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Elvis has been gone for a while. Having died almost 30 years ago you wouldn’t exactly expect to see new pictures of him popping up anywhere. Except that is exactly what’s going on.
This isn’t some vast conspiracy theory. No Elvis spottings at Wal-mart or descending from a UFO, but rather photos taken by George Kalinsky 36 years ago at Madison Square Garden. Kalinsky was asked to give a picture of an iconic New York Moment and chose Elvis at MSG. He was expecting to dig through his file and find 8 to 10 pictures from the night and instead discovered 4 rolls of film, close to 100 never before seen pictures of the King.
Besides the general excitement of this recent discovery the folks at Graceland are thrilled, calling one of the photos one of Elvis’s most iconic ever. The NY post even has a slide show of six of the images. I would expect to see them on display somwhere before the end of the year with a catch title like “The Lost Elvis Photos” or something along those lines.
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There has been growing concern about bottled water recently. A little while ago there were reports that the plastic that bottled water was packaged in was leaching into the water itself which isn’t great. Next there is the environmental impact the disposed of bottles have.
Well, the NY Post is reporting that some New York restaurants are addressing this issue and ‘banning’ bottled water at their locations. so far 12 are on board with the ban (including the Waverly Inn, Del Posto, Gemma, Bobo, Gusto Organics and Broadway East). Apparently the issue has become big enough that even the Park Slope Food Co-op will be voting later this month on whether they will continue to sell bottled waters.
According to the NY Post article, it takes 41 million barrels of oil a year to produce, transport and store bottled water. In place of bottles like Pellegrino you will have the option of free tap water (as you always did) or specially filtered tap water that will run you about $5 a glass. Of course at places like Per Se all non-alcoholic drinks are free of charge (they offer both bottled water and filtered water).
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As I am sure many of you coffee drinkers know, Starbucks was closed for a few hours last Tuesday as they re-trained their baristas on how to make a proper cup of coffee. While Dunkin’ Donuts took advantage of this and was selling $0.99 cups of joe, Starbucks was busy putting up signs in their stores saying “Your drink should be perfect every time. If not, let us know and we’ll make it right.”
And the NY Post put them to it, going to a couple of different Starbucks and placing orders and having some of their coffee remade at each. At one they had their drink made a total of three times.
Now while conceptually this is nice (cause really, how many people are actually going to say something after the first month of this) their may be a few snags in their plan which won’t be revealed until you already have a 10 minute line ahead of you in the morning and someone up front insists that their coffee be made over-and-over again.
Personally, I think each and every one of you coffee drinkers should get out there and take advantage of this. Have those Starbucks baristas make you pot after pot of coffee until it meets your standard for fine quality. I mean, after all, if you are going to pay a premium price for coffee you might as well get what you consider to be a premium cup of coffee, right?
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Different folks like different levels of scary for Halloween, some people are all about watching the slasher flicks and checking out the newest haunted house guaranteed to make you wet your pants, others prefer something a bit tamer like Bedknobs & Broomsticks.
While people are headed out to the parade or heading to their local watering hole to get their Halloween groove on, if you are one of the ones who prefers a good fright maybe you are up for something a little different. If that’s the case the NY Post has just the thing for you: A list of the 10 most haunted sites in New York.
Included on the list we have Washington Square Park, the Chelsea Hotel and a couple of restaurants also some other hotels, churches and cathedrals and the like. The list was compiled by FindingDulcinea, a site that works to compile information.
Kind of neat and worth checking out if you are up for a good Halloween scare.
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We have another two-fer today: Stupid Criminals.
First up, we have a man in Suffolk County, NY who tried to rob a convenience store with a gun. Unfortunately it was either a toy gun or he was totally unwilling to use it (which technically wouldn’t be unfortunate, though if you are going to rob a store at gun point you might want to be prepared to follow through). The guy approached the counter waving his gun and demanded the money in the register. Hafize Sahin, who is, by the way, about 4′5″ and 90 pounds, said:
“I thought the gun is not real. I wasn’t going to open the drawer. I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to give him money.’ I couldn’t give him the money because I thought it was the first time he was doing it.” She added, “I was yelling at him and telling him ‘Get out of here!’ I didn’t want to hit him, I just wanted him to get out.”
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