Lawn Chairs in Times Square

Native New Yorkers were a tad confused today when they learned that Broadway was shut down between 42nd Street and 47th Street over the long weekend. A new traffic pattern was put in place and a huge number of lawn chairs were placed to give Times Square tourists a place to sit.

Photos of Chelsea Market

Here are some neat HDR shots (mostly) that I took at Chelsea Market in NYC:

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ATM card skimming happening right in NYC

Previously on C.S.I… a man found an actual card skimmer in the wild, in the flesh. Today, Gizmodo reader Sean became the card skimmer/PIN camera’s latest almost-victim. Where? Chase Bank in Manhattan, East Village.

Sean Seibel was inside a local Chase bank where he inserted his ATM card into one of two side-by-side automatic teller machines. When the machine told him it could not read his card, it took him a bit of jiggling to get his card back. He tried it a couple more times and got the same results. Before trying the other machine, he inspected the slot of the current ATM he was using and realized that it had a false plastic cover attached to the slot. The amazing thing about the cover was that the translucent green plastic matched the card reader slot perfectly, meaning that it was made specifically for Chase ATMs. After snapping a few photos with his iPhone, he alerted the branch manager and explained what happened.

As he was leaving, Seibel remembered reading about card skimmers having small cameras in the proximity in order to read PIN pad activity, so naturally, he went back to the ATM to inspect, which is where he found an extra mirror attached to the vandalized machine that the other ATMs didn’t have. Drilled into the mirror was a tiny pinhole with a camera inside, directed at the PIN pad. Seibel alerted the branch manager again and asked Chase why they hadn’t inspected the ATM after he had warned them the first time. Chase honestly replied that they hadn’t thought of it because they had never encountered that sort of thing before.

From the crazy amounts of feedback we received last night after we posted the first story, it seems that card skimmers are a common crime everywhere from Thailand to Mexico. But actually hearing about it happening to our very own readers here in America makes us want to help get the word out. Seibel says it best: "Take this as a warning and please inspect every ATM machine you use, no matter how secure you think the environment is."

See the full article at Gizmodo.

Times Square To Become Giant Pedestrian Mall

The Great White Way is on the fast track to becoming a pedestrian mall.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced experimental plans to close part of Broadway to vehicles.

But as CBS 2 HD has discovered, not everyone is on board.

“This midtown traffic mess is one of those problems everyone always talks about and you always say there’s nothing you can do about it, well, we’re going to try and do something about it,” Bloomberg said on Thursday.

The mayor announced an ambitious plan to actually close blocks of Broadway for pedestrians.

“We expect both travel times and safety to improve and in some cases substantially,” Bloomberg added.

The mayor’s plan, according to published reports, would be to close Broadway from 42nd to 47th streets and put chairs, benches and cafe tables where taxis and trucks usually go. The mayor’s vision would resemble last summer’s Broadway Boulevard Project below 42nd Street, which is still in effect.

See the full article at WCBS.

Spider-Man + U2 = Broadway Show?

Broadway’s Spidey senses are tingling.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the hyped stage musical directed by Julie Taymor (The Lion King) with music and lyrics courtesy of U2‘s Bono and The Edge, will kick off what its producers hope will be an amazing run along the Great White Way beginning with previews on Jan. 16, 2010, and a Feb. 18, 2010, opening night.

The $40 million effort, reportedly the most expensive Broadway production ever, will make its debut in the Hilton Theatre, the only venue big enough to allow the superhero room to spin his way around the sprawling skyscraper sets while duking it out with various bad guys.

See the full article at Yahoo News.