Milton, 25, has been working as a part-time doorman in a Greenwich Village rental building for the past 3 ½ years.   

It is his first job as a doorman. Here’s what he had to tell us about resident mood swings, off-the-books services and what makes someone a nightmare tenant. 

How did you become a doorman?

A family friend introduced me to the super and the super liked me, so I got the job.

What kinds of qualities do you think are important to succeed as a doorman?

You have to be presentable, clean-shaven -- the average man could do the job, it’s not hard.

What is the most exciting or interesting part of your job?

(Grinning) The tenants’ mood swings.

What are some of the weirdest mood swings you’ve seen?

The Saturday night drunk ones where they slip and fall.

What do you do when that happens?

You try to make them feel comfortable and not embarrassed. 

Is that the most challenging part of your job?  If not, what is?

Just making sure you’re doing the right thing….that and no cell phones are allowed.  Staying off the cell phone is the hardest part of the job.

What makes someone a good tenant in the eyes of a doorman?

Greet us – that’s all we ask.  Sometimes the tenant will walk by and not even say hi or good morning.  That’s not polite – at least that’s not how I was brought up.  

What makes someone the worst possible tenant?

That -- not greeting.  There are some tenants here that still don’t greet.

Does a tenant ever ask for something that’s not in the job description? Where does a doorman draw the line?

We just speak with the boss – my super.

What are some of the things that tenants have asked for?

Sometimes they ask for us to clean their apartment windows and that’s not in our job descriptions.  If it’s ok with the super we charge them a separate rate that most of them agree to.

Do most doormen take money for extra services?

Sure – window cleaning, dog walking – nothing too crazy.

What kind of tips do you expect at Christmas?

Anything is ok with us but anything extra is a beautiful thing.  

What’s one of your strangest or most striking memories as a doorman?

I haven’t really handled strange situations yet. Maybe a leak that happens and it’s 12:00 at night and you’re like, who's going to help me at 12:00 at night?

So what would you do?

I get in contact with the super, call a 24-hour plumbing company – that’s the strangest thing that’s happened here. I guess that’s a good thing.  

So, as one relatively new to the profession, what advice would you give to someone who wanted to become a doorman?

You’re not going to grow standing a lot. We do a lot of standing here.  

Does that get tiring?

It does. It wears on your knees but still, you gotta do it.

Tips from a Doorman features interviews with assorted New York City doormen, in an effort to get the inside scoop on the intriguing life of a Big Apple doorman. Because in New York apartment buildings, doormen don’t just open the doors – they pick up your packages, keep track of your friends and family, and they sometimes keep intimate secrets.

Related posts:

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Tips from a Doorman: "Be honest from the beginning about what you want. Be clear and be friendly."

BrickUnderground's 2011 Holiday Tipping Guide

A Doorman Speaks

Best of Brick: How to concierge your doorman

7 tipping rules for doormen and residents

10 Manhattan doormen talk tips

This post originally appeared at BrickUnderground.

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Danny Meyer has built one of the most successful and respected restaurant groups in the world. The New York Timescalls him"the greatest restaurateur Manhattan has ever seen." His Union Square Hospitality Group runs everything from fine dining restaurants like the Gramercy Tavern to the enormously popular and rapidly-expanding Shake Shack.

He built his empire by focusing intensely on the diner's experience and hospitality. For example, stiff formality is not particularly enjoyable, Meyer found. So even his fine dining restaurants are about the food and being hospitable, not decor or grandiosity. That friendly experience is just as intensely managed and thought out as a stiff and choreographed classic service might be.

Both that attitude, and the frozen custard at Shake Shack, were inspired by Meyer's St. Louis upbringing. "While I was growing up, wherever there was genuine, warm hospitality, there was not cutting-edge food. And wherever there was cutting-edge food, there was not the warm hospitality," Meyer said in an interview with the St. Louis Beacon. "So I think I was in a unique situation to marry those two things for New Yorkers. Maybe that is what one of my contributions has been."

His father owned hotels, and taught him those notions of hospitality, and introduced him to the food world. "My dad gave me the gene to enjoy cooking, and to enjoy consuming good food and wine,” Meyer told The New York Times.

However, his father overextended himself in his own business life, expanding to own two hotels overseas, and ended up going bankrupt at the age of 42. 

Meyer has tried to never make that mistake, putting an incredible amount of time into each restaurant to make sure it would meet his high standards, and that the business side of things was always on rock-solid ground. He opened his first restaurant, Union Square Cafe, in 1985 with his own savings, and took four years to open his next one, Gramercy Tavern. He's made sure every restaurant is completely unique, and part of its community.

He's also had to realize his own limitations. Meyer spent one night trying to work the line at his first restaurant, and the night went just about as badly as it possibly could. 

He told Business Insider that he had given the chef the night off the night before Thanksgiving, expecting a slow night. It ended up being the busiest night the restaurant ever had, so Meyer put on chef's whites over his suit, without having eaten all day. It was the worst night of service we ever had," Meyer said, "the tickets were backed up in the kitchen, my red tie was bleeding all over the shirt, I was about to faint."

He ended up getting into a confrontation with a drunk customer, having a punch thrown at him, and punching back. "That was the last night I cooked on the line," Meyer said.

Since then, he's stuck to his area of expertise, managing the experience and growth of his empire. The focus and measured growth remained constant as Union Square Hospitality Group grew into an organization with thousands of employees and more than 20 restaurants. 

But he's encountered some resistance. Meyer had to close Tabla, a fine dining Indian restaurant, which he described as "excruciatingly hard." He avoided the decision as long as possible, holding off for years when he probably should have already closed it, and laid people off for the first time.

But he's still proud of the restaurant, and learned from his mistakes with it. He told Business Insider that the real story of the restaurant, which he "still misses and loves," was that they were able to to keep an "improbable restaurant" alive for 12 years.

"It was too big. If there was any one lesson, I would not in the future take a concept which is the most narrowly focused and give it the biggest stage," Meyer said. "It was our biggest restaurant in terms of seats and Indian food is not the most expansive and accessible concept. I would do it again in a heartbeat, but I'd do it in a smaller space."  

Since then, Meyer's strategy has paid off. He did not open a second Shake Shack location for over five years after the first one opened, despite the incredible popularity of the first branch, which routinely saw hour-long waits. That's glacial growth for a fast food chain.

That's because Meyer and his company insist that everything is right before expanding, and that even though it's a place to get a burger in fries, that every Shake Shack is unique to its community, and firmly set up for success. 

The expansion's more rapid now, but that doesn't mean it's any less thoughtful. A new Shake Shack will only open if these three criteria are met, Shake Shack CEO Randy Garutti told us:

• "We believe all the other shacks will be better in the process of opening another one. If there is ever a moment when we say because we're opening more the other ones will get worse, that just won't happen"
• "When we have communities that are excited and are asking for a Shake Shack."
• "We have developed the leadership that can continue to grow and run that restaurant as well as every other Shake Shack. So we don't want growth to out pace out ability to get better every day."

Garutti says the lessons Meyer he learned from his father and his early struggles are embedded in the whole organization. "You know what quote I use when I talk to our team, that's a good one for us? 'The bigger we get, the smaller we need to act,'" he explains."What that means is, you know, a lot of companies when they grow and keep growing they just act bigger and they forget how they used to act when they had one restaurant. Now for us, the bigger we get, the smaller we need to act. So when we make a decision we ask ourselves: 'Okay, that's a good decision. But would we make the same one if we only had one restaurant?' And we challenge every growth decision by that."

SEE ALSO: The 25 Most Innovative Businesses In New York City

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There are a mere three days remaining before the initial deadline to avoid sequestration and a fix remains unlikely. 

One way to grasp the impact of the budget cuts is to analyze which states will see the biggest economic fallout. 

Back in November, the Pew Center on the States released a groundbreaking report discussing how sequestration — back then a portion of the fiscal cliff — would impact Americans on the state by state level. 

According to the report, these are the states most and least reliant on the federal government economically:

Notice that the D.C. metro area would take a big hit in the event of budget reductions, but states like New York come across relatively unscathed.

According to the Pew Research Center:

Cuts in federal procurement and salaries and wages could slow economic activity, and thereby adversely affect state finances by reducing state personal income and sales tax revenues and increasing demand for state-funded income support programs. Again, the effects on states would vary, based on the level of such federal spending in the state.

As such, Delaware probably will not see too much pain, but the Washington D.C. metro area — including parts of Maryland and Virginia — is going to feel sequestration roughly four times harder than the national average. 

SEE ALSO: 21 Terrible Budget Cuts That Will Destroy America If Sequester Hits

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If one thing is made clear by the latest Census report on the geographic concentration of high-income households, it's this:

Wealthy people love living on the water's edge.

The report, which is based on data from the American Community Survey (2007-2011), zeroed in on not only which metro areas are home to the biggest bank accounts, but where these well-heeled residents are the most concentrated. Coastal towns were by far the most popular, including long-time favorites like California and Florida. 

With the final ranking in hand, we decided to dig a bit deeper. By breaking down each metro area in the report's top wealthiest metropolitan areas by income tax rates, household income, and home value, we sought to explain not only where the wealthy live, but why.

These are the biggest metro areas with the highest concentration of wealthy residents. 

Tax rates are noted as percentages of income and were compiled from Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy data. Average household income data was provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. Average home price data was compiled from Census data and Zillow.

21. Philadelphia

6.9 percent of households are in the top 5 percent of earners nationally. 

Average household income: $61,496

State tax rate for wealthiest 1 percent: 4.4 percent (Pennsylvania); 7 percent (New Jersey)

State tax rate for next 4 percent: 6.8 percent (Pennsylvania); 8.8 percent (New Jersey)

Average cost ofsingle-family home: $214,900

Well-known wealthy inhabitants: Mary Alice Torrance Mallone, Brian Roberts

Extra: Philly Mag recently published an exclusive feature called "Confessions of the One Percent." It was billed as a chance for the city's richest to anonymously spill their secrets about life at the top of the economic food chain.

20. Honolulu

7 percent of households are in the top 5 percent of earners nationally. 

Average household income: $71,263

Hawaii tax rate for wealthiest 1 percent: 8 percent

Hawaii tax rate for next 4 percent: 7.5 percent

Average single-family home cost: $607,600

Well-known wealthy residents: Pierre Omidyar

Extra: Although they aren't residents of The Aloha State, many people on America's rich list have oceanfront vacation homes in Hawaii, including Michael Dell and Charles Schwab.

19. Seattle

7.1  percent of households are in the top 5 percent of earners nationally. 

Average household income: $67,023

Washington tax rate for wealthiest 1 percent: 2.8 percent

Washington tax rate for next 4 percent: 4.7 percent

Average single-family home cost: $295,700

Well-known wealthy inhabitants: Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos

Extra: Washington's tax rates are known for being the friendliest to the wealthy. The state doesn't have a tax on income and has low business taxes as well.

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A group of New York City firemen came to the rescue of a woman who was being attacked on Sunday by a man wielding a meat-cleaver, preventing what could have easily turned into a brutal and very public execution.

“I see the cleaver go up and he swings down and he hit her in the head,” firefighter Jose Ortiz, with the Chinatown Dragon Fighters company, said at a press briefing. “Now I’m thinking I gotta grab this guy.”

The woman was struck several times by the blade before Ortiz and associate Shane Clark were able to subdue her attacker, according to NBC New York.

As they wrestled him to the ground, the woman fled into a nearby restaurant covered in blood, then bolted out into the street. Another firefighter fetched a trauma injury bag and chased her down, ultimately convincing the woman — who apparently had limited English-speaking skills — that he was just trying to help.

The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital with lacerations on her back, neck and face, but she’s expected to recover.

This video is from NBC New York, aired Sunday, Feb. 24, 2013.

View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.

SEE ALSO: Court Rules There Is No Right To Carry A Concealed Weapon

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York State's top financial officer will release estimates of Wall Street 2012 cash bonuses on Tuesday as public scrutiny of bankers' pay continues unabated.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli will release the closely-watched report on Wall Street compensation and its impact on the city and state at a news conference in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday morning.

DiNapoli said in October that Wall Street bonuses likely fell for a second year running in 2012, dipping below an estimated $19.7 billion for 2011 as the financial industry faces leaner times and tighter regulation

In 2011, Wall Street bonuses fell to their lowest in three years as volatile trading and stiffer regulations took a toll on profits. The overall bonus pool was down 13.5 percent from 2010 and the average cash bonus was $121,150, according to DiNapoli's report for that year.

The last time the bonus pool shrank for two years in a row was in 2007 and 2008 at the start of the financial crisis, the Comptroller's office said.

Wall Street is an important source of tax revenue for New York. About 14 percent of New York State tax revenues came from Wall Street in 2011, down from 20 percent before the financial crisis, while the industry's contribution to New York City's tax take fell from 13 percent to less than 7 percent.

Other estimates suggest compensation remained flat or grew modestly in 2012 compared with the year before. Johnson Associates expects that bonuses among senior management at financial industry firms expanded 0 to 10 percent last year.

The Comptroller's estimate is based on personal income tax trends. It reflects cash bonuses and deferred pay for which taxes have been withheld. The estimate does not include stock options or other forms of deferred compensation.

(Reporting by Edward Krudy. Editing by Andre Grenon)

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NEW YORK, N.Y. — National Rifle Association President David Keene warned Monday that there will be a "very rough and very ugly" over gun control, but said he believes his group will ultimately succeed in derailing new legislation. 

"Around the country, the tide is turning on these questions," Keene told influential conservatives at the New York Meeting. "It's going to be a very rough and very ugly battle, as many of you have already seen."

"Fortunately, our enemy doesn't have any guns and they don't know how to use them," he added. 

Keene expressed confidence that Senate Democrats will not have enough support to pass most of President Barack Obama's gun control agenda, including a new ban on assault weapons. He added that the NRA remains concerned that Congress will pass a bill that would require universal background checks for all gun buyers. 

"Harry Reid has one interest and that's the word majority in front of the word leader," Keene said, noting that several vulnerable Senate Democrats are up for re-election in gun-friendly states next year. "If it were up to him, he'd slow walk this thing into the next century."

"A lot of these folks are going to try to lose the most extreme things as they go forward," Keene added. "We're not going to give them that cover. The President says he wants votes — we want votes! This is going to cost some people their seats." 

Keene told attendees that the NRA is increasingly worried about the push for additional gun control measures at the state level. Several states — including Colorado and Maryland — are considering new legislation similar to the package of bills pushed through by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo earlier this year. Those laws — which strengthen New York's assault weapons ban and limits magazine capacities — are considered some of toughest gun legislation in the country. 

Keene said that the NRA plans to fight these and similar measures in court. 

"We believe that, if you don't live in New York, your Second Amendment rights will survive this battle," he told the meeting. 

Following Keene's remarks, attendees were given a three-minute primer on how residents of New York City can legally obtain a hand gun. 

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The office of New York State's Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli, just put out its annual review of the state of Wall Street bonuses, and let's put it this way, the results need serious unpacking.

In New York City, securities industry bonuses are forecasted to rise 8% to $20 billion, according to the report. This is better than DiNapoli's office projected in October, but it in no way tells the whole story of what's going on with compensation.

There are a couple of factors as work here. First off, this number doesn't reflect how much of what is being paid out in 2012 is part of deferred compensation from other years.

Since the financial crisis, more banks have been deferring compensation for up to three years in order to better tie banker pay with performance.

Morgan Stanley, for one, announced that 100% of this year's compensation for "top earners" would be deferred for three years. "Top earner," in this case, means anyone making more than $350,000 with a bonus of more than $50,000.

Then there's the fact that some banks paid out bonuses earlier than they'd planned to.

"In response to the fiscal cliff, a larger share of bonuses were paid in December 2012 to avoid higher federal tax rates scheduled to take effect in 2013," said the report.

So we'll see how that impacts 2013's numbers.

The average cash bonus rose by an estimated 9 percent to almost $121,900 per person, but  that's because the entire pool is being shared between fewer people.

From the report:

The Comptroller estimates that the securities industry in New York City lost 28,300 jobs during the financial crisis and has added only 8,500 so far during the recovery, a net loss of 19,800 jobs.

Employment totaled 169,700 jobs as of December 2012 -- 1,000 fewer jobs than one year earlier. DiNapoli believes the industry will continue to restructure and downsize until a new business paradigm is established.

"Restructure" and "downsize" are words the Street has become all too familiar with, and everyone knows they don't bode well for compensation.

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Today, New York's Office of the Comptroller put out its annual Wall Street compensation report for 2012.

It's an important report because it gives the state and city and understanding of what kind of tax revenue they can expect from some of the city's highest earners.

Think of it this way: In 2011, the securities industry accounted for 23 percent of all private sector wages paid in New York City.

That's a huge chunk, and that makes sense, as Wall Streeters are paid an average salary of $362,900 including bonuses. That's higher than any other industry in the state.

How much higher?

"The disparity between the average salary in the securities industry and the rest of New York City’s private sector narrowed slightly in 2011, but it remained wide, at 5.3 times more than the rest of the private sector ($67,900)," said the report.

Bottom line: Wall Street jobs are hard to get, but they're good work if you can get them.

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When Superstorm Sandy struck, it left an unprecedented amount of wreckage in its wake. For disaster relief agencies the priority was clearing the debris as quickly as possible to get residents back to some semblance of normal life.

Now, almost four months later, most of the debris has been cleared from streets and beaches.

But what happens to the roughly 4 million cubic yards of debris in New York State once it's been collected?

There are two staging locations in New York City, one on Staten Island and one at Riis Park in the Rockaways. The removal process is paid for by FEMA and overseen by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

We visited Riis Park, where they have processed the equivalent of 30 stories of the Empire State Building since the storm struck, to see where it all goes.

Watch below.

Produced by Robert Libetti

SEE ALSO: Hundreds Of Small Businesses Are Fighting Mayor Bloomberg's Latest Development Plan

SEE ALSO: It's Becoming A Lot Easier To Grow Produce In Your Apartment Window

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As smartphone cameras improve, more and more people are able to take quality photos that could, in effect, threaten a service like Shutterstock.

However, Shutterstock founder and CEO Jon Oringer doesn't see it that way.

"It's less of a threat." Oringer told us. "It's more of an opportunity."

Watch below to find out why Oringer thinks mobile and video spell the future of Shutterstock:

Produced by Business Insider Video

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A New York man was charged Thursday with stabbing his mother, then chopping her into small pieces, prosecutors said.

Bashid McLean, 23, was charged with murder and attempting to cover up the crime by hiding his mother's body parts.

The remains of the woman, Tanya Byrd, were discovered near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx on Tuesday when they were sniffed out by a dog being taken for a walk.

There were "several body parts -- torso, head, legs, hands, feet," a police spokesman said.

Prosecutors also charged a second man with helping McLean to conceal the body parts after the murder. Police say the crimes took place between Sunday and Monday.

Officials have not yet publicly given a motive for the killing, but New York newspaper reports quoted sources as saying McLean had mental problems, was aggressive and had been in trouble with the law before.

The Daily News quoted Byrd's sister as saying that McLean held a grudge over being put into foster care while his mother fought a drug problem. The New York Post reported that McLean had been photographed posing with his mother's severed head.

SEE ALSO: Slain Girlfriend Spent The Night With Oscar Pistorius Because She Was 'Too Tired' To Drive Home

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One might argue that if America actually got rid of the worst schemers on Wall Street, it would, like Batman finally cleaning up Gotham, have nothing else to do with its time.

Luckily, 150 years of American financial history tell us that day will probably never come.

Before Goldman Sachs, before Gordon Gekko, the original Wall Street boogeyman was Jay Gould.

Raised in obscurity, Gould would go on to become the top-five richest men in America thanks to a series of aggressive, probably criminal schemes.

He eventually gained a reputation so sinister that fellow Wall Street operator James Keene called him, "The worst man on earth since the beginning of the Christian era."

We wanted to tell the story of this one-time towering figure, if only to show all the vampire squids out there that they're not doing anything new. 

Gould was born to a working-class farmer near New York's Catskill mountains.

The year was 1836 — a capital year to be born for someone with ambition: America's westward blitz had just begun.

Source: Life of Jay Gould

Gould got a taste for profiting off land early.

He worked for local merchants as a surveyor, then as a tanner. By age 20, he and his partner employed 250 men. 

Source: Life of Jay Gould

He moved to the city as soon as he could.

At age 23 he moved to New York to become a Wall Street broker.

Source: Life of Jay Gould

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On Friday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyderannounced a state of emergency in deficit-plagued Detroit and would move to appoint a city manager to take control of the city's finances.

It's a bad situation.

But it's not the first time in American history something like this has happened.

We went to look at six infamous moments where major American cities ceded control of their operations to their states.

In most cases, the cities had no recourse to bankruptcy. In one case, there was a war on.

If there is any lesson, it's that cities are incapable of learning from their sisters' mistakes.

So this list will almost certainly need to be updated in the future.

Missouri seizes St. Louis' police department.

When: 1861

What happened: St. Louis was a pro-Union city in a pro-Confederate state. As Missouri's largest law enforcement body, Jefferson City officials decided they wanted to control it. The arrangement persisted until just a few months ago, when voters decided to cede control back to the city.

Source: STLMag 

Florida takes control of Miami.

When: 1997

What happened: The city fell victim to a then-$68 million deficit and its City Manager Cesar Odio, former Finance Director Manohar Surana and former Commissioner Miller Dawkins faced corruption charges. The new city manager, Ed Marquez, is today the city's deputy mayor.

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

New Jersey takes command of Newark's school district.

When: July 1995

What happened: The state immediately dismissed the district's top officials and hundreds of school employees. But four years later, it seemed like not much had changed. Mayor Sharpe James criticized the new schools head as merely taking orders from Trenton without taking into account the needs of Newarkers.

Source: New York Times

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A big storm is currently covering Chicago in wet snow, and could make its way to major cities in the Northeast later this week. 

Because it's March, it's likely the snow will be heavy and wet, which could mean wide-spread power outages as downed trees take out power lines. There will probably be tons of flight delays and cancellations out of Washington-Dulles and Reagan National airports.

Forecasters aren't sure how much snow will accumulate in D.C. — the city could end up just getting rain — or where the snow will land in the Northeast. It should be light in New York City and Philadelphia, starting Wednesday night. In Boston and the rest of New England, the snow will start Thursday and linger into Friday.

Because the storm is slow moving, it may cause some beach damage in Plum Island, Mass. and Sea Bright, N.J.

Here are the warnings and watches in effect:

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It could take another year before Gov. Andrew Cuomo decides the fate of fracking in New York, according to the AP's Michael Gormley.

Gormley spoke with environmental activist Robert Kennedy Jr., who told him Cuomo is going to hold off on deciding whether to allow fracking until a major study from Pennsylvania's Geisinger Health System is completed.

According to a Geisinger release on the study, preliminary results "may be released within the next year," while other aspects of the research will unfold over five, 10 or 20 years.

Fracking has been banned in New York since 2008. Gov. Cuomo has repeatedly said "science, not politics" will dictate the decision, Gormley notes.

SEE ALSO: Why Fracking Is A True-Blue Economic Game Changer >

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The founder of an extreme fetish website used by New York's "cannibal cop" testified that online chats about women being eaten were a typical fantasy and compared the forum to Facebook.

Sergey Merenkov, the main witness called by suspended policeman Gilberto Valle's lawyers in a single day of defense arguments, told the court his site darkfetishnet.com, a favorite of the accused, was "a social network."

Valle, 28, visited the site, most of whom's users live in the United States and Europe, for discussions on horrific -- but he claims entirely fictional -- scenarios about torturing, murdering and cannibalizing women.

Prosecutors assert that Valle should be found guilty of conspiracy to kidnap women that he had talked about abducting and eating.

But Valle's defense team hopes to persuade the jury that the policeman, who faces up to life in prison if convicted on the kidnapping conspiracy charge, is guilty of nothing more than unusual sexual fantasies.

Merenkov, a Russian, advanced the case when discussing darkfetishnet.com, playing down the apparently macabre nature of its content.

"It's very similar to Facebook," Merenkov said in videotaped evidence given in Moscow, played in the Manhattan courtroom.

The federal jury has been shown gruesome pictures downloaded onto Valle's computers, including women apparently being burned. It was not always clear when a picture had been staged or not.

Closing arguments were scheduled for Thursday, after which the jury will start deliberating in a case that has gripped New York tabloid media.

Merenkov, wearing a black T-shirt and sipping from a cup inscribed "I (heart) TEA" as he spoke to the camera, said his site had 38,000 registered members and about 4,500 used it on a near daily basis.

In a point heavily underlined by defense lawyers, Merenkov said the first thing any visitor to his website sees is a warning, in bold, that "this place is about fantasies only, so please play safe."

The site caters for all kinds of sexual interests, barring only child pornography and zoophilia, or human sex with animals, he said, naming asphyxia-related fetishes as among the most popular. There are other websites catering to the same audience, he said, including one far larger rival.

Cannibalism was Valle's secret obsession, resulting in him spending hours every night on the computer before his wife and mother of their newborn child discovered what he was doing and fled the house last year, then told the FBI.

However, Merenkov, 34, said his site was nothing more than a place where fetishists can chat and role play "without being misunderstood."

"It doesn't mean a person can go to the meat market and purchase a woman, then devour her," he said.

Although his site is run from Moscow, 70 percent of members come from the United States and the largest other portion from western Europe, said Merenkov, who added that his principal employment is "heading a company selling Spanish ice cream in Moscow."

Under cross-examination by the US prosecutor, Merenkov said that despite what he insisted was the generally safe nature of his site, he had booted members out when "it seemed not to be fantasy anymore, that it could have led to something bad."

Pressed by the prosecutor that the self-proclaimed fantasy website includes photographs of "dead women" he countered that they were "models, not real women."

However Merenkov acknowledged he could never be sure of what the pictures showed and that bloody crime scene photos had been included in the sex chats. "We try to delete them," he said.

No one was harmed by Valle, despite his numerous online chats about cannibalizing specific women he knew, including his now estranged wife, with other men.

One of those men, Dale Bolinger, also known by his Internet handle as Moody Blue, has been arrested by British police on child pornography charges.

SEE ALSO: Ex-Wife Of 'Cannibal Cop' Says He Planned To Kill, Cook, And Eat More Than 100 Women

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The Bronx High School of Science, one of New York's top public schools, has come under scrutiny recently for a hazing scandal on its successful track team.

So far, three student athletes have been arrested and charged with misdemeanor for forcible touching and assault as well as second-degree hazing and harassment, according to The New York Times.

Witnesses allege that older runners were intimidating younger students on the team, and that the abuse would quickly escalate to inappropriate touching and threats of rape.

But perhaps the most disturbing detail to come to light is that Marion Dietrich, the school's athletic director, not only knew about the incidents but that they had been going on for years, according to an email sent out by Dietrich and published today by the Daily News.

The email, sent to the school's coaches in March of 2012, alludes to an earlier "incident" that took place two years prior.

"The principal found out about it last Friday and is very concerned," an excerpt from the memo states. "A student's genitals were touched from an athlete on the track team, when the athletes were already changing."

Dietrich was suspended from the school this Tuesday along with two other track coaches.

Read the rest of the email over at The NY Daily News.

DON'T MISS: Oberlin Cancels Class After A String Of 'Hate-Related Incidents' On Campus

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Instagram has over 100 million users, but it doesn't generate any revenue for Facebook. On the flip side, Shutterstock has over 22 million photos in its database and is a publicly traded company generating tons of revenue.

So, what's Shutterstock doing differently than Facebook?

For starters, Shutterstock is a subscription service that relies on a secure approval process for its photos.

Shutterstock founder and CEO Jon Oringer talks to us about Shutterstock's comprehensive approval process and what life is like as the leader of a publicly traded company:

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SEE ALSO: Our Favorite Instagram Photos From The Last Year >

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New York City is on a mission to build a better payphone for the digital age. 

A few months ago, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a design challenge with the Reinvent Payphones initiative. The goal: crowdsource ways to revitalize and upgrade the city's 11,000 payphones. 

Just last night, the city announced the six winning prototypes. Some of the submissions imagined payphone kiosks with air pollution sensors, solar-powered cell phone chargers, and screens controlled by hand gestures and voice commands. 

The city judged the prototypes based on connectivity, creativity, visual design, functionality, and community impact. 

New York City's contracts for its payphones expire in October 2014. The winners of the Reinvent Payphone Design Challenge aren't guaranteed contracts, but the city will take those designs into consideration when determining what to do with New York's payphones. 

Already, the city has converted some payphones into Wi-Fi hotspots. And in November 2012, it replaced 10 booths in Union Square with touchscreens for maps, public service announcements, and entertainment listings. 

NYFi's prototype serves more as a public information kiosk than an actual payphone

The NYFi would consolidate a bunch of city apps and services into one kiosk. For example, we could buy metro cards, access information about local businesses, and use it as a Wi-Fi hotspot.

NYFi won the award for connectivity. 

NYC Loop created a way to morph a traditional payphone into a multi-functional kiosk

NYC Loop's prototype walked away with the Best in Creativity award.

On one side of the kiosk, an interactive image projector could display information and even art on a sidewalk. On the other side, the team envisions an electric car charging station, a bench and garden, or even bicycle parking. 

Inside, people would be able to make phone calls without much interruption, as it features sound harmonizing technology to block out some of the outside noise.

Here's another look at Loop's reinvented payphone

Here, it highlights the booth's Wi-Fi capabilities. Additionally, it envisions piezoelectric pressure plates to convert kinetic energy into electric energy, effectively powering the Loop.

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