The Brooklyn Paper announces that the Columbia Heights soapbox derby has hit the finish line before the race even began. It appears that founder John Mejias's master plan of getting a city permit via a friend, who would be filming the derby for a documentary, garnered too much press and eventually led his decision to cancel the event. The paper reports that "once the news broke about Mejias’s permit, he faced renewed scrutiny from the......

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......

Real Estate site The Real Deal has detailed the priciest streets or micro-neighborhoods to live on in each of the five boroughs of NYC. Ironically, except for Manhattan, the most expensive streets in New York's four other boroughs lean heavily towards suburban idyll rather than luxurious urbanism. But we suppose that has always been an appeal of the outer boroughs: the ability to escape Manhattan's teeming population density. If you recently came into a large......