are still a huge nuisance. In many cases, residents cannot understand why the generators powering some commercial buildings must remain running all night.

“Imagine that happening continuously all day long and at night when people are supposed to be sleeping,” said Chin. “We have families and lots of young kids down here.”

Chin said the city has already established a rapid repair program with residential buildings, one which might soon have to extend to commercial buildings as well.

“It’s unacceptable that they will be there all winter,” she said. “If there are missing parts, get them.”
While the noise and pollutants affect residents and workers in the area, Chin is particularly concerned about generators operating directly outside of a downtown school complex.

“We need all the help we can get,” said Chin. “We want this done by Christmas. This is our Christmas present.”

Carlino is at least glad to be back in his own office building despite the generators. “We were up in Times Square,” he said. “It was awful.”

Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar is too flashy and doesn’t have much heart

The arrival at 220 W. 44th St. of Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar, aka The Guy Fieri Restaurant, was for some the final nail in the coffin of the old Times Square, that halcyon place of peep shows and slashers, flashers and freaks. For others it represented something even larger, the decline of the state of cuisine in North America. If a man who has made his name not as a chef but as a cross-country tourist of the novelty hamburger is able to open a 500-seat mess hall in the flashiest neighborhood in the city, they cry, we’ve brought the indigestion upon ourselves, like one of the lesser biblical plagues.

For most, however, it lands on the curiosity scale somewhere between that guy you know who can open a beer bottle with his teeth and Ripley’s two-headed calf; a novelty to be gawked at, whispered about, but ultimately forgotten.

That is, unless you happen to walk past. The dizzying array of television screens blasting footage of The Guy himself, the bright signage that even in Times Square, the home of neon overkill, is really a bit much and the impossibly oversized wood-slab doors all conspire to stop you in your tracks, like a crow stopped at the edge of the field by a dazzler. You start to wonder just what it’s like on the inside. What on earth could all of this be in service of?

The promise of The Guy Fieri Experience™ is, unfortunately, more than it can deliver, whether you come ready to worship at the altar or to mock. It is relentlessly mediocre; not good enough to silence the haters, but not bad enough to delight them, either. A full 90 percent of the menu items’ names include some kind of booze; 82 percent are pun-based; and 4 percent are simply incomprehensible.

The Guy-talian Nachos, for instance, are allegedly Italian because they are topped with pepperoni and sweet Italian sausage. Then why, for the love of syntactical logic, are they served on fried wonton skins? Sangria-glazed shrimp are sweet, sticky and vaguely pink-tinted, as virgin as an Amish 16-year-old. Many dishes come with a long, unasked-for backstory; the Vegas Fries, apparently, were spawned when The Guy was in college and could only afford French fries, which he would douse in a startling number of sauces. Now they can be yours for $9.95, a price that would make any college student blanch.

You may be tempted to apply alcohol to the situation in a last-ditch effort to add a little entertainment value to the meal. Resist this urge. The cocktail list is a page of lies, real drink names assigned to bastard concoctions willy-nilly. Since when does a mojito feature blueberries and raspberry vodka? Nothing is as it seems; nor, unfortunately, is any of it strong enough to lend the necessary buzz.

But it’s the service staff that may be the most unsettling part of the whole endeavor. These poor souls have been subjected to the most rigorous training program/brainwashing camp ever devised for hospitality staff—the lesson on pronouncing the word “Fieri” alone must have been an ordeal of Clockwork Orange-level programming. One waiter couldn’t stop using the word “phenomenal”; things that were phenomenal included all of the beverages, the California egg rolls, a request for more napkins.

While the upsell is an accepted dirty little secret of the restaurant industry, this lack of finesse made little headway with our table of experienced diners. By the end of the meal, we had so subverted his script he was visibly terrified of us, and we had to flag down a passing stranger to ask him to bring us the check.

That, really, is the crux of the issue with Guy’s Place: It’s not for New York diners. It’s not even for tourists who aspire to be New York diners. It’s for the wealthy and lazy who want to eat food they recognize while being told they’re having fun, a not unsizeable market. Cry about it all you want, food-lovers, but Guy’s Place will probably be here long after we’re gone.

