Another day, another awful story and video of a man touching himself on the subway. Meet Monique Henry, a baker whose commute from Queens to Brooklyn and back early this morning got decidedly gross when, after transferring from the Queens-bound F to the D train at Rock Center this morning, "a middle aged hispanic man" dressed "in a rumpled, cheap looking suit, and [carrying] a Jet magazine" got on the train and sat next to her. At first she didn't think anything of him and started to doze off. So when she woke up in Queens, imagine her surprise to find the man had moved across from her and, well, this is what she saw: more ›

Finally, New York City gets its own Hurricane Irene theme song! Check out our new YouTube Hero singing his original sure-to-be hit song, "Hurricane Irene Tracks To New York City." Click play, and sing along to lyrics like: "category 1, category 2, tropical storm, we don't know yet?" Every perfect storm deserves a perfect song, and this one has simply rendered us speechless. more ›

Should we really be patting Metro-North on the caboose for running their trains on time? According to the NY Post, the railroad (allegedly!) had a 100 percent on-time record on Tuesday, with "all 659 runs east of the Hudson and all 61 runs west of the Hudson running exactly on time." Great, right? But shouldn't this happen everyday... or at least several times a week? Or several times a month? Or year? As it stands, this hasn't happened since April 29th! If this is some new standard of excellence in service with the MTA, we're going to have to find a way to lower this bar even further. The Post may be giving you a "star," but we say try harder, Metro-North. more ›

Perhaps using his Talking Heads song "Cities" as inspiration, David Byrne penned a piece for the Wall Street Journal about his ideal metropolis. Byrne lives in New York, of course, but also travels more frequently than most of us, so he's got a lot of crazy European ideas! As for his hometown, however, he says the locals wouldn't be the ideal folk to populate his city; "New Yorkers are viewed as being tough as nails, no-nonsense but with hearts of gold—or maybe just gold-plated. This might not be the sensibility I would choose if I had a choice." Don't take it personally, because he still says our nightlife is probably the best, and maybe even our security! "For example in parts of New York's West Village, as author Jane Jacobs pointed out, the streets are rarely abandoned and there are almost always some locals hanging out, so everyone sees a little bit of what's going on. The community has eyes and ears, and everyone behaves accordingly. In my perfect city I'd feel that sense of neighborliness—that people weren't in my business, but that I would be a familiar sight, as they would be to me." What else are we good for, New York? more ›