Photo by Andy Sternberg/LAist A posthumous tribute wall dedicated to singer/songwriter Elliot Smith sat defaced by graffiti for months on end -- LAist said enough, so did the fans and city council.SFist was surprised to learn that chronic presidential candidate Ralph Nader picked former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez as his running mate.Phillyist explored the possibilities of green cleaning.In the latest edition of Reel Toronto, a bi-weekly feature looking at films shot in Toronto......

Hello Jeff! Ho ho ho and a bottle of rum - it's Christmas time! Happy Saint Jesus Day, to almost all of you! And what an event it is - a time for giving, sharing, and taking; a time for thinking about the past, as well as looking forward to the future, all the while contemplating the here and now; a time of remembrance and joy, coupled with inebriation, rage, and light misogyny. And......

Remember the pigeon feeding turf wars of 2006? Well, the Pigeon Action Group are back in the news. A candlelit vigil was held at midday today on Trafalgar Square's north terrace (in daylight?) to highlight the plight of the poor starving birds. Westminster City Council closed the loophole that had allowed certain pigeon protestors to feed the birds on a daily basis back in September to make the public square more hygenic and pleasant.......

It happens at the worst of times, always. You'll be in that changing room of Topshop, jeans straddled around your hips, or on that tube platform, waiting for a train with a requisite five minute delay and then it strikes you - the urge to pee. Out of your comfort zone (the zone of knowing where the nearest cubicle is), the fear magnifies tenfold. You could surreptitiously enter that local restaurant, and negotiate the humiliation......

When Westminster City Council took on the free newspapers London Lite and The London Paper, Londonist was fully supportive. Tired of the masses of papers scattered around the city at the end of each day, the Council asked that Associated Newspapers (owners of London Lite) and Rupert Murdoch's News International (owners of The London Paper) take responsibility for the amount of rubbish they were creating and install 150 newspaper recycling bins around Westminster and......

Chicagoist is gearing up for this weekend's annual Air & Water Show along the lakefront. In what's becoming an annual tradition around there, staff member Todd McClamroch even got to fly with one of the participants. Chicagoist's decidedly opinionated readership was also appalled that one of their staffers found a popular local brewpub to be a great place to bring a kid. They also think that an unlikely activist for immigration rights should just take......

Westminster City Council is making a stand against free London newspapers London Lite (owned by Associated Newspapers) and The London Paper (owned by Rupert Murdoch) not because the City Council is tired of the two types of non-news offered in the many, many copies distributed each day, nor are they taking an official stand against the irritating assault course of newspaper distributors outside each major tube and bus station but because there is just......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 8. Cocomad It was the day of the Live Earth concerts, eight events in eight cities with a goal of raising awareness of the threat to planet Earth from climate change. The most significant cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels such as oil. So I guess it was a little ironic......

What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week. Being the nation's capital, DCist felt especially proud to let freedom ring this week by exposing the really important issues, like how sad they......

Seattlest has a talk with the photographer from last week's "Segway Mom" and then experiences some dissension in the ranks over the question of wine vs. beer. It's not West Side Story, but about as close as they'll get. They're also still waiting on some inbox relief after a spammer is arrested. As Chicagoist counts down the days to its third anniversary party, they found all-organic pizza to be underwhelming amidst the hoopla, tried......

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......

Not London, but perhaps of interest to fans of street art / that horrible mess spread over our perfectly good walls: A large wall mural by "guerrilla artist" Banksy has been mistakenly painted over by a council's graffiti-removal contractors. The valuable 25ft-long artwork, on the side of garages in Bristol, was covered with a coat of thick black paint. Bristol City Council said it wanted an investigation into the blunder. The council has ordered......

You'd think a burly contingent of live in Beef Eaters would be enough to defend The Tower of London from attack, but it seems no one took into account the overwhelming destructive power unleashed by property developers. Plans to stop developers putting up ugly buildings near Britain's heritage sites have been unveiled. Britain's 27 World Heritage Sites, including the Tower of London, are not formally protected by planning laws. But the government is now......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur,......

Artist and curator Robert Gordon McHarg III founded the Subway Gallery last year and on 6th of June 2006, the gallery joined the rest of London's art scene. While some galleries like to say they are underground, this one is undeniably so. It's in a pedestrian subway, still open to the public, still used by many people trying to get from one side of Edgware Road to the other. It's, like, totally underground. The......

Westminster City Council just never stop thinking: Bailing out of a dull Christmas office party has been made easier with the launch of a new texting service. The "excuse text" is part of a free service launched by Westminster City Council, which includes a list of travel numbers and mobile phone alerts. The four-week, £70,000 council-funded campaign, aims at ensuring revellers get home safely after a night out. "And if making small talk with......

All the best stuff from our sister sites around the globe: 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,......

We promised to keep you updated on what was happening with the statue of Nelson Mandela that Westminster City Council wanted no part of. Well it finally looks like it'll be finding a place in Parliament Square. Or Canning Green. "The clock would start ticking as soon as we have a planning application. With all this pre-planning hopefully it would be a matter of months before it would come through." Good grief. We're not......

Being the kind of Londoners who find it difficult to hold onto our money and yet not wanting to live anywhere else we quite understand why someone with a spare twenty million quid or so would want to move here: For billionaire first-home buyers or those recently come into money down Tonbridge way, London's newest development, high-end luxury flats with a price tag of up to £20m, could be just the thing. Planning permission......

It's 4am and you can't sleep. You've exhausted the Internet after reading the whole thing twice and even the American football on Channel 5 can't send you to sleep. What you could really do with is watching some naked women rubbing themselves up against the furniture, but the nursing home won't let you in at this hour... what a conundrum. Don't fret though - Peter Stringfellow is on the case. It's been a while......

We like our hidden bits of London, the secret and forgotten and pleasantly rediscovered bits. Did you know that there was once a swimming pool in the very heart of Soho? The Marshall Street Baths were built in 1931 for "the health and well-being of local people," with one large pool and one smaller "second class" pool that incidentally has the nicer roof - an extremely fine example of barrel vaulted Art Deco design.......

It's time to give the batteries a rest and let your fingers do the walking this week - National Energy Saving Week is upon us. The Energy Saving Trust would like to see us adopting multiple energy saving measures to help reduce 20% of our energy consumption. There's more info on how to go about that up on their website, but it boils down to cutting back on home energy use, driving cleaner vehicles......

The Arts Theatre in the West End (the one near the Photographer's Gallery around the corner from Leicester Square tube) is at the moment battling to stay alive. The theatre was the first London home to the Royal Shakespeare Company and was where Waiting for Godot got its UK debut, but right now its owners are trying to have the place demolished in order to redevelop the surrounding buildings as "higher value commercial property......

Marylebone: shops, bars, restaurants increased death rates, respiratory disease and more asthma attacks. At least that's what to expect according to a press release from Friends of the Earth who reveal that air pollution levels in London are breaking European law and that the government could face prosecution by the European Commission as levels of fine particles at a monitoring site on Marylebone Road exceeded European standards for the 36th day this year while......

Wow that's a contrived headline. Sorry about that. But, hopefully, it should make some sort of sense once you've read this story. Basically what's happened is that Westminster Council have instructed pubs in Soho to remove their rainbow 'Freedom flags' on planning grounds, citing the fact that they constitute a structural change and could also be perceived as 'advertising'. If they don't remove the flags the bars could face fines of £250 for every......