Manhattan

Daniel Lefkowitz, a longtime customer at 8 Bit & Up, likes the Golden Eye and Conker’s Bad Fur Day Nintendo 64 games just fine. But he has a special love: Elmo.

“It just cheers me up after a hard day,” said Lefkowitz, 27. “I get to go home and turn on my N64 and there’s my little guy, laughing and jumping around. It just comforts me.”

Even in the age of high definition, blocky 1990s Nintendo 64 video games thrive in a shadow market at places like 8 Bit & Up in the East Village. Lefkowitz is among a growing group of buyers spending big bucks to revel in the games of the past.

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A shy teenager held the microphone tight in his hand, his St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. His voice cracked and he stumbled over his words as he thanked everyone for coming to the show. It was the first time the boy, Mathew Searles,16, had ever performed in front of a formal audience. The drummer kicked the drum pedal and in an instant the auditorium was awash in blue and pink lights.

They illuminated Searles as he stood in the center of the stage.

Behind him a full band complete with back-up singers swayed to the music and began to sing “Never, never, stop.”

Searles began nodding his head in time with the rhythm and started to rap the lyrics he wrote only two months earlier with the aid of professional musicians. He got the opportunity to create his song through a new collaboration between Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute and the Department of Probation in New York City.

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NY Bureau Probation Concert from JJIE Multimedia on Vimeo.

Emergency responders left Shaun Smith to die because she is transgender, claims a lawsuit brought by the victim’s mother. The Sheepshead Bay attorney representing her says it’s part of a disturbing national trend of discrimination against transgender patients.

The allegations stem from a June 15, 2012, incident, when Smith’s mother, Jenette Cox called 911 after Smith – a transgender woman who was born a man – went into diabetic shock. When EMS responders arrived on the scene and found the victim to be transgender, they failed to render services, Cox alleges.

“This is somebody who needed urgent care and didn’t get it, and basically what stopped them were breasts on an originally male body,” said Ilya Novofastovsky, the Sheepshead Bay attorney representing Cox in the malpractice and discrimination case against the NYPD and the FDNY, which operates the EMS.

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Nathan Freeman is 37 years old. He used to work as a DJ in California. Now he blows bubbles in Central Park. Though he’s been at it for almost a year, he can still hardly believe that this is what he does for a living.

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