South Jamaica scam artists prey on Manhattan tourists

From A Walk in the Park:

A team of illegal ticket sellers has been preying on unsuspecting tourists for years, NYC Park Advocates has learned.

The ticket scalpers are working in some of the most heavily visited downtown tourist destinations - Statue of Liberty, Staten Island Ferry, and Pier 15, (South Street Seaport)

The unscrupulous scammers sell Statue of Liberty tickets for between $ 80 - 100 dollars: re-sell used Statue of Liberty tickets: Sell people tickets to the Staten Island Ferry and charge people $ 20 just to enter Battery Park, a public park on the tip of Manhattan.

The group wear dark blue official looking tourist operator vests that say, SJQ Sightseeing Tours.

SJQ stands for South Jamaica Queens.

They have been a fixture in lower Manhattan operating in broad daylight for years.

On Wednesday career criminal Gregory Reddick, 54, of 118 Road in Jamaica Queens, was busted after leading park police on a wild chase in lower Manhattan.

Parks Enforcement Patrol officer Jean-Baptist Joseph, 33, saw Reddick on Pier 15 as he was allegedly in the act of conning tourists out of cash.

The PEP officer approached Reddick and ask him for ID. He refused cursed at him and ran away.

The officer called for back up. PEP officers tracked him down a half mile away in Battery Park.

Another officer approached the con and asked him for ID.

"F*ck off off, I ain't givin you shit," he responded, according to an officer at the scene.

He ran, and the officers caught up to him. He resisted arrest and officers maced him twice in order to get him to comply.

A large group of Reddick's associates formed during the arrest, yelling and screaming.

An NYPD officer in the park said that on Monday - two days before Reddick's arrest - he had received a compliant that Reddick had sold two tickets to the Statue of Liberty to a Virginia couple for $ 409 dollars.

WTC sphere is staying

From the NY Times:

Rededicated in Battery Park in Lower Manhattan on March 11, 2002, as New York City’s interim memorial, the “Sphere” has been sitting for months behind a construction fence while the park is renovated. No one in a position to know what might happen to the 25-foot-tall bronze globe, which still bears the scars of Sept. 11, 2001, would disclose anything publicly about where it might end up. Or when.

So when a work crew arrived on Wednesday and began dismantling the sculpture, placing one hemisphere on the back of a flatbed truck, and a crew member said that he could not divulge where the “Sphere” was headed, it seemed as if the cloak of secrecy was about to swallow the sculpture whole.

To make matters even more puzzling, officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the sculpture, and those of the National September 11 Memorial, which is frequently mentioned as a possible final setting for the “Sphere,” said they knew nothing about the move.

The parks department did know about it, however. On Wednesday evening, Arthur Pincus, an assistant commissioner of the agency, said the “Sphere” was simply being moved about 550 feet within the park, to a spot much closer to Castle Clinton, to accommodate the renovations.

Originally they were going to remove the statue.

9/11 sphere to be removed for bike lane

In yet another disgusting but unsurprising move by the Bloomberg administration, the sculpture that survived the 9/11 attacks and has been at Battery Park for 10 years, is being sent to storage to accommodate a bike lane. You'd think the fact that Bloomberg never would have become mayor had it not been for 9/11 would make him a little more sensitive when it comes to the topic. But it's becoming more and more apparent that anyone living in NYC in 2001 when Bloomberg was first elected, is not welcome here now.

Watch the story here.

"As for the eternal flame, plans call for the gas line that feeds the fire to be turned off." - Fox 5

What a waste public authorities are!

MYFOXNY.COM - An investigation by the New York inspector general revealed that the Battery Park City Authority has squandered more than $300,000 on parties, gifts, and free lunches.

"Such excessive spending by a state authority was outrageous," said Inspector General Joseph Fisch, who also noted that the authority's staff complained of favoritism by top executives.

The inspector general's report identified wasteful spending of public funds from 2005 through 2008 on items from $100,000 on executive lunches to $16,000 open-bar parties and $100,000 in inappropriate charitable donations, including a gift to Auburn University Foundation, in Alabama.

AKRF archaeologist giddy over downtown artifacts

From Metro:

Pointy shoes, oyster shells, clay pipes and other detritus of the Dutch who founded New Amsterdam, the British who followed and the early New Yorkers were among the 65,000 artifacts uncovered during construction of the $400 million South Ferry subway terminal.

A sampling of the remnants, including segments of the 18th-century battery wall that gave Battery Park its name, are now on display at the New York Transit Museum’s annex at Grand Central Terminal.

Diane Dallal, archaeology director for AKRF, a firm that analyzed the artifacts, was excited to find yellow Dutch bricks that once lined walkways.

“A lot of times you see these black-and-white drawings of New York,” she said. “But it must have been very colorful.”

Her attitude is interesting considering Dallal works for AKRF, the firm the city and state hires whenever it wants to do something particularly dastardly, such as Columbia University expansion, Atlantic Yards, etc. She is the one who probably gave the green light to the MTA to start digging despite the fact that it was an archaeologically sensitive area, just like she did at the St. Saviour's site in spite of the LPC stating that there was a strong likelihood of finding similar archeologically sensitive material and graves at the site. This gal really gets around!

The Battery Park turkey struts her stuff

From the Daily News:

Run, Zelda, run!

That was the word Sunday from shocked tourists as they snapped photos with New York's famous Thanksgiving mascot in Battery Park.

"Go hide before someone eats you," pleaded Nicole Dhillon, 28, of Brooklyn.

The wild turkey has been roosting in Battery Park for at least six years - but she still caused a stir Sunday when she showed her spectacular fan of yellow, dark blue and brown feathers.

The wild turkey was named after Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, because the woman also was found wandering in the park after a nervous breakdown.

Zelda now may be the nation's only wild turkey with a Wikipedia page.

In 2004, she went astray, leaving the safety of Battery Park for an Easter strut in Tribeca. She briefly disrupted traffic along the West Side Highway before she was returned home.

Turns out she's one of about 7 million wild turkeys living in the U.S.