SFist saw Christmas Day turn tragic after a Siberian tiger escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo, killing a visitor and mauling two others. Phillyist counted down the top ten items on Philadelphia's New Year's wish list. Gothamist looked at the wooden bikes being offered for NYC's first bike share program on Governors Island. LAist received a Christmas present in the form of a drunk Santa Claus in a g-string. Bostonist launched......

Over at Huffington Post, Andrea Batista Schlesinger of the Drum Major Institute has a nice roundup of what she thinks are the best public policy initiatives of 2007. Number six on her list is the D.C. Voting Rights Act, and she has a solid grasp on why congressional representation for the District is so important:Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C's indomitable delegate, can debate with the best of them, but without the D.C. Voting Rights Act, neither......

Good morning, Washington. The week surrounding the holidays is almost always a certifiably slow news period, so you can bet good money every local media outlet in the country is shamefacedly relieved to be able to find their own angle on the terrifying fatal San Francisco Zoo tiger attack. Sister site SFist has the roundup of Bay Area coverage, and the Examiner steps up to the plate with the D.C. version of the story --......

The anti-gay, right wing group Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) will present "raw and unedited" footage shot at this year's Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco at the National Press Club at 1 p.m. tomorrow. AFTAH president Peter LaBarbera specifically targets Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with this conference, urging her "to do the right thing by condemning the public nudity and perversions — and blatant anti-Christian bigotry — that occurred in her......

Have you followed Eddie Argos' instructions and formed a band? Have you been looking, but just not finding, the perfect way to celebrate Hannukah this year? Are you free on December 8? The Eight, a concert presented by JDub Records, and Taglit-birthright Israel, is a worldwide Hannukah party happening simultaneously in 9 cities: D.C., New York, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Rio and Moscow. JDub, home to bands such as Balkan Beat Box,......

SFist witnessed a new apartment building tszuj the skyline with spectacular, gaudy turquoise aplomb, the (informal) renaming of the Mission/SOMA neighborhood border, the return of the Maltese Falcon, the Mayor Gavin Newsom mea culpa-ing over his Hawaiian getaway during the oil spill, and double-decker buses hitting the streets of San Francisco. Oh, and some baseball player named Barry Bonds is a liar whose pants, it seems, are totally on fire. LAist continues to cover the......

Fun Fun Fun Fest 2007 Recap from Super!Alright! on Vimeo. Austinist attended a town hall meeting about proposed noise ordinances that could undermine the city's future as the Live Music Capital of the World, and lamented the possible loss of Texas's only feminist bookstore. Throughout the week, they interviewed a bunch of indie fashion designers and D-I-Y websites—Etsy, Ornamental Things, 31 Corn Lane, and Aorta Designs—for the upcoming Stitch Fashion Show. They also did......

Washington, D.C. makes yet another top ten list. A new study names our beloved city as the 8th gayest in the country. Frankly, a couple of us here at DCist thought we were gayer than that. The study, by Gary J. Gates of UCLA's Williams Institute, analyzed data on same-sex couples from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. censuses along with that from American Community Surveys (ACS) between 2002 and 2006. Cities and states were ranked......

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.......

Zipcar and Flexcar, D.C.'s two most popular car-sharing companies, announced they are merging Wednesday. Emails to customers of both companies directed them to an announcement on Zipcar's website. "The combined company will provide our members with increased benefits and improve our ability to expand into new markets," said Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith in the statement. The new company will operate under the Zipcar name, and while the pricing plans are still being hammered out, they......

MONDAY >> Were you out of town this weekend, wishing you were home soaking in the goodness that was the DAM! Festival? Fear not. Tonight there is one more show, and it happens to be the festival's biggest. The chanteuse to give all other indie chanteuses a run for their money, Cat Power, is taking the 9:30 Club stage with the Dirty Delta Blues, and a little help from openers Childballads. $25 or your......

If you missed the Green Festival at the Convention Center this past weekend, you missed an incredible event. Luckily event organizers will be posting video and audio of the plethora of speeches to their website in about two weeks. You'll also be able to download speech audio from this year’s upcoming San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago festivals. The Green Festival is sponsored by Co-Op America and Global Exchange. The event is largely volunteer-run, with 1300......

Written by DCist Contributor Oscar Bunoan We’ve all heard it before. “You’ve got to try this place out. It’s a complete dive but the food is just to die for!” A friend told me about a hole-in-the-wall place in Chinatown, Full Kee, that's popular with the lunchtime crowd. Is it really? Mythbusters Adam and Jamie should have tried cracking this mystery back in season one, but since they're in San Francisco, it's up to me.......

It's no surprise to this Hill resident, but it might be to those of you who live in relative cesspools like Logan Circle, Clarendon, Silver Spring, or "North" Cleveland Park: Eastern Market has been named one of the Nation's ten best neighborhoods. Thank you, American Planning Association, for giving credit where it's due. In its first annual "Best Places" awards, the APA heralds the Eastern Market neighborhood for "its continued success in balancing the demands......

MONDAY >> At the ripe young age of 24, Patrick Wolf has already achieved a lot: three albums of brooding electronica and orchestral pop, modeling campaigns for Burberry, headlines in the British tabloids and at least one on-stage altercation that found the lupine violinist attacking his strung-out drummer with a cymbal. Drama notwithstanding, Wolf's latest, the surprisingly upbeat The Magic Position, is undoubtedly one of this year's best. Come see what all the fuss is......

Seattlest watches as a S.L.U.T. is born and Seattle Flickr users go nuts over a local art installation. A restaurant critic demands a Diner's Bill of Rights over a gnat next to her drink, and, in lieu of a Portlandist, Seattlest debates with itself over the identity of the Northwest's crown jewel. Seattlest also joins the guys from Fantagraphics for an ill-fated gun party in the woods. LAist saw national headlines soar this week with......

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......

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and......

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......

At Irvine Contemporary is Introductions3, a group exhibition featuring works of thirteen recent MFA grads from art schools across the country. According to Gallery Director Martin Irvine, Introductions3 is the first show of its kind at a commercial gallery, since similar shows stick to regional artists; instead Irvine branched out and reviewed 300 emerging artists nationwide. The selections were narrowed to 60 before a panel of art collectors committed to the final 13 emerging artists,......

MONDAY >> Fiending for some good ol' bluegrass and Americana? San Francisco's The Pine Box Boys will be delivering just that at the Red and the Black tonight. With two drinks tonight, you'll also be served free beans and rice. We suggest some whiskey to wash it all down. Or, The Whale and Revival open. 9:30 p.m., $8. >>Enjoy the slightly cooler weather by taking in Georgie James, Perfect Souvenir and Brandon Butler at Fort......

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,......

Damn Barry Bonds. Damn Cream’n’Clear takin’, media-manipulatin’, fan-hatin’ Barry Bonds. With apologies to sister site SFist, who has stepped up their excitement in anticipation of Bonds breaking Hank Aaron’s home run record, my recognition of his record-breaking achievement has gone from tepid acknowledgement to thinly-veiled animosity. It was bad enough that the Nats best baseball of the year – two straight series sweeps and a six-game win streak – was overshadowed this weekend by Balco......

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......

Via the Examiner, we learn that a new ranking put out by Dulles-based AOL places Washington, D.C. as the "most email addicted" city in the country, beating out the likes of Atlanta, New York, San Francisco and Houston, which all placed in the top five. The prevalence of mobile email devices such as Blackberries and Sidekicks in the city was attributed to the result, as well as the large number of government employees, most of......

No matter how you feel about a city known for its hippie culture or holier-than-thou aging baby boomers, you sort of have to love Takoma Park, Md. Commonly referred to as "The People's Republic of Takoma Park" or "The Berkeley of the East", the commuter suburb right on the border of the District is not only charmingly beautiful, but the people who live there wear their political proclivities on their collective sleeves so seriously they......

Monday >> Canada’s post-punk four piece Uncut just released their latest album Modern Currencies in the U.S. on July 17th and will be at DC9 tonight with special guest Patrick Krief of The Dears. Just like their name says, they are raw: loud, bold, and off the wall. Check out the stopmotion animated video for their recent single, "Darkhorse" which includes a fire bombing Ronald McDonald and an army of pissed off Care Bears. 8p.m.,......