Oprah and Obama Sunday, December 9 Verizon Wireless Arena, Manchester, NH Doors at 6:00 pm, rally at 7:30 pm You can knock, but you might not get in. Waiting List As the presidential race heats up, Barack Obama isn't messing around. He's already been to Boston several times and paid extra-special attention to New Hampshire, but now he's uncorking his secret weapon--Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey will be with Obama in South Carolina Sunday morning, and then......

If you walk through Cambridge, you would think that everyone is running for office based on the number of signs on residential streets. Finally, the day has arrived to vote for the city council and the school committee. There are nine open seats on the council, eight incumbents are running again, and several newbies want their jobs. The Cambridge Chronicle has a well-done list of profiles for each candidate. The big story of the election......

Who will be the next Boston Rob? Who cracked us up as much as "Mr. Boston" did when he wooed Tiffany "New York" Patterson? A new season of reality television has started, and Massachusetts residents are on many of the shows, so we'll take a tour of how they're doing each week. --Kid Nation: A child from Upton is participating in Kid Nation, the reality show that has stirred up all manner of controversy regarding......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked......

The BPD announced that on Tuesday they ordered a rogue fortune teller to stop dealing in the future. Neighbors on Marlborough Street didn't appreciate the fortune teller's fliers on their cars. No word if they were creeped out by the intense psychic energy. She was operating a business without being properly licensed, but we didn't know that fortune-telling required a license. A Google search on fortune telling in Boston turned up selectmen minutes from Hull......

Tomorrow a public hearing on Bicyclist Safety Bill (aka S 1414) will take place in room B-2 of the Statehouse at 10 am. The bill is the same bill that Kerry Healey vetoed when she was governor helping Mitt out when they were both lame ducks. As we learned the first time around the executive office seemed to misinterpret the bill, thinking that it imposed a new set of rules on recreation. The bill's intention,......

When The Boston Phoenix hit newsstands on Thursday, a month and a day had passed since Kelly Wallace was killed at the intersection of Cambridge Street and Harvard Avenue in Allston. Wallace was riding her bicycle when the accident occurred on May 6 - her death marked the second Boston bicycle fatality in about a month. Two lives, two scenes, two ghost bicycles. According to the Phoenix story that ran late last month, Wallace wrote......

We missed it last week when BostonNOW published a story about a city ordinance proposed by City Councilor Chuck Turner to outlaw the sale of crack pipes in convenience stores. Yeah, that's right, prohibit the sale of crack pipes. Massachusetts already has pretty strong laws against the sale of drug paraphernalia. The restrictions force prices up in those Boston area stores that do stock those odd looking tobacco delivery devices, and local college students to......

Governor Deval Patrick came out in support of UMass President Jack Wilson's reorganization plan yesterday. Well, at least he supported Wilson's authority to shake up the leadership of the university system. The state executive branch supporting the state's university system executive branch seems fitting. The biggest complaint from the faculty at the UMass campuses has been voiced as Wilson's lack of transparency and consultation with the university faculty. Essentially it is a "you should have......

In Rhode Island you can't get married as a same sex couple. You can't get divorced as a same sex couple either. Well, at least not yet. According to the Providence Journal, the Rhode Island State Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments and give an answer to the question: "May the Family Court properly recognize, for the purpose of entertaining a divorce petition, the marriage of two persons of the same sex who......

The complete game is a dying art in the States. In the age of relief specialists, managers tied to pitch counts, and Papelbon, there aren't a lot of occasions when a manager wants to leave his starter in any longer than necessary. And last night, in fact, Papelbon was warming up when the Sox blew the game open in the 8th, taking a 7-1 lead and giving Terry Francona an excuse to leave Daisuke in......

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

-- One down! After the five-game pounding that the Red Sox took from the Yankees at Fenway last August, Friday's matchup was more than just a game. It was more than just the first rivalry game of the season. It was about avenging the embarrassment that continued to smart for Sox fans over the winter and into the early season. The game itself was a battle of the best kind: one in which we came......

--At Stonehill College in Easton, a student found five empty shotgun-shell boxes in a parking lot. Given the rampage at Virginia Tech, people got nervous. However, Stonehill College waited four hours before telling students what to do. The school met with Easton Police before evacuating a dorm, but one student shot back, "It doesn't take four hours to consult with Easton Police." --Andrew Rosenblum, the part-time BU student who threatened an ex-girlfriend is now facing......

The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage. Earlier today the Pulitzer Prizes were announced. The Globe's Charlie Savage won the honor for his work in National Reporting. It's good to know that our little newspaper of record is not being totally out done by its big brother (and owner) the New York Times. Savage won for his series of reports on Bush's use of signing statements to bypass parts of new laws. Boston.com has put together a......

Sometimes even those of us who live in the rock clubs can forget how to behave ourselves. Maybe it’s some strange alchemy of alcohol and entitlement. Maybe it’s a vague attachment to the spirit of “punk rock.“ Or maybe it’s just plain rudeness. Just in case, here’s a brief refresher course on the things to keep in mind from people who know best - the ones who work there. 1) Keep Your Hands to Yourself......

The Globe reported today that Deval Patrick was reversing an order by former Governor Mitt Romey and would allow 26 couples to have their marriages to be recorded in Massachusetts. A 1913 law which stated that those couples whose marriage was specifically outlawed in their state of residence could not marry in Massachusetts was used by the Romney administration – and withheld by a State Supreme Court decision – precluded the couples marriages from being......

So the Celtics won a game against an injury-depleted Houston Rockets. That's swell and all, but the real sports news involved a man named "Cornbread." As the Sports Redux noted yesterday, Dave Adams at Universal Hub overheard WRKO Celtics announcer and former NBA player Cedric "Cornbread" Maxwell say of female referee Violet Palmer, "Get back in the kitchen!" Apparently he didn't like one of her calls. Adams writes, "Max's partner, Sean Grande, tried to throw......

Boston has a rich Catholic tradition. Ash Wednesday was this week and had may Boston residents walking around town with the cross of burnt palms on their forehead (yes, that's what it was – and it was on purpose). The beginning of the Lenten season brings other rituals to many Catholics and other Christians who may be a bit more liberal in following the canon laws the rest of the year. The practice of......

It's not fuzzy math, it's just expensive. The Commonwealth's new universal health insurance law passed last year was touted as a great chance for Massachusetts to become a leader in the nation in universal health care. At the time the talk was about a $200 per month premium. The legislation (let's call it Chapter 58 of the Acts of 2006 for fun) mandates that all adults in Massachusetts who make $29,412, three times the poverty......

Mayor Thomas Menino gave his "State of the City" address at the Strand Theater in Dorchester Tuesday night. And public safety was high on the agenda. Menino tried to warm up the audience by referencing the nickname he earned at last summer's hip-hop festival - "T-Mizzy." (So does that make Travaglini "T-Vag"? If so, we vow that we're going to use that nickname for the state senate president from now on!) After some awkward......

The New England Patriots can't seem to get enough of the courtroom. Tom Brady filed suit against Yahoo! for using his image for their Fantasy Football promotion, and the Patriots also used an obscure Massachusetts anti-scalping law to file suit against Bay Area company StubHub.com, which allows Patriots ticket holders to resell their tickets at a profit. Only StubHub hit the ball back across the court - they've filed a countersuit against the Patriots for......

This week Boston is slowly creeping to Christmas with an eye peeled to what will be in store for when we break into the new year. What does that mean? A slow music week. The amps and turntables are keeping quiet this year as 103.3 FM spins all-Christmas all the time. Look forward to 2007 and the new year in music as this year winds down and you take to the iTunes downloading all......

We've been asked a couple times about the particularities of voting in the primaries tomorrow. Bostonist doesn't claim to be an authority on the subject, but we've taken a stab at answering a few questions below. I'm registered Independent (or Undeclared). Can I still vote? The most common question we've gotten is if it's possible to vote in the primary if you're registered as independent or undeclared. Sure. Pick a party and vote in that......

In case you didn’t hear the big news last week: Boston has once again risen to the top of a Forbes list and we’re not too sure this one is a good thing. It seems that Boston was rated fourth nationwide in America’s Drunkest Cities 2006 poll. While Bostonist often rolls out of bed with a headache, questioning why we decided to have that last Grey Goose at 1:30a.m., we assumed we were just......

Well, Commonwealth actually. With streak the Red Sox have been having (it's not the good kind) Massachusetts legislators might be patting themselves on the back for the approval of Basketball as the official sport. It was invented in Springfield, and the Western Mass city is home to the sports hall of fame. Sure, the Celtics haven't been giving us the sporting thrill the Red Sox have delivered in the past few years. Or, realistically, since......

Breaking the law, breaking the law We -ist folks love us some crime, and no misdemeanor is too petty for a post on any of our sites. This week, join us for a rogues' gallery of miscreants major, minor, and alleged. Gothamist gets us started with "Law & Order", muppet style. Oh, you know what isn't a crime? Taking pictures on the MTA. So, why are cops stopping photographers? In other Gotham crime, a......

Every now and then, Bostonist tells you about some fabulous, or absurd, or fabulously absurd thing that the good folks at MIT have cooked up for their own amusement or the greater good. But until now, we never had any sense of what went into the making of these innovative inventions. Sure, we supposed that socially awkward people with oversized backpacks were involved, but that was pretty much all. Today, though, that all changed, as......

I recently received a petition by e-mail to support passage of a proposed state law that would protect mothers who breast feed in public from being charged with indecent exposure. Is this really a pressing issue? I thought we had protective laws. - A mom in Somerville No Mass. law expressly protects breast feeding, putting the Commonwealth in the minority of states (only 14 others have no law that explicitly allows breastfeeding in public places)......