After months of anticipation it has finally arrived: Inauguration Day. Not presidential, sadly; no, we have to endure that circus for another year yet. Today is the day Michael Nutter officially takes the reins as mayor and turns this city around, making it cleaner and safer (hopefully not in that order). Sadly if you don't have your tickets by now you will not be witnessing the event; the only public ticketed event, an "Inaugural Celebration"......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

A long-promised Youth Study Center is still unlikely to come anytime soon, partially due to an archaic, unwritten law of the City Council. Yesterday, it was another Philly Mayoral candidate's turn to announce his plan to fight crime in the city - Michael Nutter. Yesterday was also Rendell's second inauguration, and Philly Inquirer reporter Amy Worden was blogging it. We find it vaguely amusing that the URL of the blog starts with "pain." Pennsylvania,......

This has been a rough week for your -ist pals, though you wouldn't know it from the great posts all over the network. Plagued with server problems, our tech team (led by the great Neil Epstein) toiled around the clock to solve the glitches as they arose. Seriously, we've said, typed, and thought the phrase "server problems" more in the past week than we have for the last 35 years combined. Why not say it......