Photo by philliefan99

It’s tough to look back on a whole year of news, reviews, opinions, rants and raves and find out what you, the readers, seemed to like best. So instead of assigning the thankless task to some starry-eyed intern, we programmed an ultra-fast mainframe computer at DCist HQ to scour the year’s content for the posts that were widely read, commented, tweeted and liked. Here’s what it found.

• Just about anything related to cycling in the District is sure to provoke commentary. There was the driver who slammed on his brakes in front of a pack of cyclists on the George Washington Parkway, the thugs that gave a cyclist a concussion in Adams Morgan after he tried to report an accident, the infamous video of a helmet cam-wearing cyclist being hit by a driver on Rhode Island Avenue (and a subsequent proposed law to deal with harassment of cyclists) and a discussion over a shift in the culture of how drivers see their two-wheeled brethren. And then there was the story of the bicycle, the blue Honda and the broken water.
• Spike Mendelsohn may not have meant to call the District a “second-tier city“, but he did. He subsequently apologized for it, though the apology was decidedly second-tier.
• The U.S. Park Police might need a little help on its PR efforts, if this year’s news is any indication. It got plenty of negative attention for arresting silent dancers at the Jefferson Memorial and pulling guns on unleashed dogs.
• Much the same can be said for Metro, it seems. Our local transit agency provoked controversy for pretending that a wheelchair-bound man was resisting arrest outside the U Street Metro station, stopping a woman from boarding a Metrobus with her service dog and telling us that maybe we shouldn’t get drunk and ride the rails. That being said, you all seemed to love debating what type of SmarTrip swiper you are and really dug Metro’s shiny new trains.
• Gentrification is always a hot topic, especially when the father of the D.C. Council chairman goes all myopic little twits on us. Streetcars too, especially when it comes to assigning blame over any failures in the network’s development.
• When Capitol Hemp was raided on October, some people cheered, some cried and others accused me of being both pro-drugs and pro-drug war. Go figure.
• The D.C. Council did plenty this year, but what seemed to resonate most with you guys? Bacon, budgets and a new D.C. flag, it seems.
• The local off-shoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement made news in the last three months of the year, spreading to our fair city, marching from New York to the District and literally running into traffic (or being run down by traffic, depending on who you ask) in front of the Convention Center.
• Other popular posts: the National Zoo researcher that was accused of poisoning feral cats, the great earthquake of 2011, Chipotle workers protesting mass firings, the Safeway cashier’s anti-gay slur, neighborhood crews fighting during the Caribbean Carnival, the Key Bridge’s vandalized sign and Aaron’s heartfelt goodbye.
• And what would 2011 be without cute baby animals?