Author: Gothamist

April is National Poetry Month and we’re marking the occasion by reading poems on WNYC every day throughout the month. (Gothamist and WNYC are owned by New York Public Radio.) This year, our theme for poetry month is “local” – and we’re looking at the nearby places that matter to New Yorkers. Our first featured…

Roughly 1,000 gallons of oil spilled out of Con Edison equipment and into the Bronx River last week, and state officials said on Monday they were still scrambling to clean up the mess. Alfonso Quiroz, a spokesperson for the utility company, said the leak originated at one of its transmission feeder lines in Yonkers on…

New York City’s Law Department has hired Alex Spiro, a prominent attorney whose clients include Elon Musk and Jay-Z, to defend Mayor Eric Adams in a lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a former transit police colleague in 1993, according to a new court filing. Adams has repeatedly denied the allegations and said he does…

Warm up those knees and quads. You’ll need them to try a new dance that’s going viral in New York City. It’s called the “Reemski.” The dance involves rolling your shoulders in a circular motion while taking tiny steps and moving your hips side to side, like a downhill skier. It’s already been turned into…

MTA CEO Janno Lieber appeared unfazed over the fate of New York’s congestion pricing plan as the state follows a New Jersey lawsuit that could temporarily halt the program. “We are pretty sure that we have followed the law to a T,” he said on CBS’s “The Point with Marcia Cramer” on Sunday. “And we…

The New York state budget, already a week late, will have to wait until after the solar eclipse. The state Assembly returned to Albany on Sunday to approve a temporary budget extender through April 11, a bare-bones spending bill that will ensure the state’s payroll will go out on time this week. It was a…

A new online mapping tool from the New York City government allows New Yorkers to discover a multitude of environmental hazards in their neighborhoods. The Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice released the the map on Friday. It features a citywide map that can zero in on specific blocks and neighborhoods and marks green…

Avoid objects that could topple. Move out of traffic. Head toward a large open space. National guidance for earthquake safety may seem largely irrelevant for New Yorkers, given how rare major quakes are in the region. And considering how frequent they are in California, it’s unsurprising some of the advice has a West Coast bent.…

Several towns in New Jersey are sounding alarm bells about how they will build more affordable housing just months before the state is expected to announce their next housing obligations. Montvale Mayor Mike Ghassali said he intends to ask for a three-year pause on the construction of affordable housing in his town. “Let us just…

A rare earthquake shook the New York City region on Friday morning, surprising residents and sending officials scrambling to confirm the extent of the damage. Then, on Friday evening, a strong aftershock was felt across the area, though it was less intense than the initial quake. Here’s what we know so far about the series…