Though landlords are a difficult lot to summon sympathy for – sorry, you want us to pay how much for our itty-bitty windowless flat? – our heart (nearly) bleeds to learn of this role reversal: landlords gouged by tenants. Truly? So it would seem. Cannabis factories have gained a foothold in west London rentals – the police shuttered 36 of them last year in Hounslow alone – and the losses incurred by property owners......

Looks like Paul Smith, a constable at Holborn police station, caught a case of reefer madness. He's been charged with 15 counts of cannabis theft -- from the station. While securing his stash from the evidence locker, the pothead policeman must have slipped up. Details haven't yet been released, but we hope he had a billy club bong, Snoop Dogg on his iPod and an inability to stifle his giggles every time someone said 420.......

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......

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......

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network. It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

Preparations for 2012 are 'substantially' ahead of schedule reckons Tessa Jowell. London is the 'perfect place' to start the Tour de France says Ken. really? Because we would have thought France would have been top of that list. Bob Marley's heritage plaque was unveiled today, it's at 34 Ridgmount Gardens, Camden if you want to go visit. (We can guaranteee that the number of people cautioned for smoking marijuana in Camden will shoot up......

Like the majority of people we like looking at buildings but, if we're honest, we don't really know the first thing about architecture. Every now and again though a magazine, tv programme or website manages to cut through the smokescreen of architectural jargon and actually manages to educate and inform us about a building. The Filter does that for us on a regular basis. Striving to be "elevant and insightful for the expert, and......

You know what Londonist loves? Londonist loves those free newspapers that appear unbidden through our letter slot every now and then. Although most of the pages are filled with real estate ads, the half-dozen pages of local news thrown in to make the publication look respectable can sometimes be pure poetry. Case in point: the Tottenham and Wood Green Independent that arrived on the desks of Londonist's high-tech command centre last week. On the......

Not content with driving around in their annoying little cars with urban-inspired street graphics, London's real estate agents are now finding time in their busy schedule of fleecing renters and pushing the envelope of bad shirt-tie combinations http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/topstories/display.var.590441.0.not_quite_your_average_house.php" target="blank">to fight crime. Well, when we say fight crime, we actually mean inadvertently stumble into a cannabis factory in Leytonstone and call the rozzers. Agents from Clarke Hillyer Property Consultants along with the owner of the......