Photos Courtesy of Alissa Fleck

by Alissa Fleck

Last night, New Tang Dynasty TV took to Times Square to celebrate their first annual Fire Up The Wok Challenge, part of a two-day spread of live broadcast Chinese culinary events.

For years, NTD TV has been bringing together celebrity chefs from around the world to test their chops against one another in similar grueling culinary competition. According to NTD TV, the competitions aim to “facilitate a culinary cultural exchange between the East and the West.”

Five Western celebrity chefs — including Julieta Ballesteros, New York’s “best” Mexican chef, and Maneet Chauhan, the judge for Food Network’s “Chopped” — convened to try their hand at creating an authentic rendition of Kung Pao chicken, one of the most difficult dishes to “get right” according to the challenge’s host. Many of the challengers conceded to a lack of expertise with the wok, and Chinese cooking in general.

The Fire Up The Wok challenge was judged by big names in the food business, such as restauranteur David Burke and Susie Fogelson of the Food Network. Tourists in the square and workers from nearby businesses wandered over to check out the action, and constituted the bulk of viewers.

Boyee Wong had a coveted front-row spot at the event. Vacationing in New York, Wong said she was walking by the festivities earlier in the day when she was drawn in by the energy and excitement.

“I’ve never heard of [NTD TV],” said Wong. “But I recognized the Food Network stars.”

The Fire Up The Wok challenge was the second-to-last in a day’s worth of events featuring big names in the business. 

“I’ve been here awhile,” said Wong, acknowledging it was more fun than she’d anticipated.

The winner of the challenge, Antoine Camin, from Paris, went home with a prize kitchen knife crafted by a Chinese master swords-maker. Camin has over 16 years of experience in the culinary realm, with a special devotion to seafood.

A portion of the money raised from the competitions will go toward the James Beard Foundation’s NTD Chinese Culinary Scholarship for the Underprivileged.

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

There are some Maserati-loving thieves on the loose in the City, and they’ve gotten totally bold.

(by Alissa Fleck)

This week alone, two Maseratis have been filched from their respective owners, Gothamist reports. One case involved a recent Florida transplant to the City, who was driving his ritzy ride around Times Square at 5 a.m., when two thieves pulled just about the oldest trick in the book.

The man briefly exited his vehicle, keys still in the ignition, when the men approached asking if they could pose for a photo inside, reports the news blog. After he gave his consent, the men got inside and went nuts, fleeing in the swanky station wagon.

Then, last night in Jamaica, Queens, an off-duty corrections officer left a deli only to find himself in a holdup over…you guessed it—his Maserati. The officer handed over the keys to his $130,000 vehicle, and the thieves made off into the night.

The officer alerted cops to the situation, which resulted in a high-speed chase, ultimately ending in the thieves crashing the Maserati. They ditched the ride in an alley, according to Gothamist, and fled on foot, said witnesses. Gothamist reports, and we agree, it’s something straight out of Director Nicolas Refn’s blockbuster hit, Drive, minus Ryan Gosling.

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

By Alissa Fleck

By now everyone in the City has heard about the shooting by the NYPD of a knife-wielding man in Times Square this weekend. After the incident, officers did what they could to control the flow of information, reported Gothamist, including seizing onlookers’ phones and cameras. Despite their best efforts, tons of witnesses were on the street capturing the chaos, and video footage which did make it to the internet shows throngs of police officers pursuing the man, who is practically dancing down the street.

Was the NYPD’s reaction—the fatal shooting—overly extreme in taking down the deranged man?

The family of Darius Kennedy, the knife-carrying victim, says the police used excessive force when they shot him. The Daily News reports Kennedy’s aunt said 12 bullets should not have been used to subdue him, perhaps just one as a warning. NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly called the shooting “justified and appropriate,” and Mayor Bloomberg backed up Kelly’s assessment. Officers had already pepper-sprayed Kennedy, who had ten prior arrests on his record, six times to no avail. The NY Post reports none of the 20 cops in pursuit of the man had tasers in their possession.

Police Reporter Leonard Levitt called the shooting “Totally justified.”

“If any bystander or even a cop was wounded because the cops held back, there’d be hell to pay,” said Levitt. “Only question: how come they didnt use a taser?”

NYPD Spokesman Paul Browne said: “Only patrol sergeants and Emergency Service Unit cops are routinely armed with tasers.”

