We really like the contrast of the colored sky with the green tones of the subway stop in this photo by mewamorska......

City Councilor Michael Ross has a new project--the beautification of Beacon Hill. But, wait, you ask, isn't Beacon Hill pretty already? Sure. But Ross is underwhelmed by Cambridge Street and wants to " http://www.bostonherald.com/business/real_estate/view.bg?articleid=1075736">extend the Beacon Hill Architectural District" to include the street, the Herald reports. Offensive eyesores on Cambridge Street include a sign for Subway sandwiches and ATM machines that don't look like the World's Fanciest 7-11, which you can find on Charles......

Update to the Update: Green C is back to normal. (12:30 pm) Update: Just received a T alert about a problem on the Green C Line: "Subway Green "C" Line - is being diverted due to weather related problem - tree fallen on overhead at Fairbanks/Beacon street. A Shuttle bus will run in both directions between Coolidge Corner and Cleveland Circle." Drivers are already spinning out on the roads this morning, and pedestrians are walking......

A viral video posted by our brothers and sisters at Gothamist shows some women who pole danced in a train car on a dare from darejunkies.com, much to the chagrin of the MTA. The video is something to behold, although, after seeing all the crotch-grinding and the dubious looks of some of the men enjoying themselves, we wouldn't want to touch anything in that car after the women finished. Here's the video: Given that this......

The Holiday season is in full swing in NYC, with holiday lights in Brooklyn, a giant snow globe in Bryant Park and Chanukah specials for ham. One citizen decided to go vigilante on annoying car alarms, a murder suspect used a fake Asian accent on the stand and a video of a man being beaten up by teenage girls on a subway shocked the city. And we interviewed soon-to-be-leaving-Gawker editor Choire Sicha, who said,......

It's official. You can now put Charlie in your cell phone or on your computer. The T has a big, fat announcement on its home page, featuring an image of a gleeful woman. She's happy now, but she hasn't seen the charges that will result from all her text messages. Anyway, Bostonist has signed up. You can choose the "mode of service" you prefer: commuter rail, subway, bus, silver line, and boat. (Thank goodness......

--The man who was robbing people in the South End by impersonating a police detective has been arrested. The DA's office says that Anthony Burney, 32, of Lynn, was charged with "two counts of unarmed robbery and single counts of impersonating a police officer, kidnapping, and larceny over $250." Burney forced one man he was robbing on a trip through the subway system. From the DA's office: That victim described a long and bizarre trip......

MBTA commuters connecting through Airport, North and South Stations had a touching reunion this morning... with the sound of their own thoughts. T-Radio has been suspended. And a month early at that. Evidently, hearing a steady stream of lite rock, celebrity gossip and commercials through speakers with the fidelity of a Fisher Price record player while held captive on a subway platform turned out not to be as popular among Bostonians as was once......

Gothamist learned about the craziest urban nightmare come true: A huge python found in the bathroom pipes. It was also a nightmare for some Yankees fans, as manger Joe Torre declined to come back and manage the Bronx Bombers. At least the city's attempt to give some direction to subway riders was interesting, pranksters went shirtless at the Fifth Avenue Abercrombie & Fitch and the I Heart Brooklyn Girls calendars came out. And just......

There is a lot to love about the MBTA. Its mascot is a man who began a nightmarish lifelong captivity 'neath the streets of Boston when he tried to take the T to Jamaica Plain. It offers Bostonians spontaneous trust exercises. It grants importance to our geographically inclined citizens. And, let's face it, it gets us to work. But America's oldest subway is poised to become America's most annoying. The concept is T-Radio, and it......

LAist began the month with a new food series exploring the popular and unknown late-night eats around town. If a Top Chef winner opened up a late-night spot in Los Angeles, denizens would flock to it, yet the LA Times and other media might be wary. Turning to sports, the Dodger season was quite memorable in the way that it imploded and the LA County Sheriff's Department made some games of their own such as......

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market......

Welcome to "Series of Tubes," in which Bostonist rounds up developments among local bloggers over the past week. If you want to make sure your blog is on Bostonist's radar, please e-mail caroline@bostonist.com or leave a link in the Contribute section. --David at Blue Mass Group describes the horrible conditions animals must endure at the Wonderland and Raynham dog tracks. His post and the facts described within are more than enough to make a person......

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......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness - we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did some research and found that Massachusetts bridges......

Ah, the New York/Boston debate. While many point their fingers at Boston for stoking the flames on a regular basis (chants of "Yankees Suck" heard everywhere might have something to do with it), we can now point a little of the blame back to NYC. Gawker, having decided that they'd chastised Britney Spears' parenting techniques enough, shocked readers across the globe today by turning its typically New Yawk-centric eye beyond the boroughs. But, in characteristic......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

Just over a year ago (in June 2006) the ACLU threatened the MBTA with a lawsuit, alleging that their unwritten policy against amateur photography on the nation's oldest subway system was unconstitutional. Specifically the ACLU asserted that it was a violation of the first amendment rights (free speech specifically, though a fair argument could be made for freedom of press, we challenge you to give us a legitimate application for freedom of religion.) The......

Banner week for SFist as the site's new editor introduced himself -- hooray for Brock! While the NY Times weighed in on SF's mayoral race, only SFist had the (insert tongue firmly into cheek) hard-hitting latest on candidate/activist Josh Wolf. Coverage of a protest vs. gentrification spawned a fantastic debate amongst SFist's readers. Finally, from the sublime to the ridiculous: video of a man that confused a Board of Supes meeting with "open mic......

Ah….. summer in Boston: Lobster rolls, ice-cold Sam Adams, and teen-agers shooting each other on the subway. Boston.com issued a breaking news alert today at 2:44 PM: “Police Search for 2 Suspects after Teen Shot on Orange Line Train.” According to the story by Mac Daniel, at about 1 p.m. a teenager exited the outbound train at Ruggles and pulled a gun on another “18 to-19 year old” male, who was still on the train.......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

All across the Ist-A-Verse (or at least the American parts thereof), writers and editors are in the midst of enjoying their three-day weekend. But after the week we've all had, we feel like the break is not only needed, but deserved. Just look at everything we've been doing! Gothamist headed into the Memorial Day weekend with a number of tasks accomplished. They worried about Long Islanders giving New Yorkers a bad name. They tried......

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA......

According to Massachusetts is so blue that you can't tell if it's blue or black. We're not really sure what exactly that means. The Daily Show recapped the Republican debate and provided no fewer than three segments to dig into Mitt Romney. Perhaps it's a sign that the statesman from Massachusetts (and Utah, and Michigan, and…) is a front runner worthy of ridicule. But perhaps it's what we've known for a while: it's the little......

Mike Daisey was the first to note that there were a few messy spots in his Tuesday night performance of "Tongues Will Wag," the monologue workshopped before a rapt American Repertory Theatre audience at the Zero Arrow. He remarked upon that fact as soon as the standing ovation applause subsided. He was right. "Tongues Will Wag" has a few rough patches - an overly used reference here, a missed identification there. But for a monologue......

This from WBZ: A two-alarm fire that started at about 8:20 pm shut down the Longfellow Bridge. Trains were stopped, traffic was diverted, and heavy smoke forced the Charles-MGH station to shut down. The MBTA has posted the alert on its website and offered a few terse details: "A homeless man started a fire underneath the Longfellow Bridge. As a result the Boston Fire Department has stopped all traffic. Subway Red Line service is being......

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us. Austinist has a chat with the ever-fashionable Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, and managed to catch some local fashionistas making......