Hip hop mogul Damon Dash is writing a weekly business column for subway handout Metro. Expect horoscopes from L.A. Reid in A.M. New York any day now. [WWD]

While cruising today's docket for criminal court—we're looking for something!—we came across this utter weirdness. Today, Demolition Freedom, born 1968, will be arraigned for one count of like, not having a tax sticker on his (her???) car or something. Sorry, what? Did someone go and name her baby Demolition Freedom just so he could get arraigned on 9/11 and freak me out?

"New York can't in any stretch of the imagination be called a literary city. Other than a few staid events at chain bookstores, there are few literary happenings. The two major "alternative" papers, Village Voice and New York Press, on the day I was there, contained no information about poetry open mics." We kind of love that, but then again we're not literary crusaders or whatever. [ AttackingtheDemi-Puppets]

"The early-20s hipsters left in Manhattan are a more dance-club oriented crowd. People who are paying Manhattan rents are interested in glamour, not rock 'n' roll." The knives are out: It's a war between Manhattan and Brooklyn hipsters.

This weekend's Financial Times contained an absolutely mammoth article about Larry Silverstein, and the developer, who took over a 99-year lease on the Twin Towers a scant two months before they were brought down, could not have hoped for a more glowing profile.

Yesterday we wondered if the prostitution industry still has a presence on 42nd Street. If one of our readers is to be believed, it does! Bonus seventies nostalgia included free!

From the mailbag: "I work in Columbus Circle and just now there were just what appeared to be a bunch of open-deck tour buses full of people synchronized-screaming going around and around the circle. It was extremely loud and scary! They were just going 'AHHHHHHHHHH!' Everyone in the office agrees that this is what the Apocalypse is going to sound like." If you can elucidate any further, please do, but at this point nothing about this fucking city surprises us anymore.

So some taxi drivers are on strike? And some aren't? Live from the carnage:

Two from the mailbag! "I live by Union Square and have been serenaded by helicopters (sounds like 3 or 4) for the past half hour or so - doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. What the hell is going on??? I'm used to the sirens and helicopters 24/7 but usually they come and go...they're hovering right over Union Square it looks like." Asked and answered! "A sinkhole seems to be swallowing the backend of a dept of sanitation garbage truck on w17th st btw 5th and 6th. BLTFish customers are shuffling by nonchalantly, still intent on their roasted halibut." Yep, it's official, the city is falling apart.

Finally, an explosion we can't blame on Con Ed (yet):

"The Police Department has fired a veteran counterterrorism detective who failed a drug test, finding that his claim that his wife had served him marijuana-spiked meatballs was not credible, Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, said yesterday." Dude totes should have said pesto. Duh! [AP]

The Nanny State that is modern-day New York City is trying to insert its wagging finger even further up our already crammed anuses: "Council Member Peter Vallone Jr. of Queens is proposing to outlaw voyeurism by extending a state law that forbids non-consensual peeping with cameras to peeping with the naked eye."

Metro's humor columnist Elliott Kalan fired for admitting that the only way to get people to read the paper is to shove it into their unsuspecting hands as they fumble for their MetroCard. [NYM]

Now you know where the sidewalk ends: Bay Ridge. Go figure.
PHOTO: Rebecca.

In the wake of the Minnesota bridge collapse, our very own Governor ordered a review of all the Empire State's spans. Guess what? Everything's falling apart! More than 2,000 are listed as "deficient," and, here in town, 16 of the 19 biggest bridges are only rated as fair or poor. Those assessments come from city inspections last year, so unless things can fix themselves, they're probably slightly worse. Among those receiving a rating of "poor" are the Tappan Zee and the Brooklyn Bridge. How bad is the city's most iconic overpass? Lori Ardito, first deputy transportation secretary, says it's not what you think.

For the second time this week, I got in a cab with a driver who did not understand this concept: "Greenpoint." Or, more shockingly: "the Williamsburg Bridge." Or! Actually! "THE BQE." Did a session of taxi school just end, I asked, trying hard not to actually slap myself in the face for not just getting out when I'd had the chance? "Yes," said the driver, "but I am a fast learner! I go one time to Greenpoint, I will always know how to get there." How very useful to me! And possibly to you, if you end up in this guy's cab wanting to go to that crazy place called Greenpoint, which is now one of the three places in Brooklyn (others: "Clinton Avenue" and "Pennsylvania Street") he knows how to get to. Also, it turns out that you can take a 24 hour, $85 course to prepare for the yellow cab licensing exam, which, clearly, cannot be very difficult. Long story short? Maybe it's time for us all to make like Zach Braff and get a bike.

Michael Grynbaum—Harvard boy, former New York Observer intern, former New York Sun intern!—spent the last five weeks tailing Mayor Bloomberg. And guess what? Everyone's favorite subway-taking, straphanger advocating, public-transportation loving mayor is a total fraud. Yes! Is crazy! Two big-ass S.U.V.s wait outside his house every day, and sometimes then they drive him 22 blocks to an express stop, passing two locals. Also? He only takes the subway twice a week at this point. The N.Y.P.D. pays for the cars and drivers, and no one's quite clear on why he needs two. Unless his giant head is detachable from his little short body?

Reacting to a study's findings that two out of three subway riders have been sexually harassed, Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer blogged that "for far too long, there [has] been this credo that what happens underground stays underground." Um, sure! Like Vegas. [Scott M. Stringer]

I am an American, New York-born. John Lindsay's name is on my birth certificate (although not as a claim to paternity). I've spent the majority of my life in this area. And like so many of us here in town, I've never been to the top of the Empire State Building, because, you know, it's for tourists. Also, who gives a fuck? That all changed this weekend, when, against my better judgment, I found myself on Fifth Avenue & 34th Street paying a ridiculous amount of money to look down on the city from the top of a big building in the company of several hundred non-deoderized foreigners. If you haven't been and are wavering, let me urge you not to go. It is a nightmare.

From the mailbag: "Guy outside of Grand Central selling 'I survived the steam blast' t-shirts for $15 bucks, standing in front of a piece of posterboard that says 'Were you scared? I was.'"