Ed Koch, the former New York City Mayor who took the city back from the financial brink before presiding over its crack epidemic and AIDS crisis, died of congestive heart failure early this morning. He was 88.

Every single subway line in New York City was delayed this morning, as many of us learned much too late. The reason? "Inclement weather." Which in this case was fog. Fog broke the entire subway system.

New York magazine's latest cover story on Christine Quinn, a leading candidate for the New York City mayorship, is worth reading to better understand the sharp, ambitious, lesbian, Democratic city councilwoman who will likely win the city's top political spot later this year. Aside from all that, however, there's also this one part in which the current New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, tells a bunch of guys at a holiday party to look at some lady's butt.

Recently, the New York Observer uncovered a new problem plaguing rich people: their giant homes are simply too big.

This is a weird one. A man was killed Tuesday afternoon after he fell from a moving subway train onto the tracks. But how did he fall, you ask? He was shitting between cars, as one does, when he apparently slipped, plunging to one of the more shameful deaths imaginable.

It will already be less risky to possess marijuana in New York City in 2013 after a Manhattan judge ruled against the NYPD's "stop and frisk" program. Well, okay, that applies to minorities, who were the only ones arrested and jailed for possessing small amounts of marijuana discovered during "stop and frisk" in the first place. But if New York governor Andrew Cuomo has his way, it won't be an issue for anyone in the state any longer.

Towards the end of last year, two people were shoved onto subway tracks and killed in separate incidents. Tonight, two plainclothes NYPD cops were shot, a bystander was grazed by a bullet and a suspect was killed after opening fire at the Fort Hamilton Parkway subway stop in Brooklyn.

Well, this is starting to get a bit weird. For the second time in the span of a month, a man in New York City has been killed after being pushed in front of a subway train. The image above is the now infamous front-page of the New York Post from Dec. 4, when a freelance photographer working for the paper caught the imminent death of a man named Ki Suk Han. Tonight an unidentified man in Queens was pushed in front of the train by an also unidentified woman. Here is more or less what we know right now, courtesy of the New York Times' Ravi Somaiya.

Imagine the scene:

The New York City Department of Health has released its quarterly STD report. The takeaway here: everyone has chlamydia.

On November 14, Jennifer Foster was visiting New York City from Arizona when she spotted NYPD officer Lawrence Deprimo giving a pair of new boots to a barefoot homeless man. The moment reminded her of a time when, as a young girl, she saw her father, a policeman in Phoenix, buy food for a homeless man.

New York City was damn-near Utopian earlier this week when not one report of a shooting, stabbing, or slashing was recorded in any of the five boroughs for just over 36 hours.

After seven days in seven countries — seven tour stops separated by long rides on a Boeing 777 — our long national nightmare is over: the Rihanna plane has landed in New York, carrying with it the 150 beleaguered fans and journalists who'd been held captive at the whim of their Barbadian mistress. But for many, the last few hours were the hardest.

New Yorkers will soon find themselves facing a fear they haven't known for centuries: the king could show up on their doorstep at any time.

Just in time for the next weather disaster, the MTA has released video of a dry L train tunnel.

Power's been restored to lower Manhattan. Almost all the subways are up and running. New York City is lurching back to work today. Most of it, at least. In some sections of the city and the surrounding area — the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, Coney Island in Brooklyn, several locations across Staten Island — the lights are still off, supplies are scarce, and residents and local volunteers are struggling to distribute aid. Here's how you can most effectively help.

So here I am, perched in a Dunkin Donuts, just north of the Dark Zone in NYC, blogging for as long as my mifi hangs in, with 53 minutes left on my laptop.

In 1993, Jennifer Toth horrified the world with her book The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City. The work detailed the lives of the homeless citizens who’d established communities in the subway and railroad tunnels beneath the streets of New York. Though criticism of the validity of some of Toth’s claims ran rampant following her book’s release, over the years various other sources have indeed found many people—one documentary estimated as many as 6,000—living illegally and dangerously in the subway tunnels.

Is your boss opening the office today and making you go to work? This is not a bad thing, necessarily, if you like your job, hate your kids, have cabin fever, or live in one of the dreaded Dead Zones, where no one has power and gangs of restless professionals roam the streets, wearing elaborate ceremonial jewelry crafted out of their now-useless electronics. No, the bad thing is getting to work.

Here's a photo of the aftermath of the huge fire that devastated Breezy Point. [image via AP]