A study released earlier this week revealed that Philadelphia area drivers spend an average of 38 hours a year sitting in traffic, which is up an hour from last year, but as it turns out, it's still not that bad as far as traffic delays in large American cities go: we ranked 33rd. But we ranked second in the level of impact that accidents and stalled vehicles have on traffic congestion. Kind of makes......

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......

In a rather surprising decision, the Board of License & Inspection Review voted unanimously yesterday to allow the Death of Venus mural to remain on the wall in the historic district, even without a permit. Although the Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, and Tacony-Palmyra Bridges are still officially "safe," they're also described as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Most will be undergoing repair or updating soon. The extremely congested Terminal F at the Philadelphia International......

The Inquirer has an interesting article about Boys' Latin of Philadelphia Charter School - its popular summer sessions, and its position as "the first single-sex charter approved in Pennsylvania," "the first publicly funded school in Philadelphia that requires students to take Latin," and "the first charter in the region modeled after the rigorous Boston Latin School." The enormous amounts of traffic and congestion on the bridge across the Schuylkill linking Conshohocken with I-76 and......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too – two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......

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......

With all that went down this week, we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions this week at DCist. Like the rest of country, we were floored by the news of so many dead coming out of Virginia Tech, and with so many of the victims and their relatives from the D.C. area, we felt it important to pay tribute to those......

There are tons of follow-up articles on that mass murder down at the offices of Zigzag at the Naval Yard. The Daily News has a general article about the tragedy, as well as more on Zigzag and their clients, a timeline of the day's events, and profiles of the victims. Meanwhile, the Inquirer covers the story in detail, as well. As we suspected, lots of people are not too hot on Fattah's "congestion charge" idea.......

The snow storm came to Philly, and it was worse than was originally expected! Many schools in the area yesterday dismissed students early and/or cancelled after-school events. A couple of crazy bastards parachuted down off the Comcast Center Sunday morning. Of course, as is requisite these days when you do something stupid and dangerous, a video was taken and promptly posted on YouTube (although sadly, it has since been taken down). Police are looking for......

Things are not looking good for a quick resolution to the now three day old SEPTA strike. Talks resumed yesterday between SEPTA management and the union, but broke down around 1:00 am this morning. No new talks are scheduled and no progress is being reported. We're thinking it might be a nice idea to kidnap all the important players, chain them to a radiator in some crappy, run down motel, and threaten to feed them......