The cold weather - and holiday festivities - descended upon Gothamist. The Rockefeller Christmas tree was lit, Broadway stagehand finally ended their strike, and NASCAR decided to run their victory lap through Times Square. There were disturbing photographs revealing the working conditions in which many city manholes are produced and ninjas were also a hot topic, either robbing homes or entering into alibis. But the city was really rocked by how Rudy Giuliani's visits......

Londonist got the big scoop of the week with what may be the first images of notorious street artist Banksy in action. They also got on a runaway train without an operator provoking a response from the transport authorities. Elsewhere, London's answer to Central Station is about to open for business, and Londonist got a sneak preview. Meanwhile, spooky goings-on beneath London Bridge, where a cache of skeletons provided an apt story for Hallowe'en.......

Boston Comic Con Sunday, October 21, 10am-5pm Back Bay Events Center (180 Berkeley Street), $8 The comics industry is known for its oddballs, and Jim Steranko is a case in point. He is best known for his late sixties work at Marvel Comics, where he brought a designer's eye to drawing Nick Fury for Strange Tales. He drew across the whole page, defying panel boundaries, to a surreal effect. But comics may have been the......

After a week full of intense competition, the finalists in this year's Boston Comedy Festival Contest took the stage last night at the Cutler Majestic. The pressure was already high because they would be judged by Lifetime Achievement Award honorees Shelley Berman and Bill Dana, Comic of the Year winner Lewis Black, and a range of industry bigwigs. The comics also faced an even bigger challenge--the Red Sox game. These comics had to distract the......

The Porn Debate will be at the Middle East Downstairs, Friday, August 10, at 8:00 pm. Visit the official website for details. And, yes, the site plays that skanky seventies porno music. Porn star and reality-television presence Ron Jeremy will debate porn anywhere. He raised a ruckus at Simmons and spoke at Northeastern, and now he's taking his show to the Middle East. Apparently there is money to be made in debating porn. Or just......

So many car insurance commercials on TV, so little relevance to Massachusetts drivers. This is the only state in the country where insurance rates are set by a government panel, which has worked out well for some folks (bad drivers and insurers willing to play ball) and not so well for other folks (good drivers in bad neighborhoods, big-time out-of-town companies). Now Insurance Commissioner Nonnie Burns wants to shake things up, proposing a limited shift......

The retrospective of Charles Burnett's movies starts tonight at the MFA's Remis Auditorium with Killer of Sheep. The movie screens at 8:15 tonight. For a full schedule of the retrospective, which runs through June 17, go to the MFA's website. Killer of Sheep is one of the first 50 movies to be chosen for the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. It's also one of the 100 Essential Films according to the National Society of......

By now you're probably either planning your strategy for Saturday's WBOS EarthFest or figuring out how to avoid Storrow Drive like the plague over the course of the weekend. With predictions of weather in the low 80s and partly cloudy skies, it appears that the folks over at BOS have picked themselves a beaut of a day to devote to free music and environmental friendliness at the Hatch Shell. For EarthFest attendees, it might seem......

Bostonist enjoys taking a stroll through the music community section of Craigslist every now and then. It's always entertaining to see how the rockers are describing their sounds these days (today's listings, for example, include "baby makin' music" and "a blend of indie rock with break beats") and sometimes we happen across something that otherwise would have flown under our radar. We're curious about whether there will be more responses posted to one of today's......

James Murphy is a busy man, and over the years he's seen a lot. "I was there in 1968. I was at the first Can show in Cologne," he says before declaring the song's title, "I'm losing my edge." He was also there in 1974 at the first Suicide practices in a loft in NYC. "I was the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids. I palyed it at CBGB's. Everybody thought I......

The April rain is seemingly behind us, the flowers are springing, but we're not yet upon summer festival season. Soon enough we won't be able to go a weekend without a sleepless night with ringing in our ears as we spent too many hours in the heat a little too close to a bank of speakers broadcasting to the masses. Well, that or a sweet show at Harbor Lights The Pavilion. Tuesday, 5/8 Grant-Lee......

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions this week at DCist. Like the rest of country, we were floored by the news of so many dead coming out of Virginia Tech, and with so many of the victims and their relatives from the D.C. area, we felt it important to pay......

We don't know about where you are, but it seems like spring can't decide whether or not to happen. Some days are warm, some days are cold, and sometimes you aren't sure which. Baseball may have started up (and soccer/football winding down) but it still seems cold out there. Unless it's not. Anyways, onto the -ists. Austinist happily anticipated fall's Austin City Limits, even though they're not fully recovered from South By Southwest. In......

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......

The Brad Delp story continues. Delp's family announced today that his death wasn't as quiet as it first appeared. Delp killed himself last week. According to the Herald, toxicology tests revealed that Delp killed himself with carbon monoxide poisoning. He left two notes behind, but the contents haven't been released. Just a few days ago, we praised Delp for not being a Behind the Music kind of guy. And he still isn't. But his suicide......

Renaissance man Harry Shearer will read from Not Enough Indians at the Coolidge Corner Theatre at 6pm on Monday, December 11. The event is cheap at 2 bucks, and you can stay for a discounted screening of For Your Consideration. Comedian / writer / actor / director / Le Show host Harry Shearer has a knack of either soaring to the heights or plummeting to earth. His multiple achievements include his work voicing Ned Flanders,......