The Daily News reports the NYPD fatally shot eight people last year, and only uses deadly force “sparingly” according to police officials.

Pictured: Rodrigo, Photo by Alissa Fleck

An Elmo impersonator was arrested and subsequently hospitalized Sunday outside the Central Park Zoo for shouting, among other things, anti-Semitic obscenities at passersby.

(by Alissa Fleck)

An investigation into Elmo’s background uncovered the man, who gave the name Adam Sandler, formerly ran a Cambodian pornography site. Additionally, Gothamist revealed Elmo-gone-crazy-in-the-park is by no means an isolated incident.

The Wall Street Journal reported last fall the men and women who don these cartoon costumes for tips are frequently undocumented workers who speak little, if any, English. One could transform “from an undocumented immigrant from Peru whose grasp of English is tenuous to perhaps the most iconic American character of all time, Mickey Mouse,” reported the same article.

Many of the workers told the WSJ the job was preferable to other comparable jobs because people would touch, hug and even kiss them, rather than acting like they didn’t exist.

I visited Times Square, where the vast majority of fuzzy cartoon characters in NYC congregate (due to legality issues and tourist activity), with the hope of seeing how others in the business thought the industry might be affected by the recent Elmo incident.

I approached four separate Elmos, and one Cookie Monster conversing with an Elmo, all of whom were non-English speakers or were more forthcoming with cuddly pats than answers. The “conversations” were repeatedly interrupted by groups wanting pictures, which the characters were more than happy to oblige. After each picture, they would hold socks open for a tip, and hang their oversized heads in mock dismay if tourists did not pay up.

I finally offered one Elmo a dollar to answer questions, per his insistence, but once I’d handed over the cash, he would not answer or respond to requests for his name. None of the Elmos indicated they had heard of the arrest.

Andres, disguised as Spongebob, said he had purchased his costume at the store himself and had not heard of the arrest either. As I approached a solitary Mickey Mouse, he was playfully roughed up by a man whose pants were around his knees.

The greatest concentration of fuzzy characters was gathered outside the Times Square Toys R’ Us.

I finally made a breakthrough speaking to one Elmo named Rodrigo, from Ecuador, currently residing in Patterson. When asked how he came into this job and his costume, he responded with unintelligible, high-pitched, cartoonish squeaks. I repeated the question and he again squeaked. When I asked a third time, he said in a low, if frustrated, voice: “I know somebody.”

Rodrigo said he had not heard about the arrest, but seemed concerned about the incident. “What happened to the guy in Central Park?” he asked. Rodrigo said he makes $50 to $60 a day and only works in front of the Toys R Us. He has not been doing this long and does not currently have another job.

While talking to Rodrigo, a Hello Kitty approached. “She does not speak English,” Rodrigo said. I asked if they knew each other and he said they were friends.

I then asked if he likes his job: “No, but we need the money,” he said. He does like kids though.

More Hello Kittys meandered over, seeking out hugs, while a Shrek and Puss-in-Boots, seemingly working as a team, patted passing children. A security guard immediately inside Toys R Us said the fuzzy characters are not allowed into the store.

A Hello Kitty approached a man selling comedy tickets for a hug. “Who’s in there, Kitty?” he asked. “Is that a Chinese woman? I’m not a tourist. You wanna buy a comedy ticket?”

Erica, a teenage tourist visiting the city with her mother, hugged and took a picture with Rodrigo-as-Elmo.

When asked if she was ever “weirded out” by who might be in the costume, she replied: “Sometimes.” She also said she would not hug a random stranger on the street who was not in costume.

Greg Wrigley, a tourist from West Virginia, has two daughters and a grandson. He was visiting the Toys R Us with children from his church and said they had taken pictures with the characters. When asked how he felt about not knowing who was inside the costume, he said: “I do wonder who’s really in there. Is it a boy or girl? A child or adult? It doesn’t bother me one way or the other.

“When they put on the costume, they’re no longer a person,” he said. “They become a character. You expect them to take on the character.

“I think you trust whoever hires them,” added Wrigley. When asked how he would feel to know many of the characters were not hired, but in fact purchased the costumes themselves, Wrigley seemed surprised by the possibility. (The WSJ reported these workers do not need a license, and the Elmo incident reveals they are by no means vetted.)

“I guess that’s possible,” he said. “But [bad] behavior would give them away. If they grabbed someone inappropriately, they’d be beaten half to death, at least where I come from they would. I don’t know about here.”

As Wrigley spoke, a nearby Minnie and Mickey each swung a baby into the air for a family picture.

For most of Thursday it was business as usual in Times Square. Neon lights swirled overhead, taxis honked their call and response and the hum of thousands of passersby contributed to the customary din and discord.

At around 6:30 pm a crowd was gathered at 46^th street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, but this was no usual crowd. It was a choir of hundreds of volunteer singers participating in Make Music New York, a citywide festival that transforms cacophonous public spaces into stages for thousands of performances every June 21.

Passersby were delighted to hear Bach and Handel emanating from choir, but the highlighted composer was Philip Glass. It was the debut of The New Rule, his eight-part mixed choral piece featuring translated text by medieval Sufi poet Rumi.

The New Rule, commissioned by NPR to honor the composer’s seventy-fifth birthday, was made with amateur and professional singers in mind and anyone was welcome to participate. “There were no auditions. You just had to print the music and come,” said Donald Gallagher, a painter and member of the Reverend Billy Church of Stop Shopping Choir.

Gallagher was joined by fellow singers/performers from the Stop Shopping choir, including opera singer Ashlie Lauren Smith and Nehemiah Luckett, the choir’s music director and composer. “I think more music should be done this way. More people should be singing, not afraid to hear their own voices,” said Smith.

The heat, printer problems and lack of rehearsal were only minor challengers for these seasoned singers who were excited to participate in a Philip Glass piece for the first time. “The music was very hypnotic. It was really quite wonderful,” said Gallagher.

“It’s a lot of fun to listen to and more fun to sing,” said Luckett. Even in Times Square.

The Stop Shopping Choir’s next performance will be at the Highline Ballroom on July 1.

Digital financing is on the brink of a revolution, thanks to mobile commerce. With powerful new payment methods like Google Wallet building steam, more and more vendors are re-examining their payment processes in an effort to fluidly speed transactions at a time when e-commerce and online shopping pose competition for in-store sales.

On Monday, Google launched an initiative to expand its Google Wallet mobile payment system. The system provides consumers with speedy and seamless ways to pay at retail stores, turning their smart phones into a credit card point-of-sale system and replacing the need for a physical wallet altogether.

The most recent push was launched alongside discounts and “practice terminals” at Google’s newest partner retailers, which include Manhattan-based American Eagle Outfitters, The Container Store and Toys “R” Us, among others.

Toneise Holmes, manager of the flagship American Eagle Outfitters store in Times Square, was quick to note that the mobile payment option focuses on convenience and seems to make purchases smoother overall.

“People are checking in with their phones to pay and it seems to be going really well. People seem really comfortable with it. It’s awesome,” Holmes said.

“Overall, it’s smoother,” she said, but as in any crowded store, Holmes added that with some of the newness and unfamiliarity of the system, “if you have a long line it becomes an issue.”

The mobile wallet works by storing consumer’s credit card numbers on their phones so merchants can identify and accept the number as a payment method. At the moment of purchase, the user is required to punch in a four-digit PIN and tap the phone against the provided terminal. Using near field communication (NFC), the simple tap triggers the transfer of funds from either a Citibank MasterCard or a virtual Google card, which can be pre-paid by the consumer and stored in the phone.

“Eventually, your loyalty cards, gift cards, receipts, boarding passes, tickets, even your keys will be seamlessly synced to your Google Wallet. And every offer and loyalty point will be redeemed automatically with a single tap via NFC,” reads the “vision” section of the Google Wallet website.

So far, the digital payment method only works with one phone and one carrier—the Nexus S 4G on Sprint, along with select credit card companies. Expansion plans, however, are imminent.

Osama Bedier, vice president of payments at Google, recently said: “When we announced Google Wallet, we pledged a commitment to an open commerce ecosystem. We appreciate Citi and MasterCard for being our launch partners. And today, Visa, Discover and American Express have made available their NFC specifications that could enable their cards to be added to future versions of Google Wallet.”