Madonna is expected to hit the road on a tour later this year—following her Super Bowl stint—in support of her upcoming release, titled MDNA (and yes, she knows that title sound an awful lot like a popular drug). Warming up the press machine, the performer told Newsweek in a recent interview that she's well worth the hundreds of dollars her fans will shell out to see her. Specifically, the 53-year-old star told her fans, "Start saving your pennies now. People spend $300 on crazy things all the time, things like handbags. So work all year, scrape the money together and come to my show. I'm worth it." more ›

One man is fed up with what he deems overpriced goods at the city's Green Markets, specifically the one in Union Square. He posted that after not visiting the market there for a year, he returned only to find it's become a "gouging shit fest." With vendors selling cookies for $4 a piece, a bunch of radishes for $7, and jam for $10 a jar... he has now vowed to walk away from buying local. Could the Green Market kill the conscious buyer and in doing so bring Wal-Mart to Union Square?! He writes: more ›

Starbucks announced late yesterday it will be raising the prices of some of their more labor-intensive beverages, thereby sending some grande drinks over the $5 mark. CEO Howard Schultz blamed the price hike on "a highly speculative green coffee market and dramatically increased commodity costs... And while many, if not most, coffee roasters and retailers began raising prices months ago, we have thus far chosen to absorb the price increases ourselves and not pass them on to our customers." Well, the free ride's over, deadbeats! more ›

Shocking. Con Ed reportedly charges the highest residential rates of any major utility in the 48 contiguous states. The only people who pay more live in Alaska, Hawaii, Fishers and Block Islands. more ›

Remember how last year the City Council made a big stink about milk price gouging, calling on the Department of Agriculture and Markets to enforce price limits after a study showed that 86% of NYC retailers are breaking the law by overcharging for milk? The department regulates the price of milk with a monthly cost calibration, but many grocery store owners are unaware the law even exists. It's one year later, and Councilman Eric Gioia—who's running for public-advocate—is still crying over the price of milk. Though there's been an 83% drop in the wholesale price of milk in the past 18 months, some Manhattan stores are still charging as high as $6 a gallon. The Agriculture Department just can't get it together to publish the monthly threshold price on its website, and at a press conference yesterday, Gioia told reporters that the department's milk price enforcement is virtually non-existent: "We have a state agency that's not doing its job. The Department of Agriculture went from bad to worse." With an election looming on the horizon, you can definitely expect Gioia to milk this issue for all its worth. more ›

Want to live in New York City but can't afford Manhattan rents? Guess again! The Daily News is reporting that Brooklyn is now more expensive than Manhattan, and they have reports and data and stuff to back it up (via StreetEasy). Allegedly "the median rental prices in DUMBO, Park Slope and Fort Greene were higher than those in the East Village, Lower East Side, Upper East Side, Midtown East and Murray Hill." (Sales prices were also shown to be higher in certain Brooklyn neighborhoods.) One example: 2-bdrm Brooklyn Heights apartment renting for $4,400 and the same on the LES going for $2,887...but there's no mention of square footage. A quick look at Craigslist showed a 710-sq-ft, 1-bdrm in the Heights for $1900, and a 450-sq-ft, 1-bdrm on the LES for $1795. more ›

Long Island waiters who provide a tantalizing description of the daily specials while omitting such vulgar details as price may have to change up their patter if a proposed law in Nassau County gets passed. Of course, resistance is coming from the New York Restaurant Association, which in recent years has failed to block regulations on calorie info and bans on artificial trans fat. The executive vice president of the group maintains, "It’s good business to give the prices, but it’s beyond the purview of a legislative body to get that far into managing restaurants." But Harvey B. Levinson, a champion of the proposal, tells the Times: "I’m sure that at one time or another you have been enticed by a waiter or waitress into ordering the special of the day, only to discover that it was really the price that was special." more ›

Confirmation that it's costing more to buy your bread: Inflation is "running at the fastest pace in 17 years, which consumer prices rising 0.8% last month, twice what experts were expecting. The AP grimly reports: "It marked the third straight month of oversized inflation increases following jumps of 0.6 percent in May and 1.1 percent in June and left inflation rising by 5.6 percent over the past year, the biggest 12-month gain since January 1991." The increases were across the board, for "clothing, food, transportation and recreational products." The NY Times says that this news "suggests that a[n interest] rate increase could come sooner rather than later," because lowering interest rates might force more inflation. more ›

No surprise here, but skyrocketing fuel costs have not spared farmers who sell produce at Greenmarkets, the AP finds. Upstate strawberry grower Franca Tantillo estimates that roughly half the money she earns at a Manhattan Greenmarket is spent on transportation costs. And it’s not just getting back and forth from the city that’s more expensive; fuel costs have driven up the price of fertilizers and animal feed, and plastic supplies for greenhouses cost more. As the costs are passed on to their urban customers, farmers like Elly Hushour, who sells goat cheese that she drives in from her farm in Pennsylvania, predict that "local soon will not be that important.” And maybe Union Square soon will not be that mobbed? more ›

Those high natural gas and oil prices have raised the prices for wholesale electricity that Con Ed buys from power-generating companies, and naturally the company is passing those expenses along to us. The company says that residential customers will pay 22% more for electricity this year than they did last summer – almost a quarter of that spike is due to a Bloomberg-approved rate hike. more ›

Mayor Bloomberg’s ambitious congestion pricing plan may be toast (or Governor Paterson may bring it back from the dead) but it seems that skyrocketing gas prices are succeeded where Hizzoner failed. The Times is reporting that traffic on the city’s bridges and tunnels dropped 4.7 percent in June, compared to the same time last year. Meanwhile, subway, bus, bicycle and commuter rail ridership has surged. A transportaion consultant predicts that “if we start eclipsing $5 a gallon, which we might over the summer, I think we might get very close,” to reducing traffic in Manhattan by 6.3 percent, which was the goal for Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan. Go peak oil! more ›

While skyrocketing food prices are sparking riots around the world, in New York the crisis is forcing restaurants like Good Enough to Eat to make due with frozen blueberries in their pancakes! The owner tells the Times the blueberries she gets shipped from Maine are now $38 per flat, up from $24 last summer. A five gallon jug of Canadian maple syrup is now $250, up from $200. And a 100-pound sack of flour costs $7 more. more ›

Today the Post looks at how the turbulent economy is affecting the lifestyle of one family of four on the Upper East Side, and, surprise surprise, reports that it’s not really such a big deal for some people. Sure, their cost of living expenses have risen by $1,000 a month compared to this time last year, but Mr. and Mrs. Gary Foodim aren’t sweating it – they vacationed at Disney World last year and there's no way the recession is going to stop this year's trip. more ›

Charitable food banks are also suffering from the recent increases in the cost of food. Last year food banks were being squeezed by the increased demand from the city's hungry, who were finding that rising rents, fuel costs, and transportation costs were limiting the income they had to devote to food. More and more people were turning to New York's charitable food organizations to make ends meet. more ›

“It’s horrible. I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Arye Lewkowitz, owner of Daniel’s Bagels on Third Avenue, recently told Metro. “We’re going to have to sell a bagel for over $1.” Lewkowitz isn’t alone; bagel and bread prices are soaring nationwide due to the skyrocketing cost of wheat, which more than doubled in the past year in New York, from $5.31 a bushel to $14.22. more ›