Around the World with the -ists

LAist began the month with a new food series exploring the popular and unknown late night eats around town. If a Top Chef winner opened up a late night spot in Los Angeles, denizens would flock it, yet the LA Times and other media might be wary. Turning to sports, the Dodger season was quite memorable in the way that it imploded and the LA County Sheriff's Department made some games of their own such as "Operation Any Booking," where the object was to arrest as many people as possible within a specific 24-hour period (some might suspect these cops can be found on HotChicksWithDoucheBags). The crazy stories continue in an interview with Brandon D. Christopher, author of Dirty Little Altar Boy, and a Santa Monica College Professor being blamed for the Burma web blackout.

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Seattlest watches as an historic, uh, Denny's bites the dust. A local ski area puts in a mountain bike park for summer use and there's a lot going on in the fascinating world of transportation packages. Also, at least one baby is born as a result of last year's windstorm.

Although the Phillies eventually lost to the Rockies, Phillyist still celebrated them earlier this week. They also toasted the local theatre scene, caught some art, and reported on a novel local project. Oh - they're also having an affair and hanging out with musicians.

Torontoist got pretty excited about a bunch of things people don't normally get excited about: Fog! Trashcans! Lobotomies! Cats running for parliament! Urinal cakes! They also had a lovely collection of photos from last weekend's Nuit Blanche, a crazy all-night art festival thing that people ended up being pretty ambivalent about. Oh, and how about a VR panorama of an abandoned subway station for good measure?

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Nothing made much sense this week for DCist. A lack of water pressure in the Adams Morgan neighborhood caused firefighters to struggle for almost eights hours to put out a big apartment building fire -- the damage displaced residents of a 30-unit apartment building, including ESPN's Tony Reali. They realized the city government had 420,000 condoms nobody wants, and wondered what they should do with them. There was yet another weird crime involving Marion Barry. To top it all off, a developer proposed a giant, phallic "Invincibility" monument in the capital and they got themselves a creepy new wax museum.

Londonist have been grinning like tomfools during a happy seven days. National Chocolate Week might have had something to do with it. Big Ben was chiming again, the Spice Girls are back, and London will finally get a shiny new £16 billion rail scheme it so desperately needs. But then things went weird when a25 ft Egyptian death god sailed up the Thames. Within hours, London's horses were catching fire, and parts of the center were cordoned off when a strong chilli sauce was mistaken for a chemical attack.

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You already know what Bostonist has on its mind--the Red Sox. They attended the Red Sox Rally and rejoiced in the team's victory over AnaheimOrWhatever. But they were slightly perplexed by the emphasis on who would be president of Red Sox Nation. But it's not all Red Sox Mania in the Hub. They saw Minus the Bear and a truly trippy noise-rock show. Then they capped it all off with a mighty sweet Cupcake Taste Test.

On SFist, locals went into a frothy frenzy over whether or not using the article "the" before freeway numbers is OK, a timeless debate between Northern and Southern Californians. The Blue Angels took to the sky while Safeway took from the charity pot. The lifestyle of attainable Tenderloin Housing Clinic's living is a fun-filled experience. And one of Ed Jew's layers, Bill Fazio, clawed himself out of the dying case. Finally we introduced a new audio interview, SF Works, kicking things off with a pot trimmer. Heh.

Denny's sign skeleton: Seattlest / mary; firefightin' shot: DCist / lukekb; photo of the Red Sox rally: Bostonist / Victoria Welch