A slender young woman hung 30 feet in the air, coiling her body around two pieces of black silk that were attached to the rafters. A crowd watching below screamed as she unraveled herself and started falling toward them and then gasped with relief as she came to a stop just above their heads. READ MORE ON NYTIMES.COM
Hearing a knock at the door, Brother Nicholas White peeked through a small cross-shaped window and opened the door at St. Crispin’s Friary in the South Bronx. On the steps outside, a man stood and asked for a blessing. Without hesitating, Brother Nicholas put his hand on the man’s shoulder, closed his eyes and prayed with him. READ MORE ON NYTIMES.COM
Four men whose brutal beating of an off-duty police officer at a fast food restaurant in the Bronx set in motion a series of events that led to his death were sentenced on Wednesday to prison terms of 5 to 10 years.
Just before the sentences were handed down in State Supreme Court in the Bronx, the slain officer’s father, Efrain Hernandez, choked back tears as he called the four men cowards.
“I say that because none of you stood up to my son man to man,” Mr. Hernandez said to the men. READ MORE ON NYTIMES.COM
Armed with buckets of silver paint and rollers, local elected officials and community activists were in East Harlem on Wednesday morning to paint over a mural depicting a cartoon rat with a noose around its neck and a sign that said “stop snitchin’.” READ MORE ON NYTIMES.COM
The recording session seemed unusual by today’s standards — musicians playing instruments in real time with an engineer sitting behind a mixing board, and the sounds being captured on an eight-track tape machine. And not a computer in sight. READ MORE ON NYTIMES.COM
The first hints of something strange at Apartment 4D came one night last May: Someone jabbed at Jason B. Holt’s front door with metal tools, just a month after he moved in. He leaped from his bed, banged on the door from the inside, heard a voice say, “Hey,” and then listened to the footsteps as someone fled down the hallway. READ MORE ON NYTIMES.COM
There was not much left to memorialize. The upper decks of the windswept stadium had already been ripped down, leaving an ever-shrinking portion of the ballpark as the last remaining vestiges of Shea Stadium. READ MORE ON NYTIMES.COM
For the first time in 11 months, about 130 striking workers at the Stella D’oro cookies factory in the Bronx reported back to work on Tuesday, though their return will likely be short-lived.
Last week, a federal administrative law judge ruled in favor of the workers, who refused to accept pay cuts and changes to their benefits, and ordered they be reinstated at the factory. But on Monday, the owners, Brynwood Partners, a private investment company, announced that it would close the plant in 90 days because it could not afford to keep it open without concessions from the workers’ union.
“I feel cheated,” said Richard Pererira, 51, who has worked at the plant for 25 years as a machine operator. “All these years we worked so hard, and now they want to shut us down. That’s horrible.” READ MORE ON NYTIMES.COM
In 1994, on the last day of a month long stay at the only hotel in Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed region between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the photographer Bruce Haley took a picture of a woman he had come to know as “Mama.” Over the course of his visit, Mama brought him breakfast every day. The two became friends, but she refused to be photographed. When Mr. Haley visited her to say goodbye, though, she let him take her picture under one condition: that he permit her to hold an image of her dead son. READ MORE ON NYTIMES.COM
The Obama administration's announcement that it will stop deporting younger illegal immigrants and begin granting work permits was embraced by students in New York who said the plan will allow them to pursue their ambitions. READ MORE ON NBCNEWYORK.COM
In an email sent to NBC News Friday, Bernie Madoff, the man behind one of the most infamous Ponzi schemes in American history, discussed the pain of losing his two sons and refuted claims that they knowingly participated in the scam.
"As difficult as it is for me to live with the pain I have inflicted on so many, there is nothing to compare with the degree of pain I endure with the loss of my son's Mark and Andy," Madoff said. READ MORE ON NBCNEWYORK.COM
A small American flag taped to a brick wall in Brooklyn was all that remained Thursday of a once massive memorial near the site where two NYPD officers were shot and killed last month.
The number of homeless people sleeping in New York City shelters has risen to a record of more than 50,000 people a night, according to a new report.
The Coalition for the Homeless released the report based on city data Tuesday, which stated that an average of 50,135 people per night slept in shelters in January, including 21,000 children. READ MORE ON NBCNEWYORK.COM
By 1975, disco pioneer Patrick Adams had left his job as a songwriter, arranger, and producer at Perception Records and was looking for a new sound—his own sound.
“I wanted to do Patrick Adams, but Patrick Adams is not a great singer,” he says. “I decided the synthesizer was going to be my voice.”
Through the Minimoog, Adams began to sing uninhibited and raw verses. He recorded a futuristic, ethereal disco cut called “Atmosphere Strut” and soon after met fellow producer and record promoter Peter Brown, who convinced Adams to release the single on a new label, P&P Records. The rest is what serious disco fans talk about when trying to convince nonbelievers of the genre’s value, an onslaught of heavy New York disco grooves from the man who would become known as “the master of the masterpiece.” READ MORE ON WAX POETICS.COM