Reports have been circulating for over a week now that James "Whitey" Bulger was spotted at a screening of The Departed playing in San Diego. An FBI agent may or may not have seen him, and the man in question may or may not have slipped onto a bus to Mexico shortly after the conclusion of the film. Investigators on the Bulger Fugitive Task Force told the Boston Globe that they can't substantiate the sighting......

Question 1, the ballot initiative that would have allowed cities and towns in the Commonwealth to issue licenses to grocery stores to sell wine, was rejected by Massachusetts voters yesterday. The measure failed 56-44, according the Boston Globe. Widely reported to be the most expensive ballot question campaign in state history (a combined $11.5 million was spent), public opinion on Question 1 seemed to turn around last week after its opponents ramped up their negative......

In a world where there's nothing to do but watch movies. In a city full of theaters, museums, and libraries. One moviegoer who can be in three places at once. This week, Al Franken becomes a politician, David Hasselhoff dresses up as a scifi hero, every girl becomes a star, and ancient religious art turns into modern heaps of rubble. Friday 9/29 Piccadilly The Hays Code, adopted by the American film industry in 1930, didn't......

This string of nice days has made for some gloriously blue skies and thoroughly Hudson-River-School-esque cloud formations. Seeing this natural splendor as a dramatic backdrop to the enormous industrial plant in Everett just across the water from Charlestown reminded us of some sort of communist propaganda poster celebrating industry or progress or some such thing. Also, it was pretty, so we took a picture.......

Living here in the Hub, we are faced with daily indignities, from the complications of an ill-administered public transportation system to the risk of completely random death in the most poorly planned and implemented public works project ever. But the struggle that unifies us more than any other must surely be that scourge of sidewalk strolling, the dreaded MassPirg canvassers. How heartless these innocent-looking youngsters are, accosting us in the midst of our important business......

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea for us to claim that all shows should be played outside over the summer. Lucky for us no one listens to our suggestions on venue – so we're heading back inside where the temperature with the AC on is only about five degrees cooler than it is outside. A welcome five degrees, with a tiny bit lower humidity. This week's list hits a variety of shows, something......

Maybe you were walking by City Hall Plaza today and noticed a strange encampment of sign- and flyer-bearing, Spanish-speaking protesters on the traffic island where State Street meets Tremont. Perhaps you said to yourself, "What gives? I thought yesterday was the big day for immigrant protests!" Maybe you even took a flyer (see right). Still, you would likely have been left wondering, "Why are these people making such a fuss about UNICCO, the Mass.-based cleaning......

As promised, Bostonist attended our fair city's contribution to today's so-called "national day of action" to oppose a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would make illegal immigrants' presence in this country a felony, and to support legislative efforts to grant amnesty to undocumented workers. According to the Associated Press, there were between 5,000 (the police estimate) and 8,000 (the organizers' estimate) marchers. On the ground, with no crowd-counting skills and only the......

Bostonist is moving into a new office. We’re not changing jobs, but the building we’re in is soon to be inhabited by other tenants and we’ll be moving across the street into newly renovated space. Fortunately, we aren’t without input. We have had the opportunity to help select the furniture and configuration of the new space. This – deep breath – will be our first cubicle experience. Good fortune has thus far landed Bostonist in......

On Friday, while Bostonist looked longingly toward a weekend with promised 45-degree temperatures, legislative bigwigs finally hammered out a compromise healthcare bill. You may recall that the House of Representatives approved a version that imposed a tax on employers with more than ten employees who failed to provide healthcare. The tax was calculated as a percentage of payroll. The idea of that bill was to cover every uninsured person in the Commonwealth. However, it also......

This year attendance numbers were drastically down in movie theaters. That was the mantra being blasted at anyone who'd listen. When asked what was causing this, industry experts presented cases such as movie piracy, home movie theaters gaining in popularity, and if pressed enough, the waning quality of movies in general. If you looked hard enough or sampled enough of the releases, however, you would have seen a good number of entertaining and challenging films.......

The Globe tells us this morning us that soon, soon, the T will be fully converted to automated fare cards, a la New York (but hopefully without any crippling strikes). CharlieTicket [sic], as the card is known (the MBTA, ever hip to the latest typographical trends, eschewed the space between two words but preserved the capitalization of the second word), will allow free transfers from bus to subway, T top dog Dan Grabauskas promises, though......

There are bad meals, there are awful meals, and then there is Bostonist's experience at Joe's American Bar and Grill. This mini-chain restaurant covers several spots in Massachusetts and even has a location as far down as New Jersey. We chose to try out the Boston waterfront location in an attempt to take in the last days of summer with some patio dining. Two words: big mistake. Historically, Bostonist has found the nachos at other......

Bostonist decided to take a break from the MFA and head over to the Harvard Univerity Art Museums this past weekend; while we recall visiting the Peabody Museum on a high school field trip, we don’t recall ever wandering into any of the art museums that Harvard has to offer. The biggest draw right now is the Degas exhibit at the Sackler museum, which is home to the University’s permanent Asian, Indian, and Islamic art......