Our friend Marty Walsh of Geekhouse Bikes helped create a special "ObamaBike" that's currently for sale on eBay. If you've got an extra grand to drop on a sweet track bike built by Marty, patriotically embellished by Dan Funderburgh, and sponsored by Animal New York, head on over to eBay before the auction ends on Wednesday the 22nd. You'll be the coolest cat in the velodrome--unless election day goes the wrong way.......

The Hometown Throwdown with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones will kick off at the Middle East tonight and will take place every night until Sunday, December 30. Tickets are as precious as gold--all five shows sold out in seven minutes, according to the Globe. On Craigslist, tickets are going for about $200. On StubHub and eBay, the prices are dizzying. But at least no one is getting desperate. Bosstones fans have pride, and no one has......

The following is a public service announcement: The next time you steal a Red Sox's castoffs, particularly their sweaty cups, eBay would rather you sell them elsewhere. The Track Girls are spreading the word that SportsWorld, in Saugus, tried to sell Jonathan Papelbon and Kevin Youkilis' used jocks on their eBay store. Judging from how many times the Track Girls have written about SportsWorld and its Red Sox underwear sale, SportsWorld has been trying......

--Representative Ed "Biz" Markey is going to Bali--in Second Life. Way to be hip to the Internets, but does that avatar look like him? Discuss. [Boston Globe] --Boston got dumped by CNN. A debate that was supposed to be in Boston next week has been knocked off the schedule because of the early caucus dates this year. And we were hoping for a look at Wolf Blitzer. [Boston Globe] --The jury in the trial of......

Red Sox fans have it good when it comes to the hometown team, but it's not always easy. On one hand, the team has delivered two World Series titles in four seasons, and we're looking awfully good as we prepare for the 2008 season. But on the other, tickets to see the Sox play at Fenway Park are the hardest in MLB to acquire and they come with the biggest price tags. And while......

That's right; we almost had to go in the closets for a rare winter activation of the Panic Button. The Patriots were struggling on offense, dropping passes left and right. The defense really struggled, allowing Raven Willis McGahee to run amok for three quarters. Don Shula was up in the booth with corkscrew in hand. But somehow, the game stayed close. And Tom Brady had a chance to go up the field with 3:30 to......

-- The Mashpee Wampanoag celebrated federal recognition yesterday. "We are not celebrating Thanksgiving," said Shawn Hendricks, president of the tribal council. "It's not one of the better holidays for us. Columbus Day, that's not our top holiday, either." -- The sprinkler law is full of holes. Only 22 Boston bars have installed sprinkler systems. The rest remain as flammable as before. -- Pot advocates gathered 105,000 signatures, enough to get a decriminalization initiative on......

We weren't surprised to see Manny Ramirez selling a car on eBay, but the news that someone was selling Red Sox manager Terry Francona's chewed gum on eBay thoroughly disgusted us. The fact that people were bidding on it disgusted us even more. And how are you going to know it's Terry Francona's gum, anyway? That's like selling Britney Spears' Dorito Dust. The seller told the Inside Track that she got it from the dugout......

Former Massachusetts governor and presidential aspirant Mitt Romney has introduced the "Mitt Market." When the news first got out, it seemed that Team Romney made another boo-boo along the lines of advertising on gay.com. "Mitt Market" is awfully close to "meat market." However, the Mitt Market is another way for Romney to raise money, as if he doesn't have enough. The Mitt Market is just like one of those stores that sells your crap on......

Manny Ramirez sure loves his cars. When he went on Leno, he seemed to want to talk about cars even more than the World Series. Putting car enthusiasts Manny Ramirez and Jay Leno together was risky because they might not have talked about the World Series at all. Fans got lucky, and the talk turned to baseball, but it might be safe to assume that Ramirez holds hot rods and baseball in similarly high......

Have the local witches lost their powers or something? They used to be hardcore. They withstood trials and hangings. But now they have to rely on flinging around raccoon carcasses to get their points across. In Salem, two witches allegedly performed a rite of intimidation on a budget by cutting up a dead raccoon and leaving the parts on the doorsteps of their enemies back in May. Sharon Graham, 46, and Frederick Purtz, her 22-year-old......

The world's most expensive bottle of beer is being shipped – very carefully, we hope – to Somerville. According to the Somerville News, a resident of the city will pay over $500,000 for an unopened bottle of Allsopp's Arctic Ale on eBay. The beer was brewed in 1852 and is 155 years old. The Somerville News provides the history of the beer, a special mix with high-alcohol content that went on a trip to the......

We told you a couple of weeks ago about how Boston punk cabaret artist ("musician" doesn't seem to sum it up quite right) Amanda Palmer tried in vain to auction off her 1992 Volvo. It wasn't that Palmer couldn't find any takers - considering that the blue station wagon has been featured in Dresden Dolls video and held Palmer and fellow Doll Brian Vigilone as "Coin-Operated Boy" was conceived, there were a bunch of bids......

It started with comic books flying from the stage. Some people need eBay or Craigslist or a recycle bin to offload their Arion: Lord of Atlantis collection; Humanwine's Holly Brewer needs an audience. Friday night's crowd at the Paradise had come to celebrate the release of the first Humanwine album, Fighting Naked, and to catch airborne back issues. When M@ McNiss* and the rest of Humanwine appeared, they launched into "Big Brother," a defiant......

At about a quarter past 7pm tomorrow the bidding will end. Cucho Rodriguez' ring will be sold to the highest bidder. So far there have been about ten bids and the official Red Sox World Series Championship ring is fetching over $16,000 in the eBay auction. Cucho Rodriguez was listed as a consultant in the scouting department for the Sox from 2003-2006, he was part of the staff when the Sox went all the way......

There may or may not soon be an interesting auction on eBay for Dresden Dolls fans. Earlier this evening, Bostonist was in the process of writing about the auction Boston rocker Amanda Palmer had put into motion on the online site. We were intrigued partly because it featured a neat bit of Dolls memorabilia: the 1992 Volvo 240 station wagon that Palmer has owned since 1999 and included into various band video footage (including the......

It seems like, all across the network, folks were up to no good. Maybe it was all the green beer from last weekend... Gothamist spent the week writing about New Yorkers behaving badly: at the post office, at the Garden, and at the fertility clinic. Calvin Klein may not be misbehaving, but he's just a little dirty, and in a completely different way than some NYC kitchens. SFist had its share of misbehave-rs, too, like......

We were asking if Doc Rivers needed his head checked after letting the Celtics bench finish out the game against the Charlotte Bobcats. The Celtics were winning, but Paul Pierce got hit in the eye. Doc took him out, and then he let Big Al Jefferson rest a while. He says he wasn't trying to throw the game. If Doc were impersonating Kevin Nealon's "Subliminal Man" character on Saturday Night Live, he could have grunted......

We caught wind of Manny's grill auction yesterday afternoon. Bidding was up around $4,300 when we first checked. My midnight it was already past the million dollar mark, even higher overnight, an early morning check revealed that $99,999,999 was the current high bid. The early afternoon came a few emails letting us know that the auction would be no longer. eBay had closed the auction down. The Globe splashed the mention on the front page,......

It's so hard sometimes, trying to track down the perfect gift for that theatrical friend who seems to have everything. Or giving your Upstairs/Downstairs or Heaven/Hell party that certain something to stand out from all the rest. Fortunately, Boston Lyric Opera has the solution: buy the set for Carmen on eBay. EW.com pointed out this week that the BLO is auctioning off its set for the 2002 production of "Carmen on the Common," the opera......

Bostonist is always on the lookout for funky beverages, alcoholic or otherwise. One nonalcoholic beverage, Enviga, is causing a stir in New England. Enviga claims to help people burn calories. The Attorney General of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, isn't buying it. He has been questioning Coca-Cola and Nestle's claims that the green-tea beverage, in the words of a Coca-Cola spokesman, "invigorates your metabolism to gently burn calories." If you want to "gently burn calories," a walk......

Just wondering. Someone had to fall on the sword, and Mayor Tom Menino sure did seem happy when the head of Cartoon Network, Jim Samples, took the plunge and resigned from his post after the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Incident. Mayor Menino told the Globe, "Somebody had to pay…. He's the one who made all the decisions, and he didn't do anything to react to the concerns. The resignation should really serve as a message......

One thing's for sure - Mayor Menino is no fan of "Mooninites," or what the Globe calls "little square-shaped men frowning and making an obscene gesture." Most important, "Mooninites" are the objects that have tormented Boston law enforcement since lite-brite displays of the object were found attached to the city's sensitive spots - like by bridges and highways. It's time to figure out what to do about the people who hung LED light displays of......

As the world holds its breath, teetering precariously on the cusp of the Super Bowl (well, at least in America), the wheels of the -ists keep on turning. Austinist was in a musical frame of mind as they listened to the new Shins album, updated the SXSW band listings and got called "punk rock" for their efforts by MTV. And an ice storm swept through the area. Bostonist said goodbye to John Kerry's plans......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

If it weren't for our life as an -ist, we're not sure we'd ever leave our apartment. Fortunately, to fully -ist, one must seek out the new, the fresh, and the unknown. Brand new, or just new to us, that's what we're all about this week. Phillyist keeps it fresh by getting a new motto, learning to prioritize, and taking in an experimental indie rock show. Torontoist does their first post in franglais, gets ready......

When Bank of America took over Fleet Bank last year, many were worried about their bank accounts and ATM fees. Others were more concerned about what they would rename the Fleet Center, which was once our cherished "Boston Garden." Yesterday, the new owner, Deleware North, has drummed up some publicity for the sports arena by allowing people to bid on Ebay to rename it for 24 hours. For one whole day, your arena will not......