Photo by Benzadrine. New York City faced some stiff competition in the Forbes Top 10 “Misery Measure”, but ultimately moped away with a respectable fourth place, losing only to such perennial dystopias as Detroit (#1, forever); Flint, Michigan (#3) and… Stockton, California, in the #2 slot? Apparently, the Bay Area satellite has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country and a swelling population. To compile the list, Forbes compared 150 of America’s largest......

Photo of Eli Manning by AP/Bill Kostroun; Photo of Tom Brady by AP/Stephan Savoia When Super Sunday rolls around, there will be a lot of questions that will be answered. Will the Giants stop the undefeated season of the Patriots? How will Eli Manning perform in the biggest game of his career? And how Tom Brady's foot be? While there are clearly lots of other questions, one question that isn't so obvious is...who's the......

LAist listed a top ten list of sorts: things they hope not to see in Los Angeles in 2008. (one example, pictured above). Shanghaiist was surprised to learn that "godless," "atheist," and "commie" China is soon going to be the world's largest supplier of Bibles! Torontoist picked some of their favorite photos of 2007. Londonist was relieved to hear the fire at the Royal Marsden hospital didn't harm any of the patients even though......

Brooklyn Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (D, 51st District) wants to ban alcohol ads on buses and subways. The ads provide just $3 to $5 million of the $100 million in revenue the Metropolitan Transportation Authority gets from ad sales and the MTA has not taken a position on the proposed legislation. The state’s Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services did express support for the legislation calling it "consistent with our strategy of preventing alcoholism......

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: Secrets of New York: New York's Firsts: Pioneering Moments (Sunday, 8:30 p.m., WNYE 25) Kelly Choi takes a look at some New York firsts. White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Monday, 7:30 p.m. HBO) To commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the first bombing of civilian targets with nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, HBO airs this look at the two deadly attacks through archival footage and......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

Zodiac (directed by David Fincher) A series of attacks and subsequent puzzling communiques from the alleged killer to the San Francisco Chronicle terrified the Bay Area during the '60s through the '80s. Director David Fincher grew up in that part of California and uses his childhood feelings of dread and fascination to craft an unconventional thriller. Unlike a more typical detective story with a evil-doer and a single valiant sleuth, Zodiac meanders over a long......

Seattlest has a talk with the photographer from last week's "Segway Mom" and then experiences some dissension in the ranks over the question of wine vs. beer. It's not West Side Story, but about as close as they'll get. They're also still waiting on some inbox relief after a spammer is arrested. As Chicagoist counts down the days to its third anniversary party, they found all-organic pizza to be underwhelming amidst the hoopla, tried......

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

Rolling Stone has officially turned 40! We can't honestly say it's aged very well, but it sure is partying like it's 1967. Last year, at 39 and issue number 1000, Jann Wenner wrote, "The fact that we had John Lennon on the very first cover [pictured] was serendipity. We had a publicity photo from his role in the anti-war film How I Won the War. That photo, we now realize, speaks so clearly to the......

A's 5, Yankees 4: After all the work the Yankees did to outlast A's starter Rich Harden and hold the not-so-potent Oakland offense in check, Mariano Rivera gave up a three-run walk-off homer to Marco Scutaro (he's a former Met) and the Yankees lost a series in the Bay Area. They could have easily swept the three games, but a tough extra-inning loss Friday night and an even tougher loss Sunday made them settle......

- Outsourcing is coming to a high-end restaurant near you, and no we are not talking about phone reservationists working abroad who do not understand that a 5:45 reservation is unacceptable to you. - Florence Fabricant has the official word in this weeks "Off the Menu" on Back Forty, the upcoming casual spot from Savoy owner Peter Hoffman, which we first told you about in the fall. Located in the old Radio Perfecto space with......

Comedian Doug Benson of Best Week Ever, Last Comic Standing Season 3, and Comedy Central Present's fame is in town to perform as part of the The Marijuana-Logues at Comix on January 18th, 19th, and 20th. In this interview, he discusses his love of movies, his film in progress Super High Me, and his new podcast, Doug Benson's I Love Movies. When did you start smoking pot? 27. The story goes something like this: I......

While not listed on the website, a small bird-shaped source tells us that the gigantic (website says 66k vs. 90k sq.ft. in reality) Whole Foods in the Avalon Christie on Houston & Bowery will open in April 2007, an almost 1 year delay. Same little birdie says that contrary to reports elsewhere, they will also get to build a Whole Foods wine store (maybe not liquor) to replace the one forced out of the Columbus......

Breaking the law, breaking the law We -ist folks love us some crime, and no misdemeanor is too petty for a post on any of our sites. This week, join us for a rogues' gallery of miscreants major, minor, and alleged. Gothamist gets us started with "Law & Order", muppet style. Oh, you know what isn't a crime? Taking pictures on the MTA. So, why are cops stopping photographers? In other Gotham crime, a......

Yesterday, the Department of Energy listed places that need more power lines, possibly paving the way for the federal government to force states to upgrade or build power lines. The study, the National Electric Transmissin Congestion Study, broke out three kinds of power congestion areas: The first are categorized as the most severely congested areas - “Critical Congestion Areas,” of which the study identified two critical areas: Southern California and the Atlantic coastal area from......

Hey, have y'all been using our new "Recommend this" feature at the bottom of each post? This week we're bringing you the "Most Recommended" posts from across the -ist world, as well as recommending some of our own. Phillyist thinks that readers recommended this post the most because "most of our quieter readers (probably) agree with us that rude commenting sucks." Know what else sucks? Philly's not getting the Olympics, but they are getting thinner.......

San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer poses a heated question to his readers: Is New York better than San Francisco? His thoughts on the matter are clear: I've been asked the question of which is better many times, and I have a stock answer. Because of its size New York has more to offer, but if we viewed things on a per capita basis, San Francisco would blow the Big Apple to bits. I......

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow. Ah, Houstonist. They're biking to work, that is, if they can figure out how to get there. That's right, Mapquest says "Houston had the......

Proving that people will research anything and everything, the SCOTT Clog Clinic says New York City is the cloggiest city in the country. Um, yay for us or ewwww for us? Now, of course Scott's goal is to talk about their toilet tissue (we're Charmin consumers, for the record), because their tissue is "fast-dissolving," but it seems many clogging problems are due to bad plumbing and "heavy flushing periods." Scott provides tips to a less-clogged......

Torontoist throws down the gauntlet and challenges all comers: pillow fight, bitch. They also stand up for a fellow blogger taking heat from the TTC and welcome city-wide WiFi. SFist can finally admit it: It's possible that Bary Bonds juiced. Is Bay Area artist (tempted to put quotes around that) Thomas Kinkaid "kinda crappy" or "explosively crappy" or does he just like marking territory? SFist wonders. Technology comes in the form of new Mac goodness......

Today's map comes from Radical Cartography, source of the popular subway comparisons from a couple of days back. In this map, entitled "The Errant Isle of Manhattan", Bill has superimposed the map of Manhattan into other geographies, including Chicago (seen above), the Bay Area, and Philadelphia. It's fun to check out the sense of scale-- our little island is pretty small compared to some of these other cities.......

Albert Maysles, Documentary Filmmaker...

It's an exciting night for hip-hop in NYC. There's a big who's-who Katrina benefit show at BB King Blues Club with M1, Talib Kweli, Q-Tip, the Beatnuts, and many more. Multiple members of Wu-Tang will be at Northsix in Brooklyn, and hip-hop meets indie-rock-electronica at Irving Plaza tonight with Notwist and Themselves as 13 & God. "Take a rock band that isn't really a rock band and a hip-hop group that isn't really hip-hop,......

Andrew and Evan, Glassblowers...

On Sunday, the NY Times said that many New Yorkers are New York Region > On the Whole, They'd Rather Fly From Philadelphia" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/nyregion/13fly.html">taking flights out of Philadelphia to save money, because the NYC area airports are really expensive. The cheaper fares are mainly coming from US Airways, which slashed its fares. While this may be true, Gothamist is still really surprised. Mainly because it takes about two hours to get to Philly (it's not......

The San Fransico Chronicle reports that Jason Giambi, the Yankees slugger and first baseman, testified to using steroids during grand jury testimony on the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) case. Giambi has publicly denied the use of performance enhancing drugs, but rumors have been flying since he was summoned to testify last year. In The Chronicle's report, Giambi is said to have testified that he used steroids before becoming involved with BALCO. Once he hooked......

Gothamist just returned from a mini-vacation in San Francisco. Naturally, we spent a great deal of our time eating. And why not? San Francisco is home of a unique food phenomenon that is virtually impossible to find here in New York -- the authentic taqueria. Yes we have Mexican food here, but many of the more Mexican (rather than Tex-Mex) restaurants in New York are high-end, and therefore do not qualify in our quest for......

Petur Magnusson, Young Curmudgeon...