All Over Albany

Soares says crime will increase, man accused of killing son, woman says no one would call for help, Center Square parking garage sold, dead fish are stinky

Albany County DA David Soares says the number of crimes will rise as the economic downturn continues. There's been a rash of shootings, assaults and robberies lately in the City of Albany. [Daily Gazette] [TU]

A Coeymans man has been charged with the murder of his teenage son. Police say the man shot his son late Sunday night. The man's attorney says his client came home and found his son already dead. [TU] [Fox23]

Officials from AMD and GlobalFoundries say they're not too worried about Intel's threat to cancel a key technology sharing agreement. A spokesman for GloFo says the news "changes nothing." [TU] [Post-Star]

The design for the expansion of the Saratoga City Center was unveiled yesterday -- it changes the look of the building considerably. The expansion will increase the convention center's square footage by more than 40 percent. The project is expected to start in late Spring and take 14 months to complete. [Post-Star] [Saratogian] [Daily Gazette]

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Albany's rooftop U-haul

Hey, how'd that get up there?

You've seen it from 787, from Rensselaer, from the port of Albany.

Sure, by now it may just be a part of the A-Town landscape, but when you first noticed it you thought, "How the hell did they get that thing up there?" A big moving truck? On top of a seven-story U-Haul storage building in downtown Albany?

Any guesses? I finally broke down and asked.

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Scanning Tedisco-Murphy, take III

Updated at 3 pm Tuesday

There are only two more weeks until the special election to fill Kirsten Gillibrand's old House seat.

We've been reading the coverage of the race between Jim Tedisco and Scott Murphy so you don't have to. This time around, Tedisco takes a stand, Congress members write checks and apparently Republicans are "self-suppressing."

Here we go...

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Stocked up

St. Patrick's Day supplies fact of the day: The Parting Glass in Saratoga Springs says it bought 20 cases of corned beef and 100 half kegs of beer to be ready for this year's St. Paddy's revelry. [Post-Star]

- Tue 12:30 PM - 2 comments

Bless this bar

The Terra Nova church in Troy will holding a "blessing of the bar" in honor of St. Patrick's Day at Brown's this evening at 5 pm. Here's video from last year's blessing (the actual benediction starts at the 1:45 mark):

We're wondering if they'll use Guinness instead of holy water.

Don't go there

Oh, yes she did. This pic was snapped near Lancaster Street. (Thanks, Anonymous)

So we went back and forth on posting about this because it all seemed kind of trashy and a little stupid. But the sad truth of the matter seems to be: people are having a hard time distinguishing the streets of Center Square from a bathroom. So they're just letting it go... right there... on the sidewalk and in backyards.

The latest episode of this, um, condition played out over the weekend during/after the St. Patrick's Day parade. We've heard from a handful of people in the neighborhood that many parade-goers just couldn't seem to help themselves.

And this has prompted a few questions.

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We all scream

It sounds like there was serious pent up demand for soft serve ice cream last night at the Kurver Kreme. (It opened yesterday.)

- Tue 3:48 PM - say something!

Where's everybody going?

According to an analysis by the Pew Research Center, New York was ranked third among states with the most number of residents migrating to other states between 2005-2007.

In a twist (at least to us), it wasn't necessarily the Sun Belt that was sucking away New York residents. Sure, Florida was the #1 destination for former New Yorkers (hello, retirement!), but it was followed by New Jersey and Pennsylvania. North Carolina and Georgia rounded out the top five.

Also: New York ranked #8 among states with the most number of people moving into it. A lot of this probably just has to do with New York's relatively large population. But if you look at the percentage of the current state population that was born in another state (a measure of whether a state's "a magnet," as Pew describes it), New York ranks dead last.

[via]

map: Pew Research Center

Sgt Dunbar highlighted on NPR

All things considered, they're pretty great.

Check it out: Sgt Dunbar and the Hobo Banned was featured on this afternoon's All Things Considered as part of a SXSW preview.

NPR's All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen said he listened to samples from all 1,800 artists playing at this year's SXSW -- and decided to highlight three bands, Sgt Dunbar among them. He called the Albany crew's sound "nice and lovely and different."

Sgt Dunbar is scheduled to play a SXSW show this Thursday night. Then they're off on a tour through the South.

A couple of other local bands are also playing SXSW: Phantogram (nee Charlie Everywhere) and Sean Rowe.

Earlier on AOA:
+ Sgt Dunbar's drive-by Albany-ing
+ Sgt Dunbar and the Hobo Banned live (video)

(Thanks, Alejandro!)

photo: Patrick Dodson / Sgt Dunbar