 We know that your local Duane Reade is stocking beer now, but it's just that sort of majestic one-stop convenience that seems to be killing the bodega. According to the 2010 CPEX Retail Report (below) rents are spiking in former bodega havens like the East Village, the Bowery and Bedford Avenue. Many bodega owners say their rents are too damn high, and are thinking of following the Koreans and getting out of the business. “Bodegas are a dying breed,” Lisa Kaplan, Chief of Staff for City Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, told the Local. “The fact that the chains and pharmacies are carrying more products that bodegas used to sell, is adding greatly to the pressure." And who will care for all the bodega cats? [MORE]  | City Comptroller John Liu, who of late has been having a fun time being a thorn in the Bloomberg administration's backside (see CityTime, that 911 contract), did his thing again yesterday when he rejected a $20 million five-year contract to help train and recruit teachers from outside of the education system. “Twenty million dollars to recruit teachers as the DOE insists on laying off thousands of teachers seems curious at best,” he said in a statement.... [ MORE ] |  | A tour bus overturned on the southbound New England Thruway in the Bronx, right at the Westchester County line, killing 13 people aboard. At least six others were critically injured and while many others suffered other injuries. The bus, which held 31 people plus a driver, was headed from Mohegan Sun to NYC. ... [ MORE ] |  | After a few years of teasing the public with brief promotional runs of Pepsi and Mountain Dew Throwback—in which the sodas feature sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup and come in cans with retro designs like the one Cindy Crawford used to drink from on TV—New York's own PepsiCo is committing to them full time. The news isn't that shocking though considering the last round of promotional runs earned the company an extra $220 million in sales.... [ MORE ] |  | This week, a Brooklyn teenager was arrested and charged with killing her little brothers' pet hamster; it turned out that there was a whole messy family backstory to it, including at least one other hamster homicide. But now, Monique Smith, who was facing up to two years in prison, has had the charges dropped against her, after family members recanted their accounts. Even so, in a jailhouse interview with the News earlier today, she didn't sound like she had much love for hamsters: "If I saw a hamster in this filthy place, I'd kill it. I didn't kill that hamster, but I'd kill one right now because that's what I'm in here for - a b------t rodent."... [ MORE ] |  | After the recession, city Comptroller John Liu claimed that people began thinking of those in the public sectors as the "new fat cats," and wanted to set the record straight. So in a new report (below), the office reminds everyone that city workers get paid on average 17 percent less than their counterparts in the private, for-profit sector. “These findings about municipal salaries are an important foundation for any discussion about public employee pensions,” Liu said in a statement. “The issue of retirement needs to be looked at in the context of the overall compensation package earned by public employees." So, not at 65?... [ MORE ] | | |
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