There's a new sad rat in town: A giant 3-foot-long rat met its maker at the Marcy Houses recently, when Housing Authority worker Jose Rivera stabbed it multiple times with a pitchfork. The 48-year-old says he believes there are at least two more on the loose out there, which he spotted when filling a rat hole last week. more ›

The city will debut a special limited-edition condom package next fall, and the Health Department is holding a contest to pick the new look. They're calling for designs that reflect NYC's "distinctive culture and style while also promoting safer sex." As they put it on the website, "Maybe you’ve admired the NYC Condom’s sleek package design. Maybe you even own one or two of the 41 million the Health Department gave away last year. We’re not about to abandon the now-iconic package, but we want to keep things interesting." (But "not raunchy"!) So what does the winner get? more ›

In the same way that Radiohead's seminal album OK Computer perfectly articulated the industrialized world's millennial unease, one Gothamist reader's photograph of a rat stuck in an Upper West Side sidewalk has become a universal metaphor for the pitfalls of urban living. We are all rats, trapped by the, um, race—until the city swallows us up and turns our death into a ridiculous website meme. Our inbox continues to pile up with submissions from readers around the world, who are immortalizing the poor rodent's passing with Photoshop. more ›

Game 6 will now be played tomorrow night at 8:20 p.m... up against the Giants-Cardinals football game. more ›

When Gothamist reader Wayne sent us a picture of a rat stuck in a sidewalk, apparently trying to emerge, others readers decided it was depressing, hilarious, tempting, disgraceful, an opportunity for considering ethics and morals, and time to bait other commenters. Finally, we have an update from Wayne plus a number of Photoshop renderings of the Sad Rat: more ›