While we've been looking at apartments that make us a little jealous, there are plenty of nightmare abodes out there in the boroughs, and this latest one is a doozy. Over at Business Insider a woman writes about a $500/month apartment on Mott Street, between Grand and Hester, that she considered renting a few years ago. Some of the highlights: more ›

Toilet snakes—we've seen them from time to time in the city, and recoil in horror at each new tale. In the past there have even been 7-foot pythons. So the latest snake encounter over on Staten Island is no surprise, but it is equally horrifying. According to SI Live, Allen Shepard went to use his bathroom at 6:30 a.m. and thought he saw something in the toilet—turns out it was a 4-foot-long California Kingsnake (which is non-venomous, and could have been someone's escaped pet in the apartment complex). more ›

One of New Yorker's everyday nightmares is to be hit with falling scaffolding, and, this morning, a four-year-old was the victim of such an incident. The Post reports that she was "on her way to school on the Upper East Side" but luckily "escaped virtually unharmed this morning after she was struck by a wood plank during a scaffolding collapse." more ›

Hey, Brooklyn: If you're planning to get out of town on this long Veteran's Day Weekend, better do it fast—and think about taking Monday off, too—because there are all sorts of traffic nightmares awaiting you in the next 55 hours. more ›

Rats may seem cuddly and adorable when they're scampering across your face, swimming in your toilet bowl, or dangling from a fellow straphanger's mouth, but don't be fooled: these vicious creatures want nothing more than to sink their pestilent fangs into unsuspecting man flesh. Of course, they prefer woman flesh. amNew York reports that an unidentified woman waiting for the J train in the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station was bitten by one of these critters Monday morning. more ›

We're sorry to start the day on such a tragic note, but there is a heartrending crisis unfolding on the edge of the East River in Williamsburg, where poor people who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for luxury condominium units are finding that their upscale paradise is turning into a ramshackle ghetto. The eyes of the world are currently turned to Northside Piers, where a half dozen condo owners tell the NY Post "their walls are leaky and poorly insulated; mold is growing in the walls; and there is faulty plumbing, sewage, heating and air-conditioning systems." You'll recall that this is the same waterfront development that caught fire during construction. (Sorry, wrong link; here it is.) more ›

We've been thoroughly enjoying Max Silvestri's rants and commentary over at the AV Club, and in his latest piece he takes on Regal Cinemas. The young lad is living the dream out in Williamsburg, just one 11 minute train ride from Union Square... and as such, from Regal Cinemas on Broadway and 13th. But before your face turns green with jealousy, Silvestri says: more ›

The buzz was severely harshed last night for thousands of U2 fans making their way back from the Meadowlands to Manhattan. According to multiple reports, the post-concert scene was a total nightmare, with a packed mob left stranded for hours on the platforms. NJT officials tell 1010WINS there were plenty of trains, but there were too few ticket machines to accommodate the throngs of people. But one Gothamist reader describes a different scenario:

It was incredibly disorganized as there were not enough trains to accommodate the amount of concert-goers... At least a couple hundred people left during the encore in hopes of catching an earlier train and avoid the crowd, only to be met with a closed gate at the tracks. The staff didn't open the gates until people were completely pushed up against each other and 500 deep. When they finally allowed us on the platform, people shoved and pushed their way in. It was really unsafe.

Gawker has a doozy of a Craigslist rental nightmare. Apparently someone rented an apartment out to America's Next Top Model winner CariDee English (cycle 7) and her boyfriend for two weeks. And two weeks was more than enough time for the couple to make their mark. The tenant shared the e-mail she sent to the pair with Gawker; highlights: "There was fake orange tan dust all over everything: the pillows, the sheets, the towels, the bathmat, the walls, everywhere. The icing on the cake were the short black hairs all over the entire bathroom, as well as an unidentifiable black sludge and lipstick smeared along walls. Fruit flies formed a thick cloud in the kitchen. Band-Aids stuck to the floor...Both puzzling and sickening... I was shocked...to find a hole in the middle of my living room wall that was made during your stay. Coincidentally it's about the same size as the remote control, which is also broken." Not surprisingly, the tenant is keeping the deposit—it's unclear whether she was tempted to enter the dirtiest apartments in the USA contest. more ›

A waiter who turned his service industry lemons into publishing lemonade with his blog Waiter Rant has unmasked himself for the Post today, just in time for the release of his tell-all book. After years of anonymous venting about his miserable experiences serving swells at an unspecified restaurant in “the city's affluent suburbs,” Steve Dublanica has outed himself as the man who “prefers more elegant methods of revenge" than spitting in diners’ food – though he assures the Post this does happen often enough. more ›