Free Republic

<p>Mr. New York is movin’ out of his beloved Long Island home of over 20 years.</p><p>In the village of Centre Island, roughly 40 miles east of Midtown Manhattan, Billy Joel’s 26-acre estate has hit the market for $49 million.</p>

A bar on Long Island is in hot water after it reportedly took bets on shooting deaths in New York City and Chicago. The Cliffton on East Main Street in Patchogue created a gambling pool on which city would see the most shooting deaths over the Labor Day holiday weekend, with the winner offered a cash prize, according to Newsday. “Let the shooting sprees begin!” the bar reportedly posted to Instagram last week along with a photo of a Super Bowl-style betting box. Officials have since expressed outrage over the gambling pool. …

My black male friend just told me a white lady he barely knows chased him down, while he was riding his bike in his mostly white Long Island town, to ask him how he’s doing.

According to a survey done by Long Island index just last year, Long Island is experiencing a mass exodus. To be more precise, roughly 71 percent of young adults currently residing in Long Island are determined to leave it behind in the next five years to come. This has people around the tristate area wondering why are so many young people leaving Long Island. And the answer is simple enough—no prospective jobs and not enough income to afford housing. But let’s go a step further and truly explore why this is happening. Top 3 reasons for young people leaving Long...

Democrats in New York flipped a New York Assembly seat on Tuesday, winning a seat that has been in GOP hands for nearly four decades. Democrat Steve Stern, a former Suffolk County legislator, beat out Janet Smitelli (R) for AD-10, a Long Island seat, with 59 percent of the vote, according to Daily Kos. The district has been represented by a Republican since 1978. Former presidents Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both won the district in the last two presidential elections, but the 18-point margin in Tuesday's election is indicative of a growing blue wave in the area.

A big player in the solar-energy installation market has closed, according to PSEG Long Island and several former employees. Level Solar, which operated offices in Hicksville and Ronkonkoma, terminated employees Tuesday, according to a copy of a note sent to one of the employees. The company’s website has been suspended, and calls to the company’s Long Island and Manhattan offices were not answered. In 2015, the company reached an agreement to borrow up to $25 million from the state’s Green Bank program.

A New York utility plans to approve a wind farm off eastern Long Island that it says would be the nation’s largest offshore wind energy project built to date. The project would be the first phase of a more ambitious effort to construct hundreds of electricity-producing turbines in the Atlantic Ocean in the coming years. The announcement that the Long Island Power Authority plans to approve a proposed 90-megawatt, 15-turbine wind farm in U.S. waters east of Montauk at a meeting next week was greeted enthusiastically by energy experts, elected officials and environmentalists. […] The U.S. lags behind Europe and...

Long Beach Police officers had an "obstructed view" when they opened fire on a man who was allegedly running from a standoff Sunday, according to a press release issued Monday. "Long Beach officers, who were located on the beach, east of the foot of the stairs with an obstructed view due to palm trees and shrubbery, heard gunshots from above and saw the suspect running toward the populated beach area," the press release stated. "The suspect failed to surrender and after officers observed him reaching or his waist band, an officer involved shooting occurred."

OLD SPRING HARBOR, N.Y., March 23 - Here among the ice-cream parlors, candle shops and heaps of antiques, public toilets have emerged as a threat to all that is quaint.To supporters, installing public bathrooms in this North Shore hamlet in the Town of Huntington would be a panacea to Main Street businesses, a necessary amenity to keep shoppers from being lured to shopping malls, where the discounts are deep and the toilets are plentiful.But in the eyes of a vocal group of residents, the toilets are a menace with a mean flush. They say they will clog traffic on Main...

NIONDALE, N.Y., Feb. 19 - One by one, the children of suburbia are leaving Long Island.There is the 24-year-old graduate student who moved to Washington State to study anthropology and found that it was cheaper to live in Seattle than Hempstead. There is the sheriff's investigator, Timothy Ortwein, who left and bought his first house, in West Virginia, at age 23. And there is Emil Soskin, 24, a third-year law student who is fed up with strip malls and subdivisions and longs for an apartment in Greenwich Village.New York's suburbs have long struggled to hold on to young adults, but...

Say L.I. mayor wants D.C. job WASHINGTON - Hempstead, L.I., Mayor James Garner has told fellow Republicans he will seek to challenge Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, GOP sources said yesterday. McCarthy, a nurse serving her fourth term in Congress, became a fervent advocate for gun control after her husband was killed and her son badly wounded in a shooting spree on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993. The Republican sources said Garner, 58, has had discussions to gather support from national leaders, including Rep. Thomas Reynolds (R-N.Y.), head of the National Republican Congressional Committee. One Republican officeholder, who...