Feds Shut Down 26 Chinatown Bus Lines

The "Chinese bus" has long been the cheapest and to many, the hippest way to travel between the major cities of the Northeast. But long plagued by shoddy maintenance and not a few accidents, their safety record has been as legendary as the low price. Today the feds, for now, put an end to most of them.

Federal transportation officials citing serious safety concerns announced on Thursday that they had ordered the shutdown of 26 bus operators, many of them based in Chinatown and offering inexpensive rides along the East Coast to thousands of passengers a day. In addition, 10 bus company owners, managers and employees were forced to cease all passenger transportation operations, including selling tickets, according to transportation officials who called it the biggest crackdown in the history of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The operators cited had employed drivers who worked long hours, had serious driver qualification violations and, in many cases, did not have valid commercial driver's licenses, officials said. The companies also used vehicles that had not been regularly repaired or inspected.

Today's move was apparently spurred by the gruesome 2011 accident in the Bronx in which 15 passengers were killed when the driver allegedly fell asleep behind the wheel. My own experience with the Chinese bus involves a Christmas Eve 2005 trip to DC in which it felt like we took every curve on two wheels. I almost kissed the ground when we got there.

CENSUS: No Italians Left In Little Italy

According to the U.S. Census, the number of Italian-born residents of Manhattan's Little Italy is now zero.

A census survey released in December determined that the proportion of Italian-Americans among the 8,600 residents in the same two-dozen-square-block area of Lower Manhattan had shrunk to about 5 percent. And, incredibly, the census could not find a single resident who had been born in Italy. Little Italy is becoming Littler Italy. The encroachment that began decades ago as Chinatown bulged north, SoHo expanded from the west, and other tracts were rebranded more fashionably as NoLIta (for north of Little Italy) and NoHo seems almost complete. The Little Italy that was once the heart of Italian-American life in the city exists mostly as a nostalgic memory or in the minds of tourists who still make it a must-see on their New York itinerary.

Next month the city will create the Chinatown Business Improvement District, which will include all but two square blocks of Little Italy's 50 square blocks. According to the above-linked story, 89% of the foreign-born residents of Little Italy now hail from Asian countries.

Massive Fire Rips Throught NYC's Chinatown, Hundreds Left Homeless

Last night a 7-alarm fire destroyed several buildings in NYC's Chinatown, leaving hundreds of residents homeless.

At least 14 people were injured in a blaze in Chinatown that reached seven-alarm status shortly after midnight Monday morning. More than 250 firefighters responded to the fire at 285 Grand Street. The fire broke out at a six-story building in Chinatown. More than 250 firefighters and more than 60 Fire Department vehicles responded to the borough-wide call, descending on the six-story building at 285 Grand Street, a residential building anchored by a storefront. Flames burst 20 to 30 feet from the roof. Three ladders had been put up against the building, and a few dozen firefighters waited to be sent in, five at a time. Hundreds of people stopped to watch the blaze on the cool spring night.

Gothamist reports this morning that the number of injured has risen to 32. At least 200 people have lost their apartments.

Evening View - Lafayette & Canal

NYPD Confiscates City's Rotexes

If haven't gotten your dad that holiday Rotex yet, it might be too late. Local news is reporting that the NYPD has shut down a large swath of Chinatown today in a massive crackdown on counterfeit luxury handbags, watches, fragrances, etc.

A strip of stalls selling counterfeit goods in Chinatown were raided Tuesday morning, shutting down the notorious shops just in time for the holiday shopping season. Police say 10 buildings, housing about 30 stalls, were raided on a block of Canal Street off Broadway. A large number of counterfeit goods was reportedly seized, including knock off bags, watches and wallets purporting to be brands such as Chanel, Gucci and Tiffany. Police used bolt-cutters to burst into the shops where counterfeiting was suspected. The raids allegedly revealed secret rooms inside the buildings where dealers did their business. The crackdown was the latest strike by Mayor Bloomberg's Office of Special Enforcement on stores notorious for the wide array of knockoffs for sale on the street.

They never seem to bother the fake handbag vendors that litter the corners of the Upper East Side. I could walk 200 feet from my apartment and have my pick from hundreds of counterfeit items.

Gotham Boots Chinatown Buses

Long the salvation of penny-pinching hipsters, NYC's Chinatown bus lines provide cut-rate (and often, terrifying) service to DC, Philly, and Boston. But Gothamist reports that the city has begun cracking down on unpaid tickets and has towed away many of the buses for non-payment.

One company in particular, New Century Travel, takes the cake owing a whopping $136,387.35. Most of their tickets even date back to July 2007! "It's way overdue...This cannot be a one-time thing," Susan Stetzer, district manager for Manhattan's Community Board 3, said of the towing effort. "They're using public streets as their locations to make money as a private business and on top of it, they're not even paying fines. It's a loss of revenue for the city."

The last time I took the Fung Wah bus to DC, I swear we spent half of the trip (over icy roads) on the two right wheels. They get you there fast, but you definitely feel like kissing the ground on arrival. After that trip, I became a Bolt Bus customer.

Cops Sweep Fake Goods From Chinatown

In one of the largest raids in NYC history, today the NYPD conducted a massive sweep of Chinatown's bustling counterfeit designer goods shops, clearing Canal Street of knockoff watches and handbags. Police padlocked 32 businesses whose owners now face stiff fines or imprisonment.

Mayor Bloomberg: "It is organized crime, frequently accompanied by bloody turf wars, stickups and armed assaults. Counterfeiters rob legitimate businesses of their customers and employees of their paychecks. It defrauds the purchasers of shoddy goods and it cheats the people of New York City of an estimated $1 billion a year in sales tax revenue."

Of course, you can still find street vendors hawking fake handbags on every block elsewhere in Manhattan, not to mention the East African men that work the subway stations with briefcases full of fake watches. I once tried to take a photo of the watch peddlers to use here as a "Morning View" and I nearly got my throat slit. Stupid. I'll confess that I've bought a couple of fake handbags on the request of my sister in Orlando. I am a tool of organized crime.