Photo Of The Day: The World Trade Center, Rebuilt

by Jessica Marati on

The events of September 11, 2001, left an indelible mark on the country, and indeed the world. Today, New York will commemorate the 11th anniversary of 9/11 with a series of ceremonies and memorial services. It will also celebrate the progress underway on the new World Trade Center towers, which serve as a reminder of America’s ability to overcome adversity. The most prominent tower, called WTC1, was photographed yesterday in all of its red-white-and-blue glory by Flickr user Gus NYC. When completed, WTC1 will be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.

Do you have any great photos of the new Twin Towers? Upload your shots to the Gadling Flickr Pool and your image could be selected as our Photo of the Day.

YouTube Sensation: Real Actors Read Yelp

by Laurel Miller on

Possibly, I’ve been living under a rock, but I just discovered the hilarious YouTube series “Real Actors Read Yelp,” the brainchild of Gotta Kid to Feed Productions.

Broadway thespians and television bit players provide heart-wrenching (and sometimes downright terrifying) enactments of real reviews from across the country. There’s everything from the Times Square Olive Garden (“The waitresses-slash-waiters smile, and seem … nice, but it feels like they’re doing it just to increase their tips.”) to Crazy Horse Gentleman’s Club (“I’ve never been impressed with the dancers. They either look like they just had a kid, or they’re obviously on drugs.”).

It’s hard to choose a favorite, but I’m partial to this disembowelment of a PF Chang’s, as performed by Tony Award-winner Greg Hildreth.


New York City’s (Mostly) Unfortunate $1 Pizza Slice Phenomenon

by David Farley on
There was a crash and a boom from the kitchen. I was just a teenager but from my bedroom, my friend Jay and I immediately knew what had happened. “Your dad dropped the pizza,” he said to me, seconds after the noise reverberated through the suburban Los Angeles house. Yep. That’s exactly what happened. My dad, likely liquored up after an afternoon of football watching (and inspired to imbibe more by the prospect another work week was looming around the temporal corner), was cooking his “special” pizzas. And while removing it from the oven, he dropped it. We’d have to get pizza delivered instead.

Which was a good thing. Because my dad’s pizza was the worst I’ve ever eaten in my life. About one Sunday every month, I’d stroll out into the kitchen and see stacked-up containers of flour and jars of tomato paste and I knew it was one of those dreaded Sunday pizza nights. The thin crust of dad’s pizza, set nonna style in a rectangular pan, would cook wildly uneven: the edges were brick hard and the center doughy; the sauce was so thin it was hard to see on the finished product that there were even tomatoes involved in this near-inedible orgy; and the toppings always consisted of ground beef and bell peppers.

In a way, it seems hard to screw up something so simple. Pizza is just flour and egg for the dough, tomatoes for the sauce and whatever else you want to top it with. Put it in a scalding oven for 10 or so minute and ecco la! Your pizza is done and delicious.

I’ve recently found my dad’s match for the worst pizza I’ve ever tasted. And it’s right where I live in New York City. In the last few years a recent phenomenon has emerged on the city’s dining landscape: $1 pizza slices.

The phrase, you pay for what you get, very much applies here. I talked to Adam Kuban, founding editor of the website Serious Eats and editor and founder of Slice, a blog dedicated to all things pizza. “I think the recession is the big force driving the rise of the dollar slice,” he said. “I don’t know about other folks, but for me, once a plain slice started creeping up near the $3 mark, it ceased to be an automatic transaction. Two bucks? Fine. Two-fifty? Um, OK, sure. Because even at $2.50, if you’re getting two slices, like a lot of people do, it’s still an even fiver. Once you break the $2.50 barrier, though (the average price in Manhattan seems to be holding around $2.75), you start to think about the price in terms of MORE THAN $5.”

A good point. South Brooklyn Pizza in the East Village, one of the best slices in the city, in my opinion, is a whopping $4 per slice. It’s worth it, though. But, as Kuban pointed out, with that kind of pricing it’s not automatic anymore.


The pizza slice didn’t enter the American food landscape until the middle of the 20th century. Before this pizza was largely an ethnic phenomenon with newly arrived Italian laborers eating it in places like New York, New Haven, Chicago and Boston. But when American soldiers returned from Italy after World War II, pizza was on its way to becoming “American.” After the gas pizza oven was created here, allowing pizza makers to create this once-Italian delicacy cheaply and quickly, pizza spread through the rest of the country.

And so now we come to the $1 slice. There’s an extensive write up on Kuban’s blog with an excellent analysis of the $1 pizza phenomenon, claiming it’s a different genre of pizza, as most of the places – especially the increasingly ubiquitous 2 Bros Pizza and 99¢ Fresh Pizza – use a slightly different technique.

“Most of the dollar slice places … stretch the dough on an oiled surface,” said Kuban. “This means they have to use a baking screen so the oiled dough doesn’t burn on the hearth of the oven. The cooking method gives you a less crisp crust – more spongy.”

Which brings us to Percy’s. Located on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, this pizzeria started out as an outlet of South Brooklyn Pizza. When the NYU students were balking at $4 for a slice, the owner took a different approach.

When I stopped in for a slice, longtime pizzaiolo Jack Bruli was shoveling cheese pizzas in and out of the gas-burning oven.

“Because we put love into our work here,” Bruli said when I asked why the $1 slice is so much better here. “And we’re trained. We know what we’re doing. At the other places, there are college students working there who don’t care about their product. We do. This is my job. I’ve been doing it since the ’70s.”

True or not, what also makes Percy’s so special is they still largely use the same technique as South Brooklyn and some of the better by-the-slice places in the Big Apple. Which is to say, they don’t adhere to the same pizza-making ways of the other $1-per-slice joints.

I sat down and bit into the slice. The crust was crispy all the way through, which already gives it a huge advantage to its competitors.

This was a pizza not worth dropping on the kitchen floor.

Judge Rules Airlines Must Stand Trial Over 9/11 Negligence Claims

by Jessica Festa on

A U.S. judge has ruled AMR Corp’s American Airlines and United Continental Holdings, Inc. must face trial over claims of negligence relating to the September 11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001.

Almost eleven years ago, 19 terrorists from the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger jets, including American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, which were intentionally crashed into New York’s Twin Towers, American Airlines Flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93, which was meant to crash into the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., but was unsuccessful. Almost 3,000 people were killed.

According to NBC News, in July 2001 World Trade Center Properties, LLC (WTCP) purchased 99-year leases to four World Trade Center buildings from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Inc. for $2.805 billion. In a lawsuit against United Airlines and American Airlines, WTCP is claiming, “the terrorists could not have boarded and hijacked the aircraft and flown them into the twin towers” if it hadn’t been for the airlines’ negligence, according to a New York court filing.

While WTCP wants $8.4 billion to cover damages, Judge Alvin Hellerstein has limited the amount to the $2.805 billion paid for the leases. In their defense, the airlines say they should not go to trial because WTCP has recovered $4.091 billion from insurance companies. However, Judge Hellerstein has said that at this time he cannot reasonably determine the insurance money covered the damages.

[Image via Anthony Correia / Shutterstock.com]

Culinary Cab Confessions: Ghana on the Hudson

by David Farley on
“I want you to take me to lunch.”

These were the first words I said to the driver after getting in his cab outside my apartment on W. 10th Street in New York City. His eyes went from looking at me in the rearview mirror to whipping his head around to look at me face to face.


“Huh?” he said.

I repeated it and then mentioned the reputation cab drivers have: that, in addition to being oft-eratic drivers, they supposedly hold the secrets to a city’s best cheap eats. He let his head fall back, his face staring up at the ceiling of his car, and let out a huge laugh.

“You see,” said Joseph, “I mostly eat junk food.”

I pressed him, fearing I was going to end up at McDonalds or Taco Bell, asking where he usually eats when he’s taking a break from cab. I know it was cheating but I verbally cajoled him a bit. “Something good,” I said.

And then a lightbulb went on above his head: “Ah,” he said. “I have it.” He stepped on the gas and we whipped eastward down W. 10th St.

When seeking out new restaurants in a place, some people look at food blogs or local magazines or ask friends. I have a different method: I talk to cab drivers. As I’ve done several times in the last year, I’m testing out the theory that cab drivers are also great restaurant finders. So far I’ve done this in Ethiopia, Burma, Mexico, and, once, in New York City and I’ve yet to have had a bad meal. The last time I did this in the Big Apple I was taken to a Turkish restaurant in the Village by a Turkish driver. Would ethnicity once again determine my lunch spot?

Joseph, it turns out, is from Ghana and the restaurant he was taking me to – which he frequents once or twice a week – was a west African place. So, yes, I had my answer. Not that I have a problem with this. One of the goals of doing this is to find a place I’d never think about eating, a place I didn’t even know existed.

On the way there, stuck in traffic on Sixth Avenue, Joseph told me about the Christian book and music shop he owned in Brooklyn. “My specialty was Christian rap,” he said.

Christian rap?

“That’s right. It’s good stuff. And it has a good message. No violence. No profanity.” He suggested I get started with Sho Baraka, the “Jay-Z of Christian rap music.”

I thought this would be a good time to change the subject and asked if anyone had ever hopped in his cab and made such a crazy request like taking them to find a place to eat. About seven years ago, Joseph recalled, a drunk Irish guy asked to be taken him to a strip club – any strip club. “So I took him to a place in west Chelsea. When we got there he insisted I go inside with him. And, you won’t believe it, there were naked ladies in there!” At this point, Joseph buckled over, bursting with laughter while still talking. I understood nothing he was saying. It was totally incomprehensible except it sounded something like “Extra tiny midgets enjoy magical candies with Mitt Romney and Jesus,” but I’m almost sure that’s not what he said. He kept laughing and speaking, though, and I still had no idea what he was saying. At one point, I thought: did he just say, “Punk rock grannies give the best relief when their wooden legs are off”? Nah. It sounded like it though.

A few minutes and turns later and we were idling in front of B&B restaurant (165 W. 26th St., New York, NY, 212-627-2914). “Get the peanut butter sauce,” he said, as I handed him money for the fare.

Joseph shook my hand and reminded me that I should give Christian rap a try. I nodded and made my way into the restaurant. It was set up buffet style. There were no placards on any of the chaffing dishes, so I just grabbed a plate and began putting stuff on. Most of the food was reminiscent of Indian cuisine: a lot of saucy, meaty (sometimes curry-flavored) dishes dumped over rice.

And Joseph was right: the peanut butter sauce (bobbing with super tender lamb meatballs) was amazing. So was the yassa Guinar, a tender chicken in an onion-y sauce. I was the only non-African in the place and felt like I’d really discovered something, a place I really would have never thought to wander in.

Score another one for the taxi drivers. But only ask for music recommendations at your own peril.