DineLA's Restaurant Week officially starts today! LAist was there for the kickoff event hosted by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Neal Fraser at Grace. LAist's Callie Miller let us in on her dirty little secret this week: she loves Pinkberry. GIANT KILLER CUPCAKE!!!! Okay, so it's not exactly 50 feet tall, but jumbo cupcakes from French pâtisserie La Provence in Beverly Hills still look massively good to us. Fresh & Easy has finally opened in......

Which one of these beautiful young ladies will be named America's Next Top Model in the show's 10th go-round? I am not ashamed to admit that Wednesday nights at my house are sometimes known as "Top Model" night. (Code word: "You wanna be on top?" natch.) I didn't watch the show for its first few cycles, actually, curbing my "reality"-based curiosity about the gaggle of leggy empty-heads with the pretty faces and the ridiculous......

As it gets closer to Halloween for LAist, a contributer recollects her tale of staring down the serial killer, Richard Ramirez, otherwise known as the Night Stalker. Must think happy thoughts -- okay, free organic chocolate chip cookies for Los Angeles -- now that's a happy thought. Other happy Los Angeles thoughts include an interview with Jack Kehler of The Big Lebowski (he was the Dude's landlord), a beautiful and magical photographic moment in Venice......

This week, Phillyist saw the waters of a landmark fountain run red for a Showtime marketing stunt, the Phils pull ahead, and some serious nostalgia. They also got a chance to review an awesome tribute album, reminded folks to see the King, and appreciated their beautiful skyline. Chicagoist knows what it's like to like the Cubs. But naming your kid Wrigley Fields? At least they can breathe a little easier now that Grossman's out and......

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness - we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did a little research and found that Massachusetts......

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......

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......

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA......

Here are a few spots for eats and drinks that we are looking forward to seeing open: 1. We were very excited to pass on to you that last month was National Grilled Cheese Month, and now we're gearing up for the impending opening of Culver City's Meltdown, which is a (mostly) grilled cheese eatery that's slated to open as early as this week. Their menu, which is available online, looks like an ooey-gooey......

Padres 3, Dodgers 2 - Jeff Kent drove home a run in the first and the third, helping Los Angeles jump out to a 2-0 lead against San Diego's Greg Maddux. Then Maddux started to pitch more like, well, Maddux. He retired the final 14 batters he faced and went home with the W against his old team (you may remember he wore blue, albeit briefly). Angels 3, White Sox 0 - Gary Matthews Jr.'s......

With all that went down this week, we thought 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......

Spring is when we get busy here in the Ist-A-Verse. Very busy. But, after staying bundled-up indoors all winter, it's nice for us to be out, about, and collecting things to write about for you. Here's a glimpse at what's been keeping your favorite citybloggers busily away from home and out of bed. For LAist, strong winds attacked LA on the same day the Feds raided the Crips. Not to fear, though: the Japanese version......

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......

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week. Torontoist Special Report: Rosie to Trump: "Fire 300 Bicyclists for Fraud!" On DCist: Students Go Wild for Slogans, Secrets and Sexual Harassment The action was thick......

NYC did not disappoint us in last night’s American Idol. The cup runneth over with the number of contestants to fly their freak flags high, which made for an entertaining two hours. While the other audition cities had their share of weirdos, the Big Apple had plenty of FWAs – freaks with attitude – East Coast style. The show opened with Ryan Adams’ “New York, New York” being used under Ryan Seacrest’s opening travelogue......

Donald Trump gave the 21-year-old blonde and busty Miss USA a second chance. How big of him. Kentucky's Tara Conner came thisclose to getting dethroned amid reports of her underage partying ways in the Big Apple. (She just turned 21 on Monday.) But after what was probably a heartfelt meeting this morning, the old Trumpster decided to give her a second chance. 'Cause Trump's like God in this case. He owns -- literally, with......

Jagshemash! Borat is a hit. It's getting rave reviews, grossing millions, and definitely the most quotable thing we've seen in ages. But Borat seems to have missed most of the -ist cities, and we were all wondering how the film would have been different if he'd made his way around the world on the -ist tour. In Shanghai, Borat would be observing Inane Learnings of Penis Photos for Make Benefit Glorious Flat World of......

LAist is traveling around the country trying to find out the secret to life, the universe, and everything. Currently we're just about finished with five days in New York City. We sorta wished someone would have told us about this crazy town, you know, written a book about it, filmed a movie here or something, cuz the place is In-Sane. We had fun eating the various foods found from all over the world, we've......

Critics come up with Best Of movie lists all the time, but today we wanted to see what the people want. The people who get their home movies from Netflix, that is. It's easy enough: Netflix has a feature that lists the movies that are tops with members in one city that don't do so well elsewhere. Here in LA, we're self-obsessed — Steve Martin's LA Story, from 1991, tops the list — we......

The high temperature in New York City today reached a balmy 35 degrees. Same goes for tomorrow, too. Unfortunately, about 7 million New Yawkers had to hoof, bike or cab-it to work today -- if they went at all -- because of a massive public transportation strike. While LA had its own public transportation strike a few years back, our car-loving culture barely batted an eye. Those most effected were the lower-income brackets who......

Apparently, LA ranks as the 7th best city for singles in the nation, according to Forbes. Hmmm, 7th? At first glance, we're thinking perhaps that's a little generous, considering we're single in this city, and we don't get the sense that our odds here are theoretically better than the other 33 places listed. We've always thought that this town was coolly detached from dating--that the singles scene was about being seen; your choices are......

The Pillsbury Doughboy, beloved squishy-bellied icon of the all-American baking products company, is celebrating his 40th birthday, and this week his Taste Tour has stopped right here in LA. Despite the fact that Angelenos abide by a high aesthetic ideal that does not tolerate jiggly midsections, particularly in our celebrities, we're still taking a couple of days to fete the aging pitch puff-person down at the Santa Monica Pier. Thinking about the Doughboy makes......

We realize that theatre reviews typically come out after the reviewer has seen the play, but we're on a 9 a.m. flight to the Big Apple tomorrow for a week's vacation (and to crash the Gothamist/Six Apart Happy Hour), so a review is the farthest thing from our mind. We haven't even packed! But we're going out tonight to see As You Like It downtown at the Ahmanson, and we're pretty stoked. We're also......

LAist patriarch Gothamist recently asked the question, Do You Feel the Jamba? -- asking New Yorkers if Jamba Juice shops in the Big Apple was a huge stretch... Did New Yorkers freezing their asses off really want to get a Peach Pleasure or a Coldbuster to refresh their taste buds? The question was negotiable, but it got LAist to thinking: Has the trend of Jamba Juice, Roebek's Juice, Surf City Squeeze and other un-chained......

I spend a good deal of time in New York, and one thing that the locals there don't realize is that they live in a barren desert when it comes to sushi. I've tried a number of the top-rated places in the Big Apple and I've always come away disappointed. The East Valley alone boasts more great sushi than all of the five boroughs combined. I'll start off with (what else?) the incomparable Sushi Nozawa,......

As the Lakers put the finishing touches on a contract for new coach Rudy Tomjanovich, we don't anticipate too many "Ru-dy" chants at STAPLES Center if Kobe Bryant is not wearing Purple and Gold. Byrant met with the Clippers yesterday at an undisclosed location in Los Angeles. LAists presumes he didn't need a tour of the arena. Bryant has also met with the Nuggets, but it's doubtful that Kobe's frequent trips to Eagle has......