Up for auction this week is a dog collar owned by "Tale of Two Cities" author Charles Dickens. The Victorian-era canine ID, fashioned from leather and brass, and engraved in loopy script with the writer’s name and address, is expected to fetch between $4,000 and $6,000 at Bonham New York’s 28th annual dog art sale on Tuesday. (Bullseye was the name of the villain's dog in "Oliver Twist" but it's unclear what the writer named his non-fictional dog.) Last year an ivory and gold toothpick that belonged to the author went for $9,150, according to the AP, but that had Dickens’s spit on it, not just dog slobber. Other Dickens ephemera lives at the NYPL. more ›

Andre Balazs of the Standard Hotel claims he's not the one behind keeping the West Village Leather & Bear Street Fair off his turf. After reports came in that the hotelier was anti-Bear (despite fully supporting his guests baring it all for visitors of the High Line), he now says it's the mayor's fault! His hotel is actually "headquarters for the big NYC Wine and Food Festival happening that same weekend, so the mayor's office wants the bears to reschedule." Robert Valin, executive director of the Leather Weekend, told the Villager that the "hotel’s managing director, Ian Nicholson, reached out to him, and that a sit-down was set for this week. The hotel people now claim they had no idea the leather fest was being booted off the block—though Valin the previous week had told us the Mayor’s Office clearly said the hotel didn’t want the S&M confab there." Looks like no one wants to be on the bear's bad side! As for staying at the hotel, Valin told the paper: “I think I would request that the bears get higher floors—we are sexual men." [via Curbed] more ›

The Standard Hotel may be able to handle some skin... as long as it's not leather. Following all the attention they've gotten for their exhibitionist guests (and staff), the Villager reports the hotel on the High Line didn't want the West Village Leather and Bear Street Fair coming near their doors, even though it won unanimous approval from Community Board 2. more ›

This priceless excerpt from a low-budget infomercial for a leather store in New Hartford, NY stars an angry spokesman in an ill-fitting tuxedo going way off-topic in a seemingly improvised rant about how the economic tailspin was caused by Hillary Clinton and Eliot Spitzer's respective obsessions with the White House and hookers. None of it has anything to do with leather... or does it? A sample:

Everybody's crying about the economy... "Oh, my God things are so bad." Well, you know if—not for nothing; this is just a pet peeve—if Hillary Clinton didn't spend a whole year running for President instead of doing something for the state of New York, maybe we would be a little better. If Spitzer wasn't out there popping chicks like Bon Bons, maybe we'd be a little better... I'm not gonna badmouth, but I'm gonna badmouth.