Archives for December 2006
Another Paris Hilton Video!
THE SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION AUTHORITY NOW SAYS IT WON’T BUILD FOUR NEW BRONX SCHOOLS ON THE LAND BETWEEN CONCOURSE VILLAGE WEST AND EAST 156TH STREET (map) because, inexplicably, the site is a mercury and benzene dumping ground, says NYI. The Mott Haven Campus schools were to house 2,200 students, and the city promised to spend $30 million to clean up the site, but parents are skeptical. Some say health problems have already started since construction began. Chaira Salem says that soon [...]
Posted in The City on December 21st, 2006 | 
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Paddleball Champ Rediscoverd
Legendary 82-year-old all-New York City paddleball champ, Elaine Fein, still has her chops.
Posted in The City on December 21st, 2006 | 2 Comments »
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Flash!
Atlantic Yards Project approved: A three-member state panel greenlights the Bruce Ratner’s $4.3 billion project that will not only include an arena for the Nets, but 16 office and residential towers that will strip that part of Brooklyn of anything resembling neighborhood. See what the Atlantic Yards Report says.
Bronx grandmother murdered by asphyxiation: we guarantee, this is the last you’ll hear of this story that merited a teensy box on page 16 of the Daily News. Thugs tied up 65-year-old [...]
Posted in The City on December 21st, 2006 | No Comments »
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The Worst Book Ever
Dear Mr. Coelho:
Here at Recharger The Dog, we have a rule: never read a bestseller recommended by more than one person.
Ignoring our own advice, we started The Alchemist with trepidation. It began with a cliché that we’ve come to detest—the uneducated working class lad who secretly reads Big Books. This sappy device was used by James Jones in From Here to Eternity (Pruitt, the reluctant boxer or trumpeter—can’t remember which—has a list of Big Books stashed in his pocket), nearly [...]
Posted in Books/Films/Media, The City on December 20th, 2006 | 2 Comments »
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Tastes like chicken
A big fan of dog food with horsey remains, Recharger doesn’t get the latest fuss over illegal meat. Last Saturday, city health inspectors threw a hissy fit when they found 15 pounds of iguana meat for sale in a West Indian market in Brooklyn and 200 pounds of cow lungs for sale at a another Brooklyn store. At a Manhattan West African grocery, they freaked when they found smoked rodent meat for sale. The owner—a perfectly nice man—claimed he didn’t [...]
Posted in The City on December 20th, 2006 | No Comments »
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Best Pizza on an Abandoned Airfield.
Like three-million other losers stuck forever in the bowels of Brooklyn, when Recharger thinks about Grimaldi’s pizza, he salivates. The mere mental image of the extra-thin, extra-crisp crust is freakier than an LSD flashback. Now the pizzeria, located under the Brooklyn Bridge and rated number one in the ZAGAT survey from 1997—2005 (though, tragically, not 2006), is expanding to the Aviator Sports Complex, a $38 million project holding two indoor ice rinks, an 18,000-square-foot indoor basketball court, an indoor [...]
Posted in Food & Fashion, The City on December 18th, 2006 | No Comments »
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TLC = Tough Latkes, Cabby!
Recharger, a former cabbie (see above–note 1981 prices), has long known that the three most evil governments in world history were the German Nazis, the Stalinist Bolsheviks, and the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission.
So when the TLC announced it was hiking the idle fee (also called the “stuck in traffic fee”) from 20 cents to 40 cents per minute, to address the inequity in driver income, snickers were heard everywhere cabbies stop to pee. While the average [...]
Posted in The City on December 18th, 2006 | No Comments »
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Holiday reminder: only Derek Jeter fans permitted to sit in traffic
Apparently upset, like us, that he still lives in Brooklyn, this gentleman, our former social studies teacher, sat down last Saturday on 3rd Ave between 88th and 90th Streets in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. When this failed to get him a rent-controlled duplex in the Village, he harassed the local pizzeria for napkins, accosted strangers for a light, and finally broke off a windshield wiper. Cops arrived and caught him.
Recharger feels his pain. Last Christmas we drank a bottle of Jack [...]
Posted in The City on December 17th, 2006 | No Comments »
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Hey Pops, pass the salt.
NOSTALGIA FOR A SIMPLER, GENTLER PAST OVERCOMES RECHARGER. The Automat is back. Bamn!, brainchild of David Leong and Robert Kwak, has the same little windowed compartments for hot foods we hungry doggies dug at the original Horn & Hardart. Making its first New York City appearance in 1912, growing into a respectable chain, then biting the dust in 1991, Automats were places to grab a quick bite or, as many of the old people who spent quiet hours there can [...]
Posted in Food & Fashion, The City on December 16th, 2006 | 1 Comment »
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Happy Chanukah from Recharger
The Jewish Maid (a Chanukah song sung to tune of “Union Maid”)
There once was a Jewish maid
Who never was afraid
Of Syrian spears and Greek Racketeers
And Hellenized creeps who gave them aid
No taxes she would pay, no Greek gods she would pray
And at their armies, she threw salamies
And this is what she’d say:
Oh you can’t scare me
I’m sticking with the Maccabees
I’m sticking with the Maccabees
I’m sticking with the Maccabees
Oh no you can’t scare me
I’m sticking with the Maccabbees
I’m sticking with the [...]
Posted in The City on December 15th, 2006 | No Comments »
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