Photo by iammikeb Hey, once upon a time, Wicker Park didn't look exactly like Lincoln Park. Just 15 years ago, artists and students were just beginning to push most of the families that had lived there for years out of the area, people did drugs involving needles in bathroom stalls, and if you stumbled home after last call from The Blue Note -- then located on Armitage -- you stood a good chance of getting mugged. Good times, indeed. Over the years, the artists got pushed out by the yuppies, property values soared, coffeehouses closed down and the Real...

Miracle puppy! Well there's good news... and there's heart-wrenchingly awful news. WABC reports that Saturday night two 6-week-old puppies journeyed from Mexico City to New York City inside a cargo bay on an aircraft bound for JFK. But during their flight the temperature dropped and when they landed, Customs and Border Protection officers received a call saying they appeared to be dead. Officers responded to find one puppy clinging to life, and the other dead—but through some quick first aid, the one who was barely alive pulled through. A vet that evaluated him said he is playful and doing...

Like regular theater, security theater puts many people to sleep. (Bucky Turco/Animal New York) [UPDATE BELOW] On Monday Bucky Turco at Animal New York published this photo he took at La Guardia airport, showing a Transportation Security Administration agent apparently napping. Now the unidentified worker is under investigation and has been reassigned to desk duty. High-five? A TSA spokesman tells the AP she may have been on break, but whatever, we certainly wouldn't want her sharp and well-rested while on the job, and the rules require her to rest in the designated TSA break room. Turco acknowledged that, "to...

Over the next few weeks, the TTC will be testing a newfangled fare box on one of its buses on the 31 Greenwood route. The box (pictured above) features the latest technology from the 1970s, including a magnetic card reader, a token slot, a slot for cash and tickets, and a flashing light that will alert drivers to counterfeit tokens or Metropasses. "It’s designed to try to limit the counterfeiting of tokens and some of our passes," Danny Nicholson, the TTC’s corporate communications supervisor, told Torontoist. "The technology is very similar to the current turnstiles in our subway systems."...

Photo by Paul Frederiksen We spent most of the week wondering if the large storm parked over North Carolina and parts of Virginia would extend far enough north to hit the District. It's not looking too likely. At best we'll get an inch of snow, but even that's not a sure bet. Could the winter that came in with a roar be exiting with a whimper? I really, really hope so. Cell Phone Ban Doesn't Accomplish Much: The Post, the Examiner and WTOP are reporting on a study that finds that the number of reported accidents in states with...

The League of Humane Voters of New York City, who have long been lobbying to ban carriage horses from Central Park, has just suffered a bit of an upset. The animal-rights group has just been handed a $104,290 fine for not filing lobbying reports with the city clerk. According to the Daily News, they failed to register or file spending reports while pushing the City Council to protect the horses—now they've racked up two years worth of daily late-filing fees (they claim they didn't know they were supposed to file). On the other side of the battle, Shamrock Stables...

On Fox last night, mustachioed laissez-faire fanatic John Stossel applied his "common sense" fearmongering shtick to the concept of "Food Police." You see, it's not just the local government here in NYC that is trying to influence what people eat (and smoke, and drink!)—this is going on in cities across America. Here in New York, some restaurants are required to display calorie info, and there's a ban on trans fat. Salt and soda are in the crosshairs too! In South LA, they've banned any new fast food restaurant from opening. Well, Stossel is here to defend people from the food...

Photo via Copyranter You can take the orgy out of the Calvin Klein billboard, but you'll still be left with a one-man sex show. The latest image in the company's rotating ad space above Houston Street is pictured above, and Copyranter reports back saying, "His name is David Agbodji, and he's part of the new Calvin Klein Spring/Summer 2010 Collection ad campaign... I'm thinking five-story Mr Agbodji is going to light up the switchboard!" But this man is neither under-aged nor involved in an orgy with anyone under-aged... so maybe the downtown prudes will give it a pass?...

Photo via tobyleah's flickr 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. The federal numbers released yesterday were from 2008, and the NY Post reports that the company charges an average 24.18 cents per kilowatt hour, something they dub "sky high rates" when other areas pay and average of 11.26 cents per kilowatt hour. A rep for the company said, "Many costs are higher in New York than in other parts of the country." Well,...

James O’Keefe, the twenty-something conservative gadfly, has issued a statement explaining why he, with three others, were arrested for posing as telephone workers in Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu's office on Monday. O'Keefe, who got famous after he punk'd some workers at community organizing group ACORN last September, says that contrary to "the false claims being repeated by much of the mainstream media," they were not trying to bug Landrieu's phones. Oh no, they were just trying to verify why her "constituents were having trouble getting through to her office." While O'Keefe admits he could have "used a different approach,"...