Photo by Phillyist's Matt Johnson, SkyscraperSunset.com, December 19, 2007. Phillyist explored an impending implosion and lived to tell the tale.Gothamist marveled at the city's new NYC-branded condom campaign - especially the use of a Toronto landmark in the advertising. (Also, fun fact: Gothamist turned five years old yesterday.)Tired of the worldwide Scientology protests? Torontoist totally isn't: they covered the big downtown protest the day it happened, and followed up with an examination of all......

subway love, by presley at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a truck into scaffolding on West 39th St. and Broadway in Manhattan, a bank robbery at the HSBC branch on 33rd St. and Park Ave. in Manhattan, and a double shooting on East 57th St. and Ave. D in Brooklyn. The $8 million Jean-Michel Basquiat painting "Hannibal", which was smuggled out of Brazil, was located at a Manhattan warehouse on 61st St. and......

A poignant week for LAist as they lose their trusted and amazing editor Tony Pierce to the LA Times, but what a blast his last week was. He shared his 25 Favorite CDs of 2007 and wrote a great review of just a good movie, No Country For Old Men. At UCLA, thousands of students celebrated the end of their quarter by running around campus in their undies (lots of photos in a two-part......

This morning at the Gothamist mailbox, a small package was waiting, containing three copies of a small newspaper. On the cover were the words "if we did it, this is how it would've happened" -- a tribute to the recent unpublished OJ Simpson book-- and a picture of a defaced Shepard Fairey piece in Williamsburg. Inside the newspaper we found 14 pages of total insanity-- part revolutionary tract, part interview, part photo essay, part......

The Domino Sugar Refinery might be Brooklyn's signature building representing the borough's industrial history. Looking across the East River from Manhattan while below the Williamsburg Bridge, its presence on the Brooklyn waterfront is dominating. That Manhattan vantage point surrendered its industrial heritage of gasworks and docks more than a century ago, to tenements followed by high-rise apartment housing complexes. Now the factory is an icon of the battle to convert Brooklyn's waterfront from an......

The nicer the weather gets, the busier we get across the Ist-A-Verse. But we like being busy. Here's a peek at what we've been up to since last week! Chicagoist had an interview with Audrey Niffenegger, whose popular book, The Time Traveler's Wife, was based in their fine city. They also had a heated discussion about Rush Limbaugh's controversial Barack Obama parody, talked about whether Uncle Julio's Hacienda is a good place to get......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur,......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: double pedestrian strike on 40th and 1st, person struck by train in Brooklyn, and a level 1 mobilization for a big fire in Park Slope last night. Jesus loves interpretive dance. No, seriously. 40% of the traffic in Park Slope is people driving around looking for spaces. That's bananas! After getting punked by a blogger, the New York Times had to issue a correction on its "Dear Diary" column--......

Jagshemash! Borat is a hit. It's getting rave reviews, grossing millions, and definitely the most quotable thing we've seen in ages. But Borat seems to have missed most of the -ist cities, and we were all wondering how the film would have been different if he'd made his way around the world on the -ist tour. In Shanghai, Borat would be observing Inane Learnings of Penis Photos for Make Benefit Glorious Flat World of......

Let's look back at a week in which no site in the -ist network adopted anyone from Africa... -Austinist reveled in the dumb antics of some U.T. law students and posted some great audio from former New Orleans natives who've decided to stay in Austin. But the best news for Austinist? They were voted Best Local Entertainment Web Site by the local Austin alt-weekly. Congrats, Austinist. -DCist gloried in being told their musical tastes made......

Hey, have y'all been using our new "Recommend this" feature at the bottom of each post? This week we're bringing you the "Most Recommended" posts from across the -ist world, as well as recommending some of our own. Phillyist thinks that readers recommended this post the most because "most of our quieter readers (probably) agree with us that rude commenting sucks." Know what else sucks? Philly's not getting the Olympics, but they are getting thinner.......

- What the hell is going on with people: A father was arrested for sexually abusing his daughter - oh, and it happens that he's a supervisor at the Administration for Children's Services!! - Mario Batali is having issues with his landlords in the Meatpacking District (basically, they want him out) - Yay - fourfour has his Project Runway recap up! - The Village Voice has a photo essay on how Hello Kitty has......

Last weekend's New York Times piece about Bob Diamond's Red Hook streetcar project has sadly dropped behind the Times Select paywall, but the article inspired us to walk over to Red Hook and snap the little photo essay below. For more information on the streetcars (for free!) check out this Forgotten-NY page.......

With the new exhibit of the proposed Highline designs at the Museum of Modern Art opening today and yesterday's NY Times story about some of the design challenges the project will face, not to mention a few beautiful break out days that truly mean spring is here, Gothamist now wonders of now's the time to head to the High Line again to experience it and even take some pictures before things change. In fact,......

In an annual Thanksgiving Day event, President Bush pardoned a turkey at the White House earlier this week. His two jokes from the event: On how the turkeys "Stars" and "Stripes" (the alternate) won out over "Cranberry" and "Pumpkin": It was a neck-to-neck race.On the presence of an alternate turkey: The rule book states that an alternate turkey is chosen in case the national Thanksgiving turkey cannot fulfill his role in this ceremony. It's kind......

Great photo essay by Christopher Hawthorne in Slate about architecture's new trend: Modest and even introverted design, over spectacle, which he calls "The Om Factor." Two polar opposites in museum design he cites are Guggenheim Bilbao and Dia: Beacon. Read Felix Salmon's essay about the Dia:Beacon. Gothamist went to the similarly minimally designed Mass MoCA.......

The last link was courtesy of Lightning Field, which also has a good photo essay on my favorite elevated rail, the high line. lightningfield.com | photo weblog......