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.......

Good Morning, Washington. In an apparent attempt to rule the D.C. media landscape through terror and intimidation, the Washington Post has published the scariest local news story we've ever read this morning: apparently, these disgusting-looking creatures called camel crickets are infesting area basements due to the lack of moisture in the ground thanks to the region's rather serious drought. Described as "a mix between a spider and a cricket" and accompanied by disturbing photographic......

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......

When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg sent undercover agents into Virginia gun shops to sniff out illegal sales earlier this year, he had one point to make -- Virginia's guns are ending up plenty of other places, where they have contributed to a number of killings. Predictably, Virginia officials were incensed at Bloomberg's interstate investigation, issuing the equivalent of a cease-and-desist letter and pushing a local gun rights group to organize a "Bloomberg Gun......

In a town where motorcades are less a spectacle and more an annoyance, Mayor Adrian Fenty's modest security detail has never raised many eyebrows. But now Fenty has done away with it altogether -- and no one really knows why. According to a Post report, Fenty has decided to ditch the police security detail and drive himself around during the month of August instead. And beyond simply shedding daily armed protection, Fenty has also been......

Good Monday morning to you, Washington. We can officially declare that the dog days of August have arrived today, now that the House has finally, finally adjourned for their summer break. News junkies will want to note that before heading home they passed a modified version of the defense budget, which will increase spending for defense health care and military housing, among a list of other expenditures. Of course what Washingtonians really care about is......

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......

Good morning, Washington. We've just been catching up on the rather scary looking but thankfully not terror-related explosion in Manhattan yesterday. Naturally, our parent site Gothamist has complete coverage of the steam explosion that occurred on East 41st and Lexington Avenue (41st between Lex and Third) just before 6 p.m. yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the explosion, which killed one person and injured 30, had New Yorkers worried for a while, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said......

The Post's David Nakamura reports that Mayor Adrian Fenty plans to endorse Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. An official announcement has yet to come, but the actions of Fenty adviser Jim Hudson, who organized a fundraiser for Obama, suggest the mayor looks set to get behind the Illinois senator's campaign. Hudson collected $600,000 and endorsements from some of the mayor's more loyal D.C. Council members: Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7), Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4)......

From the tallest skyscraper in the City of Brotherly Love to Canadian tourism copywriting brilliance, here's what you should know from our -ist cities: This week, Phillyist took a gleeful listen to the White Stripes' exciting new release, watched in awe as their new tallest skyscraper was finally completed, found a cheaper way to get to Gothamist, invented a tasty new dessert, and brought back their Craigslist Round-Up feature with a bang. Bostonist watches......

You have to hand it to the Virginia Citizens' Defense League: they know how to stay in the news. We wrote about them just last Friday, noting their opposition to NYC Mayor Bloomberg's sting operations on Virginia gun shop operators. They're in the Post again today — and once again, they're exploring the blurry borders of Virginia's gun laws. This time it's about an anti-Bloomberg raffle that the group wants to put on. The "Bloomberg......

Back in January we found ourselves a bit confused by a group of Virginian gun owners who were protesting New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's presence in D.C. Bloomberg was heading up a meeting of mayors working to fight illegal firearms, which seemed to us like a relatively benign cause. Nobody wants crooks to have guns, right? But after reading today and yesterday's Post stories about Bloomberg's latest anti-gun efforts, we can kind of understand......

Last night, satirical D.C. newcomers The Onion threw themselves a little D.C. fete to celebrate their recent local launch. Editor Joe Garden prefaced his welcoming remarks by relating that he had, on the previous evening, attended an event with “people from… Reuters and Bloomberg News” but that he was much happier spending his time with a few hundred of his new friends at the Black Cat. Well, of course he is! We all know what......

Four hundred thousand people drive into D.C. each day for work and for fun, and the fact that none of them pays for the traffic and pollution they create has peeved more than a few city denizens. Asking drivers to cough up a few bucks to access our fair city is not a new idea, with everyone from local residents to the Post's Marc Fisher airing the idea out. Even Mayor Fenty (following the lead......

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 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......

>> President Bush's appointees to the United States Supreme Court, Justices Roberts and Alito, ensured the court upheld the constituionality of Bush's so-called partial-birth abortion ban in a ruling this afternoon. Justices Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas joined the majority opinion. Justices Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter and Breyer made up the dissenting opinion. [WaPo] >> Now that Gilbert is injured, perhaps it's time to draft him for the job he's really meant to do. [Mothering Hut] >>......

Happy Mardi Gras, Washington. Great news for all those planning to expose themselves to garner beads! (We're unsure if any local bars enforce such strict bead acquisition standards, but you can let us know in comments.) It's already above freezing and temps are heading up to 50 today. That's right, the big five-oh. We predict the risk of falling on your ass will be reduced by 76% by the evening commute. Of course, now we've......

We thought that this week's protest-related excitement was over. It was just yesterday that the Right To Life movement made their yearly descent upon Washington, with their de rigeur horde of earnest teenage virgins in tow. They stood outside Planned Parenthood, were politely avoided by the President, and have already faded from most of our memories. But the pro-life crowd isn't the only protest in town this week. The Virginia Citizens' Defense League is......

Finally. After what has been weeks apart, BFFs Adrian Fenty and Michael Bloomberg will once again be together. Today the New York City mayor is paying a visit to our fair city, stopping in to see Fenty's new bullpen (which was modeled on one developed by Bloomberg) and to visit with the D.C. Council. Fenty traveled north a couple times last year, taking both aides and council members up to have Bloomberg tell them how......

UPDATE: WTOP is reporting that part of a building under construction in Rosslyn has collapsed, and that there are reported injuries, but at this point they don't know how severe. The building is at the corner of North Lynn Street and 19th Street. We'll update again when we learn more. MORE: "Arlington Police spokesman John Lisle says a slab of wet concrete partially collapsed on the 24th floor of the building on North Lynn Street."......

As Adrian Fenty spends the day getting elected, we're reminded that he'll be seeing some serious dosh soon. Last month, Mayor Williams proposed legislation that would give his successor a 32% pay raise. He cited the discrepancy in the administrative pay scale in which some of the Mayor's aides make more than the actual top dog. So today DCist asks: How will he be using his $200,000? (Also, does he remember that fiver we loaned......

It's a drizzly Thursday morning out there, D.C., and it seems like every ... single ... local news headline ... we've run across has to do with this Tuesday's election. Rest assured, we'll have DCist's own election guide for you later this afternoon, but we'll also have plenty of our regular music, food and other odd goodies. Because lord knows we could all stand a break from the Midterm Midtacular (hat tip to The Daily......

And another good morning to you, D.C. Looks like it's going to be a fine, bright, sunny day in the city, with temperatures in the lower to mid 50s. But don't let our cheery outlook force you into being in a good mood too, especially if you were one of the unfortunate souls stuck in the 24-mile backup on the Outer Loop of the Beltway last night. Seriously, haven't we all already learned that slowing......

Presumptive Mayor-to-be Adrian Fenty is in New York City today, reports the Post, in order to pow wow with Mayor Michael Bloomberg about how he went all authoritarian on New York's public school system. Many aspects of what Bloomberg has done in an effort to turn things around for the city's failing schools are intriguing, if not without controversy: What Bloomberg and Klein will describe to Fenty is a massive overhaul in which they rolled......

Yesterday was the day that D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams took his annual cannonball plunge into a local public swimming pool, marking the start of summer and the last time he will participate in a tradition he started during his first year in office. But much like everything else this election year, Williams managed to turn the cannonball into a matter of politics. According to WJLA, Williams challenged his successor to continue the tradition, forcing......

The District is often compared to our behemoth neighbor of a city to the north, New York. And as much as we hate the comparison -- and the resulting argument -- we may be moving in New York's direction, figuratively speaking. As it turns out, certain folks see a bit of Manhattan moving down south, resulting in a so-called "Manhattanization" of the District. Bloomberg yesterday expounded on this issue in an article titled, "D.C., Once......

Though many of us have firmly sided in one camp or the other on whether D.C. should ban smoking in restaurants and bars, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams seems stymied by the pressure to decide. Poor Mayor Williams. We’ll be thinking about him over the weekend, as he confers with aide Gregory McCarthy, debating the pros and cons of the smoking ban before he shares his decision as to whether to sign legislation on Monday. DCist......

You're killing us, Tony, killing us. In what may turn out to be the longest political cat-and-mouse game in District history, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams again spoke to the press about his ambitions for the coming year -- and shed no more light on whether or not he will run for mayor than he has before. Williams, speaking to Bloomberg News Service yesterday, slyly noted that his inability to improve District schools may well push......

Good morning, Washington. This photo is from KimTheWolf who posted the shot of a bed of yellow daffodils near the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 25th Street NW in DCist Photos. Although temperatures will be pleasant approaching 70 degrees, Capital Weather says that for Sunday, temperatures will be "downright chilly" in the low 50s. Kansas Senator Warns D.C. to Watch Its Step: Sen. Sam Brownback, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on......