High five, bro: White people are making a big comeback in New York! Census figures show that the number of whites has increased in recent years, reversing a half century of white flight to the suburbs. Also, the Census Bureau found the number of Hispanic immigrants dipped last year for the first time in decades, and that's partly because they're the ones fleeing to the suburbs, in search of cheaper housing and better schools. According......

The NY Times has a feature on the changing face of the city electorate, finding that "New immigrants accounted for at least one-third of the increase in the number of New York City voters since 2004, while the number of Irish, Italian and Jewish voters, who together represent the traditional core of the city’s political establishment, decreased slightly." Which suggests that strategies used to win certain City Council districts or other elected offices may......

There are plenty of Starbucks in Manhattan (over 170), but if you head over to Brooklyn -- you'll see the streets are mostly void of discarded Venti cups and hardly anyone has heard Josh Groban's new Christmas album. But things are about to change, chain-haters beware.A recent Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable meeting revealed that retail giants such as Starbucks, Duane Reade pharmacies and Chase Bank are planning to double and in some cases triple their......

When residents of 17-17 Troutman St. woke Thursday morning, most were not aware that they would be homeless by the end of the day. The day before, notices were posted that city inspectors would be arriving to look the building over for violations at 9:30 a.m. It didn't take long Thursday for the Dept. of Buildings to designate the building as imminently perilous to residents and demand an almost-immediate evacuation. Residents had until 8 p.m.......

Gotham Gazette has an excellent look at the effects of "a housing bust" by Queens College demographer Andrew Beveridge. This map shows how much income goes towards mortgages; Beveridge notes:The median income of those paying less than 30 percent of their income on housing is $120,900. For those paying between 30 and 50 percent of their income, though, the median is $74,390, and for those paying over 50 percent the median income is $39,900.......

Ladies, it's time to throw your hat in the air a la Mary Tyler Moore: It turns out that young women are earning more than young men in cities like New York, Chicago, Boston, Dallas and Los Angeles. Apparently women between 21 and 30, of all income levels, are earning 117% of men's wages, according to analysis by Queens College demographer Andrew Beveridge for Gotham Gazette. The latest census data shows that women in their......

Students at all NYC schools have a day off today in what is officially noted on the Dept. of Education's calendar as a Chancellor's Conference Day for Staff Development. That dry description actually masks the fact that today's day off from school is a tradition that dates back to 1829 and used to be one of the most widely celebrated holidays in Brooklyn and Queens. Dating back 178 years, Anniversary Day was a school holiday......

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA......

Earlier this week, Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health released a study that shows New Yorkers who "reside in densely populated, pedestrian-friendly areas have significantly lower body mass index levels compared to other New Yorkers." In other words, those people who rely on their feet, rather than other New Yorkers who live in the more spacious parts of the outer boroughs, tend to be thinner. The study also implies that living near mass transit......

That's the headline in both the Post and the News today. In a long-expected announcement yesterday the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York issued their final list of parishes that they are closing. A total of twenty-one parishes in the Archdiocese, which covers the Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island and several upstate counties, will be closed. Ten parishes will be shut down completely while eleven others will be merged with neighboring parishes. The Times reports the......

The Health (and Mental Hygiene) Department released some interesting reports that detail New Yorkers' health by neighborhood. You can check out a profile for where you live, which turns out to be a 16-page PDF listing various stats, like alcoholism, smoking, death rates, and other health issues, as well as giving other interesting demographics (population with age breaks or ethnicity, compared with NYC as a whole). There are also a series of maps that......

-- Don't forget: your bids for the site of Dr. Bartha's successful suicide attempt are due tomorrow. -- Related: NYMag has a piece on "where to look for deals right now." They recommend the Upper West Side: "unrenovated models off the park are $5.5 million." Hilarious! -- But there is hope: famous NYU economist Nouriel Roubini says "since 1997, real home prices have increased by about 90 percent. There is no economic fundamental—real income,......

The last new Project Runway was practically two weeks ago, but thanks to Bravo rerunning it, we could relive it many times. It was full of twists: Two previously kicked-off winners got to reappear and fight for a place in the final four (well, besides Keith) and the outfit would have to be black-and-white and all the material had to be used - even scraps! It's debatable which spooked people more - Angela's "sad eyes,"......

One of the many things I love about this town is that there are a thousand places where you might find yourself saying, “It doesn’t even feel like I’m in New York City anymore.” I started driving a yellow cab, in large part, to try to find as many of those places as I could. I’ve discovered quite a few. The first time I drove down those steep streets in upper Manhattan I imagined I......

Today, Matt Green and Don Badaczewski are attempting to break the record for riding the entire subway system in the least amount of time (the current record is 25 hours, 11 minutes). They are starting this morning at 6AM at Rockaway Park and ending on the 6 to Pelham Bay Park. How old are you? Where do you live? Matt is 26. He lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and works in Manhattan as a transportation......

The Census Bureau is releasing data that will show an increase in Asians and Hispanics and a decrease in whites and blacks. Almost 500,000 New York immigrants came after 2000, and NYU's Immigration Studies professor Marcelo Suarez-Orozco explains to the Daily News, "If you dig a little deeper into the numbers, it shows women of Mexican, Dominican and Chinese origin are having babies at a rate much higher than other ethnicities." Other fun fact: NYC......

graphpaper has an informal look at the demographics of people on his morning subway commute, depending on the hour. Here are some of them:3:00-4:00 AM Drunks of all sorts, club kids, and winos. Late night workers, busboys, getting off their shifts. Only a handful of people per car. 6:1 male/female ratio. 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Early-career yuppies running a little late, creative industry workers, all sorts of professionals. 100% occupied. 1:1 male/female ratio. 10:00......

Did you know that May is Asian heritage month? Well, you do now. To celebrate, take a look at this great set of demographics collected by the Gotham Gazette. Some facts: Chinese, Indians, and Koreans are the leading Asian groups in the Tri-State area. Filipinos, Taiwanese, and Sri Lankens make the highest wages. Filipinos, Indians, Pakistanis, and Sri Lankens speak the best English (some credit for that should probably be given to oppressive policies......

Via Kottke: AssembleMe put together a nice set of NYC population graphs for the NYC Demographics page on Wikipedia. What impressed us what how dominant Brooklyn has been in population for the last 90 years-- although it looks like Queens is closing in, having passed Manhattan in the late 1960s. Even Staten Island is closing in on Manhattan-- maybe it's the rent prices! Another interesting data set from the Wikipedia page: "The racial makeup......

- Guess what? With more police officers in the subways, crime goes down. At least crime like smoking, drinking alcohol, and turnstile jumping is done, as some new NYPD stats say that the number of summons issued was down 18% versus 2004 - even in spite of the new rules of conduct (but the MTA did collect more in fines). However, a man was stabbed around 7AM this morning on a 4 train in Midtown.......

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. If people are going to continue to follow the age-old adage of “write what you know,” my guess is that, based on demographics, we’re going to see a lot more plays about middle-aged people having to deal with their even aging, weakening parents. Obviously that’s not......

We've talked about population demographics in the city before, but here's a very cool set of minimilist maps by Dorothy Gambrell. Damn-- the Upper East Side is so white it actually vanishes off the map-- crazy! And shouldn't Central Park really be green-- it's doubtful that the trees identify with any race, given that they love all humans and give selflessly of their shade and oxygen generating facilities. [Related: Gotham Gazette on 5 good......

Today, the NY Times revisits a series of articles it did in 1955 that predicted what the city might be like in the coming years (you know, until, as La Bamba from Conan O'Brien voice, woudl sing, "In the year 2000..." or maybe even in 2005, when the Times decided to get around to digging them up from the archives). Titled "Our Changing City," a 20-part series of articles in The New York Times painted......

Clicking through the Times online this morning, we spotted this great Flash piece all about Brooklyn demographics. We sort of remember seeing it back in June, but this time we spent some real time looking through it, and learned some interesting facts about our home borough: 1. Since 1980, Brooklyn population is up, and poverty is down. 2. The largest percentage of Brooklyn foreign-born comes from Latin America. 3. Over the last 20 years:......

The NY Times has a great article about how the Census Bureau found over 160,000 more New Yorkers - including 64,259 that the city governemnt accounted for - to make the NYC population 8,168,338, the highest ever. City officials and other demographers were surprised with the Census Bureau's 2004 figures, which "identified a 4.4 percent population growth in Staten Island and a 2.5 percent increase in the Bronx, but only 1 percent in Manhattan and......

...NYC says, "You're crazy, U.S. Census Bureau!" The U.S. Census released its latest populations estimates yesterday, and New York City lawmakers freaked out. Apparently, NYC saw a decrease, from 8,109,626 to a current (as of July 2004) 8,104,079; though there were population increases in the Bronx and Manhattan, decreases in Brooklyn and Queens led to the net decrease. Any total decrease affects the amount of money the government distributes for housing subsidies and other aid.......

Gothamist crossed the pond last week with the beta launch of Londonist, and this week, we go north to a country that's been looking better and better to some of our readers: Welcome, Torontoist. Edited by Joshua Errett and Sarah Lazarovic, Torontoist is our first endeavor to truly make Gothamist a North American operation. Recent posts have included how Jersey boy Kevin Smith is filming in town and how Canada's Health Minister doesn't want Internet......

Joel Sherman, Professional Scrabble® Player...

New York's Hal Rubenstein visits Lever House and loves it. Gothamist loved this description of how Lever House owners fine tuned the restaurant after "prickly" early weeks: A growing bar crowd discouraged. Demographics shifted and fell into place. Those who love table-hopping at 66 and lounging for hours in a booth at Pastis went back where they belong. Now that everyone is seated, you can appreciate the room�s wonderful sight lines...After two months, Lever